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A New Vision (Pro) Day
Editor’s Note: I want to take a moment to welcome new readers who have stumbled upon my internet homestead, thanks to Ben Thompson’s interview with me on the Stratechery Podcast (Subscription Required). We delved into the history of technology and my renewed enthusiasm for its future. And, of course, we chatted about Apple’s Vision Pro.
Apple’s Vision Pro went on sale this morning, and from the looks of it, there doesn’t seem to be a shortage of orders. The delivery for all models is now scheduled for March 2024, so either the demand is strong, or there isn’t enough stock. And that’s despite a less-than-stellar ordering experience and massive sticker shock. Yeah, even I wasn’t expecting the prices to be this high.
The 256GB version is priced at $3,499, while the 512GB and 1TB versions are $3,699 and $3,899, respectively. The AppleCare+ option comes in at a whopping $499. Accessories such as extra batteries, light seals, and the travel case cost $199 each, while the optical inserts and additional straps are $99 each. The device weighs about 625 grams, roughly 1.38 pounds, which is still quite heavy. For comparison, the Quest 3 weighs 515 grams, and the Quest Pro is 722 grams.
Apple Vision Pro features a pair of ultra-high-resolution micro-OLED displays that pack a combined 23 million pixels with wide color, high dynamic range, and Dolby Vision. The brand-new R1 chip streams images to each display every 12 milliseconds — 8x faster than the blink of an eye — while the M2 chip delivers breakthrough, power-efficient performance across its CPU, GPU, Neural Engine, and other custom technologies. Vision Pro supports two hours of general use, up to 2.5 hours for video playback, and all-day use when the external battery is connected to power with a USB-C charging cable.
Apple
I jokingly call Vision Pro Apple’s face computer, but for me, this is the future of television and how we will consume media. When I look at Vision Pro, I see, for now, a $4,000-reference home theater system. Regardless of what Apple says about “spatial computing” and “working” on Vision Pro, I believe this is the future of TV!
We had phone companies trying to invent the smartphone, and they couldn’t look past the 12-key keypad. Nokia’s smartphone line was amazing, but it still looked like a phone. Apple changed the game with the iPhone by eliminating the 12-key keypad altogether, turning it into software. TV makers keep producing thinner, larger, and foldable screens, but they can’t envision anything beyond the screen we’ve known for nearly a century. Apple’s Vision Pro disrupts that thinking. As I told Ben Thompson:
But the thing is you actually have to be mobile-native to actually appreciate something like this. So if you’ve grown up watching a 75-inch screen television, you probably would not really appreciate it as much. But if you are like me who’s been watching iPad for ten-plus years as my main video consumption device, this is the obvious next step. If you live in Asia, like you live in Taiwan, people don’t have big homes, they don’t have 85-inch screen televisions. Plus, you have six, seven, eight people living in the same house, they don’t get screen time to watch things so they watch everything on their phone. I think you see that behavior and you see this is going to be the iPod.
The headphones, why is headphones selling all the time everywhere? It is because people want their moment of privacy and they want to be alone and they want to listen to their media in their way. I think that’s what Vision Pro excites me is it’s going to be a video consumption device.
The funny thing is I’ve been writing about it for five years, this is where the TV has to go because demographically that’s where we are all headed. More and more people live alone now and they can watch things in devices like that. I also feel that we haven’t really looked at Vision Pro from a creator standpoint. When you think about it, I want to watch Golden State Warriors from courtside, I can’t because the tickets cost like $10,000, but I can watch it on Vision Pro if I pay extra $10 or extra $20 to sit courtside. NBA can sell that same court side ticket a million times, 10 million times. Or the same thing with IPL [Indian Premier League], I want to be on the front row of the game or I want to be in the center court of tennis. You change the relationship you have with content completely, suddenly you are immersed in content. I think if you are a sports League, you’re looking at this as additional money, this is additional money.
Similarly, I’m looking at this and just like give me a movie. I want to see a concert in this, because you go into a Taylor Swift concert, you can’t really get in the front. You’re sitting in the back and it’s a great experience, it’s great being there, but you’re not really there. Now you can be there without being there. I think that’s why I feel like once people use it, they will actually see, “Wow, this is the best TV I’ve ever owned”.
It’s a shame that video services and applications like Netflix, YouTube, and Plex have decided to adopt a wait-and-see attitude toward Vision Pro. Nevertheless, I understand their perspective — there may not be a sufficient number of people purchasing this device for them to allocate their resources. They have ample time to observe and, most importantly, enough influence to negotiate concessions from Apple. Apple is going to face increasing pressure from customers (including myself) to provide more video services on its platform. Still, there is enough programming to keep me entertained. Apple in a press release said:
Users will also be able to download and stream TV shows, films, sports, and more with apps from top streaming services, including Disney+,4 ESPN, NBA, MLB, PGA Tour, Max, Discovery+, Amazon Prime Video, Paramount+, Peacock, Pluto TV, Tubi, Fubo, Crunchyroll, Red Bull TV, IMAX, TikTok, and the 2023 App Store Award-winning MUBI. Users can also watch popular online and streaming video using Safari and other browsers.
Just like the original iPhone, this one is starting with obvious limitations, but there is enough here for me to see the possibilities.
Now, I wait!
January 19, 2024. San Francisco.
ALL MY VISION PRO ESSAYS
2 thoughts on this post
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“I see, for now, a $4,000-reference home theater system”
Um, that’s $4000 per person.
I have this weird feeling that we will be seeing Apple add some kind of collaboration/‘coactivity’ to the Vision Pro in the shape of new ways of sharing experiences, collaborating, etc. between/across Vision Pro sets.
Remember that Apple is really good at testing individual elements of new concepts/services right under our noses before pulling them together and showing them in a keynote. Thin about the stuff they are doing in Music (collaborating on playlists in the car,etc.) and sharing movies/shows in AppleTV and the collaboration in the Apple productivity suite (keynote, pages, numbers) plus the Freeform app.
Not only cool but also a way to move away from the story about Vision Pro as an gadget that isolates people.