I imagine that front glass with an outward-facing display adds some weight that many would be fine with dumping, but I understand why Apple wants to make it clear if you're in VR or AR when wearing them around others.
It's also about eye contact. You can have a conversation with someone without taking them off:
Other VR headsets are completely isolated and need you to take them off when talking to someone:
I was hoping Apple's one would be more compact than this but this is just a viewer, no onboard processing. This would be like if they moved the M2 chip (and maybe R1 too) into where the battery pack was:
This probably wouldn't be possible to do because they'd need to put 12x live 4k+ 90Hz camera streams over the cable and then dual 4k 90Hz back to the displays.
Reducing Apple Vision Pro's weight will involve redesigning some of the frame, maybe thinner case material or cover glass. The frame is described as using an 'aluminum alloy':
They'll have to go over every piece, every camera, sensor and try to eliminate bulk. It'll be difficult to get 50% of the weight but somewhere between 15-25% is probably doable within a couple of revisions. A different way of head mounting could help it feel less heavy too. Possibly they can change how the front display works from a lenticular lens to projection or ridged OLED display surface:
If someone tries to talk to me while wearing one of these toys, I'm either going to ignore them completely, or tell them, "Sorry, I can't stop laughing. Please take them off!"
Right?! This would be ridiculous and ridiculously rude of someone to begin engaging in a conversation with another person wearing these. That said, maybe Apple has already conditioned people with AirPods.
Why would it be rude? Imagine a IRS agent. You come to their office. They are wearing this set. They are super polite and help you to save 10.000 in taxes in 2023. How would you feel about it?
Like I pulled a fast one on a pathetic dork wearing a jockstrap on his face!
what about the feature where the headset itself adapts to the user's prescription? apple has a few patents on that. I'm guessing the technology is way off?
Apple has painted themselves into the corner on that one.
In an effort to keep the headset as light as possible they've made the device compact enough to prevent space for prescription glasses. That means they're committed to custom lenses, so it's gonna come, tho not without difficulty. No way the stores will be able to have prescription lenses for every possible eyesight correction combination, so I would think Apple would need to supply the lenses by special order post-sale. That in itself may also make re-sales more difficult too, and sharing with other family members out-of-the-question if you need corrective lenses.
If Vision Pro is indeed around 450g, that isn’t too far off from AirPods Max at 385g. I’m sure they are experimenting with different materials — possibly titanium or carbon fiber.
385g on top of your head is one thing. 450g hanging off your face is another. But using titanium (about the same weight as aluminum) or carbon fiber (lighter indeed) would add $$$ to an already crazy expensive toy. There should be at least 2-3 different choices: cheap, light plastic for 90% market penetration, 5% aluminum for the Apple fanatics, and 5% carbon fiber for the carbon fiber fanatics (road cyclists mostly).
Price points: $1,499, $3,499, and $3,999, respectively. Titanium is much more expensive, and has no practical weight benefit, and it's even worse from a price standpoint. If they were to make it from AL3 2.5V titanium, probably have to charge $4,499. If they used 6AL 4V titanium, at least $4,999. That's one reason the iPhone Pros cost more than the iPhones, even with minuscule use of it.
Apple store employee: "Better or worse? Better or worse?" as a customer gets fitted with the AVP v3.
While I'm not sure of the broad appeal of using the AVP for work (from my own limited perspective), I can definitely see a device similar to this to create an "IMAX"-like tv - movie - planetarium viewing experience, and that might be the ultimate use for this.
what about the feature where the headset itself adapts to the user's prescription? apple has a few patents on that. I'm guessing the technology is way off?
Apple has painted themselves into the corner on that one.
In an effort to keep the headset as light as possible they've made the device compact enough to prevent space for prescription glasses. That means they're committed to custom lenses, so it's gonna come, tho not without difficulty. No way the stores will be able to have prescription lenses for every possible eyesight correction combination, so I would think Apple would need to supply the lenses by special order post-sale. That in itself may also make re-sales more difficult too, and sharing with other family members out-of-the-question if you need corrective lenses.
Supply of lens inserts will solve itself with time and success. Apple Store staff will need to be trained on prescriptions and prescription machines and everything optometry. The supply of lens insert won't be good at the beginning, but it will eventually sort itself out. That's the easy part.
I don't think the success of the device is dependent on the supply of lens inserts. Its success is entirely dependent on use cases. If it makes people more productive and enjoy their entertainment more, then all these tryout/testing issues and even wearability issues can be overcome as people want to use it.
The hard part remains the wearability, and the nausea thing. Reducing weight by half or so is but one thing they have to do. Using these types of goggles form factors, where there are two displays 2 inches from your eyes will make people tired, even if the weight was zero. So, they need to ride a technology development curve for the display ppd (still needs to go up to something like 35m pixels from 23m). The lens in front of these displays must become variable or multi focus, and the latency probably has drop down to 8 ms.
I do think the size of the device will eventually be reduce to the point where the light shield is collapsable and you could put it in a backpack or purse with ease.
It’s like a refined beta product. Apple just wants to get this out to recoup the massive R&D spending in the hopes of figuring out an actual Apple way of solving this in the future. And that in and of itself is not very Apple. Strange times.
In a few years, when this becomes a sunglasses form factor, I’ll be interested as will the mass market. Until then, we are looking at a market limited to apple fans with expendable income. It should do better than the microcosm of PC centric VR toys, due to Apple’s fan base, but it won’t approach anywhere near Apple Watch levels of the market.
Until the until Apple iSight or whatever comes out, looking forward to the advancement of Macs and Apple Silicon to stir things up.
Yeah no, it's not unusual -- AV is already best in class in many aspects, but of course it will get better. Iterative development is how Apple rolls and it's been that way for decades. The original iPhone lacked copy & paste -- copy & paste! The original Mac had a puny black & white screen. You gotta crawl before you can walk or run. If they held off on these products until they had everything everyone wanted, they'd never get released.
As for sunglasses form factor -- ain't happening in a few years. Be prepared to wait a long time.
It’s like a refined beta product. Apple just wants to get this out to recoup the massive R&D spending in the hopes of figuring out an actual Apple way of solving this in the future. And that in and of itself is not very Apple. Strange times.
In a few years, when this becomes a sunglasses form factor, I’ll be interested as will the mass market. Until then, we are looking at a market limited to apple fans with expendable income. It should do better than the microcosm of PC centric VR toys, due to Apple’s fan base, but it won’t approach anywhere near Apple Watch levels of the market.
Until the until Apple iSight or whatever comes out, looking forward to the advancement of Macs and Apple Silicon to stir things up.
Yeah no, it's not unusual -- AV is already best in class in many aspects, but of course it will get better. Iterative development is how Apple rolls and it's been that way for decades. The original iPhone lacked copy & paste -- copy & paste! The original Mac had a puny black & white screen. You gotta crawl before you can walk or run. If they held off on these products until they had everything everyone wanted, they'd never get released.
As for sunglasses form factor -- ain't happening in a few years. Be prepared to wait a long time.
AR vs. VR/MR are just two completely different use cases IMO. All the uses of AVP are either specific to content creation (similar to a Mac or latest iPads) or fully-immersive content consumption (closer to Apple TV than iPhone).
A sunglasses form factor will need to be solely AR and be a device for light content consumption - more like iPhone compared to a Mac. You just can't get the same amount of processing power into the glasses factor, including proper battery life, to package the current functionality of AVP into it. A future AR glasses project will utilize much of the technology of visionOS (pinning content to real world areas with the ability to interact with it) but you can't get the same immersive content experience as you can with AVP completely blocking out external light.
I think there are reasons to always have both products around.
what about the feature where the headset itself adapts to the user's prescription? apple has a few patents on that. I'm guessing the technology is way off?
Apple has painted themselves into the corner on that one.
In an effort to keep the headset as light as possible they've made the device compact enough to prevent space for prescription glasses. That means they're committed to custom lenses, so it's gonna come, tho not without difficulty. No way the stores will be able to have prescription lenses for every possible eyesight correction combination, so I would think Apple would need to supply the lenses by special order post-sale. That in itself may also make re-sales more difficult too, and sharing with other family members out-of-the-question if you need corrective lenses.
Supply of lens inserts will solve itself with time and success. Apple Store staff will need to be trained on prescriptions and prescription machines and everything optometry. The supply of lens insert won't be good at the beginning, but it will eventually sort itself out. That's the easy part.
I don't think the success of the device is dependent on the supply of lens inserts. Its success is entirely dependent on use cases. If it makes people more productive and enjoy their entertainment more, then all these tryout/testing issues and even wearability issues can be overcome as people want to use it.
The hard part remains the wearability, and the nausea thing. Reducing weight by half or so is but one thing they have to do. Using these types of goggles form factors, where there are two displays 2 inches from your eyes will make people tired, even if the weight was zero. So, they need to ride a technology development curve for the display ppd (still needs to go up to something like 35m pixels from 23m). The lens in front of these displays must become variable or multi focus, and the latency probably has drop down to 8 ms.
I do think the size of the device will eventually be reduce to the point where the light shield is collapsable and you could put it in a backpack or purse with ease.
You're right that the success of the device is not dependent on the supply of lens inserts. It's mostly people over 40-50 who need those, and we're not going to buy them in large numbers. It WILL diminish widespread adoption by businesses, given that they'd need to re-insert new lenses every time someone was replaced.
But the vertigo thing is going to be an enormous challenge to overcome. Every single (independent) review by someone who's actually used them has experienced nausea, blinding headaches and/or disorientation, leading them to remove them in less than 15 minutes. Our brains are not trained to process 3 dimensional content in two dimensions. I suppose that with continued use, gradually increasing the time wearing them, some will adapt. Others will continue to be seasick without letup. What a drag to spend $5,000 on a toy, and then find out you can't use it!
It’s like a refined beta product. Apple just wants to get this out to recoup the massive R&D spending in the hopes of figuring out an actual Apple way of solving this in the future. And that in and of itself is not very Apple. Strange times.
In a few years, when this becomes a sunglasses form factor, I’ll be interested as will the mass market. Until then, we are looking at a market limited to apple fans with expendable income. It should do better than the microcosm of PC centric VR toys, due to Apple’s fan base, but it won’t approach anywhere near Apple Watch levels of the market.
Until the until Apple iSight or whatever comes out, looking forward to the advancement of Macs and Apple Silicon to stir things up.
Yeah no, it's not unusual -- AV is already best in class in many aspects, but of course it will get better. Iterative development is how Apple rolls and it's been that way for decades. The original iPhone lacked copy & paste -- copy & paste! The original Mac had a puny black & white screen. You gotta crawl before you can walk or run. If they held off on these products until they had everything everyone wanted, they'd never get released.
As for sunglasses form factor -- ain't happening in a few years. Be prepared to wait a long time.
AR vs. VR/MR are just two completely different use cases IMO. All the uses of AVP are either specific to content creation (similar to a Mac or latest iPads) or fully-immersive content consumption (closer to Apple TV than iPhone).
A sunglasses form factor will need to be solely AR and be a device for light content consumption - more like iPhone compared to a Mac. You just can't get the same amount of processing power into the glasses factor, including proper battery life, to package the current functionality of AVP into it. A future AR glasses project will utilize much of the technology of visionOS (pinning content to real world areas with the ability to interact with it) but you can't get the same immersive content experience as you can with AVP completely blocking out external light.
I think there are reasons to always have both products around.
I can think of more than one reason not to have either around. Factoring in sales tax and lens inserts, $5,000+ for a toy that will be obsolete in a few years seems inadvisable at best. For $5,000 you can get a pretty nice TV set and watch with your family and friends and have about $4,000 left over, rather than sitting alone on that smelly couch in your parents' basement, flogging your joystick. Or you could move out and get your own place.
If Vision Pro is indeed around 450g, that isn’t too far off from AirPods Max at 385g. I’m sure they are experimenting with different materials — possibly titanium or carbon fiber.
There should be at least 2-3 different choices: cheap, light plastic for 90% market penetration, 5% aluminum for the Apple fanatics, and 5% carbon fiber for the carbon fiber fanatics (road cyclists mostly).
Price points: $1,499, $3,499, and $3,999, respectively.
Plastic isn't much cheaper than Aluminum, definitely not $2k cheaper. The cost of Apple Vision Pro is in the components, mainly cameras and displays from 3rd party suppliers.
The 11" iPad Pro is $799, likely with 30% margin or more. That means M2 + display + battery + networking + chassis etc = $560.
Apple Vision Pro parts likely come to around $2200 with the largest costs being 2x 4K micro-oled ($800) + 12x cameras + R1 ($700) = $1500 / $2200 (70% of the cost).
Meta Quest 2 is $300 with only basic low-res black and white cameras Meta Quest 3 is $500 with ~HD passthrough Meta Quest Pro is $1000 with ~720p passthrough
Meta sells hardware either at a loss or break-even and they do 2K resolution, Apple does 4K and close to real-world passthrough.
To lower Apple Vision Pro price would need cheaper suppliers for displays and cameras, maybe use fewer cameras. I don't think they will be able to get sub-$2k by version 2 but maybe version 3 in 3-4 year times.
If they get the displays closer to smartphone display cost, use say 8 cameras, have a cheaper eyesight setup, that would cut $900 of costs to $1300, which could make it under $2k. I think unit volume at $3.5k would be close to 1 million, $2k would be 3-5 million.
iPhone Pro Max is $1200 and part of the most popular product line with monthly payments and it won't sell more than 20% of 250m units (50m units/year). VR at nearly 2x the price would be easily 1/10th this or less.
The hardware available still isn't ready for affordable AR yet and when it is, Meta will sell it at break-even. If Meta charged $1200 for a 4K Meta Quest Pro 2, Apple would price this hardware spec at $2k.
I thought of a way to solve this weight problem, if not the vertigo problem. Since there's already a detached battery pack, why not offload the memory, CPU, graphics processor, and the rest of the electronics, to the battery pack in the pocket? Replace the glass with scratch resistant polycarbonate plastic for a huge weight reduction, and instead of lens inserts, figure out how to digitally compensate for individual eyesight metrics. Not to mention, why does the headpiece need to be made of metal? There are many plastics that are thinner, lighter, stronger, more flexible and cheaper than aluminum. Those changes would also allow Apple to move the headset closer to the face, instead of hanging out 2" in front, making it even more comfortable for longer use.
If Vision Pro is indeed around 450g, that isn’t too far off from AirPods Max at 385g. I’m sure they are experimenting with different materials — possibly titanium or carbon fiber.
There should be at least 2-3 different choices: cheap, light plastic for 90% market penetration, 5% aluminum for the Apple fanatics, and 5% carbon fiber for the carbon fiber fanatics (road cyclists mostly).
Price points: $1,499, $3,499, and $3,999, respectively.
Plastic isn't much cheaper than Aluminum, definitely not $2k cheaper. The cost of Apple Vision Pro is in the components, mainly cameras and displays from 3rd party suppliers.
The 11" iPad Pro is $799, likely with 30% margin or more. That means M2 + display + battery + networking + chassis etc = $560.
Apple Vision Pro parts likely come to around $2200 with the largest costs being 2x 4K micro-oled ($800) + 12x cameras + R1 ($700) = $1500 / $2200 (70% of the cost).
Meta Quest 2 is $300 with only basic low-res black and white cameras Meta Quest 3 is $500 with ~HD passthrough Meta Quest Pro is $1000 with ~720 passthrough
Meta sells hardware either at a loss or break-even and they do 2K resolution, Apple does 4K and close to real-world passthrough.
To lower Apple Vision Pro price would need cheaper suppliers for displays and cameras, maybe use fewer cameras. I don't think they will be able to get sub-$2k by version 2 but maybe version 3 in 3-4 year times.
If they get the displays closer to smartphone display cost, use say 8 cameras, have a cheaper eyesight setup, that would cut $900 of costs to $1300, which could make it under $2k. I think unit volume at $3.5k would be close to 1 million, $2k would be 3-5 million.
iPhone Pro Max is $1200 and part of the most popular product line with monthly payments and it won't sell more than 20% of 250m units (50m units/year). VR at nearly 2x the price would be easily 1/10th this or less.
The hardware available still isn't ready for affordable AR yet and when it is, Meta will sell it at break-even. If Meta charged $1200 for a 4K Meta Quest Pro 2, Apple would price this hardware spec at $2k.
All good points. Until you get to your projected volume numbers. You have no quantifiable metrics to make those, since none have been sold yet, making them just guesses. Especially given that in the next sentence, you guess the VP will sell 10% of the iPhone Pro Max units, which you project at 50m. That would lead to 5 million units sold, not the 1 million in the previous guess. Or am I misreading something?
I thought of a way to solve this weight problem, if not the vertigo problem. Since there's already a detached battery pack, why not offload the memory, CPU, graphics processor, and the rest of the electronics, to the battery pack in the pocket?
I suspect that would be a bandwidth issue. It has 12 cameras likely streaming 4K HDR data at 90FPS+. Passing that down a USB-C cable all the time and then getting 2x 4K HDR 90 back would be problematic and very limiting if they ever use 8K. If they had R1 on the headset to compress/composite/process the feeds before putting them down to the box, that might work out but it's easier to keep the cameras, displays and processors in the same place. Those chips probably don't weight much. I'd say the cover glass and metal interior plus lenses will be the heaviest parts.
In their other product revisions like the iPad, they've gone over every part of the interior and tried to reduce weight, changing the layout and parts. They managed to reduce the iPad weight by about 1/3 in 3 years. They can likely do something similar here.
It’s like a refined beta product. Apple just wants to get this out to recoup the massive R&D spending in the hopes of figuring out an actual Apple way of solving this in the future. And that in and of itself is not very Apple. Strange times.
In a few years, when this becomes a sunglasses form factor, I’ll be interested as will the mass market. Until then, we are looking at a market limited to apple fans with expendable income. It should do better than the microcosm of PC centric VR toys, due to Apple’s fan base, but it won’t approach anywhere near Apple Watch levels of the market.
Until the until Apple iSight or whatever comes out, looking forward to the advancement of Macs and Apple Silicon to stir things up.
Yeah no, it's not unusual -- AV is already best in class in many aspects, but of course it will get better. Iterative development is how Apple rolls and it's been that way for decades. The original iPhone lacked copy & paste -- copy & paste! The original Mac had a puny black & white screen. You gotta crawl before you can walk or run. If they held off on these products until they had everything everyone wanted, they'd never get released.
As for sunglasses form factor -- ain't happening in a few years. Be prepared to wait a long time.
AR vs. VR/MR are just two completely different use cases IMO. All the uses of AVP are either specific to content creation (similar to a Mac or latest iPads) or fully-immersive content consumption (closer to Apple TV than iPhone).
A sunglasses form factor will need to be solely AR and be a device for light content consumption - more like iPhone compared to a Mac. You just can't get the same amount of processing power into the glasses factor, including proper battery life, to package the current functionality of AVP into it. A future AR glasses project will utilize much of the technology of visionOS (pinning content to real world areas with the ability to interact with it) but you can't get the same immersive content experience as you can with AVP completely blocking out external light.
I think there are reasons to always have both products around.
I can think of more than one reason not to have either around. Factoring in sales tax and lens inserts, $5,000+ for a toy that will be obsolete in a few years seems inadvisable at best. For $5,000 you can get a pretty nice TV set and watch with your family and friends and have about $4,000 left over, rather than sitting alone on that smelly couch in your parents' basement, flogging your joystick. Or you could move out and get your own place.
As yes, the “But it’s a toy!” trope. Haven’t heard that one before. They said the same about the original Mac, and even PCs in general. Oops.
Speaking of the original Mac, it was over twice the cost of the AV corrected for inflation. Over seven grand for that small black & white unconnected primitive desktop! It wasn’t for everyone then, and this isn’t today. And that’s okay.
It’s like a refined beta product. Apple just wants to get this out to recoup the massive R&D spending in the hopes of figuring out an actual Apple way of solving this in the future. And that in and of itself is not very Apple. Strange times.
In a few years, when this becomes a sunglasses form factor, I’ll be interested as will the mass market. Until then, we are looking at a market limited to apple fans with expendable income. It should do better than the microcosm of PC centric VR toys, due to Apple’s fan base, but it won’t approach anywhere near Apple Watch levels of the market.
Until the until Apple iSight or whatever comes out, looking forward to the advancement of Macs and Apple Silicon to stir things up.
Yeah no, it's not unusual -- AV is already best in class in many aspects, but of course it will get better. Iterative development is how Apple rolls and it's been that way for decades. The original iPhone lacked copy & paste -- copy & paste! The original Mac had a puny black & white screen. You gotta crawl before you can walk or run. If they held off on these products until they had everything everyone wanted, they'd never get released.
As for sunglasses form factor -- ain't happening in a few years. Be prepared to wait a long time.
AR vs. VR/MR are just two completely different use cases IMO. All the uses of AVP are either specific to content creation (similar to a Mac or latest iPads) or fully-immersive content consumption (closer to Apple TV than iPhone).
A sunglasses form factor will need to be solely AR and be a device for light content consumption - more like iPhone compared to a Mac. You just can't get the same amount of processing power into the glasses factor, including proper battery life, to package the current functionality of AVP into it. A future AR glasses project will utilize much of the technology of visionOS (pinning content to real world areas with the ability to interact with it) but you can't get the same immersive content experience as you can with AVP completely blocking out external light.
I think there are reasons to always have both products around.
I can think of more than one reason not to have either around. Factoring in sales tax and lens inserts, $5,000+ for a toy that will be obsolete in a few years seems inadvisable at best. For $5,000 you can get a pretty nice TV set and watch with your family and friends and have about $4,000 left over, rather than sitting alone on that smelly couch in your parents' basement, flogging your joystick. Or you could move out and get your own place.
As yes, the “But it’s a toy!” trope. Haven’t heard that one before. They said the same about the original Mac, and even PCs in general. Oops.
Speaking of the original Mac, it was over twice the cost of the AV corrected for inflation. Over seven grand for that small black & white unconnected primitive desktop! It wasn’t for everyone then, and this isn’t today. And that’s okay.
I didn't buy the original 128K Mac, but I bought two 512K Fat Macs for my printing business in 1987. They were both used, and I remember paying $2,100 for the both of them. I also bought a new Apple LaserWriter for $3,500. Far from being toys, I used them for typesetting instead of sending out to a dedicated typesetter. They paid for themselves many, many times over, even with the $1,000 each cost to upgrade them to Mac Pluses that same year, along with a 20 MB (not GB) SCSI hard drive, which was around $1000 as well. I don't recall anyone thinking of them as toys, and they certainly served me well and profitably, with yearly upgrades, until I sold the business in 2003.
Now the Commodore 64 I had, yeah, that was a toy. As are these gaming headsets.
I thought of a way to solve this weight problem, if not the vertigo problem. Since there's already a detached battery pack, why not offload the memory, CPU, graphics processor, and the rest of the electronics, to the battery pack in the pocket?
I suspect that would be a bandwidth issue. It has 12 cameras likely streaming 4K HDR data at 90FPS+. Passing that down a USB-C cable all the time and then getting 2x 4K HDR 90 back would be problematic and very limiting if they ever use 8K. If they had R1 on the headset to compress/composite/process the feeds before putting them down to the box, that might work out but it's easier to keep the cameras, displays and processors in the same place. Those chips probably don't weight much. I'd say the cover glass and metal interior plus lenses will be the heaviest parts.
In their other product revisions like the iPad, they've gone over every part of the interior and tried to reduce weight, changing the layout and parts. They managed to reduce the iPad weight by about 1/3 in 3 years. They can likely do something similar here.
I thought of that. But by changing it to ThunderBolt 4 port/cable, the potential bandwidth increases to 40Gbps. That should take care of the bandwidth issue. Obviously, can't move those cameras out of the headset. I think you're right about Apple being able to cut the weight in subsequent releases. When I changed my eyeglasses from glass to polycarbonate, the weight difference was dramatic! And they really don't scratch any more than the old glass ones did.
I thought of a way to solve this weight problem, if not the vertigo problem. Since there's already a detached battery pack, why not offload the memory, CPU, graphics processor, and the rest of the electronics, to the battery pack in the pocket?
I suspect that would be a bandwidth issue. It has 12 cameras likely streaming 4K HDR data at 90FPS+. Passing that down a USB-C cable all the time and then getting 2x 4K HDR 90 back would be problematic and very limiting if they ever use 8K. If they had R1 on the headset to compress/composite/process the feeds before putting them down to the box, that might work out but it's easier to keep the cameras, displays and processors in the same place. Those chips probably don't weight much. I'd say the cover glass and metal interior plus lenses will be the heaviest parts.
In their other product revisions like the iPad, they've gone over every part of the interior and tried to reduce weight, changing the layout and parts. They managed to reduce the iPad weight by about 1/3 in 3 years. They can likely do something similar here.
I thought of that. But by changing it to ThunderBolt 4 port/cable, the potential bandwidth increases to 40Gbps. That should take care of the bandwidth issue. Obviously, can't move those cameras out of the headset. I think you're right about Apple being able to cut the weight in subsequent releases. When I changed my eyeglasses from glass to polycarbonate, the weight difference was dramatic! And they really don't scratch any more than the old glass ones did.
4K HDR 90 is 3840 x 2160 x 30-bit x 90 = 22Gbps per stream. The following site has some details on the camera setup:
"The Apple Vision Pro packs 12 cameras in all: six external cameras (two forward facing, two downward and two side cameras), two TrueDepth cameras, and four internal infrared cameras, plus a LiDAR scanner. The external cameras track hand gestures and view what is happening around you, while the internal cameras perform eye-tracking, and what Apple calls Eyesight. It’s the two forward-facing cameras that can also capture spatial 3D photos and videos"
Thunderbolt 4 is close to the bandwidth needed for dual 4K for just the color data from the main cameras but there's no extra bandwidth for the other cameras at the same time. Thunderbolt 5 supposedly has up to 120Gbps, that would probably be enough.
I thought of a way to solve this weight problem, if not the vertigo problem. Since there's already a detached battery pack, why not offload the memory, CPU, graphics processor, and the rest of the electronics, to the battery pack in the pocket?
I suspect that would be a bandwidth issue. It has 12 cameras likely streaming 4K HDR data at 90FPS+. Passing that down a USB-C cable all the time and then getting 2x 4K HDR 90 back would be problematic and very limiting if they ever use 8K. If they had R1 on the headset to compress/composite/process the feeds before putting them down to the box, that might work out but it's easier to keep the cameras, displays and processors in the same place. Those chips probably don't weight much. I'd say the cover glass and metal interior plus lenses will be the heaviest parts.
In their other product revisions like the iPad, they've gone over every part of the interior and tried to reduce weight, changing the layout and parts. They managed to reduce the iPad weight by about 1/3 in 3 years. They can likely do something similar here.
I thought of that. But by changing it to ThunderBolt 4 port/cable, the potential bandwidth increases to 40Gbps. That should take care of the bandwidth issue. Obviously, can't move those cameras out of the headset. I think you're right about Apple being able to cut the weight in subsequent releases. When I changed my eyeglasses from glass to polycarbonate, the weight difference was dramatic! And they really don't scratch any more than the old glass ones did.
4K HDR 90 is 3840 x 2160 x 30-bit x 90 = 22Gbps per stream. The following site has some details on the camera setup:
"The Apple Vision Pro packs 12 cameras in all: six external cameras (two forward facing, two downward and two side cameras), two TrueDepth cameras, and four internal infrared cameras, plus a LiDAR scanner. The external cameras track hand gestures and view what is happening around you, while the internal cameras perform eye-tracking, and what Apple calls Eyesight. It’s the two forward-facing cameras that can also capture spatial 3D photos and videos"
Thunderbolt 4 is close to the bandwidth needed for dual 4K for just the color data from the main cameras but there's no extra bandwidth for the other cameras at the same time. Thunderbolt 5 supposedly has up to 120Gbps, that would probably be enough.
The 3 lenses per eye probably add a lot to the weight, switching to polycarbonate would help as long as it doesn't impact clarity.
Is that 120 Gbit/s for TB5 unidirectional or bidirectional?
I'm not sure if 80 Gbit/s is good enough for the VP. 23m pixels. So 23E+6 pixels x 30 bit/pixel x 100 Hz = 69 Gbits/s. It is going to depend on how much the TB5 spec is reserving for data. If it is 8 Gbit/s like TB3/4, it's going to be just enough for the displays. The video cameras and sensors? Yes, probably not enough.
Hard to know how the weight can be reduced without have an itemized list of components and their respective weight. Surely they've debated long and hard about what features and resultant hardware should be in it, and have minimized the mass for those features as much as possible.
The only easy call is switching the glass front for acrylic, and this may not be a good trade depending on how thin the glass is. Same thing for trading plastic for aluminum. They could remove the motors for the interocular adjustments, and use a manual dial., but that motor seems like a big quality life improvement for users as it should guarantee the correct positioning versus letting the user do it. They can reduce the number of cameras and sensors and use fewer, but ultrawide cameras and sensors, when they can de-distort the ultra-wide view into a normal looking one.
Not a lot there without know the exact weight of everything.
tht said: Is that 120 Gbit/s for TB5 unidirectional or bidirectional?
I'm not sure if 80 Gbit/s is good enough for the VP. 23m pixels. So 23E+6 pixels x 30 bit/pixel x 100 Hz = 69 Gbits/s. It is going to depend on how much the TB5 spec is reserving for data. If it is 8 Gbit/s like TB3/4, it's going to be just enough for the displays. The video cameras and sensors? Yes, probably not enough.
Hard to know how the weight can be reduced without have an itemized list of components and their respective weight. Surely they've debated long and hard about what features and resultant hardware should be in it, and have minimized the mass for those features as much as possible.
The only easy call is switching the glass front for acrylic, and this may not be a good trade depending on how thin the glass is. Same thing for trading plastic for aluminum. They could remove the motors for the interocular adjustments, and use a manual dial., but that motor seems like a big quality life improvement for users as it should guarantee the correct positioning versus letting the user do it. They can reduce the number of cameras and sensors and use fewer, but ultrawide cameras and sensors, when they can de-distort the ultra-wide view into a normal looking one.
Not a lot there without know the exact weight of everything.
Even if TB could support the bandwidth I can't see that happening. There are too many things that can go wrong with that setup, and the size and weight of the components over the face will decrease in time. Holding out for The Ansible passing along data in realtime from Apple's Vision Cloud servers seems more likely to me.
That kind of data pumping through TB as well as power would generate serious heat. It's probably easy to dissipate it when distances are small and you have a unit with a lot of surface area, less so when there;'s a metre long cable involved and a combined processing unit and battery in your back pocket. Burnt bum!
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In an effort to keep the headset as light as possible they've made the device compact enough to prevent space for prescription glasses. That means they're committed to custom lenses, so it's gonna come, tho not without difficulty. No way the stores will be able to have prescription lenses for every possible eyesight correction combination, so I would think Apple would need to supply the lenses by special order post-sale. That in itself may also make re-sales more difficult too, and sharing with other family members out-of-the-question if you need corrective lenses.
Price points: $1,499, $3,499, and $3,999, respectively. Titanium is much more expensive, and has no practical weight benefit, and it's even worse from a price standpoint. If they were to make it from AL3 2.5V titanium, probably have to charge $4,499. If they used 6AL 4V titanium, at least $4,999. That's one reason the iPhone Pros cost more than the iPhones, even with minuscule use of it.
While I'm not sure of the broad appeal of using the AVP for work (from my own limited perspective), I can definitely see a device similar to this to create an "IMAX"-like tv - movie - planetarium viewing experience, and that might be the ultimate use for this.
I don't think the success of the device is dependent on the supply of lens inserts. Its success is entirely dependent on use cases. If it makes people more productive and enjoy their entertainment more, then all these tryout/testing issues and even wearability issues can be overcome as people want to use it.
The hard part remains the wearability, and the nausea thing. Reducing weight by half or so is but one thing they have to do. Using these types of goggles form factors, where there are two displays 2 inches from your eyes will make people tired, even if the weight was zero. So, they need to ride a technology development curve for the display ppd (still needs to go up to something like 35m pixels from 23m). The lens in front of these displays must become variable or multi focus, and the latency probably has drop down to 8 ms.
I do think the size of the device will eventually be reduce to the point where the light shield is collapsable and you could put it in a backpack or purse with ease.
As for sunglasses form factor -- ain't happening in a few years. Be prepared to wait a long time.
https://www.macworld.com/article/205387/apple-rolls.html
A sunglasses form factor will need to be solely AR and be a device for light content consumption - more like iPhone compared to a Mac. You just can't get the same amount of processing power into the glasses factor, including proper battery life, to package the current functionality of AVP into it. A future AR glasses project will utilize much of the technology of visionOS (pinning content to real world areas with the ability to interact with it) but you can't get the same immersive content experience as you can with AVP completely blocking out external light.
I think there are reasons to always have both products around.
But the vertigo thing is going to be an enormous challenge to overcome. Every single (independent) review by someone who's actually used them has experienced nausea, blinding headaches and/or disorientation, leading them to remove them in less than 15 minutes. Our brains are not trained to process 3 dimensional content in two dimensions. I suppose that with continued use, gradually increasing the time wearing them, some will adapt. Others will continue to be seasick without letup. What a drag to spend $5,000 on a toy, and then find out you can't use it!
The 11" iPad Pro is $799, likely with 30% margin or more. That means M2 + display + battery + networking + chassis etc = $560.
Apple Vision Pro parts likely come to around $2200 with the largest costs being 2x 4K micro-oled ($800) + 12x cameras + R1 ($700) = $1500 / $2200 (70% of the cost).
Meta Quest 2 is $300 with only basic low-res black and white cameras
Meta Quest 3 is $500 with ~HD passthrough
Meta Quest Pro is $1000 with ~720p passthrough
Meta sells hardware either at a loss or break-even and they do 2K resolution, Apple does 4K and close to real-world passthrough.
Meta AR is pretty much unusable:
https://kguttag.com/2023/01/03/meta-quest-pro-part-1-unbelievably-bad-ar-passthrough/
Quest 3 improves on it but is still a distorted, blurry image:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/MLd-rz1goXw
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/zKvyoPaVETs
To lower Apple Vision Pro price would need cheaper suppliers for displays and cameras, maybe use fewer cameras. I don't think they will be able to get sub-$2k by version 2 but maybe version 3 in 3-4 year times.
If they get the displays closer to smartphone display cost, use say 8 cameras, have a cheaper eyesight setup, that would cut $900 of costs to $1300, which could make it under $2k. I think unit volume at $3.5k would be close to 1 million, $2k would be 3-5 million.
iPhone Pro Max is $1200 and part of the most popular product line with monthly payments and it won't sell more than 20% of 250m units (50m units/year). VR at nearly 2x the price would be easily 1/10th this or less.
The hardware available still isn't ready for affordable AR yet and when it is, Meta will sell it at break-even. If Meta charged $1200 for a 4K Meta Quest Pro 2, Apple would price this hardware spec at $2k.
In their other product revisions like the iPad, they've gone over every part of the interior and tried to reduce weight, changing the layout and parts. They managed to reduce the iPad weight by about 1/3 in 3 years. They can likely do something similar here.
Speaking of the original Mac, it was over twice the cost of the AV corrected for inflation. Over seven grand for that small black & white unconnected primitive desktop! It wasn’t for everyone then, and this isn’t today. And that’s okay.
Now the Commodore 64 I had, yeah, that was a toy. As are these gaming headsets.
https://www.techradar.com/news/the-apple-vision-pro-is-the-strangest-camera-ever-made
"The Apple Vision Pro packs 12 cameras in all: six external cameras (two forward facing, two downward and two side cameras), two TrueDepth cameras, and four internal infrared cameras, plus a LiDAR scanner. The external cameras track hand gestures and view what is happening around you, while the internal cameras perform eye-tracking, and what Apple calls Eyesight. It’s the two forward-facing cameras that can also capture spatial 3D photos and videos"
Thunderbolt 4 is close to the bandwidth needed for dual 4K for just the color data from the main cameras but there's no extra bandwidth for the other cameras at the same time. Thunderbolt 5 supposedly has up to 120Gbps, that would probably be enough.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/09/intel-confirms-thunderbolt-5-name-120gbps-tech-arrives-in-2024/
The 3 lenses per eye probably add a lot to the weight, switching to polycarbonate would help as long as it doesn't impact clarity.
I'm not sure if 80 Gbit/s is good enough for the VP. 23m pixels. So 23E+6 pixels x 30 bit/pixel x 100 Hz = 69 Gbits/s. It is going to depend on how much the TB5 spec is reserving for data. If it is 8 Gbit/s like TB3/4, it's going to be just enough for the displays. The video cameras and sensors? Yes, probably not enough.
Hard to know how the weight can be reduced without have an itemized list of components and their respective weight. Surely they've debated long and hard about what features and resultant hardware should be in it, and have minimized the mass for those features as much as possible.
The only easy call is switching the glass front for acrylic, and this may not be a good trade depending on how thin the glass is. Same thing for trading plastic for aluminum. They could remove the motors for the interocular adjustments, and use a manual dial., but that motor seems like a big quality life improvement for users as it should guarantee the correct positioning versus letting the user do it. They can reduce the number of cameras and sensors and use fewer, but ultrawide cameras and sensors, when they can de-distort the ultra-wide view into a normal looking one.
Not a lot there without know the exact weight of everything.