TL;DR
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Just apple revealed it’s an AR/VR headset, the ‘Vision Pro’. And it’s as expensive as it is terrifying – $3499! (the memes will be strong on this one).
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It will be released in the US in early 2024, the rest of the world to be determined. We don’t know who this is for (but it seems Apple doesn’t either).
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This is good for the metaverse (although the jury is out on Web3).
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It’s unclear, buy it seems to be a standalone device – no other products required (the world is your screen, your eyes are the mouse, your fingers are the clicker/keyboard).
Full story
We just watched the keynote to reveal of Apple’s AR/VR headset, the ‘Vision Pro’.
First impressions/takeaways:
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The memes will be strong on this one
-
It’s as expensive as it is terrifying! $3499
-
It will be released in the US in early 2024, the rest of the world to be determined
-
We don’t know who this is for (but it seems Apple doesn’t either)
-
This is good for the metaverse (although the jury is out on Web3)
-
It’s unclear, but it appears to be a standalone device – no other Apple products required (the world is your screen, your eyes are the mouse, your fingers are the clicker/keyboard).
From where we stand, the Vision Pro announcement is eerily reminiscent of the iPhone in many ways…
In that sense, it combines a number of features that we already have in other products into a single form factor.
Steve Jobs presented the iPhone as a combination of: a phone, an iPod and a “revolutionary Internet communications device.”
The Apple Vision Pro seems to want to merge your TV, iPhone and MacBook into one portable device.
Our guess is that most will respond along the lines of:
“Oh man, I want to try that! … but I’m definitely not buying one for that price.”
(As they did with the first iPhone).
But that’s not where the similarities end…
Like the first iPhone (which had no third-party or app store apps), the Vision Pro is a blank slate for developers.
The announcement of the Vision Pro at Apple’s annual developer conference reads as the company tells its developer base:
“Here! We made the hardware, now find out how to make some cool apps for this thing before it launches next year!”
Ok, ok, ok… but what about the metaverse and Web3?
Well, if you put ‘the metaverse’ down to the ‘3D version of the internet’ – the announcement of the Vision Pro bodes well!
It might take a while, but if anyone is going to inspire most people to buy an AR/VR headset, it’s Apple.
We bet it will follow the pattern of most Apple products:
It will be dragged online → mocked for its price/design/similarity to competing products →…but then, in a few years, people will be fighting to get one.
Once that “install base” (aka user base) is built up, developers will be financially incentivized to do things and actually get to work with them!
As for Web3 (or ‘the blockchain-integrated internet’) – we highly doubt those features will be cherished on the device…
That said, Apple will likely allow blockchain-integrated experiences to be built on the Vision Pro as long as it gets a share of the revenue.
Hey – we’ll take it!
