Wired wag: ‘Apple’s Vision Pro is an alarming misfire; will flop’
A Wired wag will “bet everything that Apple’s Vision Pro will flop,” calling it ” a rare misfire” and an “unavoidable failure.”
This is not a “revolutionary” gadget, no matter how confident Tim Cook looks when he says it is. It’s a rare misfire, and a sign that Apple is losing its ability to turn tech-geek novelties into normie must-haves. It doesn’t augur the future so much as suggest that Cupertino doesn’t have a clear view forward…
[A]n Apple headset, no matter how nifty its specs, is still a big honking gizmo plonked between its wearer and the rest of the world, inherently a barrier more than a conduit…
The very basic truth that the appetite for daily-use headsets is simply not there has already damaged the Vision Pro’s reception; the normally rapturous public response to a big new Apple announcement has been tempered with skepticism this time around, with plenty of people pointing out that the VR/AR market is already littered with bold-named failures…
Apple isn’t the same company it used to be. When was the last behavior-shifting new Apple product launched, the type that gets absorbed into a daily fixture?
It’s a tough sell on a conceptual level, so no matter what the execution looks like, it’d be difficult to pull off. To make matters worse, the execution is flawed. If Apple had found a way to make a mixed-reality headset that weighed 4 ounces, or functioned more like regular glasses, maybe. Right now, though, it’s offering a marginally sleeker upgrade to a decidedly uncool-looking genre of headset. The nerd goggles look like nerd goggles…
This is an antisocial device, one which the average person would be wholly reasonable to reject and even ridicule… [T]his yassified Oculus is proof that even Apple can make missteps. One can only hope that the unavoidable failure of Vision Pro might clear the company’s sights, galvanizing actual innovation instead of this disappointing foray into gimmickry.
Via: Wired.com
