Apple’s latest product, the Apple Vision Pro, a mixed-reality headset that promises to deliver immersive experiences, has been met with overwhelming customer demand.
The pre-orders for the headset started early in the morning last Friday and were sold out in 18 minutes, according to Apple’s website. To the question: Is $3,499 too much? The answer is clearly 'no'. Those who managed to place their orders will be able to don their headsets on 2 February, the official launch date of the product.
Apple has yet to reveal how many units of the Vision Pro it has produced, but some reports suggest that it could be as many as 400,000 units. Whilst this is a whopping quantity, it's significantly lower than the production of a new iPhone, which usually runs into millions of units. Apple may, however, have opted for a conservative approach due to the high cost and complexity of the Vision Pro, and it may also have reserved some stock for its retail stores, which could offer another chance for customers who missed the online pre-order.
Apple revealed the headset back in June 2023 and released advanced prototypes to a select few media organisations, including the BBC. Their reporter described the user experience "as classic, minimalist Apple. Once the headset is on, you see the room around you but you're not seeing it through glass, you're seeing it through the many on-board cameras." But if someone walks in front of you in real life, you can see them no matter how immersed you are.
This is the "mixed-reality" experience - digital content projected on to your surroundings.
You physically press a single button on the top right-hand side of the headset, and up pops familiar app icons you'll recognise if you have used an iPhone - iMessage, Photos, Apple TV (there will be more as developers make them).
And from then on it's all about gesture control - the headset tracks where you are looking so when you look at an app and pinch your thumb and forefinger together, it opens. You can choose your level of immersion using a physical dial to turn up or down the size of whatever it is that you're looking at.
Want to see how Apple's new gizmo is made? Here's the 90 second video released by Apple.