charlesn

Pema said:

Had Apple released a more down-to-earth mixed reality headset at an affordable price point there would be a much more compelling mass market case for the Vision Pro. 

Oh, you must mean something like the "more down-to-earth mixed reality headset at an affordable price" that Meta has been marketing for TEN YEARS now, right? So they must be incredibly successful at this by now and literally own the market and... oh wait... Meta has been losing more than $1 billion PER MONTH on its Reality Labs for YEARS with no end in sight. Zero profit in ten years, just billions upon billions of endless losses following your wise business advice. 

kkqd1337 said:

I know I am not the only one who wishes Apple would use their expertise again to make home WiFi routers/networks. Its' such critical infrastructure I can't understand why the abandoned this.

Apple, over time, abandoned three key peripheral products for which high volume demand exists: displays, routers and printers. They've come back with the Studio Display more recently, which I'll get back to in a second, but why did they abandon these peripherals in the first place? I don't think it was lack of sales, I think it was because they couldn't make their typically high margins on these products, That's the only explanation that makes sense to me. I suspect they do make a high margin on the Studio Display, as they should for a 27" monitor with a starting price of $1600! But I also doubt it's a high volume seller for Apple at that price point. 

ecarlseen said:

I bought the original Apple Watch Hermes. The leather band still holds up beautifully and remains one of my favorites. I absolutely agree that paying that kind of premium for any kind of plastic band is just silly and ridiculous; this is just being cheap and catering to the woke crowd.

I've read and heard "woke" used in some ridiculous ways before, but this sets a new bar for non-sensical that may never be equalled. 

Wow! I didn't realize Mark Gurman was now writing sponsored content for Mark Zuckerberg! Because there's no other explanation for his hit piece on Vision Pro while he praises Meta throughout the article for its "hit" products. WHAT hit products??!! Meta's Reality Labs has posted $50 BILLION in LOSSES over the last four years alone and it continues to lose an average of $1 billion PER MONTH. The Reality Labs "business model" was and continues to be selling products for a huge loss per unit sold. Hey, I've got an idea! Let's mark Vision Pro down to $499, sell a ton of them, post huge losses, and then Vision Pro will be a hit product, too! The LAST company that any other company should want to emulate in the headset space is Meta because it has never been able to sell anything it makes for a profit. It doesn't have hit products, it only has loss leaders. Of course, Zuck doesn't have to worry about these losses and can keep throwing billions down a rat hole because he makes so much money ignoring your privacy to monetize your data any way he can get away with. 

Here's what especially hilarious about the way the press covers Vision Pro: Meta has been at the headset game since it acquired Oculus TEN YEARS ago and has never made a penny of profit since, posting billions upon billions of dollars in losses without a single truly successful product to show for this massive, decade-long investment. It's just one failed product after another, with failure defined as a product you can only sell for a net loss. The first Vision Pro only delivered 32 WEEKS ago, with reportedly half its annual production capacity selling out in the US alone the first weekend it went on sale and yet the press reports nothing but what a failure it is...HUH? You think Apple expected an immediate hit product that sells in volume with a $3500 headset that runs an entirely new computing platform and an entirely new way of interacting with a computer? And what would the press be saying if this was 10 years after Vision Pro launched and Apple was still losing $1 billion per month on it? Would they be calling it a hit product or is that only reserved for money-losing products from Meta? 

Hey, if you've got the desire and disposable income for a Hermes edition Apple Watch, I say go for it! But PLEASE: if you're dropping big money to essentially get a watch band from a company whose reputation is largely based on its leather goods, don't spend it on this god-awful looking piece of knitted nylon that looks like some home-crafted crap you bought for $20 on Etsy. It's not even Hermes orange! Spend the extra bucks and get a proper Hermes leather band. 

By the way: thanks Apple Insider for posting this. It was a fun read. Like 99.9% of the Apple Watch crowd, I'll never be buying the Hermes edition. but I was Hermes-curious about what you get for that much extra money. Gotta admit that I like that Lucky Horse watchface. But not worth $1299 to get it.