The Six Five team discusses Apple halt on Vision Pro.
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Transcript:
Daniel Newman: So a couple of months ago, one of my biggest banger tweets was when I said what the heck’s going on with Vision Pro? I think Scoble piled on and Scoble’s historically been a, Robert Scoble has been historically a big Apple, but he agreed, which was rare in anything Apple, but basically it was like a week, Pat, everywhere you’d go, every tweet, it was some guy popping out of their cyber truck wearing their Vision Pro, walking into Starbucks, sitting there slurping their coffee and doing this. And the whole world was supposed to change because of Apple. And by the way, I tend to be critical of Apple, but then I always numerically, I often tend to be wrong, meaning I tend to have a belief that how is this going to work again?
But then when it actually does work, I’m like, “Shit, I’m wrong.” But the thing is, Apple has made the call to cut production or slow or stop R&D and development of its Pro 2. Now it’s important caveat here. It’s not stopping production of Vision Pro, it’s stopping the production of its high-end units, the part that we’ve all seen and experienced so far to focus more effort on a lower end unit. Now, Pat, that’s interesting because we basically have the continuum of XR, right from the Meta glasses, and there’s lower end even than that, but then all the way up to a $3,500 Vision Pro, which you have, right? I’ve only used it a few times, once with you, so I don’t have as much experience as you, but the use I’ve had with it, I felt it was heavy, it was klugy.
It reminded me of the HoloLens in terms of its size and shape, which I understood in the most industrious of utilization, but never really saw the consumer application for it. It felt like the momentum wore off. It feels like it’s a big commitment to carry. It’s a big commitment to use. I’ve seen people talk about putting it on on a plane, but the long and short is that I think they sold about 180,000 on the pre-order and then there was some sales that followed it up. But basically the company’s going to focus on a $1,500 cutback low end unit and that’s where they’re going to head with this thing. And Pat, I’m still concerned that this thing may bust even at 1500 bucks. I just don’t know that there’s enough value in it. So the long and the short is, is Apple over it’s skis on this one?
Meaning did it over commit here? It’s put the product out to market and now they’re kind of stuck. And should they have focused on the car? They ditched the car and then they chose the Vision Pro. And the second question is this market, this XR market, is it just slow to mature? So I’ll pause there, but it was very interesting. It only took less than really six months from the time it really hit the market to now for it to basically look like the bubble might be bursting on the Vision Pro.
Patrick Moorhead: Yeah, listen, there’s been so many people trying to bang their heads against this for so long and I think everybody collectively thought that Apple would come in and just save the day and hey, they must have figured it out and to give Apple some credit, they did move the ball forward in a couple areas. But no, I don’t even remember the last time I used mine. Maybe I used it for the first three weeks watching some videos and stuff like that. But it was great videos.
Daniel Newman: Weight training.
Patrick Moorhead: No, some movies were amazing on it and the visual quality was great, but even movie watching had its issues. You could see your hands. If you were watching a movie in bed or something, literally you had to have some light on to be able to control it. So big issues. I actually like Apple abandoning the high end Vision Pro and working on a more affordable version, but I would feel more comfortable if I felt like they had nailed the use case on the outset before they went and did that. But here we are, kudos to Apple for moving the ball forward on a couple, but we will see what happens. Until, I do not… Now in the enterprise market, I do believe we could see some pretty huge volumes if they shrank it down and made it cheaper. And I’m not even convinced you would have to make it cheaper, just make the battery life last longer or have replaceable batteries for enterprise. But getting it to let’s say a sunglasses plus type of format I think would be the right thing to do.
Author Information
Daniel is the CEO of The Futurum Group. Living his life at the intersection of people and technology, Daniel works with the world’s largest technology brands exploring Digital Transformation and how it is influencing the enterprise.
From the leading edge of AI to global technology policy, Daniel makes the connections between business, people and tech that are required for companies to benefit most from their technology investments. Daniel is a top 5 globally ranked industry analyst and his ideas are regularly cited or shared in television appearances by CNBC, Bloomberg, Wall Street Journal and hundreds of other sites around the world.
A 7x Best-Selling Author including his most recent book “Human/Machine.” Daniel is also a Forbes and MarketWatch (Dow Jones) contributor.
An MBA and Former Graduate Adjunct Faculty, Daniel is an Austin Texas transplant after 40 years in Chicago. His speaking takes him around the world each year as he shares his vision of the role technology will play in our future.
