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How Apple Can Bring Down the Price of Apple Vision Headset From $3,500

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2023-06-11/will-there-be-a-cheaper-apple-vision-how-apple-can-lower-cost-of-new-headset-lirfnvz1

Apple, having debuted the Vision Pro headset at $3,500, is already working on a cheaper model to get the new product category onto the faces of more people. Here’s how it may do it. Also: First impressions of Apple’s new operating systems, why Tim Cook won’t wear the Vision Pro in public and Apple’s future retail stores revealed.

8 comments

Nullpointer

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Time. There was one time when a 65” 1080p tv would set you back $10k. Now those are Black Friday giveaways for test driving a car. By manufacturing the first units Apple can get the manufacturing time to mature on the exact specs they want which will lower costs.

Just look at the iPhone SE, it is so cheap because all of the hard work was done years ago and it’s just swapping out a chip every few years.

Pekka

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I really hope they won't cut the quality of the screen for the cheaper model. If the experience gets worse people will start having the same issues as the Meta Quest, where text on screens will be hard to read. If things become less fluent users will start to feel dizzy and it will feel less natural to us the device.

I was looking forward to getting one, but the $3,500 price is just way too expensive and if not many people get the device, developers won't care about the device. And that would be really bad for external app support.

ndr

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The Vision Pro has a lot of high-end components beside the screen, but I’m still afraid that the display represents a very high percentage of the cost.

The more I think about it, the trickier it gets: like the M2, it could be swapped for something cheaper, but then could it drive that monster of a display?; or all the cameras and sensors, but then wouldn’t the pass through look bad?

I guess they could do away with the fancy audio. I don’t know if OpticID is already easy to do once you have eye tracking, otherwise they may remove it too.

Pekka

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I think the cheaper version will still be around $ 2000 because of the display. For me that would be cheap enough to buy one if the software is fine. Maybe they could indeed switch to an iPhone processor and require a connection to a Mac for more demanding apps. But you have a good point about AR, they will still need that 2 chip design so AR features like the hand gesture controls will work well.

If they would want to get rid of OpticID, they would have to require other Apple devices for authentication or introduce TouchID on the device. So they probably also want to keep that.

StarManta

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My assumption about how the chips work is that the M2 does the computing work while the R1 does the work of processing the camera input and display output. So the M2’s processing power is not relevant to the resolution of the displays.

ndr

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I find it hard to believe that the R1 is enough, because the M2 would be overkill then.

I guess we’ll have to wait for more reviews/analyses.

LiveLaughLoveRevenge

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I think that is largely why they are introducing it at this price.

If they didn’t hit a certain level of screen quality/ resolution, it wouldn’t be useable as a head-mounted PC.

So my guess would be that a cheaper model gets introduced with similar specs and features to the AVP as we have now…. But launch it alongside an Apple vision pro 2 that has even better specs.

gabo2007

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Agreed. This is the one suggestion I think the article gets wrong – Apple has established this display resolution as the minimum for an immersive experience, and I don't think they'll go down from here.

What I was surprised to see not considered is materials choice. I think Apple could do plastic for a non-Pro Vision device, to save on weight and cost.

I also think the non-Pro version isn't coming until the second generation, at which point it will likely have most of the features of this Pro version while the Pro gets upgraded.