Unlocking Potential for the Vision Pro - Apple's Critical Path Forward Explored

Unlocking Potential for the Vision Pro - Apple’s Critical Path Forward Explored

Jason Hiner/ZDNET

What are we to think about the future of Apple’s Vision Pro? At WWDC earlier this month – reporting on the somewhat disappointing announcements relating to the second version of VisionOS – I described Apple’s XR headset as “wildly ambitious, insanely expensive, deeply imperfect , and incredibly impressive.” That description still holds.

We can apply a lot of adjectives to the Vision Pro, but “wildly successful” is not one of them. Is it doomed? Does it need rescuing, as Kevin Roose in the New York Times claimed ? Mark Gurman, Bloomberg’s Apple prognosticator extraordinaire, thinks Apple is going to push back the release of the next-generation Vision Pro in favor of a less expensive, less capable device.

Also: Apple Vision Pro review: Fascinating, flawed, and needs to fix 5 things

To continue this conversation, I’m going to ask you to hold two competing thoughts in your head at the same time.

The Meta Quest 3 is a far better device overall.
The Vision Pro blows the Meta Quest 3 away in some key areas.

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How could Meta possibly beat Apple?

Good, better, best. What does this mean? How can a $500 device from Meta (Facebook, believe it or not) beat Apple’s offering?

Also: The best VR headsets right now (and how Apple Vision Pro stacks up)

The answer, I think, is focus. When Zuckerberg acquired Oculus , he said, “Mobile is the platform of today, and now we’re also getting ready for the platforms of tomorrow. Oculus has the chance to create the most social platform ever, and change the way we work, play, and communicate.”

Since 2014, Reality Labs (the name of the operation now that it’s under the Meta umbrella) has trucked along, producing the Oculus Rift “CV1”, Oculus Go, Oculus Quest, Quest 2 , Quest Pro, and Quest 3 . The original Quest was introduced in 2018, the Quest 2 in 2020, the Quest Pro in 2022, and the Quest 3 just last fall.

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During this time, the company focused on providing viable mixed reality and VR experiences, adding capabilities, better visuals, better cameras, improving the headsets overall, and constantly pushing to make the price viable for consumers.

Essentially, Meta’s focus has been on finding the sweet spot for AR and VR devices using current technology and baking that into its products. In the Quest 3, it has introduced a truly great device at a reasonably affordable price.

That old Apple magic

Apple, on the other hand, has a problem. It no longer has Steve Jobs to ruthlessly remove features and capabilities added by over-enthusiastic engineers and designers. Instead, Apple sometimes has a myopic focus on being special, on producing something “magic.”

Also: Why Meta’s Ray-Ban Smart Glasses are my favorite tech purchase this year

In Apple’s quest for insanely great, it sometimes leans too hard on the insane part of that phrase. Apple also has a self-destructive focus on form over function . The company’s push for thin devices has sacrificed necessary ports and battery life in its mobile offerings for years. The Butterfly Keyboard was introduced as a way to reduce the thickness of Apple’s laptops and was universally hated. The Apple mouse is still just plain stupid, with its charging port on the bottom of the device so it can’t be used while it charges.

This pathology, the need to make something wildly more Apple than its competitors, has hampered the Vision Pro launch. The external EyeSight that lets you “see” the eyes of the wearer is custom, fragile, expensive, superfluous, creepy, and ridiculous. Its custom laminated glass makes the device more breakable than necessary. The tethered battery is inconvenient at best. Even the eye-glance and gesture-based control is limiting for some applications (games, for example). For some folks, it’s entirely unusable .

Compared to the Quest 3, the Vision Pro is heavier, more uncomfortable to wear, and has a narrower field of view. And, of course, it’s seven times more expensive.

On the other hand, the graphics quality is quite good and the company’s few fully immersive experiences are jaw-droppingly amazing.

Also: I found Apple Vision Pro unusable at first - but then I fixed it. Here’s how

Earlier this year, I wrote that the Vision Pro is secretly brilliant . I gave 10 reasons, but the two most relevant ones are:

The current Vision Pro release gives users a chance to get to know this kind of product.
The current release gives Apple time to iterate with user feedback to get future versions right.

But that means that Apple has to stay the course. It can’t lose patience, even if its early adopters and reviewers do. It needs to iterate on additional versions of the operating system and the hardware. It must give the Vision concept time to grow without giving up on it. This is the game plan Meta followed, and how it got from Palmer Luckey’s early Kickstarter project to a bona fide hit in the Quest 3.

Bloomberg’s Gurman believes Apple is more willing to kill products now than it has been in the past. His examples are Apple’s termination of its self-driving car program , killing off a project to develop microLED screens , and shutting down the Pay Later finance program before it got off the ground.

His inference is that it’s possible Apple will lose patience with the slow progress of the Vision Pro and kill it off, although he says his sources claim the company is more focused on introducing a cost-cut Vision device that off-loads the processing to a tethered iPhone or Mac.

Think different?

For Apple to be able to move forward with the Vision Pro, it must answer one simple question: Why should I buy this thing?

Apple not only has to find a reason for people to spend $3,500 on what I contend is still a concept prototype, but also for folks to buy later, less expensive models. Instead of working on showy, but fundamentally unnecessary features, Apple needs to change up its thinking and focus on practicality and usability as Job 1.

Jason Perlow just published his list of 7 upgrades Apple Vision Pro needs to succeed in business , so read that for a view on enterprise adoption.

Also: Netflix is now Meta Quest 3’s killer app, thanks to these two new modes

I believe Apple was right on the edge of offering at least one compelling “why should I buy that” answer for the Vision Pro – and then delayed it until “later this year.”

Apple made a strategic mistake in allowing the ultra-wide display functionality it announced for VisionOS 2 to be delayed. For some serious Mac users, that alone would have answered the “reason to buy” question.

Image: Apple

The virtual Mac screen the Vision Pro now offers doesn’t add much. But being able to wrap a Mac screen around a user and provide ultra-wide support is a major productivity win for some heavy Mac users.

There are always reasons for delays. It’s certainly possible the company hit technical hurdles. But perhaps it could have moved resources over from circus sideshow projects like converting 2D photos into 3D photos – a feature no one will use as a justification to buy a Vision Pro – into something that could and will provide real, tangible value and even a justification for the high purchase price.

A Vision for the rest of us

Right now, the Quest 3 is the spatial computing headset for the rest of us. While head-mounted displays are still a challenging sell, the Quest 3 offers enough compelling value (especially as a theatre-sized Netflix player ) to make it the mainstream, easy-to-adopt solution.

I’ve tried the Vision Pro playing For All Mankind using the Apple TV+ app, and the Quest 3 playing Star Trek: Prodigy in the new Netflix browser mode, and I have to tell you this: both are incredible experiences. But the Vision Pro’s visual experience is not tangibly better, and because of the smaller field of view and added weight, it’s less comfortable than the Quest 3.

Also: Stanford’s VR breakthrough could spell the end of clunky headsets

It’s not like Apple can’t get there from here. To do so will require a mindset change among Apple’s most entrenched internal champions. Apple’s vision for what we expect will be a Vision product line has to be focused on usability, practicality, and value-for-money, not demonstrations of technological and design prowess.

In other words, for the Vision to be successful, it has to stop fooling around and showing off. It has to get real. It needs to provide a product that won’t, as the Times’ Roose says, sit “on a shelf collecting dust.”

So what, beyond shipping useful software like the ultra-wide Mac display, needs to factor into that probably elusive Apple mindset change? Three things.

1. Give the Vision a controller

VisionOS 2 has made some improvements. Beyond a trackpad, the new OS version (coming this fall) will support a mouse for pointing. It will also allow some form of keyboard passthrough, even in immersive environments, enabling you to see your keyboard.

The eye tracking and hand gestures interface that are the primary means of operating the Vision Pro is limiting. Among other things, the interface eliminates a ton of games. There’s one reason so many games on the Quest 3 simply can’t run on the Vision Pro: the lack of a pointing device.

Also: I watched my favorite TV show on Apple Vision Pro and it was glorious, strange, and tiring

You can see this in action with the Puzzling Places game . On the Quest 3, the game provides a much richer interface than on the Vision Pro. That’s because it’s much easier to navigate objects in the 3D space using the Quest controllers.

2. Stay away from cable tethering

It makes sense to tether the Vision Pro to a Mac for an ultra-wide display. You want zero latency and uninterrupted power. But beyond that, tethering is annoying. Nothing says “early concept prototype” more than having to carry a tethered battery in your back pocket.

Just the absence of the Vision Pro battery and its tether to manage makes the Quest 3 far more enjoyable to use. Those who use a Vision Pro are constantly wrangling the battery cable, finding where to tuck it or stick it so it isn’t in the way, doesn’t fall, and doesn’t get tangled.

Also: The best TVs you can buy: Expert tested

The idea that a future Vision device might need to be physically tethered to an iPhone to work would be a joy killer, especially when the Quest 3 doesn’t have such an annoyance.

There might be one compromise, which is to wirelessly offload some processing to an iPhone, similar to the symbiotic relationship the Apple Watch has with the iPhone. That could work.

3. Make a tough margin decision

There is no doubt that the Vision Pro has potential. It is merely limited by size, weight, and price: three things that the technology industry has conquered again and again.

My initial thought was that Apple could ditch the EyeSight display and save a big portion of its costs. But it turns out that the story is not nearly that simple. According to a report by Upload , using data originally derived from a China-based startup called Wellsenn XR, which tracks the AR/VR industry, the cost of that front display is only 3.5% of the overall component cost of the Vision Pro.

This chart shows the Vision Pro component costs vs. those for the Quest 3.

David Gewirtz/ZDNET

But it’s this next chart, which I derived from the Upload/Wellsenn data, that tells a much more interesting story. At $1,728, Apple’s component costs are over three times more than the Quest 3’s component costs, which come in at $428.

David Gewirtz/ZDNET

Think about that. If the Quest 3 is sold for $500, retailers like Amazon are likely paying Meta roughly $200-$250. But the Quest 3 costs Meta $428 to make. That means Meta is probably taking a loss on every headset it sells in favor of driving market penetration.

Also: Who’s afraid of VR? I was - until I tried Meta Quest 3

Apple, by contrast, is making a fairly predictable margin on the Vision Pro, which is why the price is so high by comparison. Apple does have some cost-cutting options (display, chips, assembly, structure, and lenses), but if Facebook is competing at a loss, that puts Apple into the uncomfortable position of also taking a per-unit COGS loss or pricing well higher than the current market leader.

Looking towards the future

The Quest 3 and the Vision Pro are as much visions of the future as they are current technological products. It’s clear that until the brick-on-face problem is solved, these will remain niche products. But once the technology is perfected so that they operate as comfortably and reliably as my current top-usage AR choice (my prescription glasses), they will change how we relate to tech and the world.

Also: Meta Quest 2 vs Quest 3: Which VR headset should you buy?

But Apple faces some tough decisions. Does it stay the course with spatial computing overall? Does it cut margins and component costs to better compete at a price that doesn’t make people pass out? Does it come out with more tangible productivity features (like the extended display) or focus its attention on the wow factor? And is it willing to take a per-unit COGS loss – as Facebook is – to appear more competitive?

Stay tuned. I’m sure we’ll see a lot more on this topic going into 2025.

What do you think? Let us know in the comments below.

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