But if you look seriously at the space, the price is aggressive for what it is. You're not getting a dumb display that's close for $2k. And the passthrough is insane and completely unmatched. There was a tiny bit of video noise, and it marginally removes your sense of the depth of the environment, but except for the fact that you have a display strapped to your face you could almost completely ignore that it's not the real world. Add the M2 chip and how powerful ARKit is and it's really a lot of tech for $3500.
$3500 is a lot. It's perfectly reasonable to wait, especially when it needs to be in developers' hands before the app ecosystem that really leverages what it can do really gets built out. But the "Apple tax" if they weren't sincerely trying to make it as affordable as possible (within their requirement of actually being good enough to constitute AR) is probably $5K plus.
I think the problem is that Apple tries to take its "Pro" label on products seriously while other companies don't. Macbook Pro/Mac Pro computers are "professional" devices separate from the "consumer" line Macbook/iMac/Mac Mini products, for example. They are meant for what they say they are. Vision Pro is presumably the same.
But "Pro" as a label has become synonymous with "Premium" in the industry and so they're just the better devices for people with more money.
I bought an apple watch out of fomo because my wife had one. I could not for the life of me figure out what this fucking thing was for. Like, do I need another reminder to look at my phone? I don't need the "health" app either. The watch "faces" are in such a walled garden limbo its fucking embarrassing. If anything, it reminds me of its limitations more than any potential. Move that feeling to something you strap to your face and lug around a tethered 2 hour battery. Do you wear it out to dinner? Or around the house to what, look at your own stuff? Is it just to watch movies on? I can't think of a single application that is better because of it. The tech for a pilot or racecar driver or any other headsup display need is already out there. Its redundant and extremely gimicky. When you see a product like this you can tell there is panic in the R&D department.
I mean if you don’t use the health app you’ve eliminated like 90% of what the watch is for. The entire premise is a wearable biometric sensor that also functions as a direct link to your phone.
I have an ultra that I use for a ton of stuff. I originally got an SE for the better sleep tracking, but that turned into using it for workouts at which point I got a series 8. When I got into longer distance cycling (75-100 miles) the battery on that didn’t last long enough so I upped to the ultra.
I don’t know what fomo means, but the trick with the Apple Watch for me was to uninstall all the apps by default then anytime I used my phone and thought, “You know, I could probably just do this just as easily from my watch,” I reinstalled that app (or something similar). Ended up taking my phone out of my pocket less frequently and ending up with better battery life.
None of this applies to an AVP, though, but it really isn’t hard to come up with a few useful ideas for that kind of tech in and around the home. Maybe not at it’s current price point, though. (And certainly not out on the streets like some doofuses are doing.)
I did something similar with my Apple Watch but in the opposite direction. Whenever I get a notification I think is this helpful or annoying? Anything annoying gets deleted or notifications turned off.
I used to do front of house audio and had to keep my phone on silent… but at the same time watch for texts and emails from my boss during shows. Having a watch for her notifications was a life (and job saver).