Summary Bullets:

• The new Apple Vison Pro AR headset has many features and innovations.

• The price of the new headset, plus the immature state of the AR/VR market is a limitation.

Apple has announced its first AR/VR headset, the Apple Vision Pro at a price point of $3,499 and will be available in early 2024. This is Apple’s first foray into the AR headset market, and it shows all of Apple’s style and UI innovation that has come to be a hallmark of the company. For what specs have been released to date, it’s an impressive headset, far outstripping rival Meta’s AR/VR headsets. Reports from those who tried the devices on-site at Apple’s WWDC 2023 talk about how its ability to select the amount of immersion, i.e., the amount of the real world you want to see is impressive, as well as the quality of the screens and the build of the headset itself. Apple ran a number of demos, showing off the features of the Apple Vision Pro. Apple’s engineering efforts on this product started all the way back in 2015, showing the time and money required with such a complicated piece of equipment. Overall, other than the price the impressions were mostly positive.

But like most Apple new products there is more than a little hype. This includes predictions that the Vision Pro is the next iPhone, or the next iPod. If forced to choose, its likely more analogous to the iPod than the iPhone. The iPhone when it came out was Death, the destroyer of worlds in regards to the cellular phone market, revolutionizing the smartphone market and consigning the featurephone to oblivion. The iPod, on the other hand took a little bit longer to catch on but didn’t have the level of competition that there is for AR/VR headsets.

There was no way for Apple to predict that the entire metaverse would enter a period of winter, this year, with all the hype the technology had in the previous years. There will be disappointment in some quarters that the entire AR/VR market doesn’t rise again and rocket upwards on the back of Apple’s Vision Pro AR.

However, in the long run it doesn’t much matter. Apple’s Vision Pro AR is a big step in the right direction, but still suffers from some of the issues that nearly every AR/VR headset has. It’s heavy on the face, is likely battery life limited, and only works with the Apple ecosystem. From an aesthetic point of view, it’s a pretty device… but not an inconspicuous one. They look like the world’s most expensive ski goggles and like all other entries in this space are not suitable for extended use in public, at least outside of Vale. Price is another factor that will keep the Apple Vision Pro AR from becoming a device for the man on the street. Apple customers are used to Apple’s premium pricing, but at $3,499 its prohibitively expensive for most of the consumer public.

Most importantly the biggest limitation of all is the immaturity of the metaverse/AR/VR technology and market. There is so much to do in terms of making even Apple’s new headset better and to hone the technology and the UI down to a level where the learning curve is relatively small and the UI differences between headsets are minimized to promote use. The market lacks a single killer app, today most AR/VR with any success to speak of is around gaming. There is a ton of potential use cases and even more that haven’t been thought of yet, but all of this takes time. It will be at least a few more generations of the Apple Vision Pro AR before we see pervasive AR/VR in the market.

But from an enterprise perspective, there is a lot of hope. The price point is not out of reach for most enterprises who want to begin developing AR applications. It is in line in regards to price with AR headsets from Magic Leap and Microsoft. Apple was careful to show both consumer and enterprise applications for the Vision Pro AR, and that may be exciting to developers and enterprises both. How fast the enterprise market for AR/VR grows is anybody’s guess, but it’s going to a lot of fun watching it.