The $3,500 headset, which blends three-dimensional digital
content with a view of the outside world, landed in the company's physical U.S.
stores on Friday. It enters a market crowded with lower-cost rivals from Meta
Platforms, HTC and others that have mostly been confined to the video game
market and failed to find a mass audience.
But Apple's pricey device comes with custom computing chips
and difficult-to-manufacture displays that rivals lack. Analysts who have tried
the headset say these features could make the device a threat to almost every
large two-dimensional screen at home or work.
Walt Disney has quietly worked with Apple for years on an
app for the Vision Pro's launch, the latest in a history of collaboration
between the two companies.
“When we saw this, it became evident it was a new canvas for
how we can tell stories in a way that hasn’t been done before,” said Aaron
LaBerge, chief technology officer of Disney Entertainment. “And so it became
pretty obvious that we wanted to do something here just as a way to stretch
ourselves.”
The ”isney+ app envelops movie viewers in one of four
environments, so they can watch “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” from the seat
of a fictional X-34 landspeeder craft on the planet of Tatooine, like a
futuristic drive-in movie theater, or catch “Avengers: Endgame” from inside
Avengers Tower in midtown Manhattan. Viewers can also watch 42 Disney films in
3D, including box office hits “Avatar: The Way of Water,” “Black Panther” and “Inside
Out.”
Jamie Voris, chief technology officer at Walt Disney
Studios, said filmmakers such as "The Lion King" director Jon Favreau
and James Cameron of "Avatar" are interested in telling stories in
new ways. Disney has built an experience it teased in a clip screened at
Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference last June, in which consumers interact
with its Marvel Studios animated anthology series, "What If?"
The device also opens new ways to experience live sporting
events or theme park rides, Voris said.
"It speaks really well to what we do best, which is
bring our characters and stories into the real world and bring you closer to
the people that you care about," said Voris.
It's not clear that a mixed-reality device was what late
Apple co-founder Steve Jobs had in mind when he confided to biographer Walter
Isaacson that, in developing a next-generation television, "I finally
cracked it." But to analysts like Ben Bajarin of Creative Strategies, the
Vision Pro seemed like it fulfilled that long-ago promise.
“I don’t know if this is what Jobs meant when he said ‘I
cracked TV,’” said Bajarin. “But the platform element is what makes it more
interesting than if they launched a TV. It can be productivity. It can be
social. … It could become a much bigger deal and a much bigger opportunity than
if it were just a TV.”
To be sure, the pricey Vision Pro will not be a quick
best-seller. In a note to investors, Bernstein analyst Toni Sacconaghi said
Apple has told its supply chain to expect to build only 1 million units – and
even that might be Apple preparing excess capacity ahead of consumer demand.
Apple's approach "suggests a lack of confidence that
consumers will feel compelled to buy immediately without needing to be
convinced by in-store demos," Sacconaghi wrote.
But the high price presents less of a barrier to business
purchasers.
Jay Wright, chief executive of Campfire, a startup that
makes software for using headsets to collaborate remotely on three-dimensional
files such as engine designs, noted that the original Mac computer in 1984 cost
the equivalent of nearly $7,500 today. But small businesses flocked to the Mac
for its ability to create and print documents and brochures.
"It's important to recognize this is not a consumer
accessory device, like Apple Watch. This is a whole new computing
platform," Wright said. "I'm of the opinion that this is more like
what comes after the Mac than what comes after the iPhone."
0 comments:
Post a Comment