Predictions for Apple Vision Pro

Yesterday, Apple introduced the Vision Pro. Reviews generally are along the lines of “don’t see the need” and “too expensive”.

The don’t see the need objection got me thinking back to the days before the Apple Watch was introduced — I’d heard the same objection back then. I wrote an article about it, Predictions on the iWatch https://medium.com/@sunilbaliga/f3219741657c. I believed back then that the iPod, iPhone, iPad were successful because enabled people to do something completely new, something they couldn’t do before.

And that’s the same as what the Vision Pro does — I believe it’s a new way to watch video, especially 3D.

Television was introduced over 75-years ago. TV technology has improved tremendously since then, black and white to color, much bigger screens, much better resolutions, etc. And the way of watching TV (now including videos) also has changed. Back in the day, programs were broadcast over the air and there were only a handful of channels. Watching TV was a social experience, people would sit together in the living room and watch the same show on a TV.

Nowadays, people have unlimited choice of video content — over-the-air, streaming, YouTube, etc. And you can watch this content not just on a TV, but also on laptops, phones, etc.

So watching videos has become much more of an individual experience — people don’t have to sit together and watch the same content on a TV, they individually watch whatever they want, whenever they want, wherever they want, on whatever screen they want. This aligns perfectly with Apple’s Vision Pro — it’s another screen for individuals to watch video content.

What’s game changing is the 3D video capabilities of the Vision Pro. Reviewers have written that the 3D video experience on the Vision Pro has been awesome. 3D is a new capability, not available on any other display (despite the industry’s efforts — remember 3D TVs?). 3D Mandalorian from Disney+ on Vision Pro would be great wouldn’t it?

What about the $3,500 price? Seems way too high right? No one will pay such an exorbitant amount would they?

Let’s check prices today for popular computers from the early days of PCs https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2018/06/22/cost-of-a-computer-the-year-you-were-born/36156373/

1984

• Notable computer: Apple Macintosh
• Price tag: $2,495
• Inflation adjusted price: $6,042 (as of 2018 when article was written, $7,299 in today’s dollars)

1992

• Notable computer: IBM ThinkPad
• Price tag: $2,375
• Inflation adjusted price: $4,259 (as of 2018 when article was written, $5,145 in today’s dollars)

2002

• Notable computer: Toshiba Satellite 1955
• Price tag: $2,499
• Inflation adjusted price: $3,495 (as of 2018 when article was written, $4,222 in today’s dollars)

$3,500 is way too high right?

I’m sure the Vision Pro price will come down significantly as volume shipments increase — it happened for PCs, it’ll happen here.

My take — I believe the Apple Vision Pro will be a very successful device. I don’t see it cannibalizing sales of other Apple products, believe it’ll be complementary to them. Sales initially will be driven by 3D video and then by other applications/use cases as those arise (just like what happened with PCs, where spreadsheets and word processing drove initial adoption and then other applications took over to drive demand).