Wagner James Au / New World Notes

Tantalizing rumor tidbit from the largely reliable MacRumors:

Apple has sold upwards of 200,000 Vision Pro headsets, MacRumors has learned from a source with knowledge of Apple's sales numbers… Last Monday, Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo claimed that Apple had sold an estimated 160,000 to 180,000 Vision Pro units during the pre-order weekend for the device, so sales may have slowed somewhat since then.

… Kuo has warned that demand for the Vision Pro could taper off quickly because of the niche market for the device. 

So let's say 180,000-200,000 Vision Pro units have likely been sold even before its officially gone on sale this Friday. That's still significantly below my prediction of 250,000 being sold this year — and as Kuo suggests, there's only so many people left who are willing / able to buy the pricey device now. 

Continued sales of this year's pilot model depend in great part on good reviews, so let's round-up some prominent appraisals from a top tech news site and two highly-regarded Apple enthusiast sites:

The Verge:

The Vision Pro is an astounding product. It’s the sort of first-generation device only Apple can really make, from the incredible display and passthrough engineering, to the use of the whole ecosystem to make it so seamlessly useful, to even getting everyone to pretty much ignore the whole external battery situation.

[T]he biggest tradeoff of all is that using the Vision Pro is such a lonely experience, regardless of the weird ghost eyes on the front. You’re in there, having experiences all by yourself that no one else can take part in. After using the Vision Pro for a while, I’ve come to agree with what Tim Cook has been saying for so long: headsets are inherently isolating. That’s fine for traditional VR headsets, which have basically turned into single-use game consoles over the past decade, but it’s a lot weirder for a primary computing device.

Tom's Guide

In terms of entertainment, the 3D video experience on the Vision Pro is unmatched, and Immersive Video in particular has a ton of potential to change the way we view everything from concerts to sporting events. And the 3D goodness continues with moving spatial videos and photos that transform your memories into something hyper-real…

So what’s not to like about the Vision Pro? The super expensive price is a big one, as it will greatly limit this headset’s initial appeal. Some may want to wait for the rumored lower-cost version on the horizon, but there’s no timetable for that. I also found the tethered battery to be annoying at times and the Personas while admirable are a bit unnerving to look at. So hopefully they look considerably better after the beta stage. 

Daring Fireball

I’ve saved the best for last. Vision Pro is simply a phenomenal way to watch movies, and 3D immersive experiences are astonishing. There are 3D immersive experiences in Vision Pro that are more compelling than Disney World attractions that people win in line for hours to see…

The only hitch is that Vision Pro is utterly personal. Putting a headset on is by nature isolating — like headphones but more so, because eye contact is so essential for all primates. If you don’t often watch movies or shows or sports by yourself, it doesn’t make sense to buy a device that only you can see. Just this weekend, I watched most of the first half of the Chiefs-Ravens game in the Paramount+ app on Vision Pro, in a window scaled to the size of my entire living room wall. It was captivating. The image quality was a bit grainy scaled to that size (I believe the telecast was only in 1080 resolution), but it was better than watching on my TV simply because it was so damn big. But I wanted to watch the rest of the game (and the subsequent Lions-49ers game) with my wife, together on the sofa. I was happier overall sharing the experience with her, but damn if my 77-inch TV didn’t suddenly seem way too small.

 The "loneliness" aspect comes up a lot in reviews, and I don't think that reaction will ever go away. It's unwise to underestimate the importance of maintaining our social connections while computing — even if it's just the ability to see the blue light flickering on our significant other's face.