1 month ago, Apple's Vision Pro headset was hailed as "the beginning of a new era of computing" by countless technologies**, and under the rush of global fruit fans, it only took 18 minutes to open the pre-sale, and the inventory was already exhausted.
However, it has only been 1 month since the pre-sale began, and various negatives about Apple's Vision Pro have emerged one after another, and even the most basic quality control guarantee has been strongly questioned by users.
According to the feedback from netizens in the Reddit community, there have been at least 3 cases of cracks in the front glass of Apple's Vision Pro for no reason, and they all occurred without bumps or falls, and it is not excluded that more users will encounter similar situations.
Source: Reddit
Although Xiaolei did not find a more detailed chain of evidence on the Internet to confirm the specific cause of the crack, it is indeed difficult for consumers to accept the fact that Vision Pro, as a product that has just been released, under the influence of non-human factors.
For a while, countless heartbroken fruit fans chose to apply for a return without reason within the officially set 14-day trial period. According to a return survey conducted by foreign media Cult of Mac, as of February 15, about 45% of users chose to return their purchased Vision Pro within the no-reason return period, and the return rate is much higher than that of Apple's other product line devices.
From 100,000 yuan is still hard to find, to a large number of returns, Vision Pro has completely fallen off the altar, and word of mouth has reversed, why is this?
1. The price is too high and cannot be climbed.
Among the first people in the world to try to try the Vision Pro are professional AR VR practitioners, 3D software developers, tech bloggers, and novices who have never used any headsets. Although Xiao Lei does not know the specific proportion of each group, I know that many potential consumers must be directly dissuaded by the starting price of $3,499.
From an industry perspective, Vision Pro is 6-7 times more expensive than its Meta Quest 3, making it difficult for many app developers and practitioners to accept such a high price. Sebastian De With, the developer of the Halide iPhone camera app, said that although it is a cool technology, the Apple Vision Pro will be returned due to its exorbitant price.
Source: meta
Judging from the feedback of various users on the pricing of the Vision Pro, this is obviously not in line with the positioning of consumer-grade headsets in the minds of the public. If Apple wants to make the Vision Pro a second iPhone, then it is obviously unwise to take the initiative to narrow down the range of users with **.
2. The weight of the equipment is large and the experience is poor.
If high pricing is a means of screening users, then poor experience is the direct cause of the wave of returns. Many users have reported that they have experienced symptoms such as visual fatigue, dizziness and headache after wearing the Vision Pro, and even ruptured blood vessels in the eyeball. Due to the large weight of the device, it is easy to put pressure on the head and cervical spine when worn for a long time, causing discomfort.
These issues have a direct impact on the user experience, which is a blow to many users who previously had the idea of replacing their phones, tablets, and PCs with Vision Pro. Even if the use effect is not ideal, maybe they can tolerate it, but it will have a bad impact on physical health, so there seems to be no other choice but to return it.
3. Lack of core applications and limited use scenarios.
Before the pre-sale, Apple showed us many uses of the Vision Pro with a promotional video, and the publicity effect was outstanding, directly attracting many users who had never touched a headset before.
But when they bought the Vision Pro, they found that it seemed difficult to achieve 100% of the results presented in the promotional video, as mentioned above, it is easy to cause discomfort when worn for a long time, which is destined to make it difficult for users to experience a movie or TV series in its entirety.
Source: Apple
The official emphasis on productivity tools is not suitable for all users, and some YouTubers have mentioned that the overall program is slow when using Vision Pro, and the color display is not accurate enough compared to PC devices. Some programmers, on the other hand, think that writing in Vision Pro is a pain in the eyes, as eye-tracking technology requires them to focus their eyes for long periods of time.
In addition to the above,The most critical issue is that Vision Pro still lacks a killer app – a functional app that no other device can replace.
Vision Pro is still a very niche product, and its success depends heavily on the support of third-party apps and services. If there is no app that can attract users to stay for a long time, according to the current dilemma that Vision Pro can neither experience audio-visual entertainment as much as they want, nor can it be used for a long time in work scenarios, even if consumers do not return it, Vision Pro will most likely become a new generation of gray products.
4. When scalping is cold, scalpers stop losses in time.
According to past experience, Apple's first-generation products such as iPhone and Apple Watch are the favorites of scalpers: the supply is small, the user base is large, and the hype space is not small. Presumably, most scalpers must have expected that the high-priced Vision Pro would not sell well before the pre-sale, but there are still many who take risks and stock up.
Compared with the previous harsh conditions such as repairing mobile phones and tablets, Apple's Vision Pro return conditions set this time are quite generous, as long as the headset and packaging are not damaged, Apple will directly ** the product.
In the face of uncertain sales prospects, instead of rotting the goods in their hands, scalpers should return the goods in the same way to reduce the risk.
At present, Vision Pro is not officially sold in the domestic market, and users who can get started in advance in China will either go to the United States to buy it in person or through scalpers**. Previously, many domestic platforms sold ** by increasing the price**, and the ** was once fried to about 100,000 yuan at the height of the popularity. But now the ** price has been declining, and even almost fell below the official offer price.
*, which fully reflects the judgment of the domestic market on the outlook of Vision Pro. It was previously reported that the Vision Pro will be available in China after Apple's spring conference. As things stand, it seems unlikely that the Vision Pro will be able to achieve the desired market performance in the Chinese market.
Most of the qualified domestic consumers have tried it out in various ways. Even if you don't have the conditions to buy it directly, Chinese people have a way to experience it. All kinds of Vision Pro experience stores have sprung up like mushrooms after a rain, and the experience** ranges from tens of yuan to thousands of yuan. A store in Beijing has already received more than 2,000 people in the two days of the Chinese New Year, and users have come to experience Vision Pro.
Source: Apple
After the experience, interested people continue to keep an eye on it, and those who are not interested will naturally not start, which is equivalent to screening out some users.
In addition to consumer groups, Huaqiangbei, as one of the domestic digital vanes, has an unusually cold attitude towards Vision Pro this timeIt's almost hard to find** a headset like Vision Pro. There are only a few store** headsets labeled as "MR All-in-One". On the one hand, Huaqiangbei naturally cannot be compared with Apple's Vision Pro at the technical level, on the other hand, the main owners are experiencing a wave of returns, and high imitation will not be favored.
In the words of the shopkeeper, "If you sell this alone, you will starve to death." ”
Although this statement is direct, the attitude of the domestic market towards Vision Pro can be seen.
According to a report released by market research agency IDC, China's AR market shipments are expected to reach 240,000 units in 2023, a year-on-year increase of 1339%, and shipments are expected to continue to grow at a high rate of 101% in 2024.
The market demand for AR devices has continued to grow in recent years, indicating that people's expectations for related devices are also increasing. But this does not mean that any headset device can be favored by domestic users, and there are many things to optimize for Vision Pro in order to become a phenomenal consumer electronics product.
Xiao Lei analyzed the four main reasons for the return of the Vision Pro above, and the real reason for these reasons is the psychological gap between consumers and other categories of devices. It is undeniable that Vision Pro belongs to the ceiling level in terms of spatial display, which can bring users an excellent viewing experience, but these surprises cannot hide the shortcomings such as weight, battery life, and single use scenario.
Source: Apple
For now, the Vision Pro still hasn't detached itself from the common dilemma of headsets.
The collapse of the original Vision Pro doesn't mean anything, and Apple, as one of the most innovative technology companies, is not lacking in the ability to continue to iterate. If Apple can figure out the direction of subsequent improvements based on the feedback of the first batch of users, I believe that the second-generation Vision Pro will be a better headset device.
As for how many generations of products are needed to achieve the ideal form and become an industry benchmark product, Xiaolei believes that this may be a long process.