The Apple Vision Pro seems like a repeat performance of the Lisa, Newton, and QuickTake camera. Extremely expensive, mediocre design, and given its issues, possibly short lived. Those who bought it are also likely a victim of an Apple marketing trial run to test to see if the product is worth continued development into a followup product designed for the general public that will have mass appeal and be profitable. In the above examples, Mac was the outcome of the Lisa, Newton was a failure, and the QuickTake was quickly eclipsed by camera manufacturers.
The Apple Vision’s livelihood may be in additional jeopardy given from what I have read that many have been returned, development of 3rd party apps has been slow, and Meta has announced the Meta Quest, a very competitive product that they just pre-released at one-tenth the price of the Vision Pro…
As a product. But technology developed as a part of the Newton R&D made its way into macOS and iOS. On the Mac, it was the Inkwell app, which was present from Mac OS X 10.2 through macOS 10.14. (It was never migrated from 32- to 64-bit). It was also introduced to the iPad in iPadOS 14, via the “Scribble” app.
Again, it failed as a standalone product, but the tech wasn’t abandoned. It is very likely that the R&D that developed the QuickTake contributed to Apple’s early camera development on other platforms, including the iSight camera and cameras embedded in early iPhones, iPod Touches and iPads and Mac laptops.
As for the AVP, what makes you think that this top-end high power device is the only possibly way to deploy the tech? There are lots of ways Apple could cut costs. Apple decided to introduce the tech with a high-end product instead of a cost-reduced commodity product, which is a perfectly legitimate business decision.
You can’t be successful in a market by trying to clone your competition at a lower cost. That’s the route a million Chinese knock-off companies take, and none of them will ever have any long-term success. They’ll all end up in a race to the bottom, then go out of business and start over cloning some other third-party doodad.
What you say is partially true but others were also working on similar technology along with Apple and Apple is not exactly innocent when copying technologies from other companies but additionally sometimes carries it to a higher level due to its often-overpriced products. The latest incidence of this is AI. The AI it is incorporating into some of its latest products is not Apple technology. It simply bought the company that created the version it is using.
Unfortunately, in-house innovation has depreciated since the passing of Steve Jobs and the loss of key innovators since Tim Cook took over. Some products that Apple has been trying to develop that they spent huge amounts of money on have never even made it to market. Need I mention the Apple car? The bottom line of all of this is that I believe that by changing its paradigm from the customer to its own bottom line, Apple has lost its way. To paraphrase Stephen Covey, author of Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, "Customers are volunteers. They volunteer to buy your products and do business with you. You need to treat them as volunteers or they will seek those that do. Right now, I am of the opinion that when it comes to selling its products and making profits, Apple is treating its customers like ranchers sending sheep to the slaughter - i.e. overpriced hardware such as memory, trying to charge subscriptions for everything it thinks it can get away with, eliminating support escalation beyond senior support, requiring customers to have upgrade to the latest software version in order to receive software support, etc.
We could continue to discuss all of the pros and cons of this discussion for eons without arriving at mutual agreement while accomplishing nothing useful. So this will be my last comment on this.
I’m not even sure it’s accurate to say the QuickTake failed as a product. Yes, it didn’t last long, but when it was on the market, it was widely used and must have been one of the leading digital cameras of its time (in terms of market share).
I own a Vision Pro. The biggest failure at this point is the lack of applications that take advantage of the Vision Pro capabilities. For example, except for Max and Disney, streamers have not given their Vision Pro apps and the video and audio capabilities of their Apple TV apps. Paramount just reskinned their iPad app, while others are content to allow the use of their iPad app in compatibility mode. Google and Netflix do not allow loading their iPad apps and restrict folks from developing specialized web browsers and extensions to enhance their web versions.
I can understand that these companies do not want to devote resources to Vision Pro, as the audience for a VP app would be small. However, Apple never expected the first-generation product to have a large audience and made a mistake by not subsidizing crossover apps to demonstrate the Vision Pro’s features.
Apple did many, many, many tons and tons of testing “Project Titan” electronic Apple Cars, as well as delivery trucks, over more than just a few years. And they also spent years hiring over 1,000 top level talent with experience in developing and testing autonomous and traditional driving vehicles. Here’s just one of many examples:
Steve Jobs is probably turning over in his grave over the Project Titan disaster.
Why? Apple has an unfathomable amount of money. What they “wasted” on Apple Car was effectively couch change money. As a shareholder, I’d suggest that it would be irresponsible for a company of Apple’s size to not explore all sorts of avenues of innovation.
What I admire about Apple is that they (usually and ideally) don’t actually release products where they can’t add unique value. When that proved to be the case with the Apple Car, they shut it down. After investing billions, most companies would have hesitated to do that; they’d have felt obligated to at least release something, and that’s when the disaster happens.
One could argue Apple shouldn’t have invested so much or for so long, or seen the writing on the wall earlier, but we outsiders aren’t privy to what really happened and we have no idea what was discussed, discovered, or developed. It’s possible that mistakes were made, the market changed, or the tech just isn’t feasible yet. They couldn’t know until they explored it. I’m glad they did and not that disappointed they stopped it. I’m sure what they learned in the process was invaluable and will influence future products.
I don’t see how Apple doing things like this effects any of us or is a problem. The real problem would have been if Apple hadn’t realized the effort wasn’t going to produce a viable product and released it anyway.
I take strong exception to the claim that the design of the vision pro was “mediocre”. I think it was a technical tour de force with very well thought out optics, a specially designed chip to reduce latency, very high resolution displays for each eye and a very clever and portable UI, something which would probably be more appropriate than an external controller in a glasses version of the headset.
It had some obvious “problems” - its weight, field of view, comfort and battery life. I doubt that the “eyesight” feature will survive the next version. At least they made a product that someone could buy right now instead of the PR-driven “glasses” of the other company which seems to be garnering so much undeserved praise in the tech press.
That’s not a problem for me. What is a problem for me is that the same company who had no problems pouring billions down the Titan toilet still cannot find it in themselves to sell a 16 mini because they’d only make 8 figures off it when the 16 will make them 9. That I have an issue with. But them not throwing good money after bad (Titan), that IMHO, is just Apple being smart.
Behind Apple’s Doomed Car Project: False Starts and Wrong Turns
Internal disagreements over the direction of the Apple car led the effort to sputter for years before it was canceled this week.
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A dark glass facade of an Apple store.
Apple spent more than $10 billion and a decade on its car effort.Credit…Ian C. Bates for The New York Times
No one who has tried it out would call it mediocre. The design is, to use two words I shy from, literally stunning. I did the demo and spent half the time with my mouth open from awe. Cost issues, definitely content issues, but mediocre it absolutely ain’t. Book a 30-minute demo and check it out. Amazing.
I ran into a friend recently who had been using Vision Pro for some special effects projects and he was very impressed by its performance. He didn’t say what it was, but it evidently needed the effects that Vision Pro can provide.
Augmented reality technology in general tends to cause eyestrain when used over a period of time. The Canadian Army tested Microsoft’s HoloLens and recommended it be limited to use for no longer than 25 minutes because of eyestrain, which leads to headaches and nausea. I have not seen any figures for the Vision Pro, but I don’t suspect the technology to be immune to eyestrain.