Apple's most powerful head display, Vision Pro, is here. Is the Metaverse saved?

The entire industry is waiting for Apple to save it.

At Apple’s 2023 Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC23), Jobs’ successor Cook brought One More Thing to this conference: Apple’s first MR head-mounted display Vision Pro, which can be said to be Apple’s most important event in recent years. hardware products.

Public business reports praised it as "the peak of its debut, Apple's most powerful head display." Apple spent seven years polishing the Vision Pro, and delayed its release many times. According to the on-site product introduction, Vison Pro is equipped with both M2 and the new R1 chip. R1 is a chip specially developed for this product. It is mainly responsible for data transmission and is designed for the challenging task of real-time sensor processing. The device can be used all day when charged, or for 2 hours when not charging and using an external battery plugged in through the headphone jack. Vision Pro also has its own operating system called vision OS. Users can control Vision Pro with their hands, eyes and voice to experience movies, TV shows and games in a more immersive way.

From Apple’s perspective, Vision Pro can be seen as a new computer that seamlessly integrates the real world and the electronic world. It is the first Apple product that is “invisible but visible”. Cook also spoke highly of the product when he released it, calling it a "revolutionary new product" that "marks the beginning of a journey that will change the way people communicate, collaborate, work and play." And unilaterally It is announced that Apple Vision Pro will lead us into the era of spatial computing - the "we" here can be understood as the XR or digital industry in a narrow sense, or it can also be the human world in a broader sense. Standard apple-style pancake, but very comfortable.

The last time a product was defined in this way was way back in 2007. The original iPhone was released, and Apple re-invented the mobile phone. Steve Jobs’s opening remarks: Every once in a while, a revolutionary product will appear.

is still ringing in our ears. Relying on Steve Jobs’s vision and the support of “revolutionary products” with strong traces of Joe’s style such as Mac, iPad, iPhone and Apple Watch, Apple has grown into the strongest technology company on earth with a market value of more than 2.8 trillion US dollars. Among them, the iPhone has brilliantly fulfilled its mission of "reinventing the mobile phone" and accelerated mankind's entry into the mobile Internet era.

For Cook, he has been in charge of Apple for more than 12 years since he succeeded Steve Jobs as CEO of Apple in 2011. I have to admit that he is an outstanding successor. He has reshaped Apple's supply chain, sorted out its product system, helped Apple's stock price continue to climb to new highs, and created generous wealth returns for shareholders. However, his personal label is always somewhat meaningless. The key is One point: lack of representative products.

Cook needs his "iPhone moment" to prove himself. Apple Vision Pro has high hopes, but like the library-style iPhone releases in the past few years, it is innovative but not amazing. Behind the fancy marketing rhetoric, the more real meaning is that this is the first time Apple has launched a new product type since 2014, and it is also Apple's first 3D camera product, which is expected to redefine an industry.

This meaning is obviously more important to Cook.

At the same time, the XR industry is waiting for Apple. According to media reports, at WWDC23, a senior in the VR industry pointed out with tears that Vision Pro’s significance to the industry “will extend the life of the VR industry for at least 10 years.” This is the luck and sadness of the industry.

There are also comments that Apple’s most powerful headset will save the Metaverse and rekindle the flames of the Metaverse in terms of technical routes, content ecology, and user experience. But it is obviously too early to be happy. The unfinished business of Mark Zuckerberg is not a burden that Vision Pro can bear.

Judging from the current public information, the launch of Vision Pro is a bit hasty, and the release pace is also cautious: the release time is set for early next year, and will only be sold on the Apple website and retail stores in the United States. The global release will be later next year. 7 times that of Meta Quest 3, up to US$3,499, or more than 24,000 yuan, the price also shows that the first generation Vision Pro is more for developers and B-end users, rather than ordinary consumers. It is not a consumer-grade product. electronic products.

Since the Steve Jobs era, Apple has been good at disruptive innovation rather than pioneering innovation. That is, Apple is good at starting from mature product categories and dares to pile up materials to provide consumers with products with better experience. Dominate the market, iPhone, Mac, iPad are all like this.

The concept of the metaverse is too grand, and there are many dreamers, but the threshold for dreamers is too high.

A few days before Apple released Vision Pro, Mazza (Mark Zuckerberg) preemptively released the next-generation VR headset Meta Quest 3, priced at US$500 and scheduled to be launched in the fall of 2023. But the head-mounted display equipment market is far from optimistic. According to data from market research company IDC, sales of AR/VR headsets fell by 21% year-on-year in 2022, from 11.2 million units to 8.8 million units, of which Meta’s Quest accounts for approximately 80% of the market share. IDC attributed the year-on-year decline to "a limited number of suppliers in the market, a challenging macroeconomic environment, and low consumer acceptance of the market."

The estimate of Apple Vision Pro shipments is also more cautious. Some consulting organizations pessimistically believe that because this new head-mounted display product is expensive and difficult to produce, it will only attract a small group of developers after its official launch, and may not exceed 100,000 units in the end. The dissipation of the virtual fire of the Metaverse in the past period also proves that without the participation of consumers, it will take time for the wave of the Metaverse to roll over. We can also see that the tide of the times is surging in artificial intelligence and large models. Microsoft's Metaverse department, Tencent's XR business, and Byte's PICO have either been disbanded or made layoffs and adjustments. Nvidia, on the other hand, has become the ninth trillion-dollar company by selling AI shovels. Meta’s stock price has plummeted, and it has withdrawn from the trillion-dollar market capitalization club, relying on AI to save face.

But Apple is quiet. The 3 comments in the circle of friends are more authentic, and their names are hidden here and quoted:

Compared with the ChatGPT4 launch, this Apple conference has no highlights. It seems like Don Quixote of the old era is challenging the windmill of the new era.

Apple still wants to continue to make money from Chinese people. Not only did more than half of the leading digital bloggers in the country attend the press conference, this was something that did not happen in previous years.

Many people say this is some kind of future product, alien technology! In fact, it’s just a combination of already existing technologies! Apple dares to pile up materials and raise prices! Starting from $3,499!

When I saw some media advocating that the next iPhone may not be a mobile phone, I couldn’t help but think that Guo Degang’s words may be more appropriate: It’s not that I am excellent, it all depends on the support of my peers.

Tang Chen, a student, pays attention to Internet technology and business stories. Original content, no reproduction without permission.

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