I still don’t get what the compelling use for these is supposed to be. There’s nothing they’ve shown so far that doesn’t seem more awkward and intrusive than it is beneficial, unless maybe if you exist in true isolation at work and at home.
Something Apple totally missed with this was the gaming industry. If Apple had put more effort years back to make Mac Gaming a thing, they could have easily reeled in VR ports of so many cool games. Even with their current catalogue of games, it’s meagre compared to what Windows has.
This is changing quickly.
Apple is alot of things I don’t like, but stupid (from a profit/business standpoint) isn’t one. Apple sell alot of products that I think are hot garbage and would be embarrassed to own, but they’re not for me as a consumer, and they tend to sell a bazillion of whatever it is and make a ton of money.
Even trying to put my biases aside though, I cannot fathom what their gameplan with this is though. Even if it was a good deal and great product, a pretty huge proportion of VR headset purchasers are PC gamers, and that generally isn’t a demographic that is Apple leaning. So the buyer for this is a person who uses VR regularly (probably a PC gamer), but also someone who is Apple leaning enough to get this vs. an Index or Vive, who also is willing to pay an A.B.S.U.R.D price premium for it (it is pretty impressive hardware to be fair, but not 3-4 times the cost impressive).
My guess is that they’re intentionally taking a loss on this, putting it out as a halo product that gets talked about a ton (that’s already happening because of the price, like they did with the mac pro wheels), and generally get a ton of attention on this without selling many (but just enough to get user data and hardware information to iterate on) and THEN in a suitable amount of time they’ll release one that will genuinely be competitive, at a big price drop, and sell a ton.
I think you got the target audience wrong, this isn’t a PC gaming headset. It doesn’t even have or support VR controllers.
This is more of an iPad replacement, second screen, productivity and consumption device. And it’s going to be the first one that actually has a big library of regular apps from the very start. Arguably the bigger market, not just for gamers.
And seriously, while you can ignore the pixels on the vive/index in action well enough, they’re there, and they’re extremely obvious and unpleasant on text. There are a couple third party options that get in the neighborhood on resolution, but shockingly, they’re also really expensive.
Exactly how many people do they think are going to fork out 4 grand for one of these things? Don’t get me wrong, I really want one. But like hell paying that much for it. I’m gonna wait a while until the price comes down.
It’s expensive (and too expensive for me), but if you put it next to a MacBook Pro with a few upgrades it’s the same price and those get bought without thinking about it.
To become more mainstream it definitely has to be cheaper, but there’s something bothering me about how all the other prices are acceptable.
MacBooks are more of a working device and the upgrades are optional, the starting price is cheaper, I know. Still, these price points aren’t unheard of for Apple.
They sell tens of them!
I really can’t unsee the ski goggle look lol
Honestly, ngl it’s kinda an improvement over current VR headsets. Tbh I think it’s pretty cool because iirc it does a bunch of stuff that other current VR headsets don’t do yet, it just sucks that it’s so expensive. Maybe the next version will be cheaper though.
