The $3499 Apple Vision Pro reportedly costs $1542 to make.
Edit: Archive link https://archive.ph/u4BCi
Because Apple
$1000 monitor stand
$80 to undo what you did to slow down my phone.
What did they do? Prevent it from randomly shutting down? Because I’ll take a slower phone or a random hard shutdown any day of the week.
Was it wrong? Yes. But what else does any handset manufacturer do?
Didn’t they sell $700 casters for THEIR Mac pro. FUCKING CASTERS!!!
/thread
The tech inside is great, but Apple also knows its customers are happy to pay a hefty premium over cost. I hate Apple but they are amazing at branding at end of day.
Apple are almost certainly planning a non “pro” model that will be much cheaper and the pro’s high pricing drives discussion, exclusivity, which leans in on their aspirational brand modus. Thus, the non-pro model will likely have absurd sales as people rush to finally buy in at their price level.
I don’t support it or like it but Apple have been following this playbook for decades now and unfortunately it really works.
It’s also easier to engineer the thing first without heavy cost pressure then reengineer it to be cheaper. With added benefit of better understanding the market and demand
I don’t like how hard the article tries to make it seem like the markup is justified because of all of Apple’s other costs. Apple will sell the product at whatever price it thinks the customer will pay, and the margins only matter to determine whether the product is worth it for Apple to sell (I’d love to see what the payback period is on the project though). The cost isn’t that outrageous if this COGS is correct, maybe slightly on the higher side for a tech product.
The real discussion should be whether the product is worth the price they are charging based on the utility and the cost of being essentially a beta tester as an owner of a 1st gen product.
Yeah there’s no way it doesn’t cost an absolute fortune to make a Vision Pro. The display is nuts, and if reports are to be believed, extremely difficult to make and with a very low yield. Then there’s a bunch of other high tech stuff in there.
It’s pretty much a polished prototype for Apple to simultaneously explore possible design avenues in the VR space, gather data on and overcome unforeseen obstacles in new VR tech and its development process, and get the ball rolling on VR software development on the Apple side.
The one perplexing thing is that right now VR has two main usecases: gaming and wanking. Apple takes a dim view of both. I think that’s something they’ll have to re-evaluate as they work to bring out more consumer-focused, sub $1k VR devices.
Yeah if you watch the iFixit tear down it’s obvious these things are just packed to the gills with tech. I’m not mega surprised they didn’t ended up costing so much. It’s really bleeding edge.
That said it’s way too expensive for me to get on board and I think they made some poor choices. Especially the outer display. The amount of weight, battery drain, fragility, and (presumably) expense that display alone added is just plain dumb. And it looks a lot worse IRL than in their videos.
I also think the aluminum looks great but I wonder how much lighter the headset would be if it were plastic without the outer display and glass.
gather data on
Yes. I make digital products for a living and our process is continuously informed by usage statistics from our customers. We also do focus group testing, and it has its place, but live data feedback gives us statistically meaningful readings of how people use our products and this tells us what to focus on to make them better.
Apple has been in pure focus group testing for a decade+ on this product and they absolutely just need to get into the field and accelerate their development with usage statistics. It doesn’t have to sell in the tens of millions. Remember focus group participants number in the dozens or hundreds, and a secretive company like Apple can’t afford to have too many of them.
The Vision Pro marks the end of prototyping and the beginning of actual product development. This is why I don’t care at all about the v1 product. It’s a starting point. Everything interesting happens from here on.
Gaming at least I feel like they’ve been trying to support more as a company for several years. It hasn’t necessarily translated to results, but it seems like they’re trying a lot more than they did a decade ago.
For wanking; it still has Safari, and Pornhub still exists 👍🏽
Good luck streaming a 30 to 60gb video.
Spoken as someone who clearly has never used a VR headset for any sort of video content. To get even passable framerates at resolutions that don’t look atrocious, you’re looking at multiple GB for scant minutes of VR video content.
Unless you just want to watch the same crap you already do, but on an effectively building sized flatscreen, bandwidth and even local data storage and transfer rates become an issue fast.
They seem to be pushing it on the productivity angle, but until someone makes a super light weight and open air headset I’m not wearing it for 8 hours a day.
The VR wanking and gaming markets are too saturated for Apple to bother with. They want the VR computing market, which is essentially vacant.
This isn’t a VR headset though…
They can call it whatever they want, but as far as I’m concerned a VR headset with very good video passthrough is still a VR headset.
Would you call Google glass or hololense a VR machine? No you wouldn’t. Apple fits right in there with them
Glass were glasses with a small HUD.
Vision Pro are goggles with a full opaque display and video passthrough. Like an Oculus/Meta device. Just higher quality passthrough.
It’s a VR headset, despite how much apple insists on it actually being a “spacial computer”, and some people saying it’s an AR device.
Glass was just a heads-up display in the corner of vision, nothing like any sort of vr/ar/xr system. I don’t know why you would consider that comparable to any of the headsets. Hololens and Magic Leap were augmented reality, but by not using camera passthrough they were limited filed-of view and could not do opacity. Quest 3 is much more similar to the Vision Pro in terms of what it can do (aside from the outer display). For instance, it’s possible to place large browser windows around your room, and replace your monitor with a larger virtual version.
The big deal is that this is a mobile VR headset. I don’t know of another VR headset you can walk around in.
The Quest range. I’m sure that the passthrough isn’t as good quality as Apple’s (some glitching at the edges of objects), but it’s easily enough to walk around in, especially the Quest 3.
The lady in the thumbnail looks like she stoking someone nipples like they’re radio dials.
Where do I get that game?
On the app store inside the headset
The reason: Apple.
Unjerk for a moment. How much should something like this cost? Serious question. Seems like it can do things other devices really can’t. Saw a video yesterday from a programmer who said it could replicate an impossible physical setup. I don’t have a need for it but maybe someone else can see the value.
The Quest 3 is capable of the same stuff and is only $500.
Adding the Valve Index is a another high end model that does all this and more for $1000.
The big difference is the Apple’s AR features
Every single reviewer is saying that the quality of the VR and specially the AR blows any competition out of the water. I highly doubt your comment is true.
Maybe not %50 of what it costs to build?
%20-%30 would be better imo. Yeah, it’s the best headset for certain tasks, and can do alot of enterprise stuff, but why does it cost %50 more then what it cost to build? Most users won’t use any of the high level features for more then just flexing to friends.
But oh no, they claim we need to pay more because of “research and development”
Like what? Why is that our problem? People who buy apple products are them paying for the research and development of new apple products. We already pay for shipping, why do we have to pay more for apple to make new stuff that most of us can’t afford anyways?
I didn’t pay for that, and it wasn’t even mentioned when I bought my Honda civic. Should I have to pay %50 more because the civics have been researched, and redesigned several times over the past 50 years?
Seriously, Apple keeps gouging it’s users/fans because for some reason apple users keep defending and praising them for their anti consumer practices.
bill of materials” for the headset at $1,542, and that doesn’t include the costs of research and development, packaging, marketing or Apple’s profit margin.
bill of materials” for the headset at $1,542, and that doesn’t include the costs of research and development, packaging, marketing or Apple’s profit margin.
Please read it, it’s just another version of the “the iPhone cost 500$ to make”. Research and especially marketing can sometimes be as much as the material and assembly cost. Id be surprised that apple doesn’t make a profit on it, but it might not be close at all to 100% .
It quite clearly seems to be some kind of public beta test product and enough rich people seem to be happy to pay for being the test hamsters.
It costing that much in materials seems a bit much though I heard its casing is milled from a brick (probably not literally) of aliminium. Combing the other high tech and mass production aspects I feel like it costing 1k is more believable. But what do I know not even employed in any manfacturing job.
Here’s why Apple users are delusional.
The thing is essentially a public dev kit. If you aren’t stupid rich and you can’t write it off on your taxes for business, it’s not worth picking up yet. And Apple knows that.
Give the tech time to mature. There were people who talked shit about the iPhone when it came out, and now we ALL use smartphones. I genuinely think AR (in a different form factor) will be a big deal. Possibly the thing to unseat smartphones, if manufacturers can start nailing transparent screens. But admittedly there are a few leaps in technology that will need to happen first.
I’m still talking shit about the iPhone. Where else do you see people using a glass keyboard? I don’t care if a billion idiots like it. There is virtually no choice in the market, everything boils down to the lowest common denominator. We need open and reusable technology, not this proprietary throwaway shit that you can’t maintain.
I had smartphones way before the iPhone but ok…
your reply is n=1, when op is clearly talking about mass adoption
Nokia s60 were mass adopted. Blackberrys were as well
“Because some dipshits will buy anything to be better than others, and also some people have just fucktons more money than they probably should “ - there, saved you a click
Apple financial statement for 2019, page 17.
God I hope this thing flops
Why?
Because Apple.
That’s not unusual for componsation for overhead and development costs. I’m honestly surprised its that expensive to make.
Thats probably 1500$ in apple parts. These parts most likely already include R&D costs as well as the additional increase for their brand.
That’s not how that number works. It’s the manufacturing cost before markup.
I believe he’s implying that apple essentially is selling the parts from one division to another so their own markup is included in the visions total cost
Gotta subsidize that lobbying and bribes to keep slavery strong on their assembly lines somehow.
Status costs, you can’t wanna be a gossip wannabe WO spending anything…
Got a link that’s not paywalled?
Thank you!
