Apple Vision Pro reveals $3,500 price tag
January 9, 2024
Apple has revealed its long-awaited Vision Pro headset will go on sale on February 2nd in the US. Customers will have the option to pre-order the device from January 19th for $3,499 (€3,202).
The company revealed the headset in June 2023, but there have been issues since then. According to the FT, Apple has more than halved its production forecasts, dropping from an estimated one million units to 400,000 in 2024.
Apple also announced the device will have 256GB of storage, and it clarified that the headset’s eye-tracking technology can function by monitoring just one dominant eye for people who do not have full use of both eyes.
It is encouraging developers for the device to brand their apps as ‘spatial computing’, rather than ‘old=style’ AR. Unlike many existing headsets, Apple has detached the battery, so it doesn’t sit heavy on users’s heads – although it does mean the battery has to sit beside them instead, attached to a cable.
When on, familiar app icons pop up that users will recognise if they have used an iPhone – iMessage, Photos, Apple TV. Then on it’s all about gesture control – the headset tracks where the user is looking so when they look at an app and pinch their thumb and forefinger together, it opens. Users can choose their level of immersion using a physical dial to turn up or down the size of whatever it is they’re looking at. It can fill the entire room or appear like a TV screen superimposed against the wall. But if someone walks in front of the suer ‘in real life’, they can see the person no matter how immersed they are.