One thing Apple doesn't seem to be cognizant of is that once developers flip the bozo bit on a platform, they never come back — it's a death spiral. That's the danger visionOS faces with its current strategy.
You know what other platform launched with half-finished/emulated system apps and no content? Windows 8. And Microsoft literally paid third-party developers to come onboard, sent them devices, gave them all the support they needed, even ported their apps for them, yet it still didn't work
@markv @stroughtonsmith I think the problems of the Vision Pro go way past “gripes”: besides minor gripes like being WAY too expensive and WAY too heavy, which perhaps could be fixed, the truly big one is Apple’s structural inability to make the right calls:
- in the absence of a new killer app, target towards exercise, games and media consumption
- make the platform viable by financing the first wave of apps, games & content
- bring third parties on board as partners
@frankreiff @stroughtonsmith But I think the 1st one may be trickier? Deciding whether to target gaming or productivity is such a fundamental product choice with such impact on hardware and software design that I'm not sure if it's something they made the wrong call on?
The device they wanted to build is something to be used professionally as a tool for surgeons, 3D CAD designers, etc etc. I don't think you can build that hardware and then target the software & content towards gaming & media 🤷♂️
@markv @stroughtonsmith I think that’s the biggest problem of them all.. they WANT to go for high margin professional uses, but that does not vibe at all.
I saw the surgery marketing stunt.. a non-sterilizable headset with super low accuracy eye-tracking input for precision surgery.. makes perfect sense.. you need special licenses for use in surgical applications.. and hyper specialized software.. and those things are sold as hardware, software, support, maintenance contracts bundles..
@frankreiff @stroughtonsmith Yeah I agree it's mostly a marketing stunt - a bit like giving the latest Beats headphones to celebrities or publishing stories about people's lives saved by their Apple Watch: it communicates product aspiration, even if 99% of users won't fall into that category.
Plus the surgery thing was (if I remember well) about Vision Pro being used by the scrub nurse managing the instruments, not the surgeons themselves.
@markv @stroughtonsmith you’re right.. it was the scrub nurse.. but the intent was clearly to associate AVR with medical applications.. and think of the possibilities! 😀
A bit like that car launch video with Tim in cyberspace.
Steve Troughton-Smith
Frank Reiff
MarkV