$3500 in 2023 isn't really that expensive relative to the history of personal computing. It's not a price point for everyone but it's nothing outrageous especially when you start including inflation as part of the calculations. And one look at the pricing for really large 4K OLED TVs and you start to see the "value" aspect pretty quickly. LG 77-83 inch TVs in that size are easily in the $3500 range...and they don't include an M2 spatial computer as part of the deal.
It's going to end TV sales. This is monumental. Remember when you knocked on your girlfriends door. I do - and that's gone. This will get all TV, eat it up like no tomorrow. But I still take the BUS. I'm serious about the airtags. I have to walk to 7/11 and get Bus tickets. I refuse to get a BUS pass.
It's not going to end TV sales. Not for a very long time.
There are lots of casual TV moments that we like to see without something literally clamped to our heads.
Cook in Marketing Mode. I get it but it still irks.
It definitely is about isolation. There is no other way out of that. It can be about connection too, though. It's both.
Trying to deflect like that really doesn't help very much.
There are dangers but also a lot to be positive about (except the price, of course. LOL)
You could literally say the same thing about any new technology, including newspapers. Cry me a river and clutch them pearls.
Are you saying newspapers are immersive?
Some things isolate by definition. Trying to argue otherwise is not a good idea.
I grew up in a house where the father (well, step-father) read the paper held up in front of his face. He couldn’t see through it and we couldn’t see his eyes looking back through it from our perspective. Newspapers were isolationist by design. Lol
I have no doubt that once the Vision Pro hits the market and is something anyone can walk into an Apple Store and purchase, a fair number of those seeing the price as a purchase inhibitor today will find a way to scrape together the money to buy it. The only question will be whether it’s paper money, plastic money, or tap-to-pay electronic money.
A lot of people who appear to be “regular,” whether they actually are or not, and only on the outside, have hobbies, interests, and other passions where real money is somehow magically transformed into “fun money” that gets spent with little regard to practicality. Maybe this is what we call “disposable income” and it’s only a matter of the regulars, irregulars, and irrationals deciding which form of disposal they’re going to stuff this money into.
For some folks on this spectrum it’s golf, or sailing, or buying a Harley Davidson, or getting body piercings and tattoos, or buying a designer doodle dog, or bringing their $100K sports car to track days, or taking cruises, or bringing a family of four to Disney World for three days, or renting a cottage on Cape Cod for a week, or buying rare baseball cards or action figures, or photography, or a shop full of wood working tools, or anything else that provides a measure of joy to their otherwise ordinary and pragmatic existence.
Of course all such purchases, and excluding things like gambling and/or drug addictions, rely on having a certain level discretionary income or dialing back in other areas of their lives. But for a seller of highly compelling products, there is plenty of cash floating around to support high levels of discretionary spending. Heck, businesses like Best Buy, B&H Photo, Crutchfield and much of the city of Las Vegas would not exist if it were not for the massive pool of disposable income out there trying to find a drain to swirl into.
Apple Vision Pro too expensive? Nah. In a world in which nearly 20 billion dollars is wagered on a single sporting event (NFL Super Bowl) I’m rather inclined to believe that those AVP puppies will all find a home. I’m not going to try to convince my neighbor across the street who just dropped 20+ grand for a new Harley that gets used twice a month, not to mention the cost of the compulsory tattoos and branded leather clothing, that he should have found some more “practical” use for that money.
People do have money to spend. Apple knows this. They’ve come up with ingenious ways to lure the folks with discretionary income out of hiding and into an Apple Store. Apple knows peope have money to spend and Apple would like nothing more than to help them dispose of some of it with Apple. In a world of cheap Android phones and craptastic PCs, even Apple doesn’t really have to exist. But somehow they seem to be soldiering on quite nicely. Go figure.
Spot on. It’s the truth that people who don’t have high levels of disposable income just don’t find themselves, or place themselves, in contexts where they see the vast amounts of wealth that exist. My experience is that I’ve been an Apple investor for 12 years, and a Tesla trader/investor for three, and I’ve done exceedingly well. I’m planning to return to the US, from The Philippines where I’ve been living for the last six years, and when I do I’ll pay cash for a home back in Florida, a Tesla and maybe a motorcycle. Plus a house full of furniture and other accoutrements needed to restart life there.
As a consequence of my plan I’ve been shopping homes all over the state of Florida, trying to see where I might want to live. And while I’ll likely buy a place for $600-700k (there’s only me, a bachelor) I do occasionally pop the price range up to a few $million to imagine what sort of mansion my money could actually afford me. And what do I see in that price range? Hundreds, thousands of homes available for sale all over the state. Those homes, and the many more in that and higher price ranges, wouldn’t exist if there wasn’t the wealth in pockets to purchase them.
I also sometimes dream of sailing again, and shop the used yacht websites. A context many don’t ever explore. And there be yachts, I’ll tell you. If my vision was perfect I’d get a pilot’s license, and then along side the yacht docked next to a too-big-for-my-needs house, yes, I could also park a slightly used helicopter of modest design. And I’m not rich by most measures; I simply have zero responsibilities other than feeding myself in this life, so all my net worth can be considered disposable.
If, as Cook stated, many will not be able to afford this product, then, by inference, ‘not many’ will be able to afford it. But the world is very big, and so is the self-selected Apple customer base. The ‘not many’ subset is a very big number in the tens of millions. I will be surprised in Apple DOESN’T sell at least 3 million in the first 12 months on the market, and I won’t be surprised if they DO sell twice that many.
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There are lots of casual TV moments that we like to see without something literally clamped to our heads.
I also sometimes dream of sailing again, and shop the used yacht websites. A context many don’t ever explore. And there be yachts, I’ll tell you. If my vision was perfect I’d get a pilot’s license, and then along side the yacht docked next to a too-big-for-my-needs house, yes, I could also park a slightly used helicopter of modest design. And I’m not rich by most measures; I simply have zero responsibilities other than feeding myself in this life, so all my net worth can be considered disposable.