Slightly tangential rant, but is anybody else becoming frustrated with the process of buying Apple products in Apple stores? For me, it started with the Apple Watch - I knew which one I wanted and was ready just to head down and buy one, but I was forced to sit through an entire "fitting" with patronising explanation on how to use the knob on the the side. Recently, I wanted to buy a new Phone. Again, I knew the one I wanted and was ready to part with cash and walk out with a box as quickly as possible - I approached a sales assistant, said: "Hi, I'd like to buy a new phone please" (or words to that effect) to be informed that if I didn't have an appointment, it would take half an hour or so to get somebody over. A random store nearby that also sold phones had no issue selling me one.
The whole experience of visiting an Apple store has changed from being something I looked forward to just another shopping chore. The VR headset is a case in point - if I want to be guided through the process, then I will ask for that. Otherwise, just sell me the damn product! I guess maybe I'm just not their target audience any more.
Yeah absolutely. Every time I’ve been in my local Apple Store, I’ve basically been talked out of purchasing, or it becomes a huge hassle of upselling and extra worrying charges, and quite frankly, stupidity and lack of knowledge from the pseudo-smart staff. All they can do is toe the party line and what they’ve been trained to say and do, which kind of falls apart when faced with someone who has used Apple computers and products for some 25 years now. Most recently I walked in and basically said “I would just like to buy this phone right now” when I wanted an iPhone Pro Max in a rush, and the hassle that I got led to me walking out and going to John Lewis (uk department store) next door, where I said “I would like to buy an iPhone Pro Max” and had one in my hands 90 seconds later and was paying for it, at £60 cheaper than Apple.
Apples pricing structure is also annoying nowadays too. As soon as one specs out and bumps a laptop, one suddenly finds that they may as well get a different laptop, ie once you bump up a MacBook Air, you may as well just buy a Pro, until all of a sudden your £999 purchase idea has turned into £3000 and a debate about AppleCare.
I’ve not had such a terrible experience but I’ve had the experience of being confused trying to work out how to buy something and the shop assistant being almost surprised that someone wanted to buy something instead of just looking at things. It was smooth enough after that but I would typically order online after that (which was mostly fine except for an annoying case where they would only deliver if I showed up in person)
People would probably like car dealerships a lot more if it was 'here's a bunch of cars you can look at, climb in and out of, and try out as much as you like as long as they don't leave the lot, and each has a specific listed price, take it or leave it'.
same here. i was able to skip a fitting for an apple watch when i told them i already measured. also with buying iphones outright i've never been hassled or up-sold. i've been going to my apple store in a medium sized american city for the past 10 years.
I've given up on simply walking into an Apple store to just buy something for the past few years. The closest you can get to this is by ordering online ahead of time, then walking into the store an hour later and picking it up.
I've walked into an Apple Store and told the person triaging people walking in, "I know EXACTLY what iPhone I want". They send me to the iPhone area where I have to wait in a queue behind 5 other people who need to be sold the damn iPhone. The customers I'm waiting for are either deliberating between a few different models or have no idea what they should get, so the people working in the store are busy talking to them for much longer than I care to wait.
I wish Apple would add a step to their triage to handle people who walk into the store and say, "I know EXACTLY what I want, _________"
Doesn't Apple have this step already? I'm talking about the online store with optional pickup in your Apple Store. I've ordered online whenever I exactly know what I want. No sales talk, no waiting. Pickup in store was fast and hassle free, but that might depend on store and time. Best of all: I know exactly that the item I want is available for me.
Meanwhile I had the opposite experience in a Google Store recently. I picked a phone case off the shelf in 10s, told the nearest employee I wanted to buy it, and he immediately whipped out a credit card scanner and I bought it right there in 30s. Didn't even need to go to the checkout counter or anything. It probably helps that that store is less crowded than the Apple store, but their training at least seems to involve making the purchasing flow as efficient as possible.
It’s a brave commenter who tries telling Apple they’re doing retail wrong.
I’d guess Apple wants to avoid their shops feeling like a supermarket, to avoid commoditisation. They want it to be like buying a work of art, where each one is unique and special. You need a knowledgable curator to guide you.
I know that for us on HN it’s all bullshit, but it’s a very, very successful strategy.
Its nothing new either, luxury brands (eyewear, purses, cars, whatever) have discovered this decades if not century ago, why do you think people actually buy say Versace suits?
And I disagree HN crowd 'looked through' this, the amount of tribalism and emotional irrationality that almost any Apple-related topic here brings is probably unparalleled.
I think the overall delayed and selective launch is attributed to the reasons you mentioned. They know they'll have to get this right 17 years after the initial iphone was released. I'd probably do the same thing if I were the head of commercialization/distribution. If they screwed this up (selling a few hundred Ks of units on a global release in the first few months), the stock will get hammered
Is that the lesson though? It seems people are falling over themselves to buy stuff at Apple stores despite these annoying and awful experiences, and Apple is the most valuable company in the world.
It seems the lesson is to treat knowledgable customers like morons using patronizing staff and try to upsell them as much as you can, even if it makes them leave the store in disgust.
Well, to be fair, they don’t know who’s knowledgable and who’s not?
I just order my stuff online, walk in, and pick it up. Not sure that it’s super frequent I have a “I need this hardware in 30 minutes or less” situation
Well, obviously not comparable. Price of case < salesman salary for the extra time << iPhone. So it does not make sense to invest extra time to get an upsell. If they can instead get you to spend an additional $100, then spending that extra time makes money.
TLDR: cheap stuff -> as quick as possible. Expensive stuff -> take time to ensure the sell and try for an upsell.
> Apples pricing structure is also annoying nowadays too. As soon as one specs out and bumps a laptop, one suddenly finds that they may as well get a different laptop, ie once you bump up a MacBook Air, you may as well just buy a Pro, until all of a sudden your £999 purchase idea has turned into £3000 and a debate about AppleCare.
Their pricing structure on basically all of their product lines is absolutely perfect from a capitalism/business perspective. They are so good at getting people to buy more than they need. It's impressive.
Well, it's not exactly perfect because I was in the mood to simply buy a basic Air, until I was pretty well talked out of it by sales staff, so instead of an easy £1099 in the till, in their attempt to turn that into £2500, they got £0. That isn't good business.
Also, the tedium of nowadays knowing that all the products will be bumped in spec in 9-12 months means that instead of excitement, buyer's remorse has already kicked in before reaching the store, for the savvy consumer midway though the product cycle. Again, not the result effective capitalism should be going for.
I wonder how representative you are of the average consumer though?
I imagine their pricing structure works well to upsell people on average, which is why they have maintained it for long.
Also, why would someone like you even go to the store; I had no issues whatsoever buying a macbook from their website. No reps, no nothing, I set my specs and clicked buy and a few days later had my product. I think most people with your profile probably buy online, and most people with the profile that fits store-goers are successfully upsold by the reps.
It is often that I see people on hackernews post as if the world was designed for them. When, in reality, they are most definitely the odd-man out.
"Also, why would someone like you even go to the store;"
Errrr, because I'm out shopping? And the store is located in a shopping centre amongst other stores where I'm buying things. I fully realise I can buy online, but I can buy vinyl records, sofas, groceries and shoes online, yet I'm often in the mood to walk in somewhere where they have those things available for sale and buy one. It can actually be quicker and easier.
I think you upset a lot of people on HN who maybe don't like the idea that some small part of how homeless people are excluded from society could be applied to them.
> wonder how representative you are of the average consumer though?
But Apple's target demograhic isn't the average person. Apple is particularly dependent on image, and one would think that they would want every customer to leave their store with a story about how awesome they are, to ensure that they keep their image polished.
Except pretty much every American has an iphone? How many americans have macbooks? Ipads? So it's most definitely for the average american. I mean, believe it or not, that's what the average american wants.
Their image is one of exclusivity, but products such as the iphone, macbooks, ipads are actually mass-market products. It's quite a remarkable thing, that the most luxurious phone you can get from Apple is what... 1500 dollars? That's affordable when you think of other luxuries, how expensive can a watch get?
I think saying apple doesn't make products for the average american consumer is really falling for their marketing. They make products that are on the upper-end of what average people can afford but they put a lot of care into presenting these as clean as possible so that people feel like they are buying into luxury. They're not in most cases.
In terms of the phone market, foldables are probably the most luxurious products right now. A foldable will run you 1800-2000 dollars for a product that you know is not designed to last more than 2 or maybe 3 years. In terms of laptops, how many people really spec out their macbooks? I would say people probably buy in the 1000-1500 range and laptops are long-lasting products. A gaming laptop can easily cost 2500+ dollars and will depreciate much faster.
So, I respectfully think you're misreading Apple's demographic. Their demographic is pretty much every adult in America and they tap onto that aspirational mindset to achieve it; which is why people who can kinda see through the bullshit might come out with the sensations that are being described in these comments.
I'm not even talking about salespeople upselling you in the store. I am just talking about how their product lines are priced.
For example, a maxed out MBA is just a few hundred short of a MBP. So you say to yourself, well why not just get the pro? That quickly turns into "well I can't get the base model macbook pro" and more. It's all designed so that the consumer instinctively upsells themselves before anyone in the store even tries to do so.
From a business perspective it’s hard to argue that their approach isn’t working even if they don’t sell to you that’s irrelevant the only thing the bottom line cares about is the totals not individual slaws.
A 50/50 chance to make close to 3x the profit is a huge net win for Apple. It’s also why they don’t cater to the low end of the market.
> A 50/50 chance to make close to 3x the profit is a huge net win for Apple.
Revenue, not profit.
And you're going to have to convince me that it's 50/50 that a consumer who came in looking to buy a $1,000 MBA is going to be convinced to walk out with a $3,000 MBP. Because I think that number is closer to 1 in 20 (and I think I'm still being generous there).
The MBP is both more expensive and has a higher profit margin, so when I say 3x the profit I do mean 3x profit.
Anyway, most people who walk in wanting a 1,000 MBA end up buying something even if it’s a 1,000$ MBA that’s just breakeven. So no they don’t upsell 50% on a 2.5k laptop with much higher margins, but that or no sale is not the only possibility.
Some people buy nothing or what the intended walking in, other people buy an 1k laptop with extended care, others by 2.5k laptops etc. So looking holistically if they lose 200 million in profit from lost sales but make it up with profit of 100 million in 3 different categories that’s a win.
PS: Something that’s not obvious is sales people don’t use the same pitch for everyone who walks in the door nor do they all execute every sale perfectly.
>in their attempt to turn that into £2500, they got £0. That isn't good business.
It IS good business. It's proven by the company's stock price and financial results. For every customer like you that leaves in disgust, there's 100 more that are happy to be upsold like this and empty their bank accounts. Consequently, Apple is the most valuable company in the world.
>Also, the tedium of nowadays knowing that all the products will be bumped in spec in 9-12 months means that instead of excitement, buyer's remorse has already kicked in before reaching the store, for the savvy consumer midway though the product cycle. Again, not the result effective capitalism should be going for.
Yes, it IS. Again, the company's financial results speak for themselves. Customers are happy to buy new Apple stuff every year, and the company is profiting enormously.
If you want to be mad at someone, be mad at all the idiots that buy into this.
Not necessarily. I already have a MBP but I wanted something lighter to bring to coffee shops or use in taxis, so I bought a nicely specced MBA. Yes I could have gotten a MBP for the same price but they’re literally different form factors and bigger isn’t always better.
Back in 2009, buying a MBP, the salesman questioned why a CS student would want a mac over a pc. Luckily for him I wasn't considering his thoughts. I definitely didn't need that powerful of a computer and glad I switched to an air a few years later.
I think part of my comment was broadly about their softly-softly approach to hard selling not actually working at all when someone simply walks in and says "I'd like to buy this right now"
This was exactly my experience trying to buy an Apple Watch from the Apple Store just before the pandemic. I had done all the research ahead of time and knew exactly what I needed. “Do you have an appointment?” No. “Oh, it’ll be about 45 minutes before someone can help you.” But I know what I want and just need you to ring me up. “I’m sorry, 45 minutes.”
Hands down the strangest retail interaction I’ve ever had. Frustrated, I went to the Best Buy literally in the mall’s parking lot and was on my way in under 10 minutes with the watch I wanted. I guess Apple still won here since I bought the product anyhow?
> “Do you have an appointment?” No. “Oh, it’ll be about 45 minutes before someone can help you.”
Ah, yes, the Ferrari customer experience. You need to be selected by the manufacturer to be allowed to buy their product. It makes the product feel rare and exclusive, and the customer feel "special", when it's a consumer product made by the same Chinese sweatshop workers that make your other e-waste.
It’s making a surface level imitation of behaviors, without understanding the underlying reasons, hoping for the same effect.
So maybe Jobs might have made experiences that looked superficially similar to this, but he would’ve done it in a manner that actually understood the customer.
How meta. It appears I’m guilty of cargo culting the phrase “cargo cult”, since I superficially use it to describe really any modern form of tech fad following, all in an attempt to be hip with “modern” terms.
I think it’s more than that; I suspect that they have pretty onerous internal store processes about inventory control and device transfer to minimize employee theft.
Or perhaps they know what Costco and Walmart and every other store knows: “Increased dwell time correlates to increased sales.” I suspect that waiting for the “Ferrari Experience” is a side show to the very real effect that the longer you spend in their stores, the higher affinity you will have for their products, during that visit or future visits.
Surely that only works if you have a pleasant experience and linger willingly. Then you develop positive associations with the store and the products.
If you have a negative experience from being forced to wait, then that's a different animal. How many of us relish the idea of visiting the DMV after previously experiencing long lines?
And yet they were still one of the companies most noted for their onerous 'unpaid bag check' stuff.
At some point you either have to point to their inventory system being a problem, and/or them having a very low trust view of their employees, and it's the customers who get to waste their time as a result.
The difference here is that you can only get a Ferrari from a dealer. Apple products aren't exclusive to Apple stores, so driving away customers eager to shell out money doesn't seem optimal.
Tbh it may well be better to forgo their retail margin to get better placement in other stores. If an Apple store was the best place to buy them why would anyone else carry them?
If you want to buy an iPhone with minimal interaction, just use the website or app, for in store pickup. Takes no time at all!
I will agree that it’s ridiculous for customers to have to wait for an appointment to buy a watch band, which I’ve seen. There were several employees standing around at the time, inexplicably.
you know, i tried this first time recently. placed order at 10am. no pickup that day. ready at 1pm next day! go to store. had to wait ten minutes after i wated at the door to checkin my appt (why). whole time employees small talking me. guy finally finds my box and shoves it in my hands and i was finally free from that cursed overpriced garbagehole
Pretty similar experience buying a studio display, except the wait time was at least 40 minutes for them to get the box with the only monitor in their stock room. I expected 10 minutes at most.
My last 4 purchases from the Apple Store were terrible experiences that all took nearly an hour.
Do you know if the item was in stock at that store? I've been able to do same-day pickups, even right after an item was launched. Not all variants are in stock, of course.
I'll take this over waiting in a long line or not knowing if they have what I'm looking for.
I picked up a MBA and had a similar experience. It just takes 5-10 minutes for someone in the stock room to find the thing and carry it out to me. 10 minutes feels like a reasonable amount of time. I guess best buy has a slightly better system?
It seems unintuitive, but the fastest way to get an iPhone when you're standing in a store may be to pull out your phone and make a purchase on the website.
This won't always be the case (I've never been told I needed an appointment to buy an iPhone, and I've bought them at several different Apple Stores over the years), but if you run into an intransigent employee, give this a try.
At the very least, the employees should be trained to tell people about the in-store pickup option. That would avoid leaving a bad taste in the mouth of customers who just want to get in and get out.
> At the very least, the employees should be trained to tell people about the in-store pickup option.
If they were going to train employees to tell customers about that, they could also just... let their employees ring someone up without an appointment. It would take exactly as much time as explaining the work around would, and would be even less likely to leave a bad taste in a customer's mouth.
It's also much less likely to result in an upsell or selling additional merchandise. Why would they want to lose that opportunity?
Leaving a bad taste in a customer's mouth isn't a problem. Just look at the comments here from people exactly like that: they went somewhere else, and then bought the exact same thing. Sure, they're griping about it, but who cares? Apple still got their money for the item, and they freed up room in the Apple Store for another customer who might be more amenable to up-selling.
Why should Apple care about pissing off customers with this kind of treatment? It's not like they're going to buy an Android Phone or Samsung watch or whatever. They're going to buy the Apple product they have their heart set on, no matter how poorly they're treated by employees at the Apple store. So exactly what incentive does Apple have to make their shopping experience more efficient and hassle-free?
It kinda seems the fastest way to get an iphone would be to go to a store where you can actually say "i want to buy an iphone from you immediately" and they respond with "i want to sell an iphone to you immediately" whereupon your money and their iphone are exchanged.
It's sort of shocking to hear about going to a store, attempting to purchase something they are selling at the asking price, and being told "I don't feel like having commerce right now. I have a headache. Why don't you come back tomorrow cause I need something time to psych myself up?" It's almost violating somehow, maybe like seeing capitalism get violated or something. I mean, what if you went to the grocery store and they told you they don't feel like selling food to you at the time but they might have some appointments open. Hunger doesn't have a snooze button to delay it until the time of your appointment.
>It's almost violating somehow, maybe like seeing capitalism get violated or something.
No one's being violated here.
>I mean, what if you went to the grocery store and they told you they don't feel like selling food to you at the time but they might have some appointments open. Hunger doesn't have a snooze button to delay it until the time of your appointment.
You don't go to the grocery store if you're hungry (in fact, that's the worst time to shop for groceries). If you're hungry, go to a restaurant.
Anyway, if there's a fancy and horribly overpriced grocery store in town, and they treat customers like this, and those customers just give in and make appointments and come back later, how is the grocery store operating badly?
Normally, such a grocery store would quickly go under, as customers would go to a competing grocery store. But with Apple, that never happens. Apple customers will keep coming back for more.
Some people (apparently many people) actually like this kind of buying experience. I imagine some ultra-high end brands of clothing and cars treat people similarly.
Do you get how insane this sounds as an experience though? I'm physically in the store, saying "just let me pay for your product so I can leave" and the default is to try and drag that interaction out?
The existence of workarounds doesn't make it not stupid.
Not really. Apple is catering to the majority of consumers who don't arrive at the store with their exact purchase ready to go. They want to be guided and shown all the options.
And if you are in the small % who don't want this. Either go to one of the other retail stores selling the product, or order it online for pickup or delivery.
It doesn't make sense economically, and it is likely a side effect of a metric used on employee performance. Quick sale -> less time in store -> more time to help those that (actually!) need it. If you truly can't be bothered to take the money for an unambiguous transaction, Something Is Broken.
Yeah but the shop itself has a long-standing user interface, ie people go into a shop to buy what they want. Ok Apple are catering to people who might not be certain and amenable to upselling, but not easily catering to people who are fairly clear about what they want, for example long-standing and valuable existing customers, is seriously stupid. It’s not like people are casually wandering into an Apple store looking to purchase a hoover or a Linux netbook.
> the shop itself has a long-standing user interface, ie people go into a shop to buy what they want
Over the last twenty years, more and more shopping is done online. Fewer people want to visit shops - those that do are usualy there to seek advice. The need for shops is changing and will become more like showcases for what you can do with the products and how they might fit into the lifestyle that you aspire to have.
You hit the nail on its head. This is HN where mostly everybody knows tech, geek out about specs and learn about devices ahead of time. But Apple sells to a general population that is far less knowledgeable and mostly lives by "new phone good". Either guidance or upsell Apple knows what they're doing. We are not the usual demographic in an apple store.
But tons and tons of stores cater to customers seeking guidance through their purchases, yet if you show up knowing exactly what you want, they are only all too happy to take the easy sale.
I always excessively research big purchases, and so I have never in my life walked into a store like this without already knowing what I want. For example, walk into a sewing machine shop ready to buy without asking for any demonstrations, and see how almost giddy the staff get about it. Salespeople and shop owners often tell me how much they appreciate the rare customer who comes in ready to buy; it means more sales for less work.
It seems weird to turn those customers away instead of perceiving the sale as an unexpected-but-welcome freebie like 99.9% of other retailers do.
ill gladly bang the drum about how insulated the HN bubble is, but this opinion specifically is bizarre to me. why does this have to be one size fits all? when someone walks in and says "i know i want this, let me buy it" how is it unreasonable to expect Apple to realize that it can skip the default flow?
Maybe they've found that most of the time the customer is mis-informed and doesn't really know what they want. I don't know, but I expect they've got more data than you or I.
I don’t always know for sure what I want when I go into an Apple Store, but I never want to wait 45 mins for an appt! Usually it comes down to 1-2 questions about storage, photo quality, screen tech, etc.
It's probably actually about the opportunity to upsell. A single upsell on a MacBook to the next better specs pays for enough apple store employee time to make up for everything.
Seriously? You think most Apple customers are developers or tech enthusiasts or meticulous shoppers? That's neither the majority of Apple customers nor their intended primary audience.
Your use of dysphemism in that paraphrase suggests a defensiveness and personal identification with your own consumption choices that are not helping you assess Apple's strategy here.
It doesn’t sound insane at all. Unless you’re paying cash, the transaction is going to be set up on a computer, the inventory is going to be checked on a computer, and the payment is going to be processed on a computer. And your smart phone is a computer. Why is it odd to expect it to be faster to ask someone else to do this process for you rather than you doing it yourself? It’s not like you need someone with extensive point-of-sale software experience to blaze through this for you.
>>Why is it odd to expect it to be faster to ask someone else to do this process for you rather than you doing it yourself?
That's not really the issue here. It's more that it's odd to ask someone else to do this process for you and they tell you to make an appointment and come back.
A potential customer is telling an apple store employee "I want to exchange my money for your goods. I need you to do the exact same thing as a high school kid at a part time job, take my money and give me the phone. I just want you to act like a proper brick and mortar store for 2 minutes dammit."
To which the employee responds "I can't do that now be cause you don't have an appointment. When you come back withone, I'll be glad to take the 2 minutes that's needed to make that transaction."
The "insane" pat is that apple store employees, the purpose of which are ultimately to convince potential customers to give them money in exchange for apple stuff and facilitate the transfer of resources, are basically telling potential customers "I won't do my job where I take your money and give you apple stuff unless you have an appointment. You don't have one, no apple for you."
Was coming here to say the same; I don’t think I’ve ever come to the Apple Store to buy something; always order it online through their app or website and choose store pick up. You schedule a time, stop in, verify ID, and are out within a few minutes.
This problem (not Apple's fault) makes me pessimistic about the practicability of this process for people with high myopia. I've never ever been able to walk out of an optometry appointment with a pair of glasses. Could an Apple Store possibly be better than an eye doctor?
I only have normal subpar vision but I too have never been able to walk out of an optometry appointment with a pair of glasses. That's a thing? Optometrists keep prescription lens stock on hand?
There's a store chain called Lenscrafters that has a gimmick where, depending on your prescription, you can get glassess in one hour at some stores. So if you have an appointment for an eye exam at the store it can be done. I've never shopped there so can't say what it's like in practice.
I returned the Pro XDR display and the person at the store didn't ask me anything other than for my receipt and opening the box to check the product was there.
Can't you also buy these products online? I'm not surprised that the in-store experience has become such a high touch affair when the customer base that would have wanted less interaction have already self-selected out by not going to the store at all
I just had this exact experience because my phone was irrevocably ruined, so I needed to pick a replacement up the same day.
The Apple Store was a very poor experience with a sales agent I knew more than trying, repeatedly, to explain to me things like backup, Apple Care, etc., etc. I also for some reason had to talk to four different people, and the only one that could actually help me was busy while everyone else in the store was standing around. It should have taken 10 minutes and it took the better part of an hour.
I wouldn’t assume they’re assuming it, they probably have data to tell them that.
I’ve not gone into a store for an item when I already knew exactly what I want since the pandemic. Even if I need it same day I’ll buy it online and pick it up. That’s probably most people now, and they probably know it.
Yes. The last time I was there to buy an iphone they said: “Someone will help you in 30 minutes, let me put your name in the queue. Oh, and you have to go stand and wait in the corner. No, you cannot leave the store to get coffee, if you do you will lose your place in the queue.”
I counted 14 workers and maybe 3x as many customers in the store, with at least 5 workers just standing around doing nothing.
It’s clever. They’re essentially hacking your attention by taking advantage of the fact that you already signaled you have money and are willing to spend it. Getting you in the store and putting the hardware in front of you is the hardest part, and you did that yourself.
This is why people on a budget go to the grocery store with a list. The physical experience is designed to sell you more, and Apple has the margins to to design the fuck out of that experience.
If you did not enjoy the Apple Store experience you should absolutely not go there again. You are in charge of your time and attention. Only you get to decide how to spend it.
I don’t have the same negative experience as others in this thread with the Apple Store, but I understand it. I would liken it to a car dealership, which I refuse to do business with after it once took five hours to buy a car from one. Lots of people are totally fine with it, but it’s not for me.
Near me, they keep the products locked up in the back room, and the person who you talk to on the floor often doesn't have direct access and needs to find the person who has access to get them the product.
It makes sense. There's not a pile of 1000 Macbooks on a pallet back there. It's locked up in a cage, and they go in and get one at a time.
This may not come as a surprise, but the practice of locking up expensive shit so people can't go grab stuff they aren't supposed to isn't unique to the Apple Store.
I've worked places that used this kind of process. It doesn't turn a 10 minute visit into a 50 minute visit without some kind of underlying issue blocking the cage pull from happening. Something along the lines of an interpersonal communication failure (forgot to request cage pull, person with key forgot/never got the request or the person with the key has gone into hiding ), a technical fluke (cage has electronic lock and it's EMP day), or a freak accident (person with the key, as well as the key itself, got disintegrated by ball lightning). As long as there isn't anything blocking, a cage pull is 10-15 min. If the person with the key was busy with a client, the requestor would normally take that over so they can run to the cage without the delay of having to finish that client.
Costco manages to do this well. If you buy a Mac (or almost any other high-value small item) you take a paper slip which is scanned by the cashier or self checkout. You then go to the cage and they hand you your item right then and there.
Gemstones are also not worth anywhere near what the gem store would like you to think. Just try selling them back to the store you bought them from and see how much less they are willing to give you.
I usually place an order online and pickup at the store for reasons. Never had it take more than a few minutes. I did check out the Apple Watch Ultra in a store to make sure I was OK with the size and the band but again very straightforward.
You can frequently get same-day delivery for a nominal fee, even within a few hours! My partner’s phone broke after she dropped it one too many times at about 7:30am on a recent morning, and we had a new one in hand without leaving the house by 10:30am.
Yes, and then too sometimes you order for same-day delivery and the store hands the bag to an Uber Eats driver (they actually do partner with Uber Eats for courier service!) who mysteriously never turns up to hand it off to you. Then you have to spend a few hours on the phone with Apple to make sure you don't end up paying for a phone you never got.
I don't blame the guy who stole it, although I might if I'd had to hold the bill for his act of sticky-fingered entrepreneurship. I do blame Apple for using a service, whose drivers normally handle $50 in food at a time, to deliver nonperishable and highly portable items of 20 or more times that value.
Just order it then go and pick it up in store. High touch customer service is universally considered a good thing, but for someone like you, you can order it online or just pick it up in store.
Except when you don't want the high-touch service. Good service companies recognize this and have some accommodation for the customer who knows what they want and are there to buy, not shop.
If I'm there to shop, I'll ask them to point me to what I want to try out and do so. If I'm buying clothes, for example, high-touch is great. "I like this style, but this manufacturer doesn't fit me well, do you have something similar you recommend?"
But when I needed a new Apple Watch charger on a trip, I walked into the store, said I needed one, and the only question was did I want USB-A or USB-C? A, thanks, sold. I was in and out in less time than it took my wife to find and use the restroom in the mall.
One bizarre experience I had was when I had a Genius Bar appointment to fix an inaudible handset speaker on an iPhone (apparently they have a program that runs through a wide gamut of frequencies to knock out any odd bits of dust). Yep, it worked. Then the Genius asked me if I would make a phone call (can't, it's a backup phone, no SIM) or FaceTime call (um, to whom?) to test it. It's work hours, the people I would call would be busy at work, how about I just call your phone? No, can't share that.
I said, Genius, why don't you have a generic thing that I can FaceTime and you can respond to that's part of your work identity? I don't need your personal info. Just "applestore-ZIPcode-[five-digit one-time account]@icloud.com" would work.
I'm not sure I agree with "universally", I bet there are a awful lot of people who can't stand that level of service and find it quite uncomfortable. I get that I could order ahead etc, but that makes an impulse purchase into a multi-step process. I'm sure the multi-trillion dollar company felt that pain when I still bought their product only from a different place. Oh wait... ;-)
A few years back I bought a MBP online with the pickup option. I picked it up, declined their assistance setting it up and went about my day.
I get home later that day, start to set it up and it’s locked to employees of a bank in Canada. Live support is no help so I take it back, only to find out the serial number did not match that on the box. They had their security guard quietly come stand near me until they figured out what they wanted to do.
The sales guy told me since they can’t prove I stole it they were giving me a different one. I think they knew it was previously returned and realized they got scammed by someone else the first time around.
This time I made sure I could login before I left.
Within the return window the new 16” came out at the same price so I took it in and swapped it for the 16”. They just took it, handed me the new laptop, transferred Apple Care and sent me on my way. It made sense as they didn’t bother to verify the box/device serial number with me. They took my word and processed everything in a matter of minutes.
That corporate lock thing is called DEP, device enrollment program. It used to be easy to bypass (just don't connect to internet during setup) but then it would bug you constantly once you did. On T2/M1/M2 macs it's no longer bypassable similar to the apple account lock anti theft feature (which is a different thing)
Apple can remove it of course. It was probably a laptop stolen from the bank or their suppliers, then returned to Apple to whitewash it.
I'm not surprised this happens. What I am surprised about is that Apple apparently sells a returned item to another customer as new. Pretty sure that's not their policy and in most cases illegal. Perhaps they checked the seals (for activating DEP you don't need to open the box at all!) but still this shouldn't happen.
Normally these items go through a cleaning and reimaging process and then end up on the refurb store at a reduced price.
Did they not scan both??? Many big box retail stores have to scan both the box and the barcode of the item through it (i.e. a Playstation) before the transaction can be completed. Yikes.
Apple stores used to feel kind of special in the early ipod/iphone era, almost like the employees were excited about the technology products they were selling. But the population of friendly and smart techy employees willing to work for retail wages in most American cities had to have always been tiny and with Apple’s growth it was exhausted long ago and employee quality has diluted at the same time as traffic has increased.
When I last went to an Apple Store to get a new one (while wearing my current Apple Watch) I just said “I know what I want and what I’m doing”.
They handed me the box on the spot in the middle of the store and I paid with the mobile PoS terminal they carry.
I was in and out in less than five minutes and this was at their very busy Chicago Michigan Avenue store. Maybe they’re that efficient because it is busy but like most Apple Store experiences I’ve had it was very fast and efficient - they didn’t get in the way of me spending my money, that’s for sure.
This is closer to my experience around late 2019. (Toronto Ontario Canada, at the time.)
Went in, saw someone on staff fixing up a display unit, asked if I could buy an S5 apple watch, he asked if I had any questions, I said none, tapped card on the mobile POS thing, and then in maybe 10 minutes, someone else came out, apologized for the wait, and handed me my box.
It's possible it's changed over covid though. Makes sense they would want the in-store experience to be more white-glove if they were seeing less foot traffic.
Lack of foot traffic was their choice. Apple stores were far more picky about COVID than the local norm. You had to show an appointment or a "ready for pickup" email to be allowed into the store. And that was early 2021, when I was fully vaccinated (and had the card to prove it).
I’ve bought a few items in store. An iPad. Went in told them what I wanted. They went got it. Came out and asked if I want to know anything else about it or need help. Said no. Asked if I wanted apple care. I said yes. They added it to the cart. Gave me a 30s overview of what I can do with apple care. Paid. Left.
If you let the people in the store talk they will talk and try upset. Just politely say no.
> if I didn't have an appointment, it would take half an hour or so to get somebody over.
It probably goes a long way to explain things if you know that Watch launched while Ahrendts was SVP of Retail at Apple. She came from Burberry, a luxury fashion retailer, and clearly had a vision for Apple Stores that was not compatible with the high throughput & demand they regularly get.
"I've tried to decorate it nicely to keep the inmates happy, but there's very little one can do. I never go in there now myself. If ever I am tempted, which these days I rarely am, I simply look at the sign written over the door and shy away."
"That one?" said Fenchurch, pointing, rather puzzled, at a blue plaque with some instructions written on it.
"Yes. They are the words that finally turned me into the hermit I have now become. It was quite sudden. I saw them, and I knew what I had to do."
The sign said:
Hold stick near centre of its length. Moisten pointed end in mouth. Insert in tooth space, blunt end next to gum. Use gentle in-out motion.
"It seemed to me," said Wonko the Sane, "that any civilization that had so far lost its head as to need to include a set of detailed instructions for use in a packet of toothpicks, was no longer a civilization in which I could live and stay sane."
— Douglas Adams, So Long and Thanks for All The Fish, Pan Books (1984)
This is what the average person likes about Apple. This is why the company is worth so much money. The facade of exclusivity and perfection. Clean, white rooms with clean, smiling staff and shiny, perfect products.
They're just phones, they're just laptops. But no, we get "what's a computer?" hurr durr.
The giant reason to do this with the headset in particular is that getting it wrong means a literally painful and/or nauseous experience. Meta is willing to let that happen with its $300 headsets mostly bought as gifts for children, but the bar is a lot higher for a $3500 device and Apple is already acutely aware of the blowback from "you're holding it wrong"-type scenarios.
I think this is a valid reason, and hopefully the driving factor.
On the other hand, Apple certainly seems to bank on making their devices as exclusive an experience as possible. They sell a huge amount, but they want the customer to feel like they are part of an elite group. This will heighten the artificial sense of scarcity.
> Apple is already acutely aware of the blowback from "you're holding it wrong"-type scenarios.
And the funny thing about what the legions of Apple faithful who were willing to pretzel themselves into contortions defending that.
(For a more reason, mention Batterygate and watch them come out and tell you how you just don't understand, Apple was absolutely doing you a favor, somehow.)
(Just like when they quoted me $900 to fix faulty charging on a MacBook, device worked perfectly, battery was healthy, just could not be charged. "Perhaps we should talk about getting you into a new Mac instead...?")
This sounds to me like the issue of when technical people call Tech Support with an advanced problem and the agent forces them to first check their monitor is on and reset.
It's frustrating, sure, but look at if from the other side: 99% of the people they deal with are completely incapable, and 90% of their problems ARE solved by a simple reboot.
Apple/iPhone is the ubiquitous phone for everyone from CTOs to grandma's.
The in store experience is optimized to make sure a person that has been stuck in a cave for 30 years and can walk out with a device optimized for their needs.
I bet they think that people like you will just buy online and choose in store pickup...
I normally order online for collection and have never had an issue there - most I've waited for collection is about 5 minutes during peak times when the store was absolutely rammed with people (Oxford Street, London, a Friday lunchtime.)
But I did once visit a store with someone wanting to buy a Watch and there was no forced sitting through any fitting or explanations. Just some questions about which Watch, if they already had a phone to connect it to, etc., and we were in and out of the store in under 20 minutes (Covent Garden, London, a Saturday afternoon, which is reasonably but not terrifyingly busy.)
I too find the it patronizing to shop in-store – it seems the staff are trained to assume everyone has less knowledge of the products than they do – this might work in other consumer retail environments but not when you're selling "Pro" level products. The tone and efficiency of the retail experience is much better at a store like Adorama or B&H (NYC pro photo/video shops). Not to mention the irritating processes and many touchpoints of reaching the right person in an Apple store
99% of their target audience does not live in Silicon Valley.
Go to LA for example and you'll find creative professionals that need "pro" level gear but appreciate the white-glove Apple service of showing them around and answering questions for a high end purchase.
Slight tangent to your tangent, but, after a poor experience last week, I'm really disappointed in how Apple handles specifically support in their stores.
Historically, I've been able to just throw in a few little bits of "yup, I know how that works" so that their techs realize that I know what I'm talking about and let up with the patronizing assumptions about what I do and don't know. However, this time, when dealing with a newly-present heat issue during charging after that very store replaced the battery in the phone (so both a safety issue and one that would be warranty if it could be determined that it was caused by the repair), the tech just kept repeating that there was no way that their work could've caused it and going "these phones don't have a fan to cool them like our laptops". No matter what I said, I couldn't get them to have an actual discussion with me, so now I'm stuck waiting for a call from their safety support team since it's a heat issue.
Hopefully I can get somewhere with the phone support people, but it's really disappointing that they don't train their techs in the stores to feel out what a customer knows or at least drop some of the "oh the user doesn't know anything" if customers are showing that they do, in fact, know things.
A few years ago I ended up having 4 visits to get my MBP fixed. They replaced the SSD 3 times (this was the last model before soldered disks). It was still having IO problems (file system corruption) even after fresh OS installs. It would only happen under heavy load. After the 3rd time, I got a decent genius - I asked him what the likelihood of having 3 bad SSDs in a row was, and maybe they should replace the logic board? He said “have you seen the new iPhone? Just go over there and have a look at it while I run a test” - I came back “I’ve reproduced the problem wink”. He knew the checklists needed appeasing, and cheated to get the desired outcome. Still, shouldn’t have taken that many visits.
Then I had a problem with the keyboard replacement program. They agreed to replace it under their extended warranty, due to the known issues with them. Posted the laptop off. Got an email 2 days later with a blurred image “the logic board shows signs of water damage”. I had a choice. Replace the logic board at my own cost (>£1000), or return the device unrepaired. They were the ones that had previously opened the machine & replaced the logic board! The machine operated permanently in clamshell mode, vertically - there’s simply no way any moisture could have got into it. I just wanted the keyboard replacing. Very frustrating. I ended up buying the parts & doing the repair myself.
> Hopefully I can get somewhere with the phone support people, but it's really disappointing that they don't train their techs in the stores to feel out what a customer knows or at least drop some of the "oh the user doesn't know anything" if customers are showing that they do, in fact, know things.
I think they have homogenized support to treat each user as equally non-technical, it's by design. Apple is like a sect, they need to have a strong grip on their users.
I was able to talk highly technical stuff to their Mac support engineers at least. Even found a bypass in their diagnosis machine’s data protection scheme and told them about it lol, their was a few months ago.
I worked Apple Retail many many moons ago. The senior manager once told me (manager -> senior manager -> store leader)
“Your job is not to sell products, we could put all this inventory out there on a pallet with a credit card swiper and sell all of them. Your job is to sell attachments, primarily Apple Care”.
Seriously, sales volume was a footnote. You are entirely judged on your attach rate for whatever it is corporate/your market is pushing, they start you part time and the only way up is to attach attach attach. No one wants to “just sell you a phone” because they know you’ll never get Apple Care and for every one of you they need to sell 4 other people on AC to get their numbers back up.
Another fun note: At the time Apple Store revenue $/sq ft beat out jewelry stores.
Great gig as a high school kid, made decent cash and a bunch of people used their tuition assistance. A large number of their employees though are what I call “retail lifers”, 25-30 year olds who are way in debt from a degree that didn’t work out or washed out of the corporate world and landed back in retail. They really don’t like younger employees who are actually going somewhere/realize it’s a temporary gig for kids and not a real career. Lots of alcoholism and drug abuse in that group.
If that's still the case, I can imagine why they'd want a customer who knows exactly what they want to walk to the store next door to get the item elsewhere.
A customer who already knows exactly what configuration they want is probably going to be hard to sell AppleCare to.
The Genius Bar also takes forever to get appointments at now compared to how it was. I think they maintained close to the same number of retail locations as their customer base exploded, which probably works out better economically but is far less convenient.
Try buying a Mac in 1992. First you have to find a reseller. Then, they may think you're not seriously looking and ignore you. Some resellers are only by appointment. If you do look like you have money, they pick an option for you (Classic, LC, IIsi, IIci) and try to keep you in your lane. They upsell you a little on software and things like Kensington locks. Then you get to order it and it arrives a couple months later.
A couple years ago I wanted an item in-stock at the Apple store but the soonest 'pickup appointment' they could give me was a few days out. What's worse is they have you choose a specific 15-minute window. That's not very customer friendly.
They seem to inject additional people into their processes, for reasons I can't discern but I'm sure exist.
For example, even buying something as simple as an Airtag means waiting for a random employee to be free, who then gets one for you, only to then wait for another different employee to be free to allow you to pay for it. Maybe that's just about theft prevention?
My one "Genius Bar" experience (recently) in Munich was really crappy - told to check in, then told to wait by a table where I was ignored; when I re-approached someone, told to wait somewhere else... and watching the flow of things, it became very apparent that my 'appointment' had no value - I was helped in a queue after people who'd just walked in.
Most non computer purchases like AirTags can be self serve. You grab a box off the shelf, scan it with the app, Apple Pay and walk out. No person necessary. Works on everything without a unique serial.
Even when the product you want is out on a shelf, it’s annoying that there’s no line to get in to pay for it. If you need help, you just have to chase someone down. The whole experience feels chaotic and contrarian.
I recently had exactly the opposite experience - I went into an Apple Store (in the UK) wanting to buy a pencil and case for an iPad mini. The whole experience took less than 10 minutes, including trying out multiple case suggestions based on my preferences.
I guess though that this does apply to accessories rather than one of their main product lineups though - although I have heard similar things from friends purchasing products at the same store. Perhaps it heavily depends on which store you go to?
I don't have an Apple Store in my country, but last time I bought Watch in Tokyo and an iPhone in NYC, I told them I know exactly what I want and the transaction was super quick.
In NYC I was even impressed by it, because I just talked to the sales rep for the tiniest bit and a colleague came over and inconspicuously handed her a box with the phone mid-walk. I haven't noticed how she (the sales rep) signaled for it. It almost felt like buying drugs.
Just order the item you want for store pickup before you leave and it’s usually ready by the time you get there. That’s my experience and it’s quite literally in-n-out.
My last experience at a busy Apple Store was walking in, finding the iPod home I wanted to buy, scanning the UPC and serial code with my Apple Store app on my phone and clicking purchase then walking out without hassle or having to talk to a single person.
This wont happen if you want to buy a phone or MacBook, but with accessories and things you can self-checkout, it’s pretty seamless.
I’ll be honest, I’m one of the people that needs instructions for Apple products. I’ve been buying them online — each time becoming frustrated with the lack of instructions and the assumed knowledge necessary to use them.
Oh, you didn’t know that there’s actually two different places to swipe down at the top of the phone? Everyone knows about that, you idiot!
For the iPhone at least there is a fairly extensive user guide online. It doesn't help much for technical issues but did a decent job explaining how to do things.
In my case, I learned about setting up a triple-click shortcut to pop up the accessibility menu so I could unmute the phone via software due to a broken side switch that won't stay on. I'm sure this is available elsewhere online, but using Google just took me to the regular places - typically someone posting on an Apple forum trying and failing to get help.
I don't buy Apple stuff so don't know anything about Apple stores -- but I've encountered it in other stores (usually ones that fancy themselves "high end" in some way).
It drive me crazy. It's bad enough to have to talk to a salesman when I wasn't seeking one, it's even worse when I tell that salesperson that I'm ready to buy something specific and then they waste both of our time trying to do anything other than take my money and give me the thing.
Those are stores I'm unlikely to return to.
This is different than when I want a salesperson to explain things to me. In that case, yes, please shower me with attention as long as they're one of the ones that are actually helpful rather than just constantly trying to sell.
My watch buying experience was really straightforward. I knew which watch I wanted, and which band - really the only thing I needed to be sure of was the band size (as I’d not worn one before). I’d say the whole thing took about 10 minutes.
This is anecdotal of course. Your experience is yours. Sorry you went through that. My experiences have all been pretty smooth.
As for the Vision Pro, I think we’re dealing with a very different kind of product. They want everyone to have a positive experience, and this is the kind of thing no one has used even if you’ve used VR headsets, you’ve not used the product they created. They want to make sure you’re not getting stuck on fit or comfort.
Are these U.S. Apple stores? I’ve had a dozen or so purchases over the last few years at several Apple stores in the Bay Area and Los Angeles area and have never experienced anything remotely like this. Sometimes I’ve bought online and done in store pickup, other times I’ve just asked the employee for the exact item I wanted, and I’ve never experienced the slightest roadblock to an extremely fast checkout process. I would be surprised if this isn’t a very deliberately planned in-store experience, so I gotta wonder if it’s a regional thing or something.
Not been my experience when I’ve bought apple watches. Product walk through were always optional that store employees were happy to offer, I always skipped them, brought the watch and was on my way.
While my dad shopped for one for my sister I had time to drink a coffee, find a Mother’s Day gift of chocolates, and do some work (the Apple Store outside Apple Park has all this).
I've been to my local Apple Store once, and it was a great experience. I was there to trade-in two M1 Macbook Air's. No associate was available however I got one after 5 minutes and they very quickly completed the trade-ins without any questions whatsoever, and wished me a great day. No attempt to sell/upsell me a product (I told them at the beginning I was going to purchase online) and they were very friendly.
I recently went in to do an exchange of a band I bought bundled with a watch and had to help the person helping me because their system didn’t understand it was a bundle and therefore had to be rung up differently. Same deal with them treating me like an 80 year old (I’m mid-20s). It’s almost like they need to be trained to recognize a person who doesn’t need a ton of support in their purchase. I would do better with self-checkout honestly.
I find the store purchasing experience to be frustrating as well, but if you order online and it's in stock, every Apple store I've lived near will deliver it to you door in 2-4 hours.
If you want to play with a product: go to the store, interact with it, and if you like it order it on your phone while you're there. It will be home not long after you are.
Being forced into an appointment when you're ready to pay and know exactly what you want doesn't sound like a run-of-the-mill shopping chore.
It oddly resembles a visit to a medical clinic (that is government subsidized, and accordingly fettered with bureaucratic rules that prevent you from just ordering the procedure you want).
Right lol this is also my experience. Do you need help setting it up? No thank you. Bye! I've never felt patronized at the Apple store, honestly it's the one electronics store where I feel like the staff kind of know what they're doing and are hovering around tentatively ready to help me actually purchase the thing.
Absolutely bizarre. My experience in Toronto buying an Apple Watch on an extremely busy day was 5-10min in and out and there was no attempt to ‘fit’ me.
Told them what they wanted, they went back and got it, they brought a POS so I could pay, I was easily out of there in 10min.
Never had any issues like this whatsoever in more than a decade of shopping at these stores?
Buying online with in-store pickup is the best way to go these days. You can take your time evaluating which options you want int the comfort of your own home, and then be in and out of the store pretty quickly without worrying about delivery.
That's what I did when I got my last phone, and will do that on every subsequent purchase.
You can use the online Apple Store then either have it delivered or pickup in person.
Or purchase from the hundreds of third party resellers who also sell them.
There are many people especially with the Apple Watch who aren't experts at technology and so having personalised service makes sense for them. And for you there are obviously many other options.
I keep reading stories about experiences like yours, but no, never experienced that myself.
But then, it might be about my buying habits: the cheapest thing which suits my needs, and only when I actually need it rather than as soon as it comes out, so I'm almost never there at the sales peak for whatever it is I'm getting.
> but I was forced to sit through an entire "fitting" with patronising explanation
I have purchased several Apple Watches, iPhones, and other devices and not once have I ever been forced to sit through anything other than an employee going to the back to get what I purchased.
It seems they made the experience for the people they show in their commercials (some "tech unconcerned happy people" who knows just barely enough to pick the Apple product, has "good vibes mandolin music" all over them and somehow makes 300k/yr)
This has not been my experience at all. I walk in (or make an appt beforehand for the sake of convenience), tell the what I want, plop down my credit card, and I am out of there in 20 minutes tops. Super smooth, professional experience.
Apple brings my snark out. After I went through all the BS to buy the base airpod for my kid, from the store, I then requested a printed receipt rather than give them my email addr.
Apparently the apple store near my house rarely gives people paper receipts anymore. It took 10+ mins for the poor sales drone to try every table in the store before he found the one that could actually still print receipts.
So I got to be the smart ass who said on the way out "goodness printing a receipt isn't that complex, i thought apple was a technology company."
Buy it online via the app and designate the store as a pick-up. You will barely have to speak with anyone. Stores are busy, that’s just how it is. I’ve bought all the products you mentioned and didn’t have to deal with any “help” or delay.
Every time I went to am Apple Store, I came in, said what I wanted, they brought it to me, I paid and then I left. 5min max, and as recently as a month ago. I'll guess you've been unlucky or your particular store is bad?
Generally, I buy the phones online and schedule pick up at the store. I go to the store for my appointment and ask the staff to apply the screen protector. It is a completely smooth and consistent experience.
It would be interesting if they tried to further emulate the famous behavior of luxury brands like Rolex, which may not deign to sell you anything if you just ask. Just recreate that aura for the mass consumer.
It sounds like Apple is deeply upset that companies like Ferrari get to invite people to buy their products while theirs are just mass-produced, made in China consumables that anyone can buy.
I've felt the opposite. The last two purchases I walked in and bought exactly what I wanted on impulse because it was so easy. An iphone upgrade and a battery thereafter.
Apple looks like a tech company, but it's really a luxury goods company. When you consider it through this lens the magic falls away and it's just selling status.
Everything I went to buy something. I told them I want to get X so they sat me down for a few minutes then I checked out for everything without explanation of the product.
Sounds like you want a self-checkout aisle for Apple Store products but its really just "IT Pro Line" or something, someone just charges you for what you want.
I personally have had the experience of having to talk to two people (with a third person required to fetch the product from the back room) at an Apple store in Toronto. You stand there waiting on the side for 10 minutes while the gopher finishes with a couple of other customers.
Referring to Apple Store employees as 'gophers' seems unnecessarily disparaging. I think I had to wait for a bit too, but I don't buy phones that often, so I didn't think much of it.
two months ago i walked in with a macbook pro spec i wanted, they confirmed they had one in stock. We did the payment dance and i walked out. Total time in store ~5m.
The Apple store experience is meant to be initializing. It's the mindset that they want their users to be in, otherwise you're not a typical Apple user.
If you know just what you want you could a) buy online or b) buy it from any other retailer. The Apple Store is for people who want to speak to apple staff
Same for me, I honestly think people are just trying to find things to complain about. I've shopped in the Apple store many times and it's been quick and easy, no hassling by the employees.
maybe the goal isnt only to sell product but also to make the customer think apple is smart and the customer needs them indefinitely to navigate the smartphone world. I wonder how their morning genius briefings go and what their plan is when a customer approaches
> it would take half an hour or so to get somebody over
That's only the case for genius bar appointments or an extended consultation when they're super busy or something. If you just want to buy a phone you've already decided on, you ask the nearest person and they grab it and you pay for it.
It sounds like there was maybe just a miscommunication in your case. There is no trend here.
I've known multiple people, and attended with one, who walked in, picked up the watch, and left in a few minutes total. That's also how I bought a laptop once (the rest online).
Apple stores are often willing to spend enormous amounts of time with you if you ask for help, but I've never seen them stay in your way when you say "no" and that you're ready to pay and leave.
(Obviously it can happen, but they're some of the most-standardized tech stores out there. If it were A Thing™, it would be everywhere.)
Some people have trouble rejecting help and feel awkward doing so. Of course, it is a totally normal thing to do, to reject help, and people should practice it!
Yep. There's often people there whose job is to sell without an appointment. At my local stores they normally stand next to the accessories, where you can just grab stuff from the shelf.
But you can ask them to grab a specific model of iPhone, iMac, etc, for you if you don't need information.
I'm very confused by Apple's strategy. As an owner of the original HTC Vive headset, its word-of-mouth power was off the charts. It was a blast at parties, and many of my friends bought their own $700+ devices after trying it.
Here's what won them over:
- Being able to try it themselves with little preparation ("put this on your head, tighten it here, and click these buttons on the controller"). You could even use it over glasses.
- Games that you play by grabbing things with your hands. The heavy hitters are Beat Saber and Half-Life: Alyx, but Climbey and UltraWings also got fans, and all the combat games where you punch cartoons or reload guns realistically.
(seriously, if you've never tried, the jump from mouse+keyboard to hand tracking is like going from arrow keys to mouse+keyboard)
Meanwhile, here's what Apple seems to be doing:
- Customized accessories, to the point that you need a face-scan and to send them your glasses prescriptions.
- Eyetracking and gesture-only interactions. I haven't seen a single demo where somebody picks a virtual object up.
How is that going to work? Do they expect to make up for all the lost word-of-mouth with marketing campaigns? Also, did they give up on VR games?
it's a totally different model of generating demand. They don't need marketing, because they have a completely captive audience of loyal apple fans who will easily saturate the first year (or even two years) of supply for this product.
They are following Palmer Luckey's "Make people want it first model". Being supply limited, traditional marketing would only generate demand they can't satisfy. What they actually have to do is make sure every person who gets one has the most perfect experience possible.
> What they actually have to do is make sure every person who gets one has the most perfect experience possible.
This is particularly important when it comes to a VR headset, where it's very easy for bad initial experiences to literally physically condition the user into getting sick every time they put on a VR headset.
Stepping the most diehard fans through how to metaphorically "hold it right" also gives them a built-in backstop of support when it comes to preventing those issues with future consumers once they eventually hit the point of proper mass market production.
>What they actually have to do is make sure every person who gets one has the most perfect experience possible.
But they can't have the most perfect experience if the software isn't there. And there won't be enough software that actually utilises the 3D features until a sufficient number of developers get access to the device.
So I agree that the strategy can work but it can also be overstretched. If expensive devices become obsolete before they become useful, and if developers write this off as some sort of forever niche then momentum will die.
> And there won't be enough software that actually utilises the 3D features until a sufficient number of developers get access to the device.
Judging by the keynote, Apple doesn't seem to care too much about 3D features. The Vision Pro looked more like a 360deg window manager for iOS & macOS-like apps.
And that's an entirely different niche, because suddenly it competes with desktop monitors. Focus on immersion seems to be much less than what eg. Meta is building; even the games they showed in the keynote were traditional, flat iOS games.
True, but this seems more like stopgap owed to the dearth of software rather than a long term strategy. If this thing never becomes more than a fancy monitor then it will be a disappointment for most users as well as Apple itself.
Surely you understand how emotionally invested in the success of VR he is right? Palmer wants "Ready Player One" to happen even though that would mean most people live in squalor and their only escape is some highly financialized "virtual world". Most normal people don't want that.
> Everyone I have seen with actual experience USING VR and AR say it is not even evolutionary, let alone revolutionary.
Luckey obviously has that experience. Now you're changing to a different argument. Marques Brownlee also has experience with these products and says it was impressive and that there's nothing equivalent: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFvXuyITwBI.
My experience of the same has been the opposite. Friends I showed it to telling me "interesting" then moving on and never mentioning it again. And I felt the same. It went to storage less than a month after I received it.
Same here. I organized a trip to a VR center for the entire team at work.
Everybody had fun, but more like going to a theme park. Nobody ever talked about it again or bought one, just zero interest. And these are tech people.
Many people even by their mid 20s begin to lose the ability to embrace or even enjoy paradigm shifts. Moving from flat gaming to fully immersive 3D gaming just doesn't do enough to budge the hardened neural pathways that have embraced 2D gaming over the years. It's a frankly common case of being "stuck in ones way".
Will VR and AR be the future? Absolutely, and a large part of the current population will be left behind. Happens with every new technology.
I think you are taking the idea of hardened neural pathways as being absolutely unbend able. If that was the case, smart phones would have been the realm of people in the early 20's and below on release. But even the elderly figured these things out very quickly.
While anecdotal, I know of many folks in their teens that use VR a few times and then just move on. VR is a neat toy but for a lot of people it is something that they forget about very quickly.
Personally it was the same, the tech was brilliant but after you take the headset off - you just forget about it.
>Many people even by their mid 20s begin to lose the ability to embrace or even enjoy paradigm shifts.
That word paradigm is doing so much work in this sentence. You realize we're talking about a gadget/product here, not a new system of government or medicine or locomotion right? So what you're basically saying is "some people lose the need to buy useless gadgets foisted on them by marketing".
Young one, let me tell you that as you gain responsibility (employment, find a home, start a family)...your gaming days are as good as over. It becomes a casual infrequent hobby at best.
As for a paradigm shift, we've had AR for 10 years now. With the exception of navigating a city by foot, there's zero successful mainstream use cases.
There's not a single VR game that has appealed to the masses so much as to buy a headset. Not one.
It's expensive, inconvenient, anti-social and it doesn't stick.
I have no doubt that AR will be the future (VR? I don't know: I'd like to retain a sense of my surroundings when I'm working). However, I think most of the population will adapt.
Smartphones for the 60+ age group was a paradigm shift. It was very difficult at first, but within 3 or 4 years, it became pervasive worldwide. Somehow I feel that AR is less of a disruption than the "swipe" mode that touchscreens introduced around 2008 or so.
I just tell people that VR makes me feel sick, but really I just find not knowing what is going on around me disconcerting. It's nice to see someone express a similar sentiment.
This is a pretty short-sighted take. VR just doesn't offer much of anything currently. Some games work well, but most games are pretty clunky. Office work isn't substantially improved. A big warm sweaty headset is not nice to have on your head for extended amounts of time.
There's a plethora of reasons why VR in its current state is little more than a gimmick.
There is absolutely no reason to believe it so far - from all of my experience, both VR and AR are technically inferior to a screen in almost every way that actually matters, except for a short demo.
Sure, but we need to base our predictions of the future on our experience of existing similar technologies to have any credbility.
For example, if I predicted that phones the size of a coin are the future, you could meaningfully say "in my experience, bigger phones are actually more sought after, so I don't believe your prediction".
if I predicted that phones the size of a coin are the future
My phone is on my wrist currently (Apple watch), I left my iphone at home. To me your prediction would have been correct (for now).
If you insist on basing your predictions on existing experiences, think of your sunglasses: light, comfortable, stylish. I predict that 10-20 years from now your sunglasses will offer great AR/VR experience, most likely through improvements in retinal projection technology. It will take nothing away from your experience using sunglasses and will add a whole lot more. Similar to traditional wrist watch —> Apple watch transition.
> My phone is on my wrist currently (Apple watch), I left my iphone at home. To me your prediction would have been correct (for now).
Your Apple Watch is still dependent on your iPhone. You're also unlikely to be browsing the web, watching YouTube, or browsing social media on your watch, and these have been the biggest factors for smartphone adoption by far - so I don't think such a prediction works. We can also see that the market for smartwatches is dwarfed by the market for phones, and this trend shows no sign of reversing.
> I predict that 10-20 years from now your sunglasses will offer great AR/VR experience, most likely through improvements in retinal projection technology.
The problem with a glasses form factor is that it fundamentally can't create enough contrast for a good quality image, especially not for VR - that requires blocking out most light coming into the eye, which no additive technology can do. I do believe that some equivalent of a smartwatch could work very nicely in a glasses form-factor (i.e. a device that acts as an accessory to your main computing devices, for small specialized tasks).
I still don't see any plausible way it could replace phones or laptops/tablets with any technology visible on the horizon. So I'm not saying AR/VR won't have a place or even be wildly successful - just that I don't believe they will ever be "the future of computing" in any reasonable sense, say like the smartphone was to the PC.
Again, you’re associating AR/VR with a specific implementation (headsets, glasses, etc), based on your experiences with existing technology. That’s a very short sighted way to think about the future. AR/VR is the future of human computer interface, as a paradigm, as a “reality 2.0”.
Smartphones became widespread 15 years ago, and will be obsolete 15 years from now. We will still see an old lady in 2040 pulling out iPhone 23 Ultra Super Pro Max, just like we still occasionally see an old lady in a supermarket pulling our her checkbook.
Both screens and retinal projections will be seen as historical curiosities 50 years from now, just like we now look at VHS tapes and compact disks. Provided we have not turned into unimaginable cyborgs by that time, surely any information that can be consumed by our brains would be fed directly into our brains - why would you want to rely on our unreliable, deteriorating and severely constrained senses to consume information - most (or even all) of which by that time will be created or transformed by an AI?
If to you brain-computer interfaces also include AR/VR, then in that sense only I can agree that they are probably the future.
However, you are wildly overestimating how near brain-computer interfaces are if you think they will obsolete smartphones in 15 years.
My prediction then is this: screens on fixed devices (desktop, laptop, phone, tablet, probably other form factors) will remain the most common way of accessing the majority of our computer use for the next, say, 50 years. They will not be displaced by glasses-mounted displays, though "smart glasses" will become a more and more common secondary device in the coming decades, just like smartwatches. The only thing that will displace regular screens will be safe, high-bandwidth, high-fidelity brain-computer interfaces - which is where the 50 years timeline is coming from.
And I believe even 50 years is optimistic given the difficulty of making such a technology mass-market.
It’s interesting that you keep confusing a concept (AR/VR) and a technology (screens, bci, etc).
For the record, what I predict is:
1. In 15 years smartphones will be obsolete. The most likely technology that will replace them is retinal projection via glasses. Laptops and monitors will probably last a bit longer.
2. In 30 years, BCI will replace all other human computer interfaces, unless by that time humans will already have merged with computers on a more fundamental level.
As with any examples of progress in human history things will appear to change slowly until they suddenly change very fast.
I had a blast showing my Rift CV1 to friends, but only one person I showed it off to got a VR headset, and both mine and his seem to be gathering dust at the moment.
It seems to me that Apple is very worried about their device getting slotted into the “fun expensive limited use toy” niche.
I bet they need time to ramp up their manufacturing. In the meantime - they can either artificially restrict the purchase of these things (what they are doing now), or have scalpers camp outside the stores and resell for 2-3x what apple are selling them for.
If they can actually deliver on their promises - they will fucking sweep the VR market. Current VR headsets blow chunks. If the meta quest cost 10$ - people would still not use it for normal things, because it unpleasant to interact with.
Hard disagree. Current headsets are perfectly fine for the well established use-cases like gaming and stereo/3D video. The problem is, as always, going to be shoehorning real features into a goofy form-factor. We've been down this avenue before with Hololens and it was very clear that enterprise customers aren't really interested in developing bespoke AR workflows. Even with perfect passthrough vision there wasn't any tangible benefit to the tech outside very narrow military applications (and who knows where those contracts went).
So now we're here. If Apple delivers on their promise of a very nice Oculus Quest sorta thing with iPhone apps and AppleTV+, I can't imagine people using it more than their Oculus Quest, iPhone or AppleTV.
My experience following the VR scene. The unreleased product doesn't solve the weight problem, it doesn't solve the friction problem of needing to put on a headset, it doesn't solve the VAC problem which can strain people's eyes, etc. I would also speculate that it doesn't solve the content problem in motivating people to consistently use the device instead of regress to using your iphone or whatever to do those normal things.
Just doing VR, but with more resolution or VR, but with a different input scheme or VR, but with a heavier headset, or MR, but with higher resolution passthrough doesn't solve the current challenges that VR headsets are facing.
It doesn’t sound like a gaming play, rather a productivity/media consumption play.
I really wish Meta or someone else would focus on fitness more. Augmented fitness (not normal gaming) seems to be an area ripe for viral adoption. Without any haptic feedback, VisionPro is less suitable than the Quest.
I don't think this designed to sell in numbers, it exists as a placeholder for them, in case m$ or Pico start drawing too much attention, the old 'what we have is better, you just can't have it yet' routine. I will be interested to see what they spend on content and how they approach webXR, I'm not sure a market for walled garden devices in 2024 will be there, hopefully not :)
They had many WWDC sessions covering 3D objects especially with the Unity integration [1] and their Reality Composer Pro [2] tool. Both were covered during the keynote. And if you look on Youtube there are countless videos of third party developers developing 3D apps.
It's just that they are positioning the device as a spatial computer i.e. something you use to get real work done. And right now for 99% of people that involves 2D windows.
I take their point as a problem of control. Picking up objects with hand tracking is, in my experience, much less deterministic, and much less useful, compared to picking them up with a button and haptics.
> Everyone that has tried the Vision Pro has said the eye and hand tracking is flawless.
Context of the interaction is important. I've seen this mentioned with selecting, but not with doing something like picking up a 3d object. I don't recall seeing this use in any of the release footage.
26 joints per hand. Assuming that all the joints in your hand are visible to the device (this seems to be unlikely for much of the time).
As per parent's line of questioning, it doesn't address how that maps to a manipulation in the virtual realm in practice.
In comparison, each controller on my Valve Index has 87 sensors - that can distinguish touch vs actual press (triggers etc), pressure, presence vs absence (fingers on the handle), as well as the usual orientation / accelerometer sensors. Even with an abundance of processing power, a camera-tracking system can't get there.
It's notable that despite the claimed joint tracking, the only actual hand interaction shown in that video is knocking something over, not any real dextrous handling requiring precise finger motion.
I get the impression they made a deliberate decision not to include any 3d handling in the launch demos because it's just not good, whereas 'look and click/swipe' works well.
I think you're right to pick up on the fact that 99% of digital content out there is 2D and they're leaning into that. It's a known quantity and easier to market.
Something like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYxPO-bfbOk (https://www.immersionanalytics.com/) would absolutely be possible with Apple's support for 3D objects. I hope that Apple doesn't neglect the analytics/visualization use case for launch; it could be gamechanging for their go-to-market strategy, as it would find its way into many corporate budgets.
> seriously, if you've never tried, the jump from mouse+keyboard to hand tracking is like going from arrow keys to mouse+keyboard
Totally different experience here. It's interesting but the mouse still blows away anything VR has offered thus far. Games like Beat Saber /are/ a ton of fun and cool input method but but the novelty wears off fast. A majority of my friend group all bought VR headsets together and after 1-2 months of playing (often together) our usage has fallen off a cliff. I can't remember the last time I picked up my headset and I even bought lenses a couple months ago to try and reinvigorate my interest (I wear glasses/contacts but glasses always fog so I'd have to put in my contacts to play which was an annoying barrier) but I literally played it 1-2 more times before getting bored and moving on.
Current VR headsets are only good for gaming (yes, even the Meta Pro, it's resolution is joke for real productivity) and I have a limited interest in that method of gaming. I still play my Xbox, I still play games on my computer, I still play games on my phone but VR gaming isn't as interesting to me. It's novel but it wears off and the motion sickness is really annoying in certain types of games. All that coupled with absolute shit hand tracking (it's cool when it works but it fails too often), lackluster controllers (I can only take my sabers going wild when that's not what my hands are doing so many times), and poor graphics makes my headset a toy and not a particular good one.
We will see if Apple is able to improve on what's currently available and their track record has me hoping they succeed. Their vision, no pun intended, of AR/VR is much more in line with what I have been dreaming of for decades.
Hmm. Are you aware that mobile gaming revenue is larger than console and PC and that the majority of mobile gaming revenue comes from iOS (iPad and iPhone)?
It's gaming in the same way that a slot machine is "gaming" or how Android is Linux. True in some sense but still not at all in line with the general usage of the word.
Most of my gaming this year has been on my iPad. There are a lot of enjoyable “real” games… Just to give some examples: Total War, Six Ages, Slay the Spire, FM23, Kingdoms Two Crowns, Vampire Survivors, and I’ve played many more.
Just in my small social circle, I know of a family where the father was addicted and it actually kept them from putting food on the table, and another friend who only has part time work but still managed to spend over a thousand dollars and choses to live with her parents.
>> I haven't seen a single demo where somebody picks a virtual object up.
Why do I need to do that? It’s a great demo but it’s not something I need to be able to do day to day. And that seems to be the strategy from Apple. Make it a useful device for daily tasks rather than a gaming specific device or a device for doing something “new”. If you’re paying $3500 it needs to be immediately useful.
Think about it, you’re trying to tell me Vive is great and their marketing strategy (word of mouth) was a huge success…I have never seen one in the wild and Occulus seems to be much more popular. In other words their strategy hasn’t worked so probably not a great idea for Apple to copy it.
I don't think they expect to sell many of these. I don't think this is some hype campaign, I think they just think/know the market for this is very limited.
"Why isn't Apple approaching their device in the same way this other company approached their device? A device which, incidentally, nobody really cares about anymore after some initial."
Apple doesn't want their market to be the same as the market for the HTC Vive, which isn't exactly a successful product (at least by Apple standards). They also don't want the market to be defined by their competitors, so they're approaching the market in a very different way. An example of this is how, in the keynote where they announced their new VR headset, they didn't say the words "Virtual Reality" once.
One area of friction that hasn’t been mentioned but is out of Apples control is that in some states like MA prescription eyewear requires a current, within one year, prescription.
After decades of hearing about Apple only being kept afloat by their indoctrinated, rabid fan base (whose numbers curiously appeared to grow exponentially with each passing year), Apple “always” making sales only by ad spots and not word of mouth is certainly a hot take.
Conversely the fact that you need special fit lenses and a store appointment means its going to be hard to test out and hard to buy. You're probably not going to be able to wander past the Apple store in the mall and take a quick peek in and play with the Vision Pro like you can with their other products like the iPad. Nor will testing your friend's necessarily be a good experience. Plus even in the U.S Apple Store's aren't that common requiring a multi-hour drive to get to in some places.
> Plus even in the U.S Apple Store's aren't that common
There are 270+ Apple stores in the US, I don't have the figures to hand but an overwhelming percentage of the country's actual population live within an hour of an Apple store. They are common, frankly.
I'm not defending the decision to require a store visit here, but lets not paint a picture of Apple store availability that doesn't exist. The number of people with disposable income in the US to purchase a 3500 dollar headset and actually want to buy one who aren't living under an hour from an Apple store is likely a very small list.
Yeah or in my case the apple store becomes a part of a trip, there's not one near my home but there is one near the beach house I rented this year, so when I wanted a better fitting waterproof watch band I just baked a trip to that store into my trip itinerary.
If I were in the target market for the vision pro I would totally schedule an appointment and drive a couple of hours to get a curated experience and feel confident I'd come home with the right combination of lenses and everything.
And there are plenty of people (including my 80 year old parents) who drive 3 hours from their small town in South Georgia to the nearest bigger city to buy products that they want to be able to see instead of our used online.
In my dads case, music gear
I even know people who would drive from the even smaller places than where my parents live who would drive to my home town to go the mall, movies and Olive Garden.
As described during the keynote, they’re magnetically held in place. You would need one set per user.
As someone that wears glasses with VR, it’s awful. The light gasket presses against them, gets tangled. The band presses against them. I can see why they didn’t bother making it an option, since I often put my headset away because of the discomfort. This is why the quest pro has optional light blockers, and why I never use mine. Leaving enough room for comfortably wearing glasses would make things huge.
You can. The Vision Pro supports a primary user that retains settings/user account/AppleID and a secondary user with gets a “guest” account that resets.
Based on how these work on many existing VR headsets including Quest 2, these are just insets that you can just take out. Probably held magnetically as well.
Do you share your iPhone, iPad, MacBook Pro, AirPods or Apple Watch with friends and family? It’s touted as a work machine first and foremost right? Do you share your work laptop with others? Apple exec logic I’m sure.
I get what you’re saying and it’s hard to describe (and never really does it justice) the experience of this technology. It’s something you have to experience yourself to understand.
I share my PlayStation and AppleTV with friends and family. And, yeah, my kid regularly uses my iPad and family members definitely use one another’s phones on occasion. Also the Vision Pro is expensive enough that not every family member will get one — if there’s one in the house it sure would be cool if everyone could use it.
It sure sounds like anyone in a household can use it but if anyone has a different eyeglass corrective lens prescription (very likely unless everyone still has 20/20 vision) from the primary user it’s a very substandard experience.
Even if they’re magnetic and easy to swap, it sounds a LOT clunkier than just handing someone an iPad. People are going to lose the lenses all over the place.
Heck, my dad loses his phone multiple times a week, necessitating a quick phone call to track it down. Are the lenses going to include built-in AirTags so people can locate them?
I don’t have a proposal. I’m skeptical of the entire market for this product. I’m taking a wait-and-see approach and I’m looking forward to reading one-year followups from early adopters.
Heck, I’m even skeptical of the iPad. I own one and I use it so seldomly that I have to charge the thing up from 0 every time I use it. But I recognize that a lot of people love them as consumption devices and a few as creation tools for some niche purposes, such as digital painting.
Apple already does laser engraving for products bought in the online store. For the price point of this thing, they can probably move engraving into the retail stores (not long ago, I bought a laser engraver for my hobby 3D printer for a few hundred bucks -- they're not expensive, certainly not by Apple Store standards).
As for getting lost, Apple already has their AirTag technology. While I don't know if that's already in these lenses, it doesn't seem like it'd be difficult to add.
I suck at optics, and optics is a hard topic, so I say it will full humility: I’m always surprised that headset manufacturer can’t correct for most of these vision issues in software.
I think you'd need to be able to control the direction of each photon coming out of the screen, so that it landed in the intended place on the retina after going through the misshapen cornea/lens. That's basically what a corrective lens does. Doing it dynamically for each thing we call a pixel indeed sounds like science fiction.
you could do it with lasers, using lasers to draw directly on the retina. I don't think there would be any way to do this with a pixelarray type screen.. maybe if you could map each pixel to a point on your retina and then modify the rendering .. maybe. the concept reminds me of a generative art piece that Kyle McDonald built: https://www.fastcompany.com/90167836/disco-meets-computer-vi...
Essentially pile up a bunch of mirrorballs. Point projectors at it. Then map where each pixel from each projector ends up on the walls/ceiling/floors.
I think it is just a weird coincidence, but in this thread price and share-ability seem to be negatively correlated.
Consoles, AppleTV, and iPads are at the lower end of the price range here, right? (Well, you can get an expensive iPad of course).
Laptop are expensive but personal, phones… definitely personal, tend to be a little more expensive maybe?
I dunno, it isn’t a straight line correlation but I don’t think the fact that the Vision Pro is expensive tells us much.
In have a Rift CV1, I enjoyed showing it off to people and got some party-game type things (Keep Talking And Nobody Explodes is great for showing the device off). But I don’t use it much solo, and I’ve shown it off to all my friends already, so I don’t use it much. Don’t get me wrong, it was fun, but it hasn’t integrated into my daily life.
If I were Apple—word of mouth is good, but I’d hope the Vision Pro becomes something that sort of gets embedded in people’s lives to the point where they don’t care to show it off (either because it becomes personal like a laptop, or because it becomes boring like a monitor).
Your comment is greyed out as if it was downvoted a bit, which seems quite bizarre to me.
I think we’re pretty clearly talking about a small number of contrary data points, here? I’m not trying to prove a general trend at least, just point out that we should at least double check the assumption that expensive implies shared.
If someone is really invested in that idea I’d love to see an argument for it, rather than silent downvotes.
I know plenty of middle class parents who bought their teenagers an old beater because they didn’t want them driving the car they needed to get to work or their expensive car.
Wrecking your first car is almost a teenage rite of package.
Again we are talking about people who are willing to spend $3500 on a headset. Not exactly the demographic of people who are “sharing a family car” and that don’t statistically have separate cars for the parents and don’t either buy their kids a car or subsidize them in some way to help them buy their own.
I know I never let either one of my sons drive my car alone and I bought myself a new car and handed my older one down to my older son and bought my younger son a car before he had a license.
Ipads are regularly shared in families and vision pro is more expensive than a top range tv which is shared in households. It's a hard sell if if can't be adapted to be used by multiple family members at its price point.
Regardless of Apple's marketing, for the vast majority of people this will be a media consumption device first and a media creation device second, just like the iPad. And you absolutely share your media consumption devices (television, game consoles, iPads) with your family/housemates.
Eh, you have a point. I am not exactly keen on sharing my Valve Index with people because hygiene is important to me. My wife can use it if she wants to.
However, we're talking about a 3500 US dollar (without tax) device and a novelty. Of course people are going to share it if they can.
It’s pretty reasonable to share iPads and Macs between people, especially people who can’t afford individual devices for everyone separately. If I bought a VR headset for $3500 anyone being able to use it would be extremely useful
They do sell more expensive iPads. Not exactly unreasonable to want to share a $1000+ nice iPad Pro among a few people rather than buy multiple bottom tier devices.
Apple doesn't want to share even for iPad, as they don't implement multi user feature (except educational usage). I expect that it's same for Vision Pro, and it seems to natural for me. (I argue iPad should support multi user or guest)
Yes, it’s indeed very common to share iPad with kids and to have a laptop shared amongst family members. That’s why users exist and were such a hugely requested features of iPadOS (something Apple actually took ages to acknowledge because well, Apple).
It shouldn’t have to be explained that dedicated video game hardware and personal mobile computers have very different use cases and sharing cultures around them.
Do you share the use of your tv with friends and family?
An Apple enthusiast not willing to go to the Apple Store? When I went to NYC, the Apple Store there was like nerd Mecca with people taking pictures in front of it.
Why xR enthusiasts don't? Though population is smaller, I suspect that they want to buy it more than average Apple enthusiasts (for %). They may already imagined use cases. They know that equip HMD is okay. xR sometimes needs enough big room but Apple enthusiasts haven't prepared for it.
you underestimate apple enthusiasts. they may not have already prepared, but the device isn’t already out.
besides, not all apple enthusiasts are wealthy. some will prepare last minute, by selling furniture to make space and help fund the headset. it doesn’t matter if that sounds silly, if it happens.
this is why apple goes slow. bring the ecosystem enthusiast to the object by attempting to integrate the object into the ecosystem first. start with the most eager, guide them in, let them deal with the growing pains, convert enough to full believers in the new object.
public-ish beta with an exclusive-ish signup fee.
apple isn’t merely training enthusiasts in how to use a headset. they are training fans that sell product. enthusiasts talk. easiest way into the ecosystem is with a guide, and even better if that’s a friend or loved one not getting paid to do so.
the least important part about this product is the product. it’s expanding the ecosystem into new territory. show apple enthusiasts that perhaps they want to be xr enthusiasts.
Most people live in urban areas though. Nova Scotia has only a million inhabitants and half of them live in Halifax where I assume the Apple Store is. If something needs fitting and prescription lenses it seems reasonable that a physical location needs to be visited and this is the kind of trade off one makes when moving to a rural area. I'd bet that this will still be convenient for the vast majority of the population.
That one store in Nova Scotia is pretty much the Atlantic Canada store being the closest for most people in Newfoundland, PEI and a huge chunk of New Brunswick (on the Western side the Québec City store is closer maybe, still hours away). There's plenty of non-rural areas there without an Apple Store.
There is still 4 U.S states that lack an Apple store entirely. It's not like Wal-mart or even Best Buy.
Good point. Telling how xR device good is one of the most difficult thing for consumer market. Trying is the only way but it's annoying to setup. Let's see how Apple solves this.
The big win I think will be the App Store rather than just the Apple Store. the App Store will provide reducing the need to take the headset off to use general apps.
When you use an oculus, if you need to do something like reply to a text, check an email or reply to someone on social media, you have to take off your headset or kill your current task and switch to virtual desktop.
Having all your iOS apps on it, and being able to multitask means people won’t be taking off their headset as often and they’ll not have to consider dedicated VR time.
This has been mostly missed by reviewers and pundits. They’ve presented a primarily sitting/static experience; the battery is for when you need to walk around between sedentary moments. In that context 2 hrs is going to be (mostly) plenty
The first thing Apple says about battery life is "all day while plugged in". The device is intended to be used as long as desired while plugged in, just like a laptop.
The reasons I would not like to have one of these devices ;
* Apple's closed moat
* App store lock-in
* 'DLC' model whereby not a single thing you do on this $3,500 device will be free - and no matter what app you choose, Apple takes 30% of whatever revenue stream that app wants...
* The piss-poor apple fix-service market, and their shitty designs of the iphone which break so fn easily that VCs (YC+) have had to invest in cottage industry of phone repairs
I've had iphones since the first day of launch... and while I prefer them over android, I still hate ios ecosystem.
The infra-mechanics of it are awesome, but compared to the smarmy and condescending greedy Apple, i still hate ios.
While I sympathize with feeling disappointed in having to pay for apps for use with such an expensive headset, I believe that its price would have severely restricted the number of free apps available for it in the first place. Developers are going to want to recuperate their investment, and that'd remain true even if it were possible to install whatever one pleased on it.
It's technically possible to develop on the simulator alone, but given that the simulator is confined to a 2D window on a computer screen I can't imagine that apps developed in this manner would be able to stand up to competition developed without such limitations.
Yeah, I understand both sides of the Coin. I appreciate your response, and it deepens my concern is that there will be an entirely new DLC-ish content model whereby you have one price for an ios app - and then a different price for the "Apple Headset AR *EXPERIENCE*" version of all the apps - and certain features will be lock-outs to non AR-paying-premium customers...
Its just FN financially-dystopian
---
@scarface_74 ;
"*May you please ELI5 expand on your comment - as I am OOTL and would like to understand what you mean, precisely. (because I want to learn, kthxbai)*"
Surprisingly the GP didn't include price of the device as a reason, but the 30% Apple cut/likely uplift in price that developers need to charge to recuperate development costs - which are far more significant than developer hardware costs.
A non-Apple device without the moat would be better. GP also didn't ask for free apps.
> The reasons I would not like to have one of these devices ;
I'm sure there are a number of people here who will agree with you.
On the other hand, the fact that Apple now has a $3 trillion-with-a-"t" market cap indicates that most people do not care about any of these issues. Not in the slightest.
Having replied to a text, checked my emails and responded to people on HN all from my first-gen Oculus Quest, I'm not really sure what you're talking about here. Do you not find a web browser sufficient for those tasks? Is there something inherent to the Quest ecosystem that should be stopping me here?
1. Many people prefer apps over browser experiences.
2. Many commonly used apps don’t have a browser experiences with equivalent features. Take Instagram for example.
3. With the Quest , you can’t really multitask, except for the Quest Pro.
The Quest 1-3 are equivalent to game consoles in many ways. I can use a web browser on my PS4. It doesn’t mean it’s a full productivity system with multitasking.
> The big win I think will be the App Store rather than just the Apple Store
It won't be using the app store, though. It's using a brand-new store, built from scratch. No iOS apps will be there unless the authors rewrite them to be compatible with visionOS.
I’m squarely in the target market for the Meta Quest, but the fact I have no way of trying one before I buy, even just for a few minutes, is my main blocker for getting one.
This is particularly important for a) new product categories where customers aren’t yet sure they want/need it, b) products that “fit”, or don’t, and c) expensive entertainment products. These headsets are all three, so it’s really important.
That's typical for most products like that but it doesn't solve the problem. The issue is only partly "will I like it" or "will it fit me", for which a free return policy can help (but not fully solve), but a lot of the issue is "why would I want this". If you walk past one in a shop and can give it a go you're much more likely to overcome that than spending £300 on one and having to go through the return process.
Aside, I hear a lot more about free returns from people in the US. In the UK they are seemingly near-universal, but there is significantly less willingness to return outside of specific categories such as clothing. I have a little experience working in a retailer (as a software engineer), and US return rates were far higher than UK/EU return rates, and this was apparently considered typical.
I can understand this being a differentiator to other AR/VR products, but that is not exactly what the comment I replied to said, they said the “killer app” was the ability to buy it at an Apple Store. Short of a few folks with too much extra cash and curiosity, just being able to try it before you buy isn’t what I would refer to as a killer app. The “killer app” is what gets the main market populace to the store to even consider it.
I think the friction can come across to some customers as good service, and help launch a category.
The Apple Watch was initially sold at fitting appointments in store, and I think that was important in establishing it as a normal thing to wear and even a fashionable thing to wear in some cases, and helped cement the product in the mainstream.
Tailored suits is another case where there’s a premium price, premium service, but a lot of friction. It’s not always bad.
They’re also probably supply constrained enough that the friction doesn’t matter for the first version or two.
Apple absolutely needed to normalise the idea that a £300 black puck was Luxury Fashion. See what happened to Google Glass for when a company fails to make a wearable product fashionable, and we've been wearing expensive glasses for hundreds of years. Watch nerds still shun it today, although Apple has managed to break through as much as they needed to make it a success.
They absolutely did. Smartwatches were mostly seen as tacky before the Apple Watch. That’s part of why they chose a different form factor and partnered with luxury brands for bracelet. For Apple to make wearing them seems normal was not a given at all.
The Moto 360 was out before the Apple watch. I know that for a fact because I got one on the release date. They were pretty hard to find when they came out.
Apple was late to the game with smartwatches and didn't do a single thing to convince people to wear them.
And it was seen as a toy for geeks and software developers who think t-shirts are an acceptable office attire despite being the most watch-like of the smartwatches.
I would never have gone to the office wearing a moto360. People would have given me funny looks all day. Meanwhile you can wear an Apple Watch with your suit and everyone finds that acceptable.
> And it was seen as a toy for geeks and software developers who think t-shirts are an acceptable office attire despite being the most watch-like of the smartwatches.
Source please! That's not how I remember the release, I recall it was very well recieved and sold out everywhere with the battery life being the biggest complaint.
> I would never have gone to the office wearing a moto360. People would have given me funny looks all day. Meanwhile you can wear an Apple Watch with your suit and everyone finds that acceptable.
I doubt you'll find a source, this entire paragraph is you projecting your own insecurities onto everyone else. Your opinion is not the general consensus or a source for anything so find a reliable 3rd party to back you up that isn't a random blogpost by Joe nobody.
> I doubt you'll find a source, this entire paragraph is you projecting your own insecurities onto everyone else.
Sometimes I wonder if I live in the same world than some of the commenters here.
Here is The Verge review of the Moto360: [https://www.theverge.com/2014/9/5/6108947/moto-360-review]. A few selected quotes by me: “It’s designed to prove that smartwatches don’t have to be ugly.”, “It’s not a gadget, it’s a watch”, “At 11.5mm, it’s a little thick”, “ Everything before it was a screen on your wrist”. And that’s the Verge being incredibly nice with the 360. Truth is it was very much still seen as a tacky piece of technology bolted to your wrist.
It took me two minutes to find by the way because this kind of reviews were literally everywhere in the years leading to the release of the Apple Watch.
> you think Apple invented wearing watches as a fashion statement with their release of the Apple watch in 2015.
No, I said that Apple successfuly turned smartwatches from something seen as gadget into something seen as a proper acceptable watch, which they most definitely did as I have proved to you with my previous message (which you are conveniently ignoring by the way).
The watch industry is very fashion conscious. Swatch Group managed to turn mechanical watches - a clearly inferior product which not only can't keep time properly but has to be serviced every couple of years - into something of seen as timeless and the embodiment of success so clearly Apple was walking a well paved road.
It only fits because if you consider Android a nerd OS (I suspect this user does) then your perception will be that everything Android does is for nerds.
It doesn't prove anything at all and Apple definitely did not make watches fashionable in 2015.
Before the Apple Watch, no mainstream celebrities were photographed wearing smart watches. After the Apple Watch, celebrities are regularly photographed wearing just one type of smart watch – the Apple Watch.
Whether you like it or not, for most people, celebrity culture drives luxury culture, and even in the top end markets it's still a leading indicator even if it's not driving it.
I'm open to hearing constructive arguments against this, but it seems very clear to me.
some people wear them, most of them clueless I-wear-it-too crowd. I see a lot of people around me / commuting wearing Garmin watches (ie fenix 7 pro), now that's a conversation starter.
There used to be a Microsoft store in the big mall near me. It turned into a babysitting service for parents who dropped their kids off to play with the Xbox.
There's a non-trivial portion of population that is familiar with the concept of having products fit to them personally: made-to-order uniforms, glasses, other sorts of assistive products.
I find it surprising that this is less common than it was in the past, and that people are more willing to put up with something that’s a subpar fit for them. One tech example that would benefit from custom fit are in-ear headphones. It would make sure that product is a perfect fit for every customer every time, rather than roughly every single customer having to put up with a suboptimal fit and poor comfort.
Fitting and customizing things takes time and is expensive. That fully explains the trend. Before industrialized mass production, making an item by hand and to fit someone's specific needs was only slightly more effort than to make some "average" fit item.
I don’t think people who pack Apple stores are target audience. From my experience they’re either not a target audience (older, non tech savvy) or lack funds (teenagers).
Can we please get rid of the stereotype that older people aren't "tech savvy"?
Older people today have been using computers since they were in their teens or twenties. Conversely, I know a 20-something woman who can't understand why her iMessages quit working when she switched to an Android phone, despite explaining it to her multiple times.
I always hated that stereotype too. Those older people were the ones to design our current processors, operating systems, and the internet and web itself. The people who sent man to the moon would be nearing 80-100 years old already.
This product has opened my eyes to "AR" glasses in general, but I think its way overkill for what I want to do.. My use case is being able to code with a giant screen anywhere (plane, hotel room, etc). I just want a few giant editor windows and terminals open. I don't care about gaming, AR gimmicks, etc.
From what I understand, there are a number of sub $500 options. (xreal air, rokud air, TCL NXTWEAR, etc). However they all get very mixed reviews. I wish there was a retailer that had demo units, as this is something I'd very much like to try before I buy.
Text editing is actually a harder problem than gaming. For gaming you can very well do with relatively low resolution and big bright objects to shoot at. But displaying clear text requires way higher resolution.
I tried Pico 4 headset, and gaming-wise it is fine, you almost forget you are not in your room anymore, but run a browser, and eyes start bleeding out from horrible font rendering. It is somewhat better on Quest 2, but still too bad.
I also tried replacing my monitors with a Quest 2. While the idea of not needing space for monitors and have your setup anywhere with you is cool, the resolution just wasn't there yet.
Yeah, this is where the Vision Pro has most of my interest and excitement. The reported[0][1] 3400PPI resolution on the thing is going to be next-level. My main use-case for it will be as a productivity device, and everything else will be a bonus.
What matters for direct comparison with physical monitors is the PPI of the virtual "monitors", not of the tiny screens in the headset.
If you have roughly 4K per eye in the headset that renders everything you see, then you can't expect the virtual equivalent of a 4K monitor that only takes up a part of your vision.
Lower PPI virtual screens should be usable, but the text may still look bad on those when you can't do things like subpixel antialiasing (macOS on 27" 1440p also suffers from this). Especially if you need to render small text at an angle. If you only work with fairly large text or with pictures/video, that would probably be fine.
It's true that the text isn't great out of the box on the current batch of 1080p versions. Personally, I just stick the zoom level to 110% / 120% and then find it fine to use though.
Yeah I think it's something people don't consider about resolution. I want to upgrade to a newer e-ink Kindle for CJK characters. On the opposite end, the Steam Deck and Nintendo Switch have a 7" screen is only 720p and it's fine for gaming.
> My use case is being able to code with a giant screen anywhere
I've tried this on other platforms. The device gets heavy and your eyes get hot and sweaty, and dealing with an extension cord running from your head to a battery pack just adds insult to the inconvenience. It's not fun and it was not a major boost to productivity.
Plus.. for $3,500 I can just buy quite a few nice monitors.
At least for me this solves nothing. If I don't want to hunch over a laptop keyboard & screen for ergonomic reasons, I'm certainly not going to add more laptop-sized screens.
It’s clever but I’ve never felt a burning need for more than a laptop screen while traveling and don’t even try to work on planes unless it’s just reading.
For hotel rooms, an HDMI adapter can usually get you hooked up to the TV. It's usually better for movies than work, though, and sometimes the TVs are so locked down you can't get it to read the HDMI in.
I think the factor you're missing is that even the Vision Pro is still only about hitting the bare minimum to be able to comfortably do what you're looking for in terms of specs (and maybe not even then in terms of weight). It's 'overkill' in terms of pricing, but only because we're still years if not decades away from the tech advances needed for true standalone AR glasses.
Though most “real” computers were quite expensive by todays standards at the time. The editor in chief of PC Magazine coined Machrones Law—the computer you want always costs $5000 dollars and that I held pretty well for a long time.
There's clearly a lot more variety in sports though. It's probably hard to have a big entry-level outlay for running or even racquet sports though for the latter you'll often benefit from lessons and there can easily be ongoing costs for club memberships and the like. Whereas SCUBA, mountain biking, golf will be significant and we won't even talk about horseback riding, yachting, etc.
While true... That doesn't mean it will actually be any good at what it's trying to do. VR/AR is truly at the edge of our current technological abilities - Apple can have done everything to the best standard possible and still not be good enough here.
Nor is their a guarantee that its even a viable market at scale.
Apple is too big to serve niches (see how they let some product lines wilt like Mac Pro, Apple TV hardware) and needs to sell 10s of millions of units in the near term.
So what about this product opened your eyes that the previous 15 years of VR/AR did not? Just Apple's marketing power? Or is there something specific about this device that made it click for you?
I had always looked at things like Oculus as a "gaming" accessory. And I demoed Google Glass about 10 years ago, and it didn't present a virtual screen.
When seeing the Apple goggles, it clicked for me that this was basically a mac environment, and I started thinking how amazing it would be to run terminals in it, then I started googling for any options that were available now..
Crazy. That's the power of marketing eh. Almost as soon as the DK1 was available, people were running desktop envs inside VR. 3D modelling, CAD, multiple floating desktops, watching movies videos in 3D or big fake theaters, panoramic photos... Google even had a 3D paintbrush program demo on their cardboard product half a decade or more ago. This is stuff all been explored before.
The Vision Pro estimates I've seen are between 33 and 40 PPD (while 20/20 vision is 60 to 70 PPD at the centre of the field of vision). So this could be quite sharp, particularly if you have the text somewhat larger (on the huge virtual monitors) than you'd normally have it.
Not really, it’s the power of solid product development. I don’t want to fuck around with setting up a desktop env inside VR. I’m 100% confident I’ll be able to walk into an Apple Store, buy a Vision Pro, go home, put it on, and get to work.
I have a Valve Index, I've tried it, the resolution is simply not good enough for it to be comfortable as a screen replacement. It (and all VR headsets before it) were simply not reaching the minimum viable product level of hardware for this use case.
And, until the resolution was good enough, your eyes were closed? You literally could not imagine what was possible until an incremental upgrade in optics occurred?
They tried it, but did they keep doing it? i.e. did it work in practice, for real-world work-flows? Was the ROI there, so allocating budget was a no-brainer? I think, if it did, it would have taken over by now.
To me, the question is whether Apple has actually made this work.
It didn’t work because the pixels per degree isn’t enough, even with the Quest Pro, to show clear text. I still use it for coding, but it’s very far from ideal.
Apple claim text is crisp with VP. They also claim the resolution is similar to retina - but their stated pixel count and my guesstimates of usage distance suggest it's about half (in each dimension, so a quarter for area).
If they've got it crisp, how big a deal do feel that would be? For yourself, and for others who've been interested?
I've showed several "professional computer users", who sit behind nice monitors all day, my Quest Pro virtual screen setup. They've all said it's too blurry/font is too large/not enough screen space (which are all the same, from lack of PPD).
So, the Quest Pro is unusable to them, due to PPD. If the Vision Pro is actually retina, then that's good, but I don't think that's the only reason they wouldn't want to use it. I think comfort/bulk is a huge concern, especially since it appears to use the flesh of your face to support the weight, rather than a top strap. My Quest Pro is unusable without a top strop, for more than 30 minutes. With, I can easily do 6 hours. But still, the bulk makes me hesitantly put it on, sometimes.
I would say claim that use in open office spaces will be the real "killer app". I think being able to cut out all the distractions, and focus, will be extremely valuable to many.
For what it's worth I think of lot of guesstimates of PPD are likely a bit low. You can play games with lenses to increase it near the centre of the display where it actually matters (because your eyes don't travel that far away from straight forwards, so you can have much lower resolution in your peripheral FOV).
SimulaVR, a competitor with roughly half the number of pixels (2x2448x2448 = 11,985,408 vs 23 million), claims to go from 24.48 PPD naively calculated to 35.5 PPD near the centre of the display using this.
1. Eye tracking for interaction vs hand tracking. If the UX works out, the amount of precision that can be reached is just far higher with less effort - just seems to be an easier technical problem.
2. Resolution and lensing. Most VR headsets have fairly low quality fresnel lenses which cause distortion near the edges (basically - if you want to see something in good detail, you have to tilt your whole head to look at it), and in general the resolution is not good enough to see things that are 'far away' (those who play games like DCS have to use the 'binoculars' feature with headsets to accurately see targets). With a device like an HP Reverb, the resolution is probably close to good enough, the lensing is not - the Meta Quest Pro has a good enough lens, but not resolution. I'd expect the lensing on the Apple device to be top of market, and we know the resolution is ~2.5x more dense than the Meta Quest Pro - which should be closer to going from SD to HD TV rather than HD to 4k. Essentially, if you try to code on a Meta Quest Pro, the text looks a bit blurry. With the Vision Pro, it won't.
3. Custom face cushion + prescription lenses. Comfort is everything with these devices and nothing is worse than a headset putting pressure in the wrong places. It'll cost much more, but be totally worth it.
4. People claim common nausea when using VR. I've felt it too, but only on certain headsets. My money is other companies know what causes folks to feel bad, but have had to make technical tradeoffs which mean that nausea remains a problem. I'd put money on Apple having done serious research into 'what causes nausea when using headsets' which causes this to minimised on their headsets.
5. Software stack and usability. VR stacks are typically fairly clunky, usually Android derived, usually behaving a bit like a dodgy phone. iOS/MacOS are usually not most feature-ful, but a core usually works very very well. Will likely push bar a lot higher, change the shape of industry (e.g. samsungs are so good because of the iPhone competition).
Basically, having used some of these devices - the complaints I have with these right now, are the same things that Apple has real, technical solutions for. And the price isn't even _that_ high compared to other players in the market. Pimax Crystal is $1600 for what right now is a fairly buggy user experience. Their vapourware Pimax 12k is listed as starting at $2400 for the most basic model, though it's been in that state for well over a year.
(1) The HoloLens used eye tracking. It was tough to get used to but it was interesting. I didn't feel that I ever got to the point where it was more precise than moving my hand to a 3d point in space.
(4) I doubt it's the headset. It's almost certainly the application the headset is running.
Yeah, Automobilista 2 or Flight Simulator 2020 are a joy on Reverb G2. Though I must say I was surprised how tiny Monaco felt which is probably a question of FOV.
4. Nausea is apparently caused by latency between head movements and updates of the visual field, which they've kept very low on the Vision Pro by means of that R1 chip.
Apple’s thesis seems to be that it is not overkill — that, in fact, every other option is significantly underkill, and that’s why you don’t use them despite knowing they exist.
I have the xreal airs. I’m very happy with them as an “on-the go” screen or “I don’t have my desk”, but I certainly prefer my desk setup (triple monitor).
Yep, on occasion. They work just like a normal monitor. I've had code/terminals/etc open while watching Netflix on a side monitor.
When Nebula is open, they simulate 3 individual monitors. Nebula is simply responsible for positioning the screens in space and keeping them where you want.
Try a few first, not everyone's eyes can manage long exposure to have a screen strapped to it. Kids under 11 are generally not allowed to use it for that reason
It's also worth noting that this is dependent on model. E.g. I can handle an HP Reverb G2 indefinitely, but a Meta Quest Pro for only about 30 minutes before I feel ill.
The alternatives have the whole unit in the headset in the front, which makes it very warm, sweaty and heavy for the neck - they're also nowhere near the required resolution for comfortably reading text in AR/VR, something that Apple seems to have solved.
Closest thing I can think of would be Big Screen Beyond, which I believe will support 3DOF mode without trackers at some point (you should confirm this), and according to YouTuber “Sadly It’s Bradley” is decent for productivity work.
But actually resolution is extremely important for that kind of work and only the highest resolution headsets available today can actually work well for that.
Do we have any indication whether it’s going to be responsive and fast enough for AR in sports?
Maybe it’s a solution looking for a problem, but the best use of AR has always seemed to be for activities that require full attention. Flying a plane, driving a car, riding a bike, etc.
yes exactly - so many options with so many games and apps and social media related experiences and all I (and im sure many others) want is a solution to “how can i travel or be in a hotel and open vi/emacs/terminal and code as comfortably as with a huge monitor(s) home setup that’s impractical to haul around”. Even hauling around 16” laptops with a solid keyboard is a pain and can’t compete with a huge monitor(s) at home setup
Even if they came to my house to fit me with it I wouldn't buy it. What problem is it solving for someone other than Apple? We've been seeing this AR pipe-dream for 10+ years and it hasn't caught on. Not because the technology was bad, but because people just don't want it.
What Apple is missing here is that people wanted the iPhone (a phone with an iPod built in) for years before it was even officially announced as under development. It succeeded because the market invented it, not because Apple are geniuses who showed us we needed it.
I may be an old man, but what I want is the opposite of immersive technology. Put a computer on my face? Are you kidding? The one in my pocket already feels increasingly parasitic.
Nah, you're not an old man or anything like that. This is just the mainstream present technological scepticism. At some point marvelous technology became so ubiquitous we became blasé about it.
Cynicism, pessimism, and affected jadedness have always been the way people have attempted to sound cool. Nothing new about that part.
Ultimately, the question is whether your path brings you joy.
What is this freeing though for a lot of people? Maybe if you’re single and live in a tiny apartment then you wouldn’t have to dedicate a wall to a tv but then again you could already be watching on a tablet/laptop. As a married person with 2 children this would solve nothing. We still need tv to watch, play PlayStation etc as a family and as my wife and I wfh we are still required to use our work issued Windows PCs.
Can you expand on this comment? What have you seen in the AR market that leads you to believe the comment you are responding to is not accurate?
From many observers, we have seen many AR/VR devices fail over the years. Some spectacularly (like Snap Spectacles), and some seem to be just throwing money into a furnace (like Oculus, which hasn't failed, but even with millions of devices sold doesn't seem to be reaching product market fit for anything outside of niche gaming and fitness).
Yes, the Vision Pro is a different device, but there are orthogonal attempts at this kind of screen sharing experience which also have very niche markets, like Sightful's Spacetop laptop.
I get that the Vision Pro has some product differentiation, such as the App Store, the developer ecosystem (debatable at this point compared to other AR products), and so on - but what exactly are you seeing the market today that will drive this demand for Vision Pro? Where is the evidence that customers want this technology?
Objectively, I think it's reasonable to say the technology was bad compared to what is/will be available in the next 12 months. There are actual material technology breakthroughs that really do fundamentally alter the equation (primarily: micro-OLED displays, significantly faster mobile processors and distortion-free pancake optics).
The original phrasing is ambiguous as to whether its acknowledging the tech was bad or not. But it doesn't seem reasonable to conclude that people don't want something until they can experience an implementation of it that isn't "bad".
Snap spectacles weren't AR really. They were just a camera strapped to your glasses. Hololens or magic leap are sort of comparable to the Vision Pro, but they were much worse. The spacetop sounds kind of low quality based on the verge review.
It's an emerging product category. I think the workmachine use case is compelling and I can imagine myself using something like it. The price is steep for a personal device, but I suspect that will be fixed in one or two iterations.
People want it, but not in this form factor. Like I've been saying regarding Oculus' products for years: VR/AR isn't a bad idea, but nobody wants to strap a set of heavy, sweaty ski goggles to their face for eight hours a day. Just because the newest models are lighter/more comfortable than the old models doesn't mean they're anywhere near acceptable. I'll be passing on these until they're the size and weight of ordinary glasses.
I have been saying it for years, but it remains true of Oculus' modern products, and it remains true of the VP. In ten years it may be different, but today is not ten years from now.
I'll go much further than that: nobody wants to wear ANY pair of glasses.
Some people do because the benefit is literally regaining one of your senses, but even if AR / VR glasses one day become like normal glasses, it will be a niche product.
Nobody's wearing glasses just to get notifications and gimmicks like this. Ever.
The only moment where AR / VR can maybe become mainstream is when we can send signal straight to the brain to generate images (disregarding that there's no way people will be ok with other people controlling their brain).
I (and very many others) very much like wearing our vision-aid glasses, thanks.
There is also an entire industry of eyewear crafted and worn just to look cool (sunglasses have not primarily been a protective aid in a very long time, they're fashion accessories now).
Of course all that's orthogonal to AR/VR, but the idea that "nobody wants to wear glasses" is a bit laughable.
HN users are generally pretty good at predicting the exact opposite of the future. Every obviously good product like Dropbox is claimed to be useless while every obviously crap product like Mastodon or the Librem phone is hyped up as the future.
AR feels like 3D TV. Mfgs want it badly so they have a 'next big thing' to sell. Otherwise they risk having their premium product line turn into a boring commodity.
I'm more excited for something like Humane's laser projection system or a less-intrusive, deep-learning driven assistant which uses voice and tactile feedback.
I think they are building all this on the hope that they can convince tech addicted kids to strap this stupid ass thing on for many hours per day. I think “on the person” computing devices are reaching their “peak tobacco” moment. Every day more and more people realize how bad it is for your mental and physical health and decide to unplug more and more.
No, objectively the technology and hardware especially are bad. It’s an immature market and the high barriers to entry hinder the progress needed for the market to mature.
It won’t get better without big drives in adoption, adoption won’t happen without big improvements to.. everything. Catch 22
> Not because the technology was bad, but because people just don't want it.
Have you ever used an AR/VR headset for something you generally enjoy (a game, a movie, Google Maps, whatever)?
I ask because my own experience (and the consensus of my network and the critics I read) is that devices like Oculus and the Vive Pro are extraordinarily compelling but overall held back by immature technology. Base stations. Wires. Visible pixels. Low quality video pass through. Stupid controllers you have to hold in your hands.
People see the potential and flashes of what might be, but it's impossible to get beyond the awful user experience.
> What Apple is missing here is that people wanted the iPhone (a phone with an iPod built in) for years before it was even officially announced as under development.
Two thoughts on this:
1) It seems to undermine your point that iPhone launched in 2007 and yet through 2011 failed to come close to outselling iPod in terms of units.
2) The device you are describing -- "a phone with an iPod built in", before the iPhone -- actually did exist. The Motorola ROKR E1, or the "iTunes Phone": it was unveiled in 2005 on stage by Steve Jobs. Motorola did the phone stuff, and Apple did the iPod bit.
It was a dismal failure and was discontinued after roughly a year on the market.
> It succeeded because the market invented it, not because Apple are geniuses who showed us we needed it.
What do you mean by "invented"? Because literally two years before the iPhone launched, the market "invented" a phone with a built-in iPod, manufactured by the leading cell phone manufacturer of the day, in collaboration with Apple, and it failed miserably. Did the market invent that phone?
It's fair to say that Apple is not the first entrant to most market it contributes to, and it's fair to say that they are rarely the progenitors of the technologies their devices rely upon.
What Apple is very good at is deeply understanding when new technologies can be combined or honed to bring them over a threshold of resonance with consumers which drives widespread adoption. It is not enough to simply say "ship a phone with a touch screen' --- folks were doing that for years before iPhone launched. Instead it's about understanding the interplay of latency, brightness, PPI, plural point awareness, manufacturing yields, component costs, and making tradeoffs which pursue a vision which people buy into.
That's why when you said "a phone with an iPod built in" you could have been referring to both iPhone _and_ the ROKR, but the two devices could not be more different: ROKR had a fiddly microSD card for storage. Crummy slow processor and user interface. Stupid tiny keyboard for typing on. WAP internet. Wired transfer speeds slower than high speed USB. Slow java apps. A low resolution TFT LCD display. Only 11 megabytes of onboard memory.
I'm actually fine with the appointment setting, even if some others are bothered by the notion of an involved process. It's sort of like buying a toy anyways, so all the more fun for me to enjoy the steps of checking out.
The thing I would hate, though, is limited availability with no real way of securing a spot. Nothing more annoying than trying to find any appointment spot available and praying that the units aren't sold out. It seems that their production "numbers" are capped by supply chain difficulties, rather than raw demand. But then again, it's $3500, so maybe I won't have any trouble grabbing a headset.
"Gurman says Apple will ensure that the Vision Pro fits the wearer and also outfit the device with prescription lens inserts if needed"
I wear prescription glasses and have gone from single vision to progressive lenses that are stupid expensive. Worse, my prescription changes every visit to the optometrist. How sensitive is the headset's performance to my prescription, how expensive would replacement lenses be, and how difficult would they be to change out? Could I do this myself by ordering updated lenses based on my prescription or would I have to take the headset in?
But the screen is always 2” away. As you look from things that are drawn as if they are near or far is kind of irrelevant, isn’t it? Your focus depth won’t change because your actual focus depth never changes.
Human vision cannot focus on an object less than 9” away without fatigue. VR headsets put lenses between your eyes and the screen to give up to several feet of effective focal distance.
It’s a shame that the eye trackers are not suitable to understand the shape of the eye, so the image could be adapted for it.
I feel you on this topic. I wear glasses. Wearing a really old pair from 20 years back is painful, but I can slip comfortably into a prescription from 6 years ago, I don’t know what your experience is with that, though.
I wish there were more information about this. Should I get an updated Rx and put in a pre-order for lenses? Who knows!?! I’m astigmatic, near sighted I guess, but a close up VR lens doesn’t change focal length at all, so lenses are a must for me.
> Worse, my prescription changes every visit to the optometrist.
FYI, unless your vision is quite bad, this is likely to bilk you and/or your insurance for money. I have slight-to-moderately bad eyesight and had optometrists trying to change my prescription every year as well, to no noticeable effect. I started getting my eyes checked only every few years and then taking away my prescription without purchasing glasses immediately. You can generally gauge how honest your optometrist is by how indignant this makes them.
For some, it might be easier and cheaper to get an Apple Vision Pro-specific prescription and contact lenses than to update the lenses in the device, assuming you're ok with contacts.
> your vision will eventually settle when you hit late 30’s
Eyesight doesn't settle, it continues to deteriorate with age. Lasik also deteriorates with time, normally becoming noticeable about ten years after the surgery. Lasik providers offer "touch ups" as you get older in order to ameliorate this.
>your vision will eventually settle when you hit late 30’s
This statement reminds me of the surgeon who did my PRK few months ago. He mentioned preferring not doing procedure on candidates who are at least in their mid-20's. I think the person you're replying to probably meant specifically myopia whereas you're referring to presbyopia?
> Eyesight doesn't settle, it continues to deteriorate with age
Apparently a common pattern, at least for myopia, is for that to stop progressing in the late 30s, but then focussing response to get worse (why people end up needing reading glasses in their 50s-ish.)
Certainly that's what I've experienced, and what before I did I was told to expect.
I always assumed I'd get LASIK if my vision started to degrade. Then I learned that apparently LASIK can't treat age-related farsightedness: fixing your close vision will mess up your far vision. The only option AFAIU is to treat one eye only, so you have one eye for close vision and one eye for far. That doesn't sound very enticing to me.
Yep. I have had myopia since my teens and by the time I decided to consider LASIK at 40 my optician told me it wasn't worth it because my vision will start to adjust toward far sightedness within 10 years.
Fantastic advice! A few years later my prescription started to drop and I wear glasses less and less.
If I had LASIK I'd be looking at glasses or more LASIK already.
I do have low prescription inserts for VR because one eye is slightly weaker and I found that more noticeable than IRL.
LASIK can't be considered until your prescription stabilizes for at least a year or two, so that isn't helpful to someone whose prescription is constantly changing.
It feels like they want to use this first version of the Vision Pro as a sort of public beta release? My speculation is that their target audience is quite niche, on purpose, that they want to see how it performs in real life, while controlling the onboarding and working on ramping up their production processes. And a future version would target the general public. Just my personal thoughts.
It’s not for me in its current form, I feel I wouldn’t be able to deal with a heavy and warm mask on my face isolating me from my surrounding for more than a few minutes (quite sure I would be sweating a good amount while wearing it…). Hopefully we will get something closer to Dennou Coil soon :)
My thinking as well, it’s very similar to how the first Apple Watch was rolled out: appointment for a “fitting” with a device that was eventually completely overhauled (so much as to call the v1 the “series 0” due to how different the v2 was). I think they want to see how users actually want to use this thing then rework the hardware to suit that.
Also, they want developers to figure out what they want to do with it. If it was a “development kit” people would still try to get their hands on one like with the Apple Silicon dev kit, but with this anyone can try it out if they have the money and time to do so.
Maybe this is cynical, but my marketing class taught us to look at everything Apple does under the view of the best marketers in the world.
The marketers told them to go for the 'exclusive club' vibe by doing in-store appointments.
Wonder if there is some messaging by the Apple leader at the appointment that explains how this is cool, exclusive, luxury. Reinforcing the purchase decision.
Need to make the barrier to entry extra high too, so when people laugh at it in public, they are fully committed to defend it. Who knows maybe they will go full abercrombie and make sure people who are older than 40 get it slightly later than 20 year old females. Eventually it gets normalized and people use it.
> my marketing class taught us to look at everything Apple does under the view of the best marketers in the world.
I think there's a risk that your marketing class is being taught by folks who have a limited grasp of how trivial the discipline of marketing can be when a company's products -- in Apple's case: iPhone, MacBooks Pro & Air, iPad, AirPods, Apple Watch -- rank among the leading products in their categories by nearly any measure, from consumer satisfaction to performance benchmarks.
> The marketers told them to go for the 'exclusive club' vibe by doing in-store appointments.
"The marketers" told them the same thing for the Apple Watch launch in 2015, and each iPhone launch since 2014 (?). The article suggests that the in-store requirement for Vision Pro stems from the need for multiple components of the device to be tailored to the purchaser's head/face/vision.
> Who knows maybe they will go full abercrombie and make sure people who are older than 40 get it slightly later than 20 year old females.
It's almost impossible for me to imagine that someone with sufficient interest in marketing to intentionally study it in a class could entertain this idea, even as a joke. It betrays a near total misconception of the discipline of marketing, and Apple's relationship to it.
This is some blatant rhetoric. I cannot help but to call this out when I see it.
> rank among the leading products in their categories by nearly any measure, from consumer satisfaction to performance benchmarks.
When you say it generically like this, it has no meaning. Among? Top 50%
You could say this about any company. Its marketing jargon from the best in the world at marketing.
This is no different than when they plaster 'Security' and 'Privacy' in their ads, yet have worse security than Android(if we use pegasus and zerodium for security) and have been known to hand over data(PRISM, data in Russian and chinese data centers).
It has little to no meaning, but it sounds really positive when you say words like 'rank among' and 'nearly any measure'
Let me pull up single and multithreaded bench marks. "Oh not that measure". "Well it was among, top 36.6 percentile".
> When you say it generically like this, it has no meaning. Among? Top 50%
Here are two measures for you: 1) look at the last ten years of Consumer Reports smartphone rankings. How often is the latest iPhone ranked in the top 3? 2) look at the single core performance, battery life, and screen quality of the original 13" M1 MacBook Air. Now find me a laptop with commensurate performance at the same price point from that time.
> You could say this about any company. Its marketing jargon from the best in the world at marketing.
The urge to suggest that you seek a refund of the tuition fees for your marketing class is tempered only by a growing feeling that it might have been an elective at high school?
> This is no different than when they plaster 'Security' and 'Privacy' in their ads, yet have worse security than Android(if we use pegasus and zerodium for security)
Trusted Reviews:[^1] "iPhones are more secure by default. Disk encryption is enabled by default, apps from the App Store go through a stricter vetting process, and Apple doesn’t gather users’ personal details for advertising purposes"
Norton:[^2] "There’s no doubt Android is a bit more of a Wild West than iOS, but, with the right precautions, it can still be a safe platform."
InfoSecurityBuzz:[^3] "Android had 547 vulnerabilities in the year 2021, compared to 357 for iOS. While both Android and iOS have vulnerabilities […] Android has more overall vulnerabilities [and] a higher proportion of Android vulnerabilities are considered to have a low attack complexity, which means that they are easier to exploit."
The claim that Android is more secure than iOS seems like pure fantasy. Can you substantiate it?
> and have been known to hand over data(PRISM, data in Russian and chinese data centers).
Any foreign company operating a data center in China is required to contract with a domestic partner for legal ownership of the data within the facility and physical security of the location. In this regard, as with PRISM, Apple is no different to Amazon, Microsoft, et al.
The only data stored in Apple's Chinese data center is that of its Chinese customers, and I do not believe Apple markets its products as "privacy"-focused in China, where there is almost literally no concept of privacy.
Apple has in fact publicly resisted repeated attempts from state and federal authorities to have it insert backdoors into iOS, and launched an amicus legal claim with Meta against the NSO group.
But anyway, let's pretend for a second that I grant you all of these fantastical and unsubstantiated claims about iPhone privacy and security, I have some direct questions for you!
1. Can you explain to me why "the marketers" are adopting the same strategy for Vision Pro's launch as they have for every other flagship Apple launch in the last decade?
2. Can you explain why a company with an estimated NPS in range(+65,+80) even _needs_ the best marketers in the world?
3. Can you explain why you seem to believe that it is the job of Apple's marketing team to "normalise" something ex post facto? Isn't it a well understood axiom of Apple's philosophy that until the technology is mature (in this case: thin / light) enough to create a resonant user experience, they will not enter a market?
4. Can you find me that mythical laptop computer to compete with MacBook Air?
5. Can you see a trend looking back at the top 3 smartphones in Consumer Reports' surveys over the last decade?
Don’t bother trying to convince people who think Apple’s product success is some marketing ploy that no one else has figured out how to replicate. Their worldview is the products are a priori inferior, so some magical reason must explain their success beyond the theory that people (repeatedly) buy products they like.
Blackberries and palm pilots were ready to take over the world in 2007, when Apple swooped in and hypnotized people to think a full screen, no-stylus touchscreen was a better design!
> Apple has in fact publicly resisted repeated attempts from state and federal authorities to have it insert backdoors into iOS
They have also in fact been part of NSA surveillance programs for over a decade. It's nice that Android gets out ahead of these things by offering pure Open Source images.
1. Can you explain to me why "the marketers" are adopting the same strategy for Vision Pro's launch as they have for every other flagship Apple launch in the last decade?
Because lying works!
2. Can you explain why a company with an estimated NPS in range(+65,+80) even _needs_ the best marketers in the world?
Why wouldn't they? They're the largest company in the world, forced to compete in one of the most competitive advertising markets in the world. Publishing things that keeps those customers happy takes work, and Apple clearly does lots of "work" in that sense.
3. Can you explain why you seem to believe that it is the job of Apple's marketing team to "normalise" something ex post facto? Isn't it a well understood axiom of Apple's philosophy that until the technology is mature (in this case: thin / light) enough to create a resonant user experience, they will not enter a market?
Well, that's kinda what they did with the iPhone and the Apple Watch and even the iPad: https://youtu.be/3S5BLs51yDQ
I don't know what their end-goal is, but they seem to be perfectly aware that Apple products are not 'the norm' in many places.
4. Can you find me that mythical laptop computer to compete with MacBook Air?
See above. There are hundreds but anything with a Ryzen 5 or 7 from 2019-onward should smoke the M1, if only for lacking a big.LITTLE core architecture. Beating the M1 in CPU or GPU performance is... not difficult. Beating it's idle draw will be what people struggle with.
5. Can you see a trend looking back at the top 3 smartphones in Consumer Reports' surveys over the last decade?
I'm happy to get into the subjective stuff you've outlined, although you're not OP, but before I do, can I just make sure you're clear on what I'm asking for on the laptop thing?
I said:
> look at the single core performance, battery life, and screen quality of the original 13" M1 MacBook Air. Now find me a laptop with commensurate performance at the same price point from that time.
1. Single core performance
It looks like the M1 which shipped in the 13" MacBook Air massively outperforms the AMD Ryzen 5 3500U[^1] on Geekbench 5 single core: 1710 vs. 707.
Am I missing something?
2. Battery life
Here's a comparison[^2] of the M1 MacBook Air with the laptop you referred to from the same publication. The M1 MacBook Air scored >29hrs on the battery rundown test: "It ran for 29 hours and 1 minute on our battery rundown test, producing one of the longest results we’ve ever recorded." The Ideapad was about 1/3rd of that at 8hrs: "Eight and a half hours away from a wall outlet isn't bad…"
Am I missing something?
3. Screen quality
The same reviews refer to the Ideapad having a "mediocre" screen. It's 1920x1080, but the resolution is only 142ppi. The M1 MacBook Air is higher resolution and higher PPI (227) and 13" not 15". The disparity in quality between them almost couldn't be starker.
Am I missing something?
Happy to talk to someone who can at least try to offer substantiation for their perspectives, but it feels like we're missing each other on this.
> It looks like the M1 which shipped in the 13" MacBook Air massively outperforms the AMD Ryzen 5 3500U[^1] on Geekbench 5 single core: 1710 vs. 707.
> Am I missing something?
Yes, a fair fight. Pick a laptop with the same core count as M1 and preferably another 5nm laptop chip for a truly "fair" comparison. Like the 5800u, if you fancy. Or ignore that and continue to insist faster and cheaper laptops don't exist.
> The M1 MacBook Air scored >29hrs on the battery rundown test
> Am I missing something?
Presumably the part in any of my previous comment where I mentioned battery life.
> The same reviews refer to the Ideapad having a "mediocre" screen.
> Am I missing something?
It's a $400 laptop and your only critera was that it had to be faster and cheaper. If you actually wanted to talk about displays then yes, your original comment was missing some key details. I wouldn't be surprised if your next reach was to claim MacOS is an "infinite value add" and end our comparison on that basis alone.
> 2) look at the single core performance, battery life, and screen quality of the original 13" M1 MacBook Air. Now find me a laptop with commensurate performance at the same price point from that time.
My point is not that there are NO faster or cheaper laptops than MacBook Air, but that at this price point, it's very difficult (impossible?) to find comparable processor performance, battery life, and screen quality.
You offered a laptop which doesn't seem to be commensurate on any of those aspects. I think it's possibly because you didn't read the full comment?
> Or ignore that and continue to insist faster and cheaper laptops don't exist.
Hopefully the above clears up what I'm driving at. Faster laptops definitely exist. Cheaper laptops definitely exist.
> It's a $400 laptop and your only critera was that it had to be faster and cheaper.
No, that is not what I said. I referred to the MacBook Air "test" twice:
> > 2) look at the single core performance, battery life, and screen quality of the original 13" M1 MacBook Air. Now find me a laptop with commensurate performance at the same price point from that time.
This might be unclear to you. I am saying: look at [processor performance, battery performance, screen performance] of the original 13" M1 MacBook Air. Now find me a laptop with commensurate performance [to those aspects][ at the same price point.
I went on to refer back to this later on:
> 4. Can you find me that mythical laptop computer to compete with MacBook Air?
I did not set the condition that it be cheaper. I did not constrain performance to JUST the processor speed.
> If you actually wanted to talk about displays then yes, your original comment was missing some key details.
Is there something beyond me specifically referring to the "screen quality" that would have been helpful to your understanding?
> I wouldn't be surprised if your next reach was to claim MacOS is an "infinite value add" and end our comparison on that basis alone.
You're engaging in a lot of quite pointed speculation about my integrity in this discussion. Did you read what I said to OP? If so, can you help everyone understand why you think I don't care about the list of parameters I enumerated and am somehow moving the goalposts by assessing your example by the criteria I feel like I originally expressed?
Clearly bad faith and incivility, calling a MBA marketing class high school level just because it doesn't fit your world view.
You share links to random websites that fit your narrative. Its dangerous to listen to your opinion, you might get mureded like jamal khashoggi with a pegasus hack. Or maybe it will be mere nudes like Jeff Bezos. Has anyone gotten hacked with Pegasus on Android? I couldn't find any examples.
Your identity is wrapped up in Apple products, its scary what they can do to a human brain.
Isn't it funny that in your previous reply, you suggested that if you offered a rebuttal of my point around performance, I would try to move the goalposts:
> Let me pull up single and multithreaded bench marks. "Oh not that measure". "Well it was among, top 36.6 percentile".
And now you say:
> You share links to random websites that fit your narrative. Its dangerous to listen to your opinion,
If you can reject the mass of empirical data supporting the view that MacBook Air M1 offers unparalleled processor performance and battery life in its class and form factor, then I'm not really sure what to say. Good luck with the MBA which educated you sufficiently to suggest that Apple's marketing team might profile customers in retail stores based on age and gender.
> Your identity is wrapped up in Apple products, its scary what they can do to a human brain.
I'd say my identity is more wrapped up in helping the world to avoid making facile and conspiratorial statements about marketing strategies so hopelessly out of touch with reality that they can make someone apparently educated to a postgraduate level appear roughly as superficially informed as a high school student.
I suspect that they don't expect high volumes so rather than giving the impression that the launch is a failure they turn it into an exclusive club product.
Supply chain scuttlebutt is that the display technology is so constrained[^1] that Apple expects to only _manufacture_ 400,000 headsets next year.
It's possible that this product will flop, but I can't see it being anything other than sold out everywhere for most of 2024. Heck, you can make a reasonable case for there only being 10k-30k SKUs in channel inventory at launch, and Apple has 275 retail locations which require multiple demo units in addition to launch stock.
It'll be by appointment so they can control the tap, say it is sold out, say there is a waiting list. Create a buzz.
Cynically, a case in point is the display: it is so new and advanced that they have problems ramping production!
Whether issues are real or not, I am sure that Apple's marketing team knows how to spin everything. They are famous for that and indeed one of the best.
> It'll be by appointment so they can control the tap, say it is sold out, say there is a waiting list. Create a buzz.
For near enough the last decade, all iPhone launches have been appointment only in-store, and Apple Watch was appointment only in-store for the first 4 months of its life.
> Cynically, a case in point is the display: it is so new and advanced that they have problems ramping production!
Imagine that at the end of next year, Apple has sold 400,000 devices, and tells us that only supply constraints are preventing them from selling many more. Which is the more plausible explanation:
1. As with nearly all novel/complex technologies when manufactured at large scale, the combined costs of tooling, the complexity and uncertainty of new manufacturing techniques, and the low yields which inevitably follow, have created a supply constraint for Vision Pro.
2. In the face of weak demand for Vision Pro, Apple and its partners choose to collude in a lie to customers and shareholders alike, claiming that Vision Pro is supply constrained when really nobody wants to buy it, thus… achieving… erm… uh… something?
I think this is true. I'm sure there are practical reasons for a slow rollout, but this kind of exclusive rollout to flagship US stores will lead to a lot of coverage of people lining up get the device. It will generate worldwide demand for a product that many probably don't even know what they will do with it.
Very reminiscent of the rollout of Facebook which had an exclusive, Ivy league only presence, that eventually expanded out to everyone and their grandparents.
Another thing I just noticed in this release is how the device looks like ski goggles; an item already associated with 'coolness' and extreme sports but also wealth and exclusivity.
The Bigscreen beyond requires a face scan and generates a custom interface to fit each persons face perfectly. Everything I've read indicates that this actually improves fit and comfort. It helps that the bigscreen beyond is incredibly light and small, but the face scan doesn't seem to be a gimmick.
The Vision Pro might end up a complete failure, but requiring an appointment and a face scan is not a sign for this.
But with the iPhone, iPad, Mac and Watch, they also had an army of enthusiastic users who would show off these portable devices to all their friends and acquaintances. An ad hoc product demo given by someone you know is often worth more than thousands of dollars in traditional marketing.
With the Vision Pro, it’s not obvious that users can give demos so easily. There’s custom face fit, prescription lenses, and hygiene questions.
Their previous hit devices were famously “one size fits all” — the billionaire’s iPhone is the same as everyone else’s. The Watch has a bit of customization, but the Vision Pro takes it beyond fashion into a necessity.
When Apple introduced the iPhone, they had lines of people waiting to buy one without ever trying it. The same was true with the iPad.
Apple sold 10 million iPhones in the first year. But 10 million was such a small number, that the chance of you seeing one in the wild wasn’t that common.
Apple is already seeding journalist with demos and it’s getting enough buzz from people in YouTube who were invited to use one and people like John Gruber and Marco Arment that if even a small percentage of their listeners/readers try it not to mention natural foot traffic in popular Apple Stores that demand will outpace supply.
Meta has neither of those things and still managed to sell 15-20 million Quest units. If Apple is projecting less than a million units sold this year, they're going to have a hard time catching up to Meta's install-base, let alone their MAU count.
And Apple has single digit market share in computer sells and barely double digit in phone sales.
Are those two categories also failures for Apple?
And saying that Meta can sell more worse devices than Apple that are cheaper and losing Meta money is like saying that Android manufactures can sell more $50 unsubsidized phones than Apple.
People who are buying a $60 unsubsidized phone are not going to all the sudden be able to afford a $400+ iPhone. Apple has never in 40+ years catered toward the low end.
People who are priced out of an iPhone Pro are not going to take out a loan to pay for a headset they'll use like a game console. If they're not replacing their iPhone with it, there's no point in buying it. It's a product that inherently relies on an ecosystem (albeit a strong one) to survive. Much like the iPad and the Apple Watch, if the iPhone and it's app ecosystem didn't exist it would be DOA.
So... assuming you're right, who is this headset for? People inside the ecosystem, who want to spend more money on Apple products but don't need it for anything particularly useful? I wager more iPhone users will own Quest headsets than Apple-branded ones by 2025.
> People who are priced out of an iPhone Pro are not going to take out a loan to pay for a headset they'll use like a game console
Yet people take out 0% interest loans from Apple to buy $3000* laptops?
Besides, in most countries, people tend to pay cash for phones and carriers don’t offer payment plans.
> with it, there's no point in buying it. It's a product that inherently relies on an ecosystem (albeit a strong one) to survive
You mean like you can’t use an Apple Watch at all without an iPhone paired to it initially - not even the cellular Apple Watch and I doubt very many people are buying AirPods that don’t own Apple devices. The main value add over other BT headsets is the tight integration.
> Much like the iPad and the Apple Watch, if the iPhone and its app ecosystem didn't exist it would be DOA.
But the iPhone does exist and Apple’s services revenue from selling to existing users is larger than its revenue from the Mac and iPad revenue combined.
To a first approximation, no one buys Apple Watches for its third party app ecosystem. Most use it for notifications from the phone, for workouts using first party apps and for times when they don’t want to have their phones on them like running or other exercise
> I wager more iPhone users will own Quest headsets than Apple-branded ones by 2025.
And more iPod users and iPhone users own Windows PCs.
RIM and Palm sold 15-20 million units this year. If Apple is only projecting selling a million iPhones they're going to have a hard time catching up to Palm and RIM's install base.
That's not what I was saying. Palm and RIM assumed their unit sales were an unassailable moat. Both almost completely ignored the consumer phone market then dominated by feature phones. Apple didn't jump after raw market share but an underserved market.
I'm not saying the Vision Pro will follow the same path as the iPhone. Past sales of the competition shouldn't be used as a signal of how good compelling of a product it will be. Meta's sales reflect the demand of a product from Meta. Apple has a lot more experience and success at building a platform for third parties. Meta can improve the Oculus platform but it's an open question whether they will.
Yep. You left out the part where Palm ate Apple's lunch for 15 years, to the point that Apple was forced to abandon the Newton platform in order to compete. Spot-on recounting otherwise though.
>Apple was forced to abandon the Newton platform in order to compete.
They cancelled Newton in order to compete? I don't understand the assertion.
Newton was cancelled by Jobs in 1997 for a number of reasons, but mainly because Apple had lost focus and was running out of money. Jobs cleaned house and only kept the products that could bring in larger profits more quickly.
Palm pilots were sold as complementary products to Macs or PCs and synced well with either one. I don't understand how that is eating Apple's lunch for 15 years since Apple was not shipping a competing product. Does Boeing eat Apple's lunch since Apple doesn't sell any airplanes?
Apple released iPod in 2001, again, not a competitor to Palm but it did provide a means for Apple to learn how to build handheld devices in very high volumes. Ignoring the Motorola ROKR, when Apple finally entered the smartphone market in 2007, Palm began to wither away.
You've always got the weirdest anti-Apple position. Palm ate Apple's lunch? Palm spent ten years trying to overextend their platform, selling themselves to anyone that gave them the time of day, and going out of business. By 2007 Palm was a brand name on an out of date platform. The Pre was a few good ideas on a bad foundation and underpowered hardware.
The Newton platform was never competitive. The only group that forced the Newton to shut down was Apple. Then Apple didn't compete at all in the PDA space. Palm had a better PDA than Apple and Ford in 2000, because neither company competed in that space.
Meanwhile the iPhone sells more units in a year than Palm sold units in its lifetime.
Meta's unit sales are not an unassailable moat just like Palm's unit sales weren't a moat. Apple setting low initial projections is also not necessarily indicative of them not taking the market seriously or not having faith in the product.
Hopefully Meta learned the lessons of Palm, RIM, and the other smartphone also-rans and focuses on making their platform better. Apple's not unstoppable. There's also likely plenty of market for VR/AR at all price points. There's certainly room for that market to grow if the offerings are compelling.
> Everything I've read indicates that this actually improves fit and comfort.
Everything we have read at this point comes directly from Apple
or from “reviewers” invited by Apple which is the same as coming from Apple considering Apple blacklists reviewers who don’t play ball from futur events.
At that point, we as consumers have absolutely zero meaningful and trustworthy information about the product and that will most likely be so until it is out.
This also means the device will be suboptimal for anyone other than the primary wearer.
While the personalized parts can probably be bought for a whole household and swapped by the user, when including lens correction for instance it's just not practical and it becomes a single owner device.
1. How much room in the headset is there for glasses? I can wear glasses relatively comfortably in existing gaming headsets like the Vive, Index, and Quest.
2. What are the stats on likelihood of requiring corrective lenses across a group of people, and what subset of those exclusively wear glasses?
If I had a friend with one of these and they didn't accommodate glasses on the wearer, I'd just wear contacts to do a demo. If I were spending $3500 on a setup at home, I probably wouldn't scoff at an accessory cost alongside it to get lenses for a family member.
On 1., leaving space for glasses limits the FOV so I'd assume Apple is not leaving that gap (which would also justify the production of prescription lenses from the start, for a product that isn't even shipping yet)
> The distributions with significant changes included males that were significantly more myopic and astigmatic, while females were more hyperopic across the age groups. Furthermore, myopia decreased, while hyperopia, astigmatism and anisometropia increased with increasing age.
So,
- parents and children have a high probability of having a different correction
- A man/woman couple has a high probability of having a different correction
> Maybe Apple doesn't actually want to sell a lot of a first generation product they know will quickly evolve?
It's an impressive tech demo pushed out early to support the stock price, claim trademarks, gauge interest, and allow developers to begin building the ecosystem. Apple isn't going to go in with both feet on a product with dubious market potential.
They need to go back and read the Newton’s postmortem. With every new detail about this devices release - it’s becoming clearer and clearer this device just is not ready.
I was excited iPad apps could be directly ported over to VisionPro - but now after hacking with it in XCode - it’s evident this device and its APIs have no idea that customer intent drives context.
This lack of customer awareness is so interesting because all the designers in WWDC videos outline context with great labor. They forget a space is only part of an intent, and an intent is not a click or scroll. Intents demand a certain context, not the other way around - they’re scratching at old scars of starting with technology first then working to some customer experience.
Everyone pulls up the SJ D3 interview to say VisionPro is what Steve would want - but just like everything he says, if you only quickly listen you miss the full history and intent -
he says something along the lines of “headphones are just as good as amazing audio systems, displays on your face need to get better before we can recreate the plasma tv experience” - only after a lot of reflection did I come to understand this means audio passive consumption and display passive consumption. The customer intent for a display on face context is to recreate watching a plasma tv - following this intent means you end up with something completely different than what is happening now (I think SOL has nailed this, but perhaps focused too niche on the use case). Only later do you pull forward interactivity - as in the delay between headphones and Siri, which is still lagging.
> They need to go back and read the Newton’s postmortem. With every new detail about this devices release - it’s becoming clearer and clearer this device just is not ready.
In fact their actions suggest they already know this. It feels like Apple felt obliged to show .. something, anything .. after so many years of work (7 years? Just a guess).
I think this limited appointment-only release is part of a cautious wait-and-see approach.
> They need to go back and read the Newton’s postmortem. With every new detail about this devices release - it’s becoming clearer and clearer this device just is not ready.
Neither was the Mac that sold abysmally for years and Apple was propped up by the Apple // series
And neither was the iPod. They sold less than 1 million in the first two years.
Or the Apple iPhone that barely captured 1% market share tte first year (Jobs stated goal)
Or the Apple Watch which was slow, with bad battery life and a horrible SDK. It took years for Apple to have a coherent focus.
Number of unit sales isn’t the measure of success for a new paradigm. Everyone knows this. The quality of ideas and the affordances to achieve human aims is what makes a success.
The development process from what I read is not great for Apple Watches. But at first, you couldn’t even create real apps just projections from the phone.
Thankfully the dev process has improved to ~5seconds to hit a breakpoint on a real watch - which is the only way to work with live HealthKit/HKWorkout data.
> This lack of customer awareness is so interesting because all the designers in WWDC videos outline context with great labor. They forget a space is only part of an intent, and an intent is not a click or scroll. Intents demand a certain context, not the other way around - they’re scratching at old scars of starting with technology first then working to some customer experience.
Could you elaborate on that? I'd like to better understand
Every time I try to type something in response it comes out overly verbose -
Basically think of what you want to achieve, it’s the intent. Then think what happens if it happened automatically, that’s the ideal context (why pills for losing weight is so enticing). Then actually try to solve the problem in tech in the best way, and then you’ll see that the intent drives what tech context is truly great - as in you’ll end up creating dedicated hardware and software; what’s happened is that this platform has become good enough for many use cases and everyone is looking for the next best “good enough” when this current generation of tech platforms was built for a specific intent very different from what’s next
Tell me if this is what you're saying: It'd be better if they picked a use case, e.g. consuming movies/TV shows, and designed a device around that specific goal, rather than focusing on broader capabilities. Is that kinda what you're saying?
Yes, the best portable media player begot the best mobile phone. The best mobile phone begot the best general computing device - the general compute structure is emergent not core.
Think AirFryers and Convection Ovens - focused, small package, easy to use, etc vs…
I believe that your memory is not as perfect as you believe.
> Beginning at 3:01 a.m. ET today, customers have the option of pre-ordering the Apple Watch of their choice or making an appointment for an in-store fitting.
> While Apple is directing people to the website to schedule a 15-minute fitting experience, they'll also accommodate walk-ins if time permits. Customers can also play with an Apple Watch display unit that lets them demo the interface. However they won't be able to try one on without meeting with an Apple employee.
> What It's Like to Get an Apple Watch Fitting Appointment on the 1st Day
ABC News tech editor Alyssa Newcomb gets in-store appointment.
Allow me to repeat myself: I had the original Apple Watch on pre-order from the online store and did not need to visit a physical location for fitting first.
I am not misremembering. I even still have the order invoice and delivery notification from the courier in my email archive.
See operative "or" in the quoted "customers have the option of pre-ordering the Apple Watch of their choice or making an appointment for an in-store fitting".
I believe that your memory is not as perfect as you believe.
> Beginning at 3:01 a.m. ET today, customers have the option of pre-ordering the Apple Watch of their choice or making an appointment for an in-store fitting.
> While Apple is directing people to the website to schedule a 15-minute fitting experience, they'll also accommodate walk-ins if time permits. Customers can also play with an Apple Watch display unit that lets them demo the interface. However they won't be able to try one on without meeting with an Apple employee.
> What It's Like to Get an Apple Watch Fitting Appointment on the 1st Day
ABC News tech editor Alyssa Newcomb gets in-store appointment.
It's too clunky to be more than a niche product, like everybody else's VR headsets. John Carmack, after he quit Oculus, said this wasn't going to work as a product until the size got down to swim goggle size, and wouldn't go mass market until the devices reached eyeglass size and weight.
What seemed more likely from Apple was the form factor of the Vuzix Ultralight, which looks like ordinary glasses. AR-only, offering access to a smartphone functionality with hands free. That's a mass market product. Several companies showed such things at CES.
What Apple is demoing is nicely engineered, but has every bell and whistle known to VR headgear. It shows in the weight, bulk, price, and battery life. It seems to have roughly the same market as the Microsoft HoloLens, which is an nice piece of expensive equipment sold to corporate buyers.
Meta and Microsoft have something in this space, so Apple had to have one too, in case somebody made this niche grow.
The Vuzix Ultralight gives you a 30° FOV display with support for notifications and turn-by-turn directions... which makes it identical feature-wise to plenty of previous products that have failed to make any waves at all, just marginally lighter and with a longer battery life. That's not a mass-market product, it's a niche product that's at best riding on the coattails of the already-niche Xreal Air.
At least it'll be at all (most?) of their US stores. I drove halfway across the country to NYC to get Google Glass. At least me and a couple friends turned it into a fun vacation.
> unclear use cases ... a small group of enthusiasts
Apple's image announcement is just for future positioning: this really is a "Pro" device, for specific market segments and use-cases - niche. It's how apple won desktop publishing years ago.
Segment 1: creative professionals keep buying more and bigger screens. Vision Pro (VP) can eat that budget, and provide as many displays as you want. (The technology appeal is that a display must be high resolution everywhere - but VP only needs to be hi-res where you're looking, giving arbitrarily large "displays"). Apple carefully and specifically claims text is crisp. The engineering question is if Apple has actually done this: is it as good as a physical display? (or close enough)
Segment 2: creative professionals who make 3D objects: industrial designers, architects (but not yet engineers - they have different priorities). Also directors: cgi sets and set extensions have long been standard, and directors (and production designers etc) use an ipad to "see" the fully dressed cgi set, overlaid on the practical set. This is a better version of that. I can see James Cameron and Denis Villeneuve ordering any many as they can use - if it actually help. (aside: maybe for actors in rehearsal, but interferes with mocap).
Creative professional collaborate, hence Apple's huge efforts on the eyes being visible. A real question is will it be enough, for effective and natural communication, in a real-worlx work-flow situation? Will Jim be able to ordsr people around, or will he have to rip it off?
By announcing it after years and years of work, Apple shows they think they have enough of it, for it to be worthwhile for some people.
Provided they can get a genuine foothold, in actually making people more productive (real ROI, not jus enthusiast prosumers), then this has endless upside. If they can, users, usages and sales will grow fantastically for decades....if
Totally makes sense. It needs to be sold exactly like a vehicle.
They probably only want serious people trying these things. And by serious I mean people with the money to spend and intent to buy it.
My first thought when I saw this was how will this work in an Apple store with every Tom, Dick and Mary with at most $100 bucks in their bank account and a bunch of soon to be maxed out credit cards trying this thing but knowing full well that they cannot afford it and will probably not buy it.
It would be a waste of time for Apple store employees to demo this thing for people who are thousands of dollars away from being able to afford it.
By making it appointment only they can reduce the pool of people who would waste their time.
And no, I'm not trying to be a snob, in fact, I am one of these people who could never afford this thing. They'd have to sell it at $500 for it to be in my price range.
They could do it without appointments. Just require that prospective buyers bring their car keys.
Then tell anyone driving something less fancy than a Mercedes S-class or equivalent to fuck off :-)
It's funny to see a company rooted in jeans and T-shirt California counterculture struggle to reinvent something that would have been painfully obvious to any luxury store owner before the 20th century: throw out anyone not wearing sufficiently fancy clothing.
I get that the Vision Pro is expensive and near-useless for most users.
So was the Macintosh in 1984, which cost the equivalent of $7000 today adjusted for inflation. So yeah, two Vision Pros. With just 128 KiB of RAM, the original Macintosh didn't have the capacity to run the applications of the future everyone to run. But people knew it was the future... and if you had the scratch, you could go down to the store and buy one.
That's where Vision Pro should be. It should be on everyone's minds as obviously where computing is going, and you should be able to buy tomorrow's computing paradigm today -- so that when better products come in at lower price points, everybody's ready.
This is the correct approach for VR IMO, especially or a brand like apple. It's going to continue being a niche within a niche for years to come and you don't want to expose how immature & jank the entire industry is to normal people yet.
Apple masters the art of creating artificial product shortages for marketing purposes. They deny it, they say it's some manufacturing issue, but usually it's just marketing.
That's not my opinion. That's what Apple Analysts say is happening and they even predicted it. They observe the supply chain very closely and get information from the floor level. Apple does it it again and again in a way that is not realistic and analysts point it out.
When Apple seems to face less demand than expected they have 'problems'.
Sony has real screw ups it hurts the company because demand is off the roof.
(Apple has the best supply chain management in the world)
Remember when there were export requlations for the Playstation 3 because the chips were so powerful that North Korea could use them for missile guiding systems? I always thought that was excellent marketing.
I'm not surprised, given the overwhelming focus so far that they've had on minimizing the bad parts of VR (motion sickness in particular). Since they're not going to have real mass-market production numbers anyway, they've gone all in on making the experience as positive as possible for those limited number of people who get their hands on one, even if that means burning a bunch of retail employee time on fitting and adjustments.
Wow, imagine if Apple starts integrating their stores with their products into connected life experiences. The stores become showcases for personalized experiences for life, work, and play. Companies are already integrating Watch and VisionPro with biofeedback. Might be something consumers need to deeply experience to believe, from the spatial desktop to music, games, and movies, desk to couch to bed.
Imagine walking into an Apple Store and seeing as new customers are getting fitted and exploring these experiences on 100” OLEDs. Converting the masses requires displaying entirely new experiences, from work to play.
1000%. I’ve worked for almost 15 years in empathic computing, what we have now for screen time is already deeply dystopian. So the question remains how next generation computing experiences can make our connected lives better. Because connectivity isnt going away, and maybe if we’re strapping it to our face we’ll be much more conscious of the times we choose not to.
You understand that this is miserable and dystopian, right? As humans we shouldn't be leading that kind of "integrated", "personalized" life. We already have too much of that going on with YouTube and Facebook.
Better context switching from work to meditation to entertainment then sleep. Anything health serious in that direction with biomarkers would be far better than what we have now for screen time.
Ah yes, the joys of traveling through high crime mall areas to arrive at a crowded Apple Store. At least one has a permanent police presence at the door.
How do you drum up interest in expensive bit of tech with few apps and many undesirable drawbacks which limit its adoption to enthusiasts and in turn interest from third party developers? Pretend its exclusive and hard to get I suppose?
Media and companies still pushing the VR hype garbage... its not new, its not 'the future', get over it.
I’m neither a AR/VR enthusiast nor an Apple fanboy. Still, after looking at the presentation when Vision Pro was shown and reading about it I truly think the world will be obsessed by these devices. People will be even more addicted to it than they already are with the smartphones.
I wonder if it will be possible to create a Vision Cafe, kind of like how arcades used to have networked battletech pods for a kind of proto VR experience.
I don’t feel the need to elaborate much, but it could be an interesting offering for a shared workspace rental business too.
This seems the lukewarm response from their announcement scared Apple and they are now trying to control the narrative to avoid this being perceived as a flop.
Makes sense. Weeds out people unsure if they’ll like it and returning it. Might even rule out the YouTubers that but and return after they make a video.
It's Cannon Lake all over again but since it's a retail product and Apple to boot, it's much, much more visible.
The tale of a product which needed to be launched due to corporate dynamics but several years need to pass before it's actually ready. (And as we see with the Sapphire Rapids woes, it's still not fully so, five years later. But close enough.)
