SAN FRANCISCO, Feb 3: Eager customers lined up outside US Apple stores Friday to nab the first Vision Pro headsets, a $3,499 device that is the tech giants biggest release since the Apple Watch nine years ago.
Vision Pros arrival from the worlds most iconic device maker could be a milestone for lovers of virtual or augmented reality, who see the technology as the next chapter in online life after the smartphone.
"I am really eager to try it out and get ideas for applications," said Jose Carlos, a software engineer at Uber as he stood outside a San Francisco Apple Store.
"It is expensive, but Im willing to pay the price to be an early adopter," he added.
With the high price, and the middling success of similar and cheaper releases from Facebook owner Meta, early reviews expressed doubt that the Vision Pro will be a game-changer, at least for now.
The Vision Pro is an "astonishing" product, wrote tech website The Verge, but "also represents a series of really big trade-offs" that are "impossible to ignore."
It is "an impressive product, one that has been many years and billions of dollars in the making," but "even after trying it, I still have no idea whom or what this thing is supposed to be for," wrote The New York Times.
Critics acknowledge a definite "wow" factor, noting its state-of-the-art image quality and the joy of opening and closing apps floating in space using only your eyes and fingers. —AFP
