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Comment by scarface_74 | Hacker News Reader

I won’t buy it because I don’t have any use it for it. But $3500 for a gadget is not crazy.

I look back at what some of my computer set ups cost over the years in non inflation adjusted terms

- An Apple //e with a duo disk drive, a green screen monitor, and a dot matrix printer in 1986 was $3000

- A Mac LC II with 10 MB RAM, an 80MB hard drive, a laser printer a little 12 inch monitor, and a //e card with a separate drive - $4000 with an education discount.

- A PowerMac 6100/60 with 24 MB RAM, 250MB hard drive and a 486 DOS Compatibility Card and a $500 13 inch monitor - $3300 in 1996.

I won’t buy one because just like the 1st gen iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch, it usually doesn’t last as long as the second generation and Apple usually makes rapid advances between the two.

But if Apple addresses all of your other (very valid) concerns, price wouldn’t hold me back from it if I could find a use for it.

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$3500 for a headset isn't crazy. $3500 for a headset that isn't allowed to do the overwhelming majority of VR things is.

Even if it could, it's not even remotely a competitive price. 90s hardware cost what it cost because that's what was available. Today, there is plenty of competition for VR, and Apple is explicitly ignoring it.

What isn't it allowed to do?

Anything outside the App Store.

Go look for other headsets with similar features and especially optical quality. You won’t find anything much cheaper. The quest (even considering the pro) and pico devices are toys in comparison

Right. If this was actually a general purpose VR headset, then it would be competitive.

Instead, it's a toy. It's not allowed to be anything more.

What do you mean by general purpose VR? Toy? Without defining how it falls short of your expectations, you just come across like you’re ranting.

This thing is literally not able to run arbitrary software. It is only allowed to run Apple's OS, and only allowed to install software from Apple's app store, written with Apple's app toolchain, and compiled with Apple's app libraries.

There is a whole world of software that this device will never touch, simply because it's not allowed.

Oh ffs. So really for you the quality of the hardware, the price, the whole experience—these things are irrelevant because you can’t sideload. It’s an Apple product what did you expect? “This is the year of Linux on desktop” people are not the intended customers.

It's not irrelevant! Quite the opposite, the overall experience is precisely what is relevant.

It's exactly what I expected from an Apple product. That's why I was never enthusiastic about this hardware to begin with: I knew anything I would want to do with it would be arbitrarily impossible. That's Apple's business model. Just because I'm not the target audience doesn't mean I don't exist!

The target audience is anyone who is willing to pay $3500 for a walled garden. For fucks sake, I'm allowed to be critical of that business model.

You’re allowed to be anything you want, it’s just a predictable, well-trod take.

It’s no different than the people who show up in new iPhone announcement threads complaining about iOS and the App Store. We’ve heard all this before literally all the time — Google sells Pixels go buy one of those and be happy. Some of us like what Apple does with their ecosystem.

What normal VR things can’t you do? Gaming is the obvious one but I think as soon as people start developing games for the vision App Store, that problem is going to resolve itself.

Like it love it or hate it, but this is what Apple does.

They sell premium hardware with a walled garden of software that meets the full expectations of 80% of people in general and 90-95% of people who can afford these devices.

For their target audience, $3000-3500 is probably the perfect the price point for the “first” generation of a new (to them) tech platform. Insofar as it allows them to turn a profit, ship best in class mass-manufacturable hardware, and not price out their core demographic of new adopters.

Pretty much. Under Tim Cook, Apple has become the greediest corporation ever, for products that are just about competitive with the overall technology market. But since they have fanboys that created some sort of cult they can get away with absurdity.

I have been an Apple customer since the first iPod but nowadays their pricing makes absolutely no sense considering their products' positioning compared to the rest of the market.

But somehow you cannot say that and you will be gaslighted about Apple pricing that always have been this way (even though it is demonstrably and factually not true).

At least for the iPhone there was a good excuse: network operators were not very keen on letting a completely open device run on their network, and still today there are limitations on what you can do with a fully rooted Android device. It somewhat makes sense; the nefarious potential is pretty big.

But for a headset? No reason at all to have it locked down from the get go.

You can buy 7 Quest 3s for the price. Or 14 Quest 2s.

How many people did what you did though? Were those all Apple branded monitors + printers? There were much cheaper alternatives in the same time frame.

I paid full price for a 3DS on day one, doesn't mean it was the right price for it to be a success.

I could also buy 10 Android BLU F92 5G phones for the price of 1 iPhone 15 Pro Max. I won’t be doing that either.

All indications is that Apple will only be able to manufacturer 2 million of them. Is there any doubt those will sell out.

As far as how many people did it. Back in 1992, Apple was the number one seller of computers when they started selling “low cost” Macs. Apple didn’t start struggling until Windows 95.

Apple was more valuable than Microsoft until the mid 90s if I recall correctly

While Apple sold a lot less Apple //e’s than low cost Commodores and Atari computers, they were much more profitable.

Yes, there is doubt they will sell out. How many $3500 things does Apple sell? Most of what they sell doesn't come close. There's no obvious business need for a Vision Pro unlike a $3500 MacBook Pro config either.

And a Quest 3 is a much closer competitor to the Vision Pro than a Blu F92 5G is to a iPhone 15 Pro Max...

Does it have less space than the Quest and no wireless and therefore will be lame?

(Deep cut)

Do you think the iPod would have been the same sales success if it cost 700% more than a Nomad instead of being basically the same price? $399 for 5GB iPod, $500 for 6GB Nomad?

The iPhone Pro Max I referenced above is 10x as expensive as the cheaper good enough Android phone.

Even the high end iPads are about 10x as expensive as a Fire Tablet.

The original iPhone was unsubsidized at $700 compared to “free” phones and was laughed at by Balmer for that very reason.

How many months did it take for Apple to lower the price of the iPhone to $400 and drop the 4GB model again? Or did they do that out of the goodness of their hearts?

$400 was still more than the “free” phones that carriers were giving away and it’s my understanding that in the rest of the world, most people still have to drop the cash for the total cost of the phone

You don't slash the price of something selling within your expectations after a few months. And you know that crummy $0 free on contract phones weren't the competitor to the iPhone. It was $400 on contract smartphones like the Palm Treo 750 or Cingular 8525, actually comparable devices.

And you still ignored the rest of my point. Today in 2024, most of the world is paying full price for their phones up front. Apple is competing in a market where you can buy an Android for tenth of the price . Yet, Apple is selling enough iPhones to make it one of the most valuable companies in the world

The current crop of Apple fanboys apologist has left all logics and facts out of the door, so I don't expect telling them something true will have any effect.

In fact, they are the sole reason Apple has been able to charge those ludicrous price lately. It seems they exist only to validate and rationalise any stupidly greedy decision Apple is making. At this point it really has become very close to a cult...

I'm not telling you it's worth it.

I do not own Apple stock, I don't work for them, and I'm not buying one (although I'll be watching with great interest)

However.... whether or not you think any of these products are worth it, the Apple Vision Pro is objectively pretty far ahead of the Quest 2/3 in terms of capability.

I don't think people bought those just for playing around with it.

They upgraded or started using those generic machines for generic things.

You can't just buy this and use it as a replacement.

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