>What I do not expect is something I’d have been happy to pay $500 or $1,000 for, but not $3,500. Either the game will be changed, or it won’t be changed quite yet. I can’t wait to find out.
From context, I assume you’re saying this about the current iteration?
I guess willingness to pay for different things depends on one’s personal preferences, but here’s an outcome that I find somewhat likely (>50%):
The first-gen Apple Vision Pro will not be very useful for work, aside from some niche tasks.
It seems that to be better than a laptop for working at a coffee shop or something they need to have solved ~10 different problems extremely well and my guess is that they will have failed to solve one of them well enough. For example, I think comfort/weight alone has a >30% probability of making this less enjoyable to work with (for me at least) than with a laptop, even if all other stuff works fairly well.
Like you, I’m sometimes a bit puzzled by what Apple does. So I could also imagine that Apple screws up something weird that isn’t technologically difficult. For example, the first version of iPad OS was extremely restrictive (no multitasking/splitscreen, etc.). So even though the hardware was already great, it was difficult to use it for anything serious and felt more like a toy. Based on what they emphasize on the website, I could very well imagine that they won’t focus on making this work and that there’ll be some basic, obvious issue like not being able to use a mouse. If Apple had pitched this more in the way that Spacetop was pitched, I’d be much more optimistic that the first gen will be useful for work.
The first-gen Apple Vision Pro will still produce lots of extremely interesting experiences so that many people would be happy to pay, say, $1000 for, but not $3,500 and definitely not much more than $3,500. For example, I think all the reviews I’ve seen have described the experience as very interesting, intense and immersive. Let’s say this novelty value wears off after something like 10h. Then a family of four gets 40h of fun out of it. Say, you’re happy to spend on the order of $10 per hour per person for a fun new experience (that’s roughly what you’d spend to go to the movie theater, for example), then that’d be a willingness to pay in the hundreds of dollars.
Nice overview! I mostly agree.
>What I do not expect is something I’d have been happy to pay $500 or $1,000 for, but not $3,500. Either the game will be changed, or it won’t be changed quite yet. I can’t wait to find out.
From context, I assume you’re saying this about the current iteration?
I guess willingness to pay for different things depends on one’s personal preferences, but here’s an outcome that I find somewhat likely (>50%):
The first-gen Apple Vision Pro will not be very useful for work, aside from some niche tasks.
It seems that to be better than a laptop for working at a coffee shop or something they need to have solved ~10 different problems extremely well and my guess is that they will have failed to solve one of them well enough. For example, I think comfort/weight alone has a >30% probability of making this less enjoyable to work with (for me at least) than with a laptop, even if all other stuff works fairly well.
Like you, I’m sometimes a bit puzzled by what Apple does. So I could also imagine that Apple screws up something weird that isn’t technologically difficult. For example, the first version of iPad OS was extremely restrictive (no multitasking/splitscreen, etc.). So even though the hardware was already great, it was difficult to use it for anything serious and felt more like a toy. Based on what they emphasize on the website, I could very well imagine that they won’t focus on making this work and that there’ll be some basic, obvious issue like not being able to use a mouse. If Apple had pitched this more in the way that Spacetop was pitched, I’d be much more optimistic that the first gen will be useful for work.
The first-gen Apple Vision Pro will still produce lots of extremely interesting experiences so that many people would be happy to pay, say, $1000 for, but not $3,500 and definitely not much more than $3,500. For example, I think all the reviews I’ve seen have described the experience as very interesting, intense and immersive. Let’s say this novelty value wears off after something like 10h. Then a family of four gets 40h of fun out of it. Say, you’re happy to spend on the order of $10 per hour per person for a fun new experience (that’s roughly what you’d spend to go to the movie theater, for example), then that’d be a willingness to pay in the hundreds of dollars.