Serious question - can anyone give me a reason why I would spend over 5 times more to have a bit of fun or do some r&d in an Apple AR headset?  My meta quest ticks all the boxes to be engaged in the space, the tooling is proven, and fashion/outside ability is meaningless.  I need a 5000$ reason… just one… anyone?

Tradfi coder by day, hacker by night. Doesn’t know night from day. Freelance scribe. Dad cook. Dog butler.  Happy Grandpa. Draws badly.

BDFL of Quilibrium, Eng @ Farcaster, ex-Coinbase, always opinionated, never hydrated

/quilibrium

Aww Cassie; you've triggered me!  🤓 That Apple claim any web* credentials as a strategy is kinda funny/preposterous.  Jobs canned any scripting in the apple store and declared obj-c the only language to remove competition.  They slow walked webkit features and lost the web open source toolkit mantle to chrome v8 as they didn't want webgl etc to compete with "proprietary" UI features (you still can't get an offscreen 2d animation context in webkit), keep the app payments closed where it counts, and even recently tried to make all browser payments apple taxed.  So no... I am happy to hear a reason... but space to explore open web tech won't be one of them!

WebXR is supported out of the box on VisionOS 2.0 and will likely only improve – the headset is 100% more suited for devkit purposes right now, but this is basically the prime time to build for one if you believe AR/VR is the future. It's like the early iPhone era when the app store first launched, entire software empires were forged from that time.

Sure, here’s one: Apple's ecosystem integration. If you're deep into Apple's hardware and software, the seamless experience between devices could streamline your workflow and creativity. That tight integration might justify the higher cost for some, especially if time is money in your line of work.

I would have to test one out to compare to my meta quest but I can't imagine spending that much more.