Apple announced today that Apple Vision Pro will be launched on February 2, 2024. The product was introduced back in June of 2023. I am quite buried in the Apple ecosystem and have generally ended up purchasing, using, and liking most Apple products (with the notable exception of their mice, and stand-alone displays.) I am thus far ambivalent about this new ‘spatial computing platform’ but I am hopeful of its success.

First off, a new product from Apple is always exciting as they can communicate to the market better than most other companies and hence almost overnight invigorate entire product categories and platforms. So, I am excited about this product even though I don’t intend to place a pre-order, unlike many other products that I have instantly done in the past. Seondly, I am going to assume that this device is very good. The reviews so far have been unanimous in praising the quality and brilliance of the design and its execution.

Apple is framing this product as the dawn of a new “spatial computing platform” that will blend your “digital content and your physical space”. However, I feel that that this device will mostly be used for consuming media.

I don’t anticipate people using this for work even though that may be an easier way to justify the price tag. Speaking of price, this is a very expensive product. It would end up costing over $4,000 for most. That will definitely be the biggest hurdle standing in the path of the vision pro. At half that price, it would have flown off the shelves I feel. Unlike the Apple Watch, or an iPad even, this is not an affordable luxury.

Having said that, the number of people that will drop over $4,000 on a shiny new toy from Apple is still very large both in the U.S. and internationally. And hence the signs of early commercial success are already there. It will be produced in small quantities given the supply issues and given Apple’s hefty margins typically baked in, I feel it will almost instantly get sold out creating scarcity and hence a sense of a “hit” product even if the sales volumes are relatively modest by Apple standards.

However, for sustained success like that of Apple Watch or AirPods, the product will have to come down in price pretty substantially or otherwise it will be like the MacPro, XDR Display, or AirPods MAX – all of which are good products and presumably profitable given their steep prices and margins to Apple (or otherwise they’d all be discontinued already). These are products much loved by a small group of people, but they are not runaway successes. But then these products are also not trying to define a new paradigm, if anything, they are just trying to bring a good Apple quality experience for established use cases to Apple devotees. I don’t doubt that prices will come down, while not substantially but cheaper models, cheaper materials, lower specs, older models, and advantages of manufacturing at volumes, will all lead to models with about half the price.

The Vision Pro, as a new computing platform will have to try a lot harder to be successful. It is still a new-ish paradigm, for which a compelling “killer-app” doesn’t quite exist yet. For it to be the kind of disrupter Apple would like it to be, it will have to gain quite a wide adoption in the industry. This to me is an uphill task even at a lower price point. It is not a phone-like platform that you can easily use throughout the day.

In conclusion, I feel that it will eventually go the route of the Apple Watch or the iPad. Apple Watch started out as an expensive “fashion accessory” and a “communication device” but over the decade of its existence, it has almost entirely ended up as a cheap health tracker, a better “fit-bit” and has thrived for it. This isn’t entirely dissimilar to the fate of the iPad. It didn’t turn out to be a new “computing platform” as many had wanted or declared it would be. It does not really replace a laptop despite the heroic efforts of many. It is used mostly as a gorgeous consumption device by most with the cheapest versions selling the most. I feel Vision Pro will meet a similar fate. A small cohort of users will try to use it to redefine computing, but it will end up largely as a gorgeous consumption device, which, at the right price point of ~$2,000, will see sustained success.