Marvin

pulseimages said:

Any idea how many units have been sold?

There's some information from the wearables revenue:

https://s2.q4cdn.com/470004039/files/doc_earnings/2024/q3/filing/_10-Q-Q3-2024-As-Filed.pdf

Wearables, home and accessories in 9 months ending June 29th 2024 = $27.9b. The same period the year before was $30.5b. The Apple Watch makes up around half the total. iPhone/iPad accessories (AirPods, cases, chargers, keyboards) make a significant amount, mainly AirPods, which are estimated to be close to half the amount too. AirPods + Watch are easily 80-90% of the total wearables category, possibly more.

1m Vision Pro units would be over $3.5b. Given that the total fell nearly $3b, it's not likely Apple Vision Pro made over $1b, < 300k sales in 9 months.

Not too surprising considering it had a US-only launch initially and the fact that $500 VR headsets like Meta Quest only sell 5-10m units per year.

A sub-$2000 headset would sell millions of units.

jdw said:

Marvin said:

Keeping support for it on computers is what keeps manufacturers making the products with USB-A. 

nor will a decision by Apple to drop all USB-A ports on the Mac Mini dictate what the Windoze PC world will do.

Apple is pretty influential these days, especially with mobile and this isn't a decision that's going against the grain. PC manufacturers would love to have the mobility Apple has with the latest standards. They don't have that luxury because their competitors adding more ports count as competitive features and there's little brand loyalty among low quality brands.

PCs are trying to make thinner laptops now and they are only fitting the USB-A ports at the thickest parts of the laptops. This one has 2x USB-C/Thunderbolt and 1x USB-A:

https://www.amazon.com/ASUS-Zenbook-Touchscreen-i7-13700H-Thunderbolts/dp/B0CDD8BFH1/

Mobiles are all USB-C and come with USB-C cables and chargers. That hugely influences the ports that are added to computers.

jdw said:

Marvin said:

Keeping support for it on computers is what keeps manufacturers making the products with USB-A. 

By the way, I just bought the single best 1TB Thumbdrive SSD today on Amazon only 1 hour ago, and guess what?  The connector only comes in USB-A.  Check it out too, because it beats any other thumb drive out there.  Pretty incredible.  And yeah, I'll need to use a STUPID DONGLE with it on my 16" M1 Max MBP

There's also the Kingston USB-C drive, which will give mostly the same real-world speed:

https://www.amazon.com/Kingston-DataTraveler-256GB-USB-C-Performance/dp/B09DVPH8NQ

The external SSDs are almost as compact as thumb drives now, some are faster and offer more capacity:

https://www.amazon.com/SanDisk-1TB-Extreme-Portable-SDSSDE61-1T00-G25/dp/B08GTYFC37/

This is 100mm x 52mm x 9mm
vs
92mm x 30mm x 14mm for the thumb drive

This one is around the same size and 3x faster because of USB-C/Thunderbolt3:

https://www.amazon.com/SanDisk-Professional-1TB-PRO-G40-SDPS31H-001T-GBCND/dp/B0BGYMJBQF/

Once you own a USB-C-only computer, you will gradually move all the peripherals to USB-C connectors/cables and the exceptions will eventually drop to one or two products. Changing standards over the years have always been painful (firewire, displayport, mini-displayport, ADC, DVI-I, DVI-D etc) but this is one of the least painful because it's a compatible port.

jdw said:

USB-A is still ubiquitous (unlike USB-C) and Apple going to all USB-C on a new Mac Mini won't change that fact in the least.  For better or for worse, USB-A is here to stay, and I suspect it will continue to be used 10 or 15 years hence.

Keeping support for it on computers is what keeps manufacturers making the products with USB-A. This has been played out a number of times with different ports over the years and it's why VGA ports were on PCs long after they were useful.

USB-C is at a point where most products can be supported by changing cables. Logitech keeps shipping USB-A receivers with their mice and they sell an adaptor instead of a native USB-C version but their mice work fine over Bluetooth without the adaptor.

https://www.amazon.com/Logitech-USB-C-to-USB-A-Adaptor/dp/B09JL9RQN5/

All computer manufacturers should start dropping USB-A so there's not a repeat of VGA. USB-C is faster, more compact, easier to plug in (works upside down), can charge an entire laptop supporting 100W of power and more. It's better in every way than USB-A.

For the rare products that have wired USB-A cables, the adaptors like the Logitech one above can be left attached to the cable.

maury markowitz said:

lotones said:

When that comes down everybody will want one. 

I've been reading some form of this statement for 20 years now.

I really don't think people want to strap something to their face until it's the same form factor as a pair of glasses.

This is why I think a visor form factor would help, it takes away the pressure and weight from the face and straps from messing up people's hair and it would remove the need for a fitting procedure so people can buy online and use them out of the box.





It could be a version of Airpods Max like a swivel on the outside of the ear cups that allows the user to push it up on top of the head and use the Airpods for audio only.

People can use the Airpods for music as normal. If they want a relaxing environment, move the visor down and dial in an immersive environment. Similarly with a movie. Then there's no need for Eyesight because you can tilt the display up to talk to someone.

If people don't use the visor much, worst-case they paid $1600-1700 for a pair of Airpods Max instead of $550 but they'll use them regularly.

brianjo said:

PLEASE! No external power supply required.  It suck on the iMac, and would suck way more on the mini.  The old mini had a stupid external brick, and they made it awesome with the current design.  The size is great because you can put a pair of them in a single rack space easily.  Make it smaller so you can put 3 might be interesting, but too small and you can't have enough ports to be useful.  A smaller computer that needs dongles and adaptors is NOT an improvement!

Now, if they offered a DC power supply jack alongside an internal power supply, THAT would be appealing.  Probably not likely though.

There is a lot of empty space inside the current model. In the following video around 3:15, with the fan removed, half the mini is empty:



This mini size was basically unchanged for 14 years, 1.4" x 7.7" x 7.7":

https://support.apple.com/en-us/112588

This was designed to support DVD drives and 2.5" hard drives. They could make it smaller like the Apple TV or just thinner like the laptops. They could probably get it close to the Macbook Pro thickness but half the current height should be doable: