Author: Liu Fan
Editor: Lin Jiongjia Is the Vision Pro the next iPhone or an expensive technology vase?The question has been debated since Apple released the Vision Pro at WWDC on June 6, 2023. Nearly a year on, it has been almost impossible to reach a consensus about it, whether it is the technology industry or ordinary users, whether it is the people who buy and use it, or those who have only learned about it on the Internet. For products with obvious technical and product characteristics, but the public evaluation is polarized, most of the time there will be a consensus that is not a consensus - time will tell. Those who support Vision Pro see time as a silent weapon, while those who criticize Vision Pro expect the "emperor's new clothes" to be peeled off by time. A year is not a long time, but it is not a short time in the ever-changing consumer electronics industry, and the Vision Pro has been released for nearly a year, and now we can see it clearly?
At last year's conference, Apple CEO Tim Cook said that the Vision Pro would "usher in the era of spatial computing," and in 2007, Steve Jobs defined the original iPhone as "reinventing the phone," and in 2007, Jobs was humble in comparison. The reason why the Vision Pro and the original iPhone are frequently compared is also largely due to the fact that the two faced very similar controversies at the beginning of their launch.
With a multi-touch screen and the epoch-making OS X operating system (the predecessor of iOS), the original iPhone has an interactive experience and Internet capabilities that far surpass any other mobile phone, as well as the integration of MP3 and MP4 music and video functions, making it a highly applicable mobile device. But on the other hand, its screen reaches 3.5 inches, and the battery life can only be used for about 5 hours, which is far less than the battery life of the feature phone for several days; there is no physical keyboard, and it is criticized for "typing on glass", and the text input efficiency is very low; the huge screen makes it extremely resistant to falling, like a "vase". The Vision Pro is like this: it has the best display technology at the moment, it can achieve unparalleled 3D stereoscopic video, almost everyone who has experienced it is impressed, it uses gestures, eye movements and voice control, the accuracy and convenience are far greater than other VR/AR, and it is equipped with the new visionOS operating system, with a new interactive mode and UI design, which lowers the threshold for using virtual reality devices.
On the other hand, the Vision Pro weighs more than 600g, and almost everyone who uses it for a long time will not give a good review of its wearing experience; in the case of using an external battery, it can only be used for about 2 hours, and it can't even watch a "Avengers". By analogy, the Vision Pro has received almost the same reviews as the original iPhone: they have so long boards that only the industry can offer such features, such as new ways to interact with each other, and their shortcomings are so short that they can even be called semi-finished compared to their peers, such as the battery life of both can only last a few hours. So, can we say that the Vision Pro is the next iPhone? Not yet.
Historically, there have been many "meteor" products that were stunning at first and then disappeared in the dust. In 2011, Google's smart glasses Google Glass was no worse than the current Vision Pro, but this product was discontinued last year and has a full life cycle of only 12 years. Even Apple launched the world's first tablet, Newton, in 1993. Now, 17 years after the release of the original iPhone, it's clear why the iPhone has created a wave of smartphones – its long board far outweighs its shortcomings. We often use the "barrel effect" to describe a product, saying that the short board determines the lower limit of a product, but this sentence actually ignores the significance of the long board to the upper limit. Compared to other phones of the same era, the shortcomings of the iPhone are very obvious, but the extremely good longboard allows it to fill the bucket with more water even when the shortcomings are obvious - as much as possible to amplify its advantage range, so that users love the iPhone more than they dislike the shortcomings. Like a tilted bucket.
The original iPhone did exactly that: the new operating system allowed children to control their phones intuitively, listened to songs, watched videos, made phone calls, texted, and combined entertainment and business, and made Internet tools such as the new browser as easy to surf the Internet on mobile phones as easy as PCs, greatly improving the efficiency of surfing the Internet. In short, the perfect display of interaction, the great satisfaction of entertainment, and the great improvement of Internet efficiency have made the original iPhone have far more capabilities than contemporaneous mobile phones, and they are the core functions of mobile phones, MP3, MP4 and even personal computers, rather than leftovers, so that users ignore their shortcomings. This is also the core reason why smartphones represented by iPhones can replace feature phones. What's more, the so-called "shortcomings" of the original iPhone were only compared to the feature phones of the time, not the innate defects that violated human habits. For example, although the battery life of several hours is very short compared to the feature phone, it has almost no impact on the daily use of the phone, watching videos, listening to songs, etc., after the user develops the habit of charging, the battery life of several days is meaningless for most people;
A real-life example is that just six months after the release of the original iPhone, the New York Times, based on internal Google data obtained, showed that for the first time during the Christmas period in 2007, Google's website received more visits from the iPhone than any other model. According to the data released by IDC, a market research institute at the time, the iPhone only accounted for 2% of the global smartphone market, far lower than the other "predecessors" - Symbian mobile phones accounted for 63% of the share, and Microsoft Windows Mobile accounted for 11%. Therefore, although the media had mixed reviews of the iPhone at that time, the users who actually bought the iPhone used traffic to prove that its product power was outstanding. So, in the case of the Vision Pro, can we see a similar performance of the long board far more than the short board? The answer is no. As mentioned above, the advantages of Vision Pro are mainly focused on the visual experience and interaction mode, and the actual performance is indeed far beyond the current VR/AR, if you look at the VR/AR industry, Vision Pro is undoubtedly an excellent product, but VR/AR is a niche device, and the original iPhone is not at the same level as the mobile phone market that sells billions of units per year. That's why Apple defines it as a "next-generation spatial computing device", with a mission to replace personal computers or smartphones as a new generation of national products. If you compare smartphones, you will find that the so-called 3D video, air interaction, etc. on the Vision Pro do not pose a substantial threat to smartphones, because the two are not the same way at all. In addition, the experience on the Vision Pro can be called "revolutionary", but in terms of operational efficiency, there is almost no advantage over smartphones. For example, Air Motion is not more efficient than Touch, but it is better than other VR/AR products. For another example, in the office and Internet scenarios mentioned at Apple's press conference, Vision Pro just placed a few more windows in the space.
On the other hand, the shortcomings of the Vision Pro are not as dispensable as the original iPhone, but very deadly. Even with an external battery, the Vision Pro only has a battery life of about two hours, and it's hard to even watch a longer movie, but the film and television experience is one of its core selling points. The Vision Pro is too heavy to make it feel very poor for long periods of time, and can cause eye discomfort and even physiological damage, while the original iPhone never had any problems with human usage (excluding software operation). Endurance and weight are the biggest shortcomings of the Vision Pro, which is so short that it has involved the most extensive human experience and operating habits, rather than just a flaw in product design. Without revolutionary innovations in batteries, semiconductors, heat dissipation, and more, it's hard to see Vision Pro solve them in subsequent update iterations. In general, the Vision Pro does not show a unique advantage over other computing devices on the long board, but on the short board, it has fatal flaws that are difficult to solve in a short time, and being expensive is only its most insignificant shortcoming. Therefore, although the Vision Pro and the original iPhone have similarities in product features and reviews, it is difficult to compare the fates of the two. Now that the Vision Pro has only been on sale for three months, the market discussion has almost disappeared, which also shows that it is very far from the needs of ordinary users.
On April 29, well-known technology journalist Mark Gurman said that the release of Apple's Vision Pro successor may be delayed until the end of 2026, but before launching the second generation, Apple must find a way to reduce costs, "As far as I know, Apple is still confused about how to reduce costs." Gurman also said that this year Apple plans to launch a new and upgraded visionOS 2.0 operating system for the Vision Pro, but it is not expected to bring revolutionary changes. The next big move for the Vision Pro will be an international expansion, which Apple is preparing to introduce to the Chinese market. Also comparing the development history of the iPhone, a year after the launch of the original iPhone, Apple brought the iPhone 3G in June 2008, which greatly made up for the shortcomings in network speed, and sales skyrocketed by 7 times. If the iteration speed of the Vision Pro is so slow, it may be difficult to maintain enough heat in the market to promote its sales growth. At present, the industry's sales estimate for the year has been reduced from the initial million units to hundreds of thousands of units - Tianfeng Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said that Apple has cut Vision Pro shipments to 40-450,000 units in 2024.
Without the stimulation of new products, it is difficult to attract developers to develop new applications for Vision Pro with such a low number of users, and eventually a vicious circle is formed. From a technical point of view, the Vision Pro is undoubtedly very innovative, but in terms of solving user pain points and improving entertainment and work efficiency, it does not show revolutionary advantages, and it is not the same as the original iPhone. For Apple, the global tech giant, there is little to no marketing to think about, as long as the product is not bad, even if it is expensive, users will pay for it, and they have proven this countless times. The only thing Apple needs to think about is what users really need and how it can be implemented. The latter is a technical question, while the former is a product philosophy question, which is very pure, but extremely difficult to solve. From the establishment of the Apple Car project to its abandonment, it proves that Apple knows what users want, but it can't achieve it. The Vision Pro is a different story, with Apple innovating "Only Apple can do", but it doesn't seem to be sure what "users need". Whether or not this question can be truly answered will be the fundamental decision of the fate of Vision Pro.
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