Who Is The Vision Pro For?

I got this comment on one of my posts about the Vision Pro.

It has ‘industrial product’ written all over it, no matter how much Apple markets it with models sat on a sofa. I hope it succeeds here. It has a lot of uses in an area where the high-price is easily swallowed.

But as with every other Apple product I expect the 2nd gen to strip out a lot of the expensive, pointless parts to lower costs and prices.

Proprietary prescription lenses? That external piece of glass is both expensive and heavy. The outward-facing display is really just eating the battery. The eye thing is weird. All that? Gone in the consumer model in favour of an opaque plastic front, M1 processor and room for spectacles. End price? $1500+tax.

So let’s talk about that first paragraph. ‘It has ‘industrial product’ written all over it’ This is one of the things I thought about before the reveal: Apple may be targeting businesses and not consumers with this headset.

I actually wrote about this in my first post about the headset. Back when we still called it the Reality Pro.

What do you think of when you think augmented reality? Well, for me the first thing I think of are those cool meetings that many movies have where you can see a virtual representation of another person in an empty chair. I’m specifically thinking of Kingsmen but a similar idea appears in other movies such as The Winter Soldier.

It just makes sense, right? More and more companies are moving to remote work. So what if we had an augmented reality headset to make meetings much more personal?

I think this alone could make the Reality Pro device a hit. Maybe not as big of a success as, say, the iPhone or even the Airpods but it’s a big idea. There are millions of workers now working remotely. Imagine if each one of those bought a Reality Pro headset, or (even better) their company bought a Reality Pro headset? Apple could soon dominate the market.

I thought the headset would be used for video calls. But it looks like that’s not going to be the headset’s primary purpose. In the keynote they showed video calls, yes, but not taking advantage of any AR functionality. It was just a normal video call just with larger screens.

Pretty weird as Tim says ‘connect with people as if you were sharing the same space. Doesn’t seem like it to me. So if it’s not primarily for video calling then who is the Vision Pro for?

You know, it’s funny. 9to5Mac posted a post on a similar topic

They outline 10 possible purposes: industrial design, architectural modelling, furniture mockups, meetings, mockups, training, recreational simulations, reliving memories, games, and virtual monitors.

And this to me is a big problem. When you’re selling hardware you need a ‘killer app’. This is an app that you want so bad that it makes buying the hardware worth it. The most common killer app is a video game. There are many people that buy consoles solely to play one video game. That’s the killer app.

Another killer app is document editing. Sure, you can do it on a touchscreen but having a physical full-size keyboard is so much easier. Similarly: spreadsheet editing. These are really important reasons to get a computer.

So when I see a post that talks about 10 uses for a device I’m not overcome with confidence. Sure, there are 10 use cases but no one use case is all that appealing. Maybe it does design better than anything else. But how much better? Especially as your phone can do that too. Is it $3,500 better? Probably not.

And a lot of people have tried to enter this type of market. Most notably Microsoft’s HoloLens. Also upon looking at the HoloLens it appears that it also retails for $3,500 and it appears to be doing fairly well. But the HoloLens is tailor-built for an industrial setting. It is much smaller and is presumably lighter due to having a smaller screen. Plus it has more battery life despite not having an external battery. The Vision Pro is like a completely overengineered HoloLens. It is trying to appease businesses and consumers and, quite frankly, fails to truly impress either.

Every single one of those 10 possible use cases can also be done by another device. Apple actually talked about how the Vision Pro can replace those devices in their event. But the problem is people already have those devices. People are just not going to throw away a perfectly functional TV, sound system, and computer just because they got a new device. And they shouldn’t either especially if you consider this thing will have to use external battery packs.

Ultimately the Vision Pro is a device that is trying to be all things to all people. And it could be that. It’s what everyone is hyped for. But is it really? How likely are you to actually use it for those purposes? It doesn’t have a killer app, a use case that you absolutely need it for, so I don’t see this being very appealing. It’s the same problem with many other VR headsets, you wear them once and then they get forgotten about. In order for Apple to make a headset people actually want to use they have to give you a reason to put it on. And, quite frankly, I don’t see them doing that.

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