25,000 Apple headshow, who buys it?
Shynrancaijing original
Author | Wang Min
Edit | Jin Xuanfan
The XR industry's "iPhone moment" is coming?
In the early morning of June 6, Beijing time, Apple's 2023 Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) kicked off. Historically, software updates have been WWDC's main focus. But this time, the limelight was completely stolen by Apple's "one more thing" - MR (mixed reality) headset Apple Vision Pro.
After watching the press conference of about 2 hours, a user said that the first 80 minutes of updates and upgrades made people can't help but complain "just here", and when Apple used 40 minutes to finish the finale of Apple Vision Pro, the audience's reaction immediately changed to "real fragrance".
According to the introduction, the difficulty of operation of Apple Vision Pro has been greatly reduced, and users only need to operate by moving their gaze, with gestures and voice, unlike most VR devices that were equipped with a handle.
At the same time, another major feature of Apple Vision Pro is that it can be wirelessly connected with other hardware devices in the Apple ecosystem in scenarios such as work, audio, communication, and entertainment.
But the price of Apple's MR headset may have dissuaded many people. The price is 3,499 US dollars, equivalent to about 25,000 yuan, and the sale price is basically the same as the previous forecast of the outside world, which is a high-end product. Apple plans to be the first to release it in the United States early next year, which means that the product is almost a year away from the actual sale, and it may take longer to launch in the Chinese market.
Since the VR (virtual reality) field first exploded in 2015, the XR industry has experienced several ups and downs in the past eight years. In 2023, due to factors such as poor user experience, lack of content ecology, and unclear commercialization prospects, the XR business lines of large manufacturers have reduced their investment and focused on conservation. The industry is eager to break the bottleneck of the industry and help the industry enter a new stage of development.
At the press conference, Apple CEO Cook said that just as Mac brings us into the era of personal computing, iPhone brings us into the era of mobile computing, Apple Vision Pro will lead us into the era of spatial computing.
Qin Kai, a senior practitioner in the VR industry, said to Shen Ran that the advent of Vision Pro shows that the VR all-in-one machine is changing from focusing on VR experience and game interaction to MR and productivity tools. It is pleasantly surprised by hardware performance, interaction and spatial computing, and multi-terminal cross-screen interaction.
Of course, the "emergency release" of Apple's MR headset has shortcomings in battery life, and what are the requirements and changes of the new interaction method for game experience design, and whether the underlying system has accelerated and supported AIGC, and there are still many unknowns, which make many practitioners feel imperfect in addition to surprises.
Apple amplified the move, MR headset bombed the field
After skipping tickets countless times, Apple's MR headset Apple Vision Pro has finally arrived.
In terms of design, Vision Pro is like a ski goggle. After wearing it, users can not only see the page of the virtual world, various apps are presented in front of them, but also see things in the real world, and can be controlled by APP only with gestures or voice.
Image source / WWDC
The competition in the XR industry has been dominated by VR (virtual reality), AR (augmented reality) single-line breakthroughs, compared to the previous use of VR equipment will be closed immersed in the virtual world, MR is to break the boundary of VR and AR, the two are integrated, to form "mixed reality", before the industry players have not made much progress, and now Apple's products have taken a big step forward in this direction.
At the press conference, Apple demonstrated the application of Apple Vision Pro in different scenarios such as work, home entertainment, voice calls, and movie watching.
Among them, in the work scene, Vision Pro can be wirelessly connected with Mac, iPhone and iPad and other devices to achieve synchronization of memos and other information, and at the same time, each APP interface can be placed at will, and the information reception is no longer limited to the 2D plane, but can achieve 3D stereoscopic reception. And when someone comes to talk, users can communicate directly without taking off their glasses, and the interaction between virtual and real has become more fluid and natural. When using FaceTime, Vision Pro uses machine learning to create a real user image – reflecting facial and hand movements in real time.
In home entertainment scenarios, its Eyesight feature allows other people in the room to see the eyes of the headset wearer, creating real-world conversations. Vision Pro is also Apple's first 3D camera that supports spatial photo and spatial video features to capture and review 3D video. In addition, in the entertainment experience, it can automatically adjust the light, use it to watch 3D movies, and any room can be turned into a space theater.
In order to expand the content ecology, Apple has partnered with Disney to provide content for the headset. Disney CEO Bob Iger said that users who buy Apple's Vision Pro headset can get Disney Plus for free and watch TV series and movies in a virtual setting.
Qin Kai said that Vision Pro brings a new natural and smooth interaction method, that is, a new eye movement + voice + gesture interaction, which is subversive for the future of office, creative design, and pan-entertainment content experience forms.
Gesture capture based on eye tracking, facial reconstruction, and facial expressions will make remote work and social experiences more immersive and efficient. In the future, the LUI (Natural Language User Interface) form combined with AIGC technology will greatly improve production efficiency and multi-person collaboration efficiency, such as remote meetings will become more realistic scenes, conference rooms, whiteboards, participants are displayed in a three-dimensional form of space, and there are delicate expressions and body interaction, which will change the problem of low communication efficiency of remote office.
Users can have such a user experience, inseparable from Apple's breakthroughs in screens, audio systems, chips, space operating systems and other levels.
On the screen, Apple uses two MicroLED screens inside the Apple Vision Pro, integrating 23 million pixels, surpassing 4K resolution. On the audio side, Vision Pro uses an all-new spatial audio system with dual-driver audio pods and ambient spatial audio to match sound to the user's room and uses audio ray tracing to analyze specific material in the user's space to provide a good enough audio to hear.
Vision Pro uses a unique two-chip model, where the M2 chip is used to support product performance and the new R1 chip is used for data transmission, ensuring that the content is presented in front of the user's eyes in real time.
Like Apple's other hardware devices, Vision Pro also has its own operating system, the world's first space operating system, Vision OS, which makes digital content seem to exist in the real world through the mode of user interaction with digital content.
The life of the Vision Pro is still an issue. There is no built-in battery, and it can be used all day when the charging cable is connected, and if the charging cable is not connected, the battery life can only last about 2 hours. The inconvenience brought by this has become one of the slots criticized by users.
Qin Kai said that the current external battery adopted by Vision Pro is a compromise design scheme, and the actual experience may be shrunk on the basis of 2 hours.
More than 20,000 MR headsets, do they meet the expectations of the outside world?
"It's like a sci-fi world has come to life," surprised users commented similarly. The essence of XR device hardware-level competition is display technology, and one user said that being able to achieve a monocular 4K display effect may mean that immersion will bring qualitative changes.
Zhao Wei, a senior practitioner in the XR industry, told Deep Burn that Apple Vision Pro still has a lot of innovation. First of all, the use of two chips provides powerful computing power and makes the user experience smoother. Secondly, it can be connected with Apple's ecosystem and realize multiple virtual large screens in office scenarios. These are only smoother and easier to achieve if hardware tech giant Apple does this.
Qin Kai believes that the opening up with the Apple ecosystem has expanded the use scenarios and frequency of Vision Pro, and the positioning of the original mainstream VR all-in-one machine in the C end is mainly game entertainment will change, and it is possible to replace MacBook and iPad in the future.
But at the same time, Apple is making balances and trade-offs, the most obvious of which is a compromise battery life solution.
For Apple's Vision Pro and Meta's Quest 3, which emphasized MR on June 1, Qin Kai believes that this shows that the industry is shifting to MR and productivity tools.
In the past, VR equipment in people's impression, there are two main functions, one is to watch movies, the other is to play games. Meta, which has always had a leading edge in the XR field, can become popular with its Quest series products, which is inseparable from large-scale games in the content ecosystem, especially paying attention to the user's VR game experience. Under the positioning of productivity tools, Apple's attention to the game experience is very general.
Zhao Wei mentioned that Apple canceled the controller control in the interaction, and used eye tracking and gesture recognition mode to reduce the difficulty of the user's operation, but at the same time, some complex interactions in VR games will have some difficulties to complete, and may need to be completed with the help of gamepads. At the press conference, Apple also mentioned that Vision Pro can play games and supports gamepads. But obviously the game is not the focus this time, Apple may hope to make trade-offs to highlight the positioning of the main office scene.
Qin Kai also mentioned that the Vision Pro, priced at nearly 25,000 yuan, the entire demonstration is audio and video interaction, there is no introduction to customized games, what are the features in the interactive experience of the game, and what technical support Apple will do, it is still unknown. The current demo is a bit like changing the original game console to the positioning of the Mac and iPad.
Putting aside the neglect of the gaming scene, if the Vision Pro becomes a productivity tool, it means that the rigidity will increase. However, the XR industry that Apple faces is still an immature industry.
Before the product release, foreign media reported that Apple's first MR headset device real machine form far from meeting Apple CEO Cook's psychological expectations, thick design, external battery, inconvenient connection, appearance is even more difficult to reach ordinary glasses. This is very far from Cook's original vision of the MR headset, or it may be delayed again.
Today, the advent of Vision Pro has a bit of "to" meaning. Moreover, Apple's MR products, one year away from the real sale, may be longer in the Chinese market. Some analysts said that Apple was not fully prepared for mass production before the release of this new product.
Zhao Wei mentioned that Apple should seize the opportunity of the XR industry, which is only the first generation of products, and there may be many shortcomings. Moreover, Apple's products often go through two to three generations of iterations before they really mature. Qin Kai also said that Apple's Vision Pro this time surprised the market, but it was not excited.
Apple MR, can it afford the "hope of the whole village"?
The imperfect Apple MR headset is still waiting for the industry, because the entire XR industry needs new vitality.
In 2015, the XR industry ushered in a frenzy of entrepreneurship and capital, but two years later it entered a trough. Until 2021, driven by the popularity of the metaverse concept and the sales of Meta Quest 2 exceeding 10 million, the XR industry ushered in a new heat.
But this boom has not been able to continue, from the situation of the past year, the technical path of manufacturers to explore VR has been clear, but at the same time it means that it is difficult to make new breakthroughs in the short term, in this case, the commercialization dilemma of the XR industry is still difficult to solve.
In 2023, the XR business lines of major manufacturers at home and abroad have begun to shrink. Tencent's XR business department is adjusted across the board, PICO personnel are optimized, and even the former leader Meta cannot drive the entire XR industry. Meta's financial report for the first quarter of this year shows that the revenue of its metaverse-related departments has fallen year-on-year, but the investment is still continuing, and it is expected that the operating loss will continue to increase in 2023.
At a time when the industry is in trouble, the industry has high expectations for Apple's MR devices, hoping that Apple can change the industry's recession with new technical routes and products.
Apple, which once created the iPhone legend, is believed to have decades of experience in hardware development and design, and Apple itself has created a complete ecosystem of hardware, software, services and content.
Today, Apple Vision Pro offers new ideas for industry development. However, whether the birth of Apple's MR device can become a turning point in the industry is still a question mark.
For whether Apple's MR headset can change the status quo of the industry, Qin Kai is cautiously optimistic. This generation of products is more like the "Daystar" of the industry, will give MR and new ways of interaction, bring a new experience in terms of productivity and pan-entertainment, but it must not be the most perfect form.
At present, it is indeed difficult to rely on Apple to return the XR industry to the peak in the short term. The price of $3499 is destined to be very niche for buyers, and it is difficult to quickly complete market education, and may even have a certain limit on the early content ecology. In the next 2-3 years, how to quickly reduce the price of products to consumer grade has become the key.
For example, Meta's Quest 3, although the overall experience is not as good as Apple, but the price of about $500 is only one-seventh of Vision Pro, making it more acceptable to mass users.
The positive effect that Apple has brought to the market is still worthy of recognition. "Apple's entry has given the industry a reassurance", Zhao Wei said to Shen Ran, before that, the big manufacturers that entered XR were mostly Internet manufacturers, and lacked experience in hardware design, so that many people would be skeptical about the development of the entire XR industry. Now, with hardware technology giants like Apple, the outside world will not doubt the ability and determination of such a large factory, and will have stronger confidence in the XR industry.
*The title image comes from Apple's official website. At the request of the interviewee, Zhao Wei is a pseudonym in the article.