this post was submitted on 21 Mar 2025
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I don’t know if this counts as a conspiracy theory but I kind of suspect the story of the Vision Pro was that it was originally a real project focused as much on patents as anything. If they wanted a viable consumer product line, they’d have sold the 1st generation(s) at a loss to help an app ecosystem flourish and compete with other XR products (even if an Apple’s XR headset would still cost $500 more because Apple).
The US military was calling for XR headsets and even evaluated HoloLens. Companies were obviously exploring too. That’s when Vision Pro was under development. Apple isn’t really a military contractor — I’m not sure if they do any — but having patents to license to future XR headsets could potentially be very valuable and subsidize Vision Pro consumer pricing until the component prices fell.
Then, HoloLens shit the bed. It made soldiers nauseous and the military (and companies) pretty much lost interest in XR. The entire HoloLens team got laid off. By then, the Vision Pro was probably in early production but the potential revenue from having the most advanced XR’s patents became essentially nil. So, they just sold them at the actual cost and gave up on the product line.
In that scenario, the Vision Pro lead (and team) delivered exactly what Tim Apple wanted but the revenue potential disappeared. Meanwhile, “A.I. Siri” continued to suck (except the new animation; props to that team). So, the Vision Pro management was rewarded even if the Vision Pro failed in the market.
Or it’s just the classic Apple “launch some weird shit with a cool interaction model or form factor, but we don’t really know how people will -actually- use this.”
AppleTV, AppleWatch, Firewire iPod, HomePod, etc. They kick it out, people complain about it, Apple learns the users who adopted it, then they focus the feature set when they better understand the market fit.
IMHO, it seems like that’s the play here. Heck, they even started with the “pro” during the initial launch, which gives them a very obvious off ramp for a cheaper / more focused non-pro product.
That’s probably the Occam's razor explanation. I obviously have no proof for my little pet theory.