Apple, having debuted the Vision Pro headset at $3,500, is already working on a cheaper model to get the new product category onto the faces of more people. Here’s how it may do it. Also: First impressions of Apple’s new operating systems, why Tim Cook won’t wear the Vision Pro in public and Apple’s future retail stores revealed.
The Vision Pro has a lot of high-end components beside the screen, but I’m still afraid that the display represents a very high percentage of the cost.
The more I think about it, the trickier it gets: like the M2, it could be swapped for something cheaper, but then could it drive that monster of a display?; or all the cameras and sensors, but then wouldn’t the pass through look bad?
I guess they could do away with the fancy audio. I don’t know if OpticID is already easy to do once you have eye tracking, otherwise they may remove it too.
I think the cheaper version will still be around $ 2000 because of the display. For me that would be cheap enough to buy one if the software is fine. Maybe they could indeed switch to an iPhone processor and require a connection to a Mac for more demanding apps. But you have a good point about AR, they will still need that 2 chip design so AR features like the hand gesture controls will work well.
If they would want to get rid of OpticID, they would have to require other Apple devices for authentication or introduce TouchID on the device. So they probably also want to keep that.
My assumption about how the chips work is that the M2 does the computing work while the R1 does the work of processing the camera input and display output. So the M2’s processing power is not relevant to the resolution of the displays.
I find it hard to believe that the R1 is enough, because the M2 would be overkill then.
I guess we’ll have to wait for more reviews/analyses.