Apple Vision Pro: Great Marketing, and a Vision for the Future Most People Might Not Want

Yesterday, Apple unveiled its much-anticipated virtual/mixed reality headset, officially named Apple Vision Pro. Priced at an eye-watering $3,499 (excluding any potential sales taxes), the device is set to release in Q1/24 in the US with global markets to follow. While the full technical details and capabilities are not known yet, the release event was informative enough to generate a ton of conversation.

In this blog post, I'll delve into the marketing employed by Apple in the launch, discuss the product features and potential applications, and contemplate its positioning. 

For full disclosure, I’m a former employee of Varjo, a company specializing in high-end mixed and virtual reality headsets mainly for the use cases. I believe they represent the current pinnacle of this technology, so I will be doing some comparisons between the two as well - even though they are geared towards different audiences.

You can watch the launch announcement here for example.

Marketing Mastery and Challenges

Apple is marketing Vision Pro as a revolutionary new device category. CEO Tim Cook even uttered the iconic phrase "One more thing," an homage to the late Steve Jobs, to underline how big he thinks this product could end up being. 

The launch event for the Vision Pro was characterized by Apple’s signature sleek look, which was not surprising. Apple's marketing and launch events for each individual product are top of the line.

What I appreciate about the company the most, and where Apple truly shines, is not the individual launches though. It’s how they’ve built and marketed the entire product portfolio. Each device contributes to the whole, and Apple truly is a masterful example of building a portfolio of products and marketing it.

The Vision Pro was certainly no exception in terms of an individual device. The sleek videos accompanying the presentation showcased mainly entertainment and productivity-oriented use cases, such as browsing the internet and watching photos and video content in massive size in your field of view. 

However, this is also where the problems with Vision Pro begin. Unlike the previous entry into the product family, the Apple Watch, I’m not entirely convinced there is a natural, incremental place for the Vision Pro in Apple’s portfolio, a sentiment some of the early reporters echoed as well. 

Although Apple did not say it out loud, what I feel it is ultimately angling for is replacing your laptop (and your TV to a lesser extent) with the Vision Pro and products that’ll inevitably follow it. This first generation certainly won’t be capable of that, but I believe this is the eventual goal somewhere down the line.

Mixed Reality Can Be Incredible, But It’s a Hard Sell to Consumers

The Vision Pro is capable of both virtual reality (meaning all content the user sees is digital) as well as mixed reality, where cameras in the device show you the outside world and blend digital objects into it. 

Both technologies have been around for a while now, but broader consumer adoption still hasn’t happened – not for the lack of effort from other major players like Meta though.

Sorry Mark, I don’t think that’s going to do it.

More specialized players like Varjo have found success by exclusively focusing on the enterprise space and business use cases such as industrial design or simulation. 

The things that have been possible in mixed reality for the past few years are truly astonishing, but most of the applications are not focused on consumer-oriented use cases. Furthermore, the cost of these technologies - especially at high enough quality - is still fairly massive, as Apple’s price tag goes to show. 

Make no mistake, mixed reality is a really exciting technology, but notoriously difficult to market, because all digital marketing is displayed in 2D mediums, which simply fail to communicate how great 3D experiences can be.

Demo videos can give you some indication of what XR and VR can do, but you really need to try these devices out for yourself to truly understand what kind of a game changer it can be. 

The first time I tried a mixed reality headset was one of the few times I’ve truly been astonished by technology as a lifelike, and lifesize, digital replica of a car was projected in front of me.

However, that was a professional use case, and I’m not entirely sure most people really want mixed reality for entertainment or social purposes – especially if the price starts at around 3500 dollars (vs. a 100-inch LED tv which costs much less per person viewing it).

Sure, you can remove the limitations of how big your TV is and show an entirely virtual screen of hundreds of inches on top of the real world in mixed reality, but I’m not sure that is very attractive to people at the end of the day, especially if they need to sit around wearing what looks like a pair of expensive ski goggles. 

This is why the productivity use cases also need to be solid enough for the proposition to work – and also why Apple seems to be putting a lot of effort into them. If people can replace meaningful parts of their daily lives and tasks done on computers or phones with a headset, then the consumer value proposition might be compelling enough.

Interesting Control Schemes and Interaction Possibilities 

The Vision Pro boasts gesture and gaze controls, allowing users to interact with the mixed reality environment without controllers. From early tests by tech journalists, this seems to work really well.

There are also other nifty applications to enhance interaction with others and avoiding a sense of total isolation, such as the mixed reality scene adapting when a person gets close to you to show them, even if you’ve dimmed the real world to watch a movie. 

Apple also claimed to be the first to achieve interaction with other people in mixed reality, which simply isn’t true. Companies like Varjo have enabled this for several years now, although mainly in the enterprise space. As other devices have mainly been accessible to business users, this could be the first consumer device to make it happen more broadly though.

Yeah, looks totally natural and would be great to talk to this person while they wear the device, right?

Another interesting application was EyeSight, an outward display that reveals your eyes while wearing Vision Pro.

According to Apple, this lets others know when you are using apps or are fully immersed. While it can certainly be useful in some situations, like when trying to talk to a person while they are wearing the device, I can’t quite shake the feeling that people won’t really enjoy talking to people wearing these things unless they absolutely must.

The way I’d expect most people to behave in these situations is basically showing that they’ve seen you, removing the device, and then talking to you, just like they would look away from a computer screen. Again, behavior you can identify with and something that could replace traditional computers.

Positioning Challenges in Uncanny Valley

Apple highlighted several use cases for the Vision Pro, including mindfulness, virtual desktop with larger screens, immersive media consumption, FaceTime integration, and a built-in 3D camera for capturing images and video. 

However, some scenes in the marketing videos, such as a father recording his kids with the device and watching it alone on a couch later, felt somewhat cringey and failed to convince me of the device's practicality in social settings. And this brings me to the biggest problem I have with the device so far.

While these types of devices are great for one person to use without outside distractions, and also when collaborating with others to do professional work, they feel really uncomfortable in social settings for the vast majority of us.

The preferred behavior will always be to remove these devices when you need to interact with others – the mixed reality just helps you be aware of what’s happening around you so you can do it at the right time. Again, this could a meaningful computer replacement given enough time, and the use cases certainly support that, but the marketing just makes it seem weird when wearing these things in social situations is portrayed as the greatest time in our lives – outside of the first cup of coffee in the morning.

From a marketer’s perspective, my biggest gripe about the device is its position within Apple's product lineup is so unclear. It is difficult to ascertain whether the Vision Pro is meant to complement existing Apple products or replace laptops or even the iPhone altogether, given time. 

Nevertheless, Apple's pricing strategy could pay off here, especially in the long term after the next couple of generations of these devices have been released.

Pricing the Vision Pro higher than an iPhone or MacBook Air, and at fairly comparable levels to higher-end Macbook Pro models, could potentially convince consumers to hand over additional dollars to Apple if this is successfully sold to them as a laptop or even phone replacement. However, as an additional device I’m having a hard time seeing people outside of the really hardcore fans buying this for now.

In conclusion

As an industry observer, Apple entering the market is great. It will certainly increase competition and give developers of these technologies new ideas and motivation. I also like the fact that they did not attempt to go for a lower price point, but instead try to make an ambitious consumer device with high-end specs and new capabilities. Lower-priced alternatives from competitors will almost certainly become available if this kind of device does take off. 

However, whether the Vision Pro has the potential to spearhead a broader consumer VR shift – or more accurately, make people switch their laptops for mixed reality goggles, only time will tell. 

Apple's entry into the consumer mixed reality space marks a significant step forward for the industry. The true test lies in whether this product can unlock broad consumer appeal, something no device has been capable of before. And if it does indeed pull it off, this will also be one of the most successful product marketing pushes of all time.

If anyone is to succeed in this herculean task, it would most likely be Apple.  The marketing prowess, combined with intriguing features and applications could do the trick, but I’m not yet convinced this first device attempt is enough. With the current price point, capabilities, and a meager two hour battery life, it’s not enough to be a true game changer – yet.

Just like with many Apple products before, the true potential will probably show itself in the second or third generation Vision Pro, and I’ll be waiting with interest to see how this first generation and the ones that follow it sell in 2024 and beyond.