Apple Reportedly Suspends Work on Vision Pro 2

Everyone I’ve talked to that has used a Vision Pro has said it’s an incredible piece of magical technology, but it’s utterly useless.

It’s literally just Apple flexing.

but it’s utterly useless.
That imo has been the issue with VR/AR for a while now. The Hardware as you said is pretty good by now and looking at something like the quest even afforable. What's lacking is content and use cases.
Smartphones had an easier time being adopted, since it was just moving from a larger to a smaller screen. But VR/AR actually needs a new type of content to make use of it's capabilities. And there you run into a chicken/egg problem, where no one is putting in the effort (and vr content is harder to produce) without a large user base.
Just games and some office stuff (that you can do just as well on a regular pc) aren't cutting it. You'd need stuff like every major sport event being broadcast with unique content, e.g. formula one with the ability to put yourself into the driver seat of any car.
- You've nailed it. Ordinarily, Apple is good at throwing its weight (money) around to make things like this happen, but it seems like there weren't many takers this go-round, so we just got an overpriced, beautiful and fascinating paperweight.
  That's why the biggest use case for VR has been gaming and metaverses. It's a ready-to-go thing that adapts well, but it's certainly not for everyone. For my part, I'm saving up for a PS VR2, because it's adding PC support soon and I already own a PS5 as well. Far, far cheaper than Apple's device, and likely quite good still.
- When the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift first came out, the rift didn’t yet have full-room support. You had to sit facing the base station and use a video game controller. Meanwhile, on Vive, you could stand up, walk around, and manipulate the world with two tracked remotes.
  One pro-con comparison I read at the time actually listed needing to walk around the room as a con against HTC. That is the whole point of VR.
  I think the core issue is that every piece of new technology so far has helped us get lazier. People used to walk around an office, then they sat at a computer, now they carry their computer with them and do things from the couch.
  Nobody wants to get up to do things if they can avoid it, and that’s the only real benefit VR/AR provides.
- This may be true for AR, but it is emphatically not true for VR. There are dozens of amazing games that are extremely addictive and fun. Steam VR is no joke, it's a very solid store these days.
- That would actually be super interesting. Yeah, let me switch between cams on cars, pit crews, stands, helicopter etc., with real sound where possible. Hell yeah.
- Volumetric video for sports is interesting because it offers VR users the option to 'be there', but the provider can also offer desktop/mobile users the option to control their own virtual camera. I can kinda see it taking off in a few years when more cheaper/lighter headsets with good passthrough arrive.
as a VR enthusiast: if the had just added controllers it would have made it so much more useable.
No matter how good your gesture controlls are, it still greatly limits its use. Theres a reason we use mice and styluses with computers, instead of touch and mid-air gestures!
- Are there still no 3rd party controllers? It seems like controllers like the quest pro has (that can track themselves) would be an easy match. I guess meta is spending millions on development though, so it’s probably not something easily made by a small company.
  I would think Bluetooth should provide enough bandwidth, but IDK if apple’s OS is configurable enough to support something like that.
- VR in its current form, I agree, has only one real use.
  But when improved upon and made smaller, I could easily see it being used to watch TV or similar. I’ve done that on a few flights and it was decent.
  Not to mention, VR is a necessary step to get to AR, and AR has many more applications. Screens with anything anywhere, for one. Imagine a computer with one monitor, but numerous virtual monitors. Or a TV on your ceiling.
  It’s iterative. Gaming just happens to be the current driver.
I use mine daily… primarily as a monitor for my laptop.
Now you might think that’s dumb, but I can go sit outside in the backyard, park, beach, coffee shop, wherever and work on a big, totally private, crisp and clear, glare-free anywhere monitor. I can bring it to the in-laws or on trips and even use it as a monitor for my Steam Deck. Or I can lay in bed or on the sofa or on a lawn chair and use the Steam Link app to play games from my PC.
Taken purely as a private, portable, omni-monitor, it’s absolutely worth the price for me.
As an AR/MR/XR device, it has some MAJOR software problems. Honestly, it makes sense they’d pause hardware development… it’ll be a couple years before there’s anything worth upgrading and they have a long way to go on UX, gestures, inputs, and even basic real-time object recognition and tracking. I bought mine knowing it was a Development Kit and planning to use it to get ahead on AR development experience, but I hit major roadblocks so frequently I’ve just about given up on every interesting use-case I went into this with.
VisionOS 2 is a baby step forward, but Apple has a long, long way to go before it makes sense for regular people. Heck, they aren’t even including all the cool new AI features in VisionOS 2, and it’s the one device that could benefit from that stuff the most.
So, yeah… it can still be worth it to certain people with specific use-cases, but I think it’ll be a solid 5 years before the software and hardware can reach a “normal consumer” level of quality and value.
- Do you mind sharing if you feel fatigue if you use it as a monitor for long durations. I feel headphone fatigue with my ears getting too warm very quickly for example. Anything of that sort physically, and how about eye strain?
- This is the reason I want one. I really want to take a long haul flight with one paired to my wireless keychron with Mx blue switches, and proceed to code for the entire flight.
Then it's just useless...
The blackberry was the exact opposite, it was an unpolished piece of ugly hardware that was, at the time, incredibly useful
Pretty tech that accomplishes nothing is akin to the garbage toy lights they peddled to kids in Disney... Just landfill e-waste
Used or owned? I own one and bought several for my company and they’re not useless at all. They’re just limited in the AR/VR experiences you can do right now. As a computer, productivity, and production device, it’s far from useless.
- Blue Steel Look intensifies
DARPA is going to have to play with this for a while before it gets to a point where it’s actually useful to the general public. And they are playing with it.
- DARPA hasn’t been an innovator in decades. Their budget is pathetic compared to Apple.
"Hey look what we could do at six times the price point" isn't a flex, it's stupidity.
Like why not just release Apple brand Skis, or team up with Nike and make some shoes, or Jewelry if you want to do high priced stuff rich idiots pay for.
- It's a flex because the vision pro has the best optics and display technology ever made. It's stupid because it has no use. It's not a flex because it's expensive, it's expensive because it's a flex, if that makes sense.

Note that suspends != cancelled and it's just the "Pro", with a cheaper model allegedly in the works.

We'll see where a cheaper model lands in terms of price, but it's very clear now that $3500+ isn't really the price range where most people buy something out of curiosity. Because let's face it: the Vision (Pro) still lacks a "killer app" for the masses.

That's the important bit that everybody is missing:
Apple has suspended work on the second-generation Vision Pro headset to singularly focus on a cheaper model
Clicking through to the paywalled article, the headlines reads as follows:
Apple Suspends Work on Next Vision Pro, Focused on Releasing Cheaper Model in Late 2025.
I am as unoptimistic on the future of VR as everybody else here, but can we please leave the nuance in? Apple are not turning the key on VR, at least not yet, they are simply doing the predicable thing that everybody said their would: Release a VR headset that isn't targeted at developers only.
My impression of the Vision Pro was that it was built and priced for developers to buy and expense and then build VR apps with it. That way when the consumer version comes out there's stuff in the app store.
- Have they built apps for it yet? I was going to get one but then it was stupidly expensive, was only available in the US, and would require a Mac for development not just for code compiling. To like many I didn't bother with it. Even if I could have imported it.

Apple has suspended work on the second-generation Vision Pro headset to singularly focus on a cheaper model

That seems very reasonable and like what they probably should’ve been doing all along.

I still don't understand who the pro was actually for. Everyone who had one said exactly the same thing about it which was they couldn't understand how to use it productively for anything.
- IMHO, it’s a fancy dev kit.
- The kind of people who would go around driving a Cybertruck with a Vision Pro on their faces and an humane pin strapped on.

Companies have been pushing VR so long now. I'll say that I think the tech is cool and the idea is cool, but I will literally never use them.

I can't wear them while working as I am in meetings 99% of the time.

I would not wear them in my free time, as I do not want to disassociate from my wife and cats.

My issue is, aside from gaming, I'm not interacting with the content or data in any meaningful, improved way.
VR for real life is just a series of flat two dimensional screens, usually with a novelty background of a waterfall.
- Yeah, I think it could be useful for CAD or 3D art (with proper software) but I can’t think of many other jobs where it would be all that helpful.
I love VR. So I use it for gaming maybe once a week, for 1-2 hours, usually as an activity with my SO so we can switch who's playing each "round" depending on the game. That's the maximum I find fun instead of tiring. I can't see using it for long periods or for work, that sounds like a nightmare.
It's absolutely phenomenal for gaming or vr "experiences" (basically movies made specifically for vr). But the corpos are really hellbent on making everyone use it for meetings for some fucking reason. Which is truly the lamest, most unnecessary use of this tech.
This is just a price to function issue.
If the price was 0 everyone would have one.
But the cost of it is way too high for what it is. Price and weight etc will come down. Uses will increase.
- Have one != Use one. I own two and stopped using them ages ago. All of them are too clunky and I realized I'm generally too lazy to want to interact with stuff in VR vs my more comfortable media consumption on a TV and a couch.
  Maybe if they were super lightweight and I could legitimately do real exercise with them they'd be useful, but as is they're too hot, too uncomfortable and too limited.
- I don’t think the cost is too high at all. But I also don’t think it’s a consumer device right now. It’s a dev kit with none of the cost savings of production at scale.
I would only use VR in racing, flight sim, or space sim games. probably once a couple of months after the initial excitement.
- That’s a good point. I’d have loved this for elite dangerous.
I have found my headset useful for work, when working from home and I don't do camera on meetings anyway.
At home it's pretty nice, and since my ears are open I can actually talk, so my wife actually prefers it over me wearing headphones. But all things in moderation, I wouldn't wear it constantly.
Despite being a huge fan of the concept, I still couldn't go for Apple's headset, it's heavy, it's expensive, and lack of controllers are all deal breakers. The Quest 3 is lighter, has good controllers, and is more affordable. It may not have the displays as nice as Vision, but that doesn't make up for the rest of the stuff.
Aren't the meetings pushed as one of the basic function of these? But I guess it only makes sense if most of the participants use them and software has the support.
- If most people have them? Ok, I’ll tell all my clients to get a pair 😂
- yeah the software they developed only works between Vision owners... perfect for meetings between all your millionaire friends I guess
The current iterations have far more potential than the past.
But the hardware is stil too power inefficiënt and the display pixel density is expensive to produce.

Bro, just one more year. Let them come up with just another pair of goggles bro, trust me bro, one more year and we will be in VR future bro.

I'm still waiting for:
good Linux support, including apps/games
not too expensive - $500-ish
relatively privacy-friendly, so anything Meta is out
Valve Index is close, but it's expensive and Linux content is very limited. Bigscreen VR Headsets looks interesting since it seems more comfortable than Index, just as privacy-friendly, and should work on Linux, but it's still a little expensive ($1k) and there aren't many Linux VR apps AFAIK. I might get it though, still deciding.
- This requires an Apple iPhone XR or newer, as the face scan utilizes the TrueDepth sensor.
  I'd rather take a plaster mold of my face than have to use a specific phone to order a VR headset.
In the year 2000...
Quest 3 adoption is super high compared to where quest 1 or 2 were at years ago, the apple vision pro wasn't meant to create mass adoption anyway, not at that price point.

You mean they're doing what everyone said they should have done to begin with - release an affordable consumer product that will in turn attract more developers?

Everyone knew that they would release a cheaper model, and it was always their plan. That’s why it has ‘pro’ in its name.
- And my point is that maybe they should have established a market by releasing a cheaper model first.

To do:

Cheaper headset

Actual controllers

Make it work with PCs

Don't make it out of a solid chunk of aluminium and glass so it weighs a ton and has nothing to balance it out on the back.
Apple: nah
I still don't understand how Windows got the PC name. A Mac is also a personal computer...
Also, apple isn't going to make it work with other OSs any more than they have their other products, not sure why you'd even list that.
- In case you are wanting the history. IBM actually coined the term PC with their IBM Personal Computers
  At the time most computing platforms were incompatible. Software written for a commodore computer wouldn’t work with an apple computer wouldn’t work with an IBM PC.
  The IBM PC was popular enough though that people started building “pc compatible” machines. A very popular configuration for this was intel chips with Microsoft DOS. While these machines started out as “pc compatible” after a while the IBM PC wasn’t a big deal anymore so saying “we are compatible with a machine released in 1981” just slowly morphed into “it’s a PC” as shorthand for “intel chipset with Microsoft OS”
  Now why didn’t apple get the pc moniker? At the time when the IBM PC launched apple was actively building and selling their own computers and weren’t interested in making them IBM PC clones so they never went out and marketed themselves as “pc compatible” because for the most part they were not.
  Thanks for attending my Ted talk

I watched a YouTuber telling something like:

"I cannot believe Apple's biggest premium VR tech wants to change the world... And they are advertising it with... Fucking spreadsheets"

I am paraphrasing ofc, but the meaning was that this could have been a pretty good toy for everyone, but they are trying to sell it as a work-buddy thingy, yeah seeing those spreadsheets focus was kinda dystopian (like in Ready Player One where they are caged doing work or something hah), watching movies in crazy sites yeah, that was what would have sell it more for me, and other ppl, if it wasn't crazily expensive.

It's not for gaming and it's not for porn... what were they thinking?
- If it fails it is totally on them.

Is this the virtual boy of Apple? A product that never really made no sense to anybody and was never really supported?

I was hoping they'd get the price down to something sane. It looks like it could be a cool tool for CAD. Of course there won't be any input available from a non-Apple computer so I still wouldn't want one.
- I desperately want a virtual desktop environment for plain ass computing. Give me infinite windows for my spreadsheet and IDE and that’s all I need!
- In the article it says they're cancelling the "pro" version to focus on producing a cheaper version. So it sounds like you might get what you want, although "cheaper" will still likely be very expensive, and your point about compatibility with non-Apple devices still holds.
At least the VirtualBoy sold enough to not make it a waste of time?
- It did?
The virtual boy was awesome. I literally thought it was a childhood hallucination for almost 2 decades...
Imagine if they had more games for it, and kept improving the tech. Up through the Wii, Nintendo actually made some of the most amazing tech - the Wii accelerometers are what made quadcopters possible (outside of DARPA projects). The Nintendo back then could've made worthwhile VR before the iPad took the "I want to be on the Internet on the couch" niche
- I played it at a blockbuster I think. I desperately wanted one as a kid. The only games I remember were tennis and a wario side scroller where he can jump into the background. I think I would have been bored within a week.

I don't know why everyone is so negative. The gameplan seems pretty clear to me.

Make expensive fancy product. This is effectively a "devkit" that companies can use to start experimenting with AR software.
Make lower cost product. There are now a few decent apps available and early adopters will be willing to buy it to be one the leading edge.
Now there is a bigger market, leading more companies to be willing to develop apps.

Apple is hoping that this is enough to break the chicken-and-egg cycle. Enough to get a few powerful apps such that more regular consumers will be willing to buy which again increases the addressable market which makes it more attractive to companies.

Yep that's exactly why they had started the 2 then changed their mind lol. Alllll part of the plan
- It's all 5D chess, just like Elon.
Basically sounds like the Tesla game plan, which was super effective: roadster (which is purely a toy for the rich) and a little later the Model S (practical EV), and then introduce an affordable model.
This implies that eventually people will strap rusty boxes to their head though, so grain of salt with the analogy...
They did something similar with Apple Watch and Apple TV and Home Pod and jt worked out well enough for them.
- HomePod is still mid. But people really sleep on how terrible the first Apple Watch was, and how AppleTV is a media juggernaut now.

Why does this feel like another "voice assistant" that we're supposed to talk to all day?

If we worked from home, maaaayyybe voice control could be a thing once it's 100%? But Boss Man wants us back at work. Are we really going to be a open-office with everyone talking to their computer like some sort of crypto bro boiler room?

It's sorta like the "video phone" that everyone was dying to have for decades. We finally got it and everyone went "meh". A few grandparents use it to talk to their grandkids. Hell, most of the current generations don't even use phones anymore.

It's one more technology that's being pushed out before it's baked and will likely be only really useful in niche applications. Really fucking good for those niche applications, but just too expensive and awkward for anyone else.

The video phone is now facetime, skype, zoom, google meet etc…
- Yeah, FaceTime. But how often do people use it in practice?
  Good point about Zoom. Business clearly like Zoom for meetings, but big business is still hammering BTO hard. Will Zoom be marginalized when they finally force in-person meetings?
  Also, the last few companies I worked for that did Zoom meetings, everyone kept their cameras off.

Apple should make a virtual headset you can buy in META, then put it on when you are already in a VR setting, except now you can use Apple services with it!

That way it would have zero production cost, be absolutely as useless as it already is, and can be just as overpriced.

It seems like the perfect Apple scheme.

If you can continue with vapid schemes that ensure endless shareholder value I'll follow you anywhere senpaisano

I'm not sure why they tried this.

'We made a VR games headset, but replaced the games with office related programs, like calenders and notepads'

Did any of them ever use an Oculus Quest? Like, why did they try this? Is this Apple's Google Glass moment? Did they really think that if you pay enough youtubers to wear it in public, normal people would magically go into car-level debt to emulate them?

In fact, I'll go as far as to say this campaign and price point was a bigger mistake, and a louder failure than Google Glasses.

I don't know how far things have come since the aptly named Acer AH101-D8EY, but that was the last time I tried to be "productive" in VR and it was absolutely not working.
My guess was that they knew gaming was niche and were willing to invest less in this headset and more in spreading the widespread idea that "Spatial Computing" is the next paradigm for work.
I VR a decent amount, and I really do like it a lot for watching TV and YouTube, and am toying with using it a bit for work-from-home where the shift in environment is surprisingly helpful.
It's just limited. Streaming apps aren't very good, there's no great source for 3D movies (which are great, when Bigscreen had them anyways), they're still a bit too hot and heavy for long-term use, the game library isn't very broad and there haven't been many killer app games/products that distinct it from other modalities, and it's going to need a critical amount of adoption to get used in remote meetings.
I really do think it's huge for given a sense of remote presence, and I'd love to research how VR presence affects remote collaboration, but there are so many factors keeping it tough to buy into.
They did try, though, and I think they're on the right track. Facial capture for remote presence and hybrid meetings, extending the monitors to give more privacy and flexibility to laptops, strong AR to reduce the need to take the headset off - but they're first selling the idea, and then maybe there will be a break. I'll admit the industry is moving much slower than I'd anticipated back in 2012 when I was starting VR research.

The only thing I could see myself using it for, is being in bed and watching a movie. I can do that with ar glasses for 300$.

I myself use a 9 US$ gooseneck phone holder that gives me a great tv watching experience in bed. Came across it as a lemmy recommendation and it's improved the quality of my life much more than some high end gadgets.
you can get a giant 4K TV for $500 (1/7 the Vision price)
basically one TV for every room in your house

BUT THE SHAREHOLDERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The price immediately put this product into the grave. They should take out all the useless features like the eye passthrough, or the bizarre face scanning, if it’ll only ever be used for calls. If this were to be used in a gaming scenario, sort of like what the PSVR2 does, that’d be a whole different conversation

The front screen is what no one wants in a cheaper version. Don’t cut back on sound and cameras ffs

If they can’t get the headset to fit the size and weight of swimming goggles, I don’t think it can get mass adoption

Speak for yourself.
That's what they were SO close to getting. Solutions like Xreal Air and Viture are just much more comfortable and less isolating.
- Was about to comment this. Those products are actually usable versions of apples vr. And they can be used with any device. Apples use case is so narrow that other companies overtook them out of the gate.
- Viture looks neat, still missing some things I want to see but they seem to understand what this kind of device needs

Rip

I made the right choice back in 2019 when they were recruiting optimechanics experts. It's a dumb idea.

Yeah right. Surely it would have been a good idea to take the money for the last 5 years.
- Why? I got a way better job that I like and it has no end in sight. I could retire on this one. Maybe.
Weird flex, but ok.
Good for sticking to something you believe in. Highly underrated quality in engineers. "Take the money and run like a thief" is such a bullshit attitude
- Im not an engineer but I am in development. I will do the best I can to make as good a product as I can based on the requirements but when it comes to what I will work on I am a total whore. Show me the money and tell me what you want honey. Ill do anything for the right price. No weapon stuff though.
- Yeah the best jobs are all about doing something you like. The moment you stop caring much about being employed there, quality drops and your own reputation is on the line. It's much better to do what you love. Getting paid 🤪 for it, that's my wife's job. She pushed me in the negotiation phase to the point where I was so uncomfortable. But now I feel like that was ok based on the change I brought to others in the company. My pay bump raised the pay for several others. But anyway, do what you love and get paid doing it, like Chris Rock said once...or twice while getting paid to say it.