So… I can’t buy it?

If you can afford it you can buy it, the purpose of a product does not need to affect availablility.

you’re either lying

Why go straight into calling me a liar? This just shows that you don’t want to have a proper discussion.

wrong,

This is quite possible, I have been wrong before, and I will be wrong in the future, it happens, and is not the end of the world unless you realy fuck up.

or have an agenda.

I can’t figure out any agenda that I would push regarding the Vision Pro.

In the end, it is a theory, based on resonable data available to me.

This isn’t really a “pet” theory — just economics. VR represents an entirely new product line, and with Apple’s expansion into services, a whole new way to value-add to those services and entire ecosystem; capturing more recurring revenue. This price point is based on new manufacturing costs at a much smaller scale than their other product lines.

It’s Apple, so it’ll never be “cheap”, but it can’t remain at this price point and stave off competition for long. Within 3 years they’ll either drop the price and introduce a pro version, or release an SE version, that’ll still probably be around $2000-2500 — but bringing it within reach of the people who’d normally buy “pro” devices.

You have to start somewhere. The iPhone was a game changer so it took of instantly. Something like an AR/VR headset is still pretty niche even today about 10 years after VR really became a thing.

This thing is overpriced but there’s no way Apple ships it if they don’t have the pixel density to render text in a way that doesn’t make your eyes bleed. It’s being marketed as a work device, after all.

Also it’s too heavy to wear comfortably for long sessions

Parsec?

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Totally agree.

Relatedly, I think people would be surprised how little the Apple Tax really is when accounting for specs and performance. That said I’m sure the margin is quite a bit higher on this device than an mbp. It’s very clearly not positioned for consumers but for businesses and bleeding edge enthusiasts

It has been various headsets, most often Quest headsets for me personally. Currently a Quest 3. For most of them a halo style strap with battery on back was most comfortable for me. But everyone is different. Custom face pads don’t matter for me once I have a halo style headstrap, but for other headstrap styles the facepads would be very important for 8+ hour comfort.

Silicone facepads are good for short term exercise sessions as they clean quickly and easily, plu leather is a good choice for longer sessions with less profuse sweating. And cloth is good for very long sessions with no or mild sweating.

But yeah, in terms of what I actually do with it in this example, it’s very similar to a steamdeck, I just play my computer games on it, but while sitting on a nice comfy recliner.

I do also play VR games, mostly adventure RPGs. I have played the MMOs, specifically Orbus and Zenith. They are both pretty good. Lately I have been playing Dungeons of Eternity, Into the Radius, Ancient Dungeon, and the beta for Legendary Tales.

Previously I have played over 100 different games over the past 9 years in VR. All the “I expect you to die” games are great, everything from Owlchemy labs is awesome, while also being entirely kid friendly too. The official Iron Man VR game, surprisingly good. The moss games are good. Both “little cities” and “Cities VR” are great in completely different ways if you like city builders.

Walking dead:saints and sinners was good, once you get past some of the frankly too scary parts at the start of the game and to the part where it’s an action game instead of sneaking around in the dark being surprised by unsuspected zombies. Also never stay out past the bells. I’m glad I played the Quest version first before playing the PCVR version. Not sure I would have gotten past the start if the zombies were scary looking instead of cartoony, hehe. The Quest 3 graphics upgrade is also kinda getting there, lol.

The Red Matter games are an interesting experience, but I mostly played them to see the kickass graphics running on mobile hardware. The people that made those games have alot of talent for getting good looking graphics efficiently.

Speaking of graphics, for a Quest 3, I highly recommend the purchase of “Quest Games Optimizer”. It’s a program with the ability to override alot of the hardware settings on the headset with ADB commands. And a database of presets for each game. You’ll be able to pick between a few for most games, depending on if you prefer higher framerate or higher resolution, or if you want to not run the headset at max but still have better graphics than a game originally made for Quest 1 or 2 would otherwise have. Otherwise some older games can look unnecessarily not great on a Quest 3. When they are fully capable of looking great.

“The Under Presents:” was a truly unique concept. They hired actors to perform as all the NPCs in the game, between live showings of the plays they put on. The plays were classic plays enhanced by effects that could only be done live in a VR environment. And they also tended to have some audience participation. Unfortunately the live aspects of the game don’t exist anymore. They brought them back every now and then for a month or so, but it has been a while since the last time, so it likely won’t happen any more. Hopefully more stuff like that exists in the future.

For PCVR stuff, I played alot of Elite:Dangerous, I still play some American truck sim. And various racing and rally games. I also play alot of the same types of games as what I play on stand alone. I play wirelessly either through Virtual Desktop, Steam VR Link, or Oculus air link. Whatever the game I intend to play works best on.

I also do indeed watch 3D movies on it, this is the first reasonable household medium in human history with perfect 3D. Definitely gonna take advantage of that. And speaking of 3D, most computer games with a modern engine can be played in 3D. Like either making a virtual 3D monitor, or by actually putting your head inside the game world. Also most gamecube and wii games too. But yeah, just recently the entire Unreal engine got a VR mod, so any game made on unreal engine all of a sudden is capable of being a VR game out of the box. Most will still need some minor bespoke mods to clean things up here and there, or if they want to do motion controls, but the hardest part is done as a baseline now.

There is also the old program “VorpX” which is a dll injection based universal VR mod database. It doesn’t work with every game, but the list is pretty long. One caveat, playing a computer game in VR is harder to run than 4k 60fps. So depending on what game you want to play, like say Cyberpunk 2077 or something, you might need what is currently pretty expensive hardware to have a good time. But if you want to run something from 5-10 years ago, you’ll have no problem with a computer that wouldn’t be able to run modern games at 4k 60fps, as long as it can run those old games at that. Playing games on a perfect 3D monitor alone is pretty awesome, but “stepping into” a gamecube game potentially from your childhood, is a whole other thing.

Also on that topic, Quest 3 just got a native 3DS emulator that runs most games at full framerate in 3D. Many well enough to increase the render resolution too. And this is the initial release, so it should only get better from here. I loved my “new” 3DS back in it’s day, even though the resolution was so low, but I love it more now that I can fix that.

Also as a parting note, Skyrim VR, Fallout 4 VR, and VR chat are all individual games/apps that can easily support thousands of hours of use each. VRchat seems crazy and darn near repulsive until you manage to find “your” crowd. And skyrim and fallout 4 have an insane selection of mods. You can turn them into whatever you want, as long as your computer can run what you want.

I personally have a pretty wide variety of activities I do in/with my VR headset, but in terms of time clocked, using it as a virtual computer monitor with 2ms network latency and a 40 foot tall screen where I control every aspect of the monitors properties, shape, size, brightness, curvature, whether or not the light it casts interacts with the rest of the room, what even the “rest of the room” completely means… probably my most time spent, just ahead of time spent playing VR games.

It also can run any android app you sideload, but unfortunately it has no GPS. But there are some pretty useful android apps, notably any emulators made for Android. Those versions will just be run on a virtual flat-screen, it won’t suddenly make android apps 3D. But it can still be nice to have a 6 foot wide phone game where you use laser pointers instead of fingers to tap the stuff. Save your finger joints, and your neck from looking down at your phone.

Being an engineer and being smart are not synonyms. I’ve met quite a few dumb engineers in my life. Fine engineers, quite shit at making any non specifically engineering related decisions. Just the implication that choosing Apple is the smart choice is plainly a disingenuous argument. Every choice is an exercise in compromise, and choice of smartphone OS vendor is no different.

Remember that doctors used to prescribe tobacco and taking up smoking. Authority doesn’t automatically means someone is always right on everything.