The Columbus of the times, the eight major risk concerns of Vision Pro

Wen VR gyroscope Ran Qixing.

On January 19, Apple officially opened pre-orders for Vision Pro.

Referring to the continuous postponement of the online express delivery time on the official sales page, as well as the "out of stock" feedback from offline stores, the first sales of Vision Pro have undoubtedly been a great success.

Sold out" is not surprising to Apple, even though the price is as high as $3,499, there are still users who pay for it. The first batch of Vision Pro is mainly sold in the U.S. domestic market, but not only overseas users have placed orders, but also domestic users have rushed to grab them, and major technology KOLs, well-known UP owners, developers, and XR industry manufacturers have posted their achievements on social platforms.

As Apple's most anticipated product this year, Vision Pro has a significant effect on boosting the market. On January 22, Apple's stock price was 122% to 193At $89 per share, the market capitalization once again crossed the $3 trillion mark, surpassing Microsoft and regaining the world's largest market capitalization.

There will be a thousand Hamlets in the eyes of a thousand readers. When major ** and investors have expressed extreme respect for Vision Pro, believing that the device is the second disruptive hardware that Apple will produce since the iPhone, there are also neutrals who stand on different business sides.

Tobias Hedtke, a scientist from Germany, considers the Vision Pro to be a high-risk product for Apple. Combined with Hedtke's point of view, as well as Apple's disclosure of more product information and services about Vision Pro, we can also see some of Vision Pro's "risk concerns" from the perspective of the industry.

Apple has always valued innovation. Apple has launched several leading products in the past that have changed the industry, and Vision Pro will undoubtedly be the next candidate.

However, it is the first generation, and it always takes time for such devices to enter the market, not just awareness. It also includes the low yield rate in the early stage, high manufacturing costs, content ecology and other factors that potentially limit its market capacity.

For reference, Apple released the first generation of the Apple Watch in 2015, when only 8.3 million units were sold. It took 5 years for the Apple Watch to reach 100 million sales, but it took only 2 years to go from 100 million to 200 million.

Vision Pro also has a long way to go. While consumers eagerly await the capabilities of the Vision Pro, we must acknowledge the uncertainties associated with the first-generation devices. Despite Apple's rigorous testing, real-world dynamics bring a certain degree of unavoidability. Market acceptance, user feedback, and unforeseen challenges can all affect the trajectory of the device.

The first generation of products is not only "trial and error", but also the best combination of market demand and technological innovation.

The Apple Vision Pro comes with a battery pack that claims to provide up to 2 hours of general use of the device, with up to 2 hours5 hours.

However, this value seems to be difficult to meet some specific needs. For example, many large 3D movies are more than 2 hours long, which means it's hard to watch just one movie without interacting with other apps while wearing Vision Pro.

Of course, the Vision Pro supports charging and using it at the same time – which makes it necessary for the user to be tied to a wall plug for continuous operation.

For the drawbacks of battery life, Apple has also proposed a solution for additional accessory battery packs, but the price is as high as $199.

In fact, not only the Apple Vision Pro, but other XR devices such as the Quest 3, Pico 4, and others also have a battery life in the 2-4 hour range. The difference is that the Vision Pro uses an external battery pack, while the latter two are truly all-in-one.

Theoretically, the Vision Pro's additional battery pack, which doesn't take into account the weight of the headset, can provide more capacity, but its 4K resolution Micro-OLED, M2+R1 and other core displays, as well as real-time data sensing, increase its power consumption.

For XR products, perhaps a more advanced battery material revolution in the future, or continuous iteration of lower-power components, will lead to true "all-day" use, as is the case with today's smartphones and laptops.

The Apple Vision Pro comes with two types of straps: a single-loop braided strap that wraps around the back of the user's head to keep the Vision Pro in place for the eyes; Double loop strap with additional head strap.

Depending on the configuration, the Vision Pro weighs between 600 650 grams, which is only more than 12The 9-inch iPad Pro is 32 82 grams lighter.

Although Apple has invested a lot of time and research into a comfortable wearing experience, there have been reports that even after a short period of time, some users will start to feel uncomfortable wearing the Vision Pro, such as the downward pressure that is common in headsets.

Therefore, when Apple provides the headband, it adds a double ring belt with an additional head strap, and the increase in the compression area can effectively disperse the stress points.

Nearly all head-mounted XR products, including a pair of glasses, are hard to avoid pressure on the head and nose bridge. If an object with a certain mass exists on the earth, it will be affected by gravity, resulting in downward gravity, which is limited by physics.

For manufacturers, 0 gravity is not realistic, and headsets can only do their best to do ergonomic design, so that the weight of the product is distributed on the head to make a relative balance.

Vision Pro comes with 25 built-in apps.

Compared with iPhone and Mac, many applications seem to have disappeared, such as Keynote, Numbers, and Pages are our common Apple Office trio, which is equivalent to Word, PPT, and Excel.

Among the pre-installed applications revealed so far, only Keynote, and other applications have not been shown, which seems to be somewhat unreasonable for a product that focuses on spatial computing, or even office scenarios and focuses on performance. Of course, it is not excluded that there may be some apps that are not pre-installed, but can be available from the app store ** after listing.

The above is mostly Apple's first-party application. In the trailer for Vision OS, an icon for "compatible apps" was also officially displayed. However, some foreign media said that new users of the product may be disappointed with the native apps they chose at launch, as only about 150 apps are specially designed for Vision Pro.

According to TechCrunch's recently published AppFigures study, there may be just over 150 apps that have been updated to include Vision Pro-specific features, i.e., apps that incorporate some form of virtual reality or mixed reality features.

When Vision Pro actually gets into the hands of users, it's still possible to add more native apps from the App Store, but that's still a small amount for a major computing platform.

Apple's consideration for the Vision Pro app ecosystem is forward compatibility. Apple automatically portes iPadOS apps, making porting as complex as possible for developers. The difference is that instead of a full-fledged MR environment, these applications run as flat 2D applications within a window in VisionOS, lacking features that incorporate the functionality of Vision Pro products.

Although Microsoft, one of the big software developers, has partnered with Apple and released apps optimized for VisionOS, not all software companies are so interested.

Mark Gurman said in Power On that big streaming** service giants like YouTube, Netflix, and Spotify won't develop specific apps for VisionOS, which can be a huge shame for everyone who uses Vision Pro.

Much of the success of the new platform depends on developers, and Apple currently has a strained relationship with developers due to the ongoing controversy over the App Store's charging policy. Although iOS and iPadOS apps automatically appear in the VisionOS app store, developers can even opt out of the VisionOS app store.

Another aspect that makes VisionOS less attractive to developers is the user base. Analyst Ming-Chi Kuo estimates that Apple has sold between 160,000 and 180,000 Vision Pro units so far. By the end of 2024, Apple plans to increase these numbers to 300,000 to 400,000.

Greg Peters, Netflix's co-chief executive, said it was because the company didn't know if anyone would actually use it. "We have to be cautious and make sure that we don't invest in places where we can't really generate returns, and I would say, we're going to see where Vision Pro goes," he said. ”

It is obviously not a wise decision to spend huge manpower, material and financial resources on a platform with little success, and usually the larger streaming platforms, such as Netflix, hold many film and television IP copyrights, and it is difficult to have new platform software to replace them. For their part, there is no rush to enter.

Conversely, some small content studios may use VisionOS as their main development position, and a new ecosystem platform may mean less competition in the market, but also more potential opportunities. Of course, in the absence of financing, the final input-output ratio remains to be seen.

According to Apple's VisionOS developer**, it is officially stated that most iOS and iPadOS apps will be compatible with VisionOS without further adjustments.

Mark Gurman also quoted the developer's remarks questioning the app's compatibility, saying that apps optimized for touch input could behave differently on systems that rely on eye and motion detection.

So, don't take seamless application compatibility for granted, it's likely that important productivity apps in your workflow won't adapt well to the new ways of interacting with the UI.

In fact, this has been confirmed in Apple's previous devices and platforms. Just as Apple's macOS platform is compatible with apps from the iOS platform, without optimizing the interaction on desktop devices, the app may have a series of problems such as not being able to click to confirm, unable to return to the previous menu, and unable to open folders.

The Vision Pro is a quirky headset that, unlike most XR headsets, is not suitable for use with glasses (probably due to factors such as the narrow space inside the headset's contact surface and the impact of traditional glasses on eye tracking).

Myopic consumers who want to buy the Apple Vision Pro will need to pay extra for the matching magnetic Zeiss lenses, which are officially** $149. In addition, the standard reading lenses without a prescription are** $99. Apple's requirements for Vision Pro corrective lenses are very strict, requiring customers to upload a valid prescription from a certified ophthalmologist in the United States.

However, this adaptation has limitations. Some users shared on social platforms that Zeiss does not support their prescription, which means that Apple's Vision Pro basically excludes users with severe myopia from using Vision Pro.

Of course, in addition to adapting magnetic lenses, another solution for myopic users to use Vision Pro is "** glasses". Compared to traditional polarized glasses, **glasses have a thinner and lighter size, and fit directly to the eyeball without taking up additional head space.

Apple's Q&A on the product page reads: "The same is true if you wear soft** glasses to correct distance vision, becauseThe Apple Vision Pro works well with most soft** glasses

Due to direct contact with the eyeball, ** glasses are not the first vision correction option for most users, and the problem of vision correction in XR headsets has always been a problem in the industry.

Apple's Vision Pro has been rumored to feature a Pancake folded light path design. From a theoretical point of view of optical technology, the optical solution can achieve refractive adjustment if it adopts a multi-chip design, but Apple does not seem to do so. Many of the optical technical details may need to be disassembled by the Vision Pro before the cause can be further dissected.

The Vision Pro starts at $3,499 and comes standard with an 8-core M2 processor (4 performance cores and 4 efficiency cores GPU, 16-core Neural Engine, and 16 GB of memory.

When it comes to the Vision Pro's specs, the only option Apple has given is storage capacity, with the most basic version coming with 256 GB of storage, and upgrading to 512 GB or 1 TB of storage costs $200 or $400, respectively.

If you use the 512 GB version of the Vision Pro as a hypothesis, add magnetic optics ($149), an Apple Vision Pro travel case ($199), and a battery holder ($49.)$95) and maybe an additional battery pack ($199),* and that's $4,295$95 (excluding Apple Care).

Considering that for the same money you can buy a 1**1-inch M1-inch Max MacBook Pro with 3GB RAM and 3TB storage, the Vision Pro is just crazy at a price. For ordinary consumers with a monthly income of "3,000 yuan", it is beyond reach.

From the very beginning, Apple has been known for its high-flying marketing strategy. As Apple's first product to enter the XR hardware market, from the perspective of its configuration and R&D cycle, the price of $3499 is actually not high. Apple may have factored in all R&D, BOM costs, etc., to ensure its own sustainable development.

Generally, technology products will be accompanied by the maturity of technology and the improvement of the first chain, so as to improve yield and reduce costs. Perhaps we will see more attractive prices on Apple's second- and third-generation hardware products.

Just as the early iPhones were directly linked to the "kidneys", the iPhone is now one of the most common electronic products on the street, and has jumped to the first place in terms of shipments in China (2023 China smartphone shipment data).

It will still take time for spatial computing to reach the masses.

Writing this, the author suddenly thought of Zuckerberg's remarks that comforted employees after the release of Vision Pro last year:

- Apple also has "no magic solutions" to some of the design issues Meta has encountered with AR VR hardware.

The Apple Vision Pro is a game-changing spatial computing device, but it currently has a lot of hardware and experience limitations. At the same time, it is also a revolutionary long-term investment. For Apple, it could be the core product that will determine its leadership in the next decade of technology.

Of course, no technology can be achieved overnight, the development of things is always tortuous and slow, we always believe that although the road is far, the line is coming. Without the "Columbus" of the era, how can the New World of Computing be discovered?

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