Commentary
Apple enters the XR ring
Apple Vision Pro serves a cornucopia of expensive technologies offering a standard 2D AR experience of overlayed Mac OS apps now presented spatially.
July 24, 2023 by Kevin Williams
As the immersive entertainment sector moves in myriad directions, the real hotness in the market has been the speculation on the deployment and release of Apple's entry into immersive technology. The industry is expecting its focus to be on the XR market, and the corporation has been working for over four years on its own headset.
This is a project championed by the corporation's CEO and was finally revealed to the public at an eagerly anticipated Apple Worldwide Developers Conference 2023.
What Apple revealed was, however, not what many had anticipated, or the hype-train promoted. In the famous "just one more thing" part of the presentation, heavily drawing from a previous founder's famous catchphrase, the corporation's CEO revealed the Apple Vision Pro. Looking like skiing goggles, the system proffered a cornucopia of expensive technologies, from the per-eye 4K micro-oled displays with face/eye-tracking to the carbon fiber frame and M2 chipset processing supported by an R1 chip for the pass-through AR sensors (Lidar IR and camera), all linked to Wi-Fi.
All this comes with an inevitably-high price tag, starting at $3,500, available for sale at the beginning of 2024. This is some $500 more than online speculation had suggested.
All that's at stake
But the other big surprise was what all this expensive tech offered. Not the XR utopia that had again been speculated, but an AR-focused approach — not with the ability to mix VR and AR, but just to offer a standard 2D AR experience of overlayed Mac OS apps now presented spatially.
Spatial computing was the focus of this presentation, with no live applications shown, but a selection of slick Apple-style pitch video sequences. Later, selected journalists would be given a short unfilmed demonstration that underlined the wholly AR-focused nature of the system.
The whole ecosystem is supported by Apple's new visionOS spatial operating system — shown on workplace apps, allowing floating displays and the ability to view photos spatially. The Vision Pro is envisaged as a replacement for displays and, eventually, MacBooks and tablets.
While no games were shown, the consumption of entertainment was represented by the "big screen" style viewing of movies, seeing Apple partnering with Disney to have access to its library of Disney+ movies and ESPN sports content. All achieved through a finger-tracking interface, the Vision Pro does not include controllers, and only supports a short two-hour battery life — an interesting approach for productivity.
A first generation platform
Most surprising, the form factor goggles do not allow for glasses, although there will be some special Zeiss optical inserts available for an additional fee. This is a first-generation platform, something not seen from Apple for a long time. The last major launch was some 15 years ago with the Apple Watch.
On news of the launch, Apple stock prices reacted to the announcement — while much of the reaction from the VR and XR community was consternation and surprise.
That Apple had doubled down on AR rather than an MR or XR environment seemed characteristic in ploughing their own furrow. Some are feeling that rather than being Apple's iPhone moment for XR, this was Apple's Google Glass moment from 2013 — redrawing customer expectations for this technology.
It was more than obvious this hardware was not for general consumption, with the high price and the exotic technology limiting production plans. Internal sources say they only expect to sell a million units in the first 12 months' sales of this "prosumer" device.
More to come
As with the ill-received QuestPro, this was seen as a devkit — a pathfinder that will lead towards a future Apple Vision Lite release, if the initial experiment is successful.
Overall, this felt like a strategy of "dipping a toe in the water," evaluating the thirst from the consumer base for this AR platform, and then supporting it with a wider product lineup — reasoning the developer conference revealed.
The natural progression for "spatial computing" but avoiding any association with the VR, MR or XR landscape is a body blow for those in VR hoping to see Apple's entry validate their efforts or offer a lifeline to poor retention of users as has been seen with the drop off on the Quest 2.
It felt more like Apple hit the reset button on expectations about wearable computing and has cut adrift the VR standalone market to find its own path. Live demonstrations of the Apple Vision Pro will validate if the hype for the hardware was warranted, or if this is AR's second Google Glass moment.
That urgent need to grow the VR/AR market is reflected in the NPD Group market estimates that claim, during 2022, only 9.2 million headsets were sold globally, adding to the $1.1 billion market worth in sales of the VR sector.
This is far less than had been speculated back in 2014, when major investments came, such as the Meta (then Facebook) founder acquiring Oculus VR and making its $100 billion gamble on growing the VR landscape. At which time the Meta founder claimed it would achieve 1 billion users on its VR platform.
These are speculations that seem to have fallen well short, especially as internal reports at Meta see users becoming bored of their headset purchases and moving on, as retention falls.
Apple's AR vision
Apple does not want to enter the consumer VR sector that has become mired partly in the toxicity of certain manufacturers' behaviors, focusing on what they envisage to be the untainted AR landscape. In what some had wrongly called before the launch, the "iPhone moment for XR," Apple turned the clock back to 2013 and released its interpretation of what AR should offer — side-stepping completely VR and gaming for the time being and focusing on productivity and even a more nuanced enterprise approach.
Now the dust settles, and the combatants have revealed their hands — it is now up to the developers and consumers to bite. It is essential that sales accelerate in hardware adoption to avoid the limbo that VR and AR in the consumer sector has experienced, unable to achieve the grandiose promised adoption rates. But also, a serious need for user retention — a failure of these XR platforms to grow the market will have major repercussions.
(Editor's note: Extracts from this blog are from recent coverage in The Stinger Report, published by KWP and its director, Kevin Williams, the leading interactive out-of-home entertainment news service covering the immersive frontier and beyond.)
About Kevin Williams
Along with advisory positions with other entrants into the market he is founder and publisher of the Stinger Report, “a-must-read” e-zine for those working or investing in the amusement, attractions and entertainment industry. He is a prolific writer and provides regular news columns for main trade publications. He also travels the globe as a keynote speaker, moderator and panelist at numerous industry conferences and events. Author of “The Out-of-Home Immersive Entertainment Frontier: Expanding Interactive Boundaries in Leisure Facilities,” the only book on this aspect of the market, with the second edition scheduled for a 2023 release.
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