I think the price and the challenge of category creation are tightly connected. Apple has decided that the capabilities of the Vision Pro are the minimum viable product – that it just isn’t worth making or selling a device without a screen so good you can’t see the pixels, pass-through where you can’t see any lag, perfect eye-tracking and perfect hand-tracking.
Apple’s recently released Vision Pro goggle/headset has been a challenge to review. For one, few have actually had the “wearing it on my head” experience. The rest of us have merely seen 2D videos or still images of what the experience might be like IF one was actually wearing the Vision Pro.
Benedict Evans nonetheless has some insightful takeaways about the device such as Apple’s powerful blending of multiple modes…he counts five metaverse types. Which he says is “binary” when compared to Zuckerberg’s Metaverse approach, although he also states that by now, the word metaverse has no common specific meaning, it’s been used so loosely and so often.
Vision Pro — Benedict EvansBetter VR screens produce a better VR experience, obviously, but that’s on a spectrum right back to the original Rift in 2011 (or indeed the 1990s).
Conversely, the proposition that you don’t think you’re looking at a screen at all is binary – it’s more like the difference between using nav keys or a stylus and using multitouch. For VR, better screens are merely better, but for AR Apple thinks this this level of display system is a base below which you don’t have a product at all.