TechCrunch tried out the Apple Vision Pro headset, concluding that it is very good — but perhaps also too good to be true. Apple has a long history of launching first-generation products that are pretty decent before quickly following up with updates and amendments that make the original kit better.
From hardware engineers, you occasionally hear an under-breath muttered comment along the lines of “the third generation of X was the one we wanted to ship in the first place.” That isn’t uncommon in hardware; it’s pretty rare that a full product vision survives the constraints of supply chains and manufacturing. There’s a chasm of difference between building a single prototype of something and building a few million of something.
Yes, the Apple Vision Pro is weighed down by its $3,500 price tag, and judging from the videos and cut-away photos alone, I’d be surprised if the company will make any money at all on the devices.
How did Apple wind up there? It appears that its engineers were given carte blanche to make the best device they could, solving some crucial problems along the way. To make this a standalone device (it can be used without being tethered to a phone or computer, although it does, awkwardly, have an external battery pack), the company packed an M2 processor into the headset, along with a brand-new R1 processor, which takes care of all the inbound data from the 12 (!) cameras, lidar, eye sensors, six microphones and more. The company says the device has 23 sensors in total.
Still, the preposterously over-engineered headset is a vital flag in the ground for startups.
It’s been more than a decade since the original Oculus Rift hit Kickstarter, with its 640×800 pixels per eye resolution, a product that was persistently plagued by complaints that it made people feel motion sickness. Since then, we’ve seen dozens of additional headsets launched. The $300 Meta Quest 2 is proving to be an important entry-level headset for the masses, while the $1,000 Meta Quest Pro and the $1,500 HTC VIVE Pro 2 are shoring up the high-end headset market. Apple’s device is launching at more than twice the price.
VR can be fun, and there are decent games out there. Beat Saber is a classic, and Superhot VR is one of the most engaging virtual reality games I’ve played. It can be productive: Corporations use VR for training, for example. And camera giant Canon stuck an oar in trying to make VR calling a thing. All of that is encouraging, but AR/VR continues to miss out on a true “killer app.” Unless you are particularly interested in immersive experiences, there’s simply no real reason to buy an AR or VR headset.
Hordes of startup founders have heaved themselves onto the cliffs of trying to build a killer app. More and more innovative games. Better productivity tools. Virtual this, virtual that. Time and time again, the experiments fail to produce a true must-have app for the masses.
Apple has reportedly been working on the headset it just launched for about a decade. Along the way, it filed more than 5,000 patent applications, and Monday’s product launch showed one thing more clearly than anything else: The company isn’t dipping its pinkie toe in these waters; it is performing the corporate equivalent of a cannonball into the pool off the garage roof. At least on the hardware side.
This is where startups need to start paying attention. MP3 players existed before the iPod, but the market accelerated immeasurably after Apple launched its own digital music accessory — not because you could finally squeeze 1,000 songs onto a player, but because it also came with a software ecosystem and the iTunes store. That solved some of the core problems with music: It was hard to buy digital music. It was tricky to manage music. It was technically complex to load it onto your portable music player. iPod solved all of that in one fell swoop and basically invented podcasting at the same time. That’s a hell of a shift in an industry.
Apple also has a history of launching slightly half-baked products that in retrospect were shrewd moves. The first iPhone was Edge only, at a time when 3G started to be common on phones. It also didn’t have GPS built-in. Both were, indeed, fixed in the second version of the phone. The list goes on: The first AirPods were unimpressive. Don’t get me started on the continuity camera — I thought it was profoundly stupid when it was launched — but making it possible to use an Apple TV as a FaceTime camera through the tech means it finally makes sense.
To me, all of the above adds up to one conclusion: Betting against Apple is pretty silly. With a few notable exceptions, the company has a formidable track record of willing entire ecosystems into existence. It is against that backdrop that Vision Pro shows up.
With Vision Pro, the company brought a nuclear weapon to the proverbial knife fight. It didn’t just launch what looks to be best-in-class hardware; it also created visionOS — a whole new operating system — and a new interaction paradigm, eschewing controllers in favor of eye and gesture control. It appears that Apple looked at what else was out there and concluded “Hey, you know what? We can do better than that.”
Apple may not have completely nailed the Vision Pro launch, but it’s certainly true that the company is throwing its full weight behind the technology. You already know this, but I’ll say it anyway: The full weight of a nearly $3 trillion company is quite the thing.
As a startup founder, then, it’s time to pause and think. Imagine a world where headsets are as ubiquitous as iPhones. Or maybe as iMacs. Or, should things go particularly poorly, at least as big as Apple TVs. However you envision this particular future, it’s obvious to me that something huge has just happened in the world of AR and VR. If you had an idea for a tool, app or product in this space, but you’ve been holding off for a sign that the time is right, consider this your sign and get building. Apple just launched the AR equivalent of a first-generation iPod. Ride that wave.