I think this is the make-or-break moment for consumer VR/AR. Valve's attempt flopped, Facebook's attempt is flopping, Sony's attempt is about to flop (see their recently cut projections for PSVR2). If even Apple can't do it, I think it's headed for the dustbin, at least for the next decade or three.
I'm not ready to make a guess either way at whether they'll be successful. Apple does have a history of pulling these kinds of things off after others' failures, but a $3k price tag and the article saying execs are rushing the product to market over internal objections points to another story. We'll see.
Meta Quest is definitely not flopping. It's now believed Quest headsets have outsold the Nintendo GameCube. Quest 2 outsold the latest Xbox. I really question the narrative that VR is this niche thing no one uses. The numbers support that it is going mainstream.
I don't think so given that any Apple device will try to pull the user into the whole Apple world which has turned a sizeable portion of the potential market off from buying (nearly) anything Apple. The same is true for Facebook (by whatever name they think they can whitewash their reputation now), some - me among them - will not touch anything tied to their 'services' with a barge pole. Google's reputation as a data parasite also turns off a significant portion of the population, as does Microsoft's less than stellar reputation.
In the end there will be several competing VR/AR systems which each target their own section of the market while more or less being off-limits to others. Those who have bought in to the Church of Apple will naturally flock to anything Apple since not doing so means they are cut off from a sizeable part of their co-religionists. Those who swallowed the Facebook Kool-Aid will blithely walk the path directed by The Company. Those who follow the "If you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear" mantra will have no problems opening up their lives and those of their peers to the Google-alphabet. Those who think that Microsoft really means it this time when they claim to have changed their ways will fall into the same trap as all the others who believed Microsoft all those previous times they made this claim did.
Me? I'll just look from the side, on the lookout for hardware to hack so it does my bidding.
Humanity seems to overestimate the progress that can be made in years, while grossly underestimating—to the point of not even understanding—the progress that can be made in decades.
I have the Meta/Rayban stories sunglasses and they're unquestionably my favorite sunglasses and it's unfortunate they haven't been as big of a hit as I expected.
They are very natural, the camera and video feature work great, they're excellent for taking calls and listening to music. If they could achieve the AR feature set that I have in my Nreal Air's, but untethered it would be "The great leap forward" for AR/VR consumer glasses.
I'm extremely bearish on AR. It's failed to find a footing in any niche. I thought phone-based AR had a better chance of taking hold than headsets, but we haven't really seen much of anything since Pokemon Go. AR Core and ARKit have not attracted many developers since being released nearly 5 years ago.
I'll throw one counterpoint in which is the new Mario Kart ride at Universal Studios. It's dark ride featuring a spinning cart, big sets and projections and interactive gaming via an AR visor. It's absolutely incredible. They skirt a lot of issues by keeping the lights off so the overlayed image stays sharp and also the visor is tethered to the car, so most of the horsepower is not melting your head.
Would you expect any system with tethered cables to do anything more than flop as a wide release product? Sure, maybe a dev version might come tethered, but for general consumer product, tethering should be a non-starter
I don't think there is a make or break moment for VR/AR. If it's not now, it can be later. It could be the moment for Meta. There were many popular PDAs before the iPhone that wouldn't have gone away until it was displaced by something more successful. That said, Apple has never been a games company so I'll bet they miss the mark.
Sony seems to be doing fine releasing new stuff whenever it's ready. PSVR2 and Gran Turismo with foveated rendering is reported to be the killer app for PSVR2, and I'm thinking about buying all of it to play.
Meta and Apple are both working on creating an environment in which they can succeed in AR. The hardware for AR is a good ways off, but I think the current market is more about building the momentum of software, hardware, and ecosystem that Meta and Apple need to succeed with AR. They are both willing to take losses to get there. In that regard, I don't think this is a make or break moment, but I do think that Apple is hoping to put out a product that gives people a better glimpse of their vision for mixed reality and AR.
I wouldn’t say a company that has said “this isn’t it, this is an enthusiast device that’s a stepping stone to a consumer ready product” has made a flop. The index was exactly what it was supposed to be, a step in the right direction.
The only way any company can pull this off is if they create a truly wire-free, glasses form-factor device which is sufficiently high fidelity to display AR convincingly.
It all relies on how much the technology can be miniaturised and pushed, if there is anyone that can do it it's Apple.
"But Apple’s famed industrial design team had cautioned patience, wanting to delay until a more lightweight version of AR glasses became technically feasible. Most in the tech industry expect that to take several more years. "
"Just a few years ago, going against the wishes of Apple’s all-powerful design team would have been unthinkable. But since the departure of its longtime leader Jony Ive in 2019, Apple’s structure has been reshuffled, with design now reporting to Williams. "
"Ive’s former role as chief design officer was split in two, with Evans Hankey on hardware and Alan Dye on software. However, Hankey announced last October that she would be leaving within six months, contributing to significant staff turnover in the division over recent years."
"Apple’s 12-person executive team reflects how the company’s focus has shifted under Cook, himself a former operations chief."
Wow, sounds like the 80's storyline is repeating itself. The greedy business guys took over again, drove out the best creators, and are now driving off a cliff 200km/h.
Ehh, maybe. I bought an M1 MacBook because it supported other OSs, reverted back to a reasonable keyboard, had reasonable ports, and soft feel. The problem with successful artists like Ives is sometimes they become a cult of personality within an org, domineering and protective of their vision. I feel like Ives wanted you to cut yourself on the edge of your laptop and carry 20 dongles. I feel like they dialed back the ridiculousness.
The Apple Watch wasn’t quite ready for launch either. Apple didn’t know how to market it or what the hell to do with it. It took them a few generations to zone in on health and fitness and the rest is history.
The Apple VR headset has been in development for 7 years. They need to release it now and see how the world is using it and tweak it accordingly. It’s going to drastically improve the product.
> They need to release it now and see how the word is using it and tweak it accordingly.
I don’t know. If you release something before it’s really ready you can shoot a whole category in the foot.
A 2005 iPhone would have been terrible. The 2007 iPhone was right on the edge of what was possible. A 2005 iPhone would have flopped because the tech would have held it back so bad.
Then there is the problem of why I’d want to use it.
There was a conversation on Dithering (I think) about this recently. The Apple Watch was still a watch and provided notifications. The iPhone was a phone and an iPod, plus the real internet. The iPad was a big iPhone. They all had predecessors so you sort of knew why you would want it. The value proposition was at least somewhat clear.
A VR/AR/MR headset is a totally new thing. For the vast number of people it doesn’t do what their X did but better. You have to convince/teach people why they need this and that’s a MUCH higher barrier than the iPhone/iPod/iPad/Apple Watch/Air Pods had.
The only thing that has shown some success is games. Apple is not good at games. They (as a company) just don’t ‘get it’. And if games was enough we’d see existing solutions be way more popular.
Plus the nausea issue is very real for a non-trivial portion of the population.
Maybe things have passed that magic threshold where, like the iPhone, little additions have added together enough to make Apple’s thing feel way more necessary that what existed before. But I’m skeptical.
They need Mario, VisiCalc, Word Perfect, Sonic, Page Maker, something to be their killer app.
At the time, Angela Ahrendts, formerly the Burberry CEO, had been hired as the SVP of Retail to replace the guy who left to go flop at JC Penny. What you noticed at the time is that Ahrendts tried to position things as luxury fashion items. This was the era when you had the ridiculous $10,000 Apple Watch Edition, Hermes straps and the like. This completely flopped.
They sort of scrambled after this inevitable failure and settled on it being a device for health and fitness. I think health monitoring in particular is a huge untapped market. A later version added an ECG. If they can figure out how to do blood sugar testing without a needle that will be absolutely huge for so many people.
Preventative care and passive monitoring I expect to become huge industries, particularly with aging populations. It won't be too many years before you see such devices giving you early warnings of a heart attack, for example.
From the outside it looked like Apple never had a clear goal for the Apple Watch on launch and just stumbled into it.
> The Apple Watch wasn’t quite ready for launch either. Apple didn’t know how to market it or what the hell to do with it. It took them a few generations to zone in on health and fitness and the rest is history.
The Apple Watch didn’t cost $3k. It’s much easier to iterate on a product that folks can (relatively) easily replace in 1-2 years.
Many fewer folks will be ready to replace a $3k device within 2-3 years.
It wouldn't be the first major product steered entirely by Cook, as the sub-heading states, that would be the watch.
Within a year or two of the launch of the iPhone the tech industry went into "what have you done for me lately?" mode, on the edge of their seats for the next major iPhone level change-the-world platform from Apple. That's died down over the years. The fact that the watch merely defined the segment and was so dominant it re-shaped the watch industry is still seen in some quarters as a failure because it didn't replace the phone.
If the AR headset does launch and it just does as well and it's leading competitors that's fine. Not everything has to change the world. Maybe just having it as a really solid option for those who want one is enough.
Physics is working against everyone here, it’s just too hard to get a bright, sharp screen in the form factor, weight & style that can literally appeal to everyone. The processing power to obtain world lock is not trivial either.
In contrast, a watch is just a scaled down phone with skin sensors. Most of the building blocks already exist.
Sociology is another blocker. Our species has evolved to read each other’s eyes to identify attention and emotion. As soon as you block the eyes with a pair of darkened screens, you lose that ability to directly connect human to human in person. Sure there are individual used cases like biking they could be compelling, but they are niche applications.
This is a good salad of truth, but I think it misses the point. VR is not going to happen for a long time, but this high status product is mostly about demonstrating the possibilities of AR, which is happening all around us with existing technologies. Apple has concluded that it will be worth it to demonstrate how information superiority and affordance will work in a $3k headset before the lightweight glasses become feasible. The applications for this product (sports, research, conferencing, gaming, etc) won't depend on real world interaction.
Imo, seems like a bad thing to bet your legacy on. Haven't most people gotten over the VR headset hype by now? Kind of like 3D TV's from a decade ago. It also feels like such an anti-social technology. + the fact that a certain % of the population just get motion sickness from it.
But who knows, if anyone can succeed with it, Apple probably can!
I think one killer feature would be monitor replacement. For many of us who value screen real-estate and work by ourselves, this would be pretty great. I keep trying to make this work with the Quest 2 but the resolution and lag are just too much to be anything more of an experiment at this point, though I appreciate the continued work on it.
I do really enjoy movies in VR, and sometimes movies with other's in BigScreen. But generally, I am watching TV with other people in the room and suddenly VR makes no sense. Metaverse is interesting in some ways, I like Venues which kind of goes back to movies, but otherwise I only spend a few minutes poking around there. There are some cool games though, but they remind me of phone games that you would just play for a few minutes at a time.
The timing can work out nicely for Apple since Tim Cook is on his way out in a year or two anyway, so if it flops or the initial launch goes real bad, they can blame it him and communicate his exit as a "reset" for the product and company. It would have been risky to leave it for the new CEO to launch. Sort of like you never fire a football manager before a major clash even if it was clear to everybody that he will be sacked soon.
> On 19 April 2021, Mourinho was sacked by Tottenham Hotspur after 17 months in charge of the club, days before the EFL Cup Final against Manchester City.
Apple's VR offering is likely to face challenges, given the limited success of Apple's previous ventures outside its ecosystem. While it may attract a dedicated user base, its potential beyond this remains uncertain. In comparison, the Oculus Quest has seen some success due to its good library of standalone games, as well as its connectivity to PCs. Although the number of users who use the PC connectivity feature exclusively may be small, they remain an important group. It is unclear what Apple's plans for their VR device are, but if they intend to follow the same strategy as they did with the iPhone, they will need to offer something truly innovative and game-changing, particularly considering the high price point. The VR market presents unique challenges when it comes to vertical integration, which Apple will need to overcome to succeed.
I think this is going to age about as well as everyone who predicted that nobody would wear AirPods because they were ugly.
Even if you are correct, Apple makes products that are not designed to be taken out of the house (iMac/Mini/Studio, HomePod). It is entirely possible that this first generation device is not intended to be "outside of the house" mobile.
I was confused about this line at first: 'When Tim Cook unveils Apple’s new “mixed-reality” headset later this year'
If I'm understanding correctly: there's AR glasses that were expected, which are not happening this year, and then separately, there's a mixed-reality headset (ie VR with some exterior cameras) that apparently is happening for sure this year
I'm curious if Beat Saber is ever going to come to the device.. Like did Meta acquire it just for the potential to force some concessions from Apple? The Quest can show notifications from your phone, but the integration is overall terrible and I think Apple knows that having that tight integration is a Big Deal
(which conversely might mean they'll never accept any terms whatsoever to get Beat Saber on apple mixed reality)
"The early bird catches the worm - but the second mouse gets the cheese. " comes to mind re Meta/Apple... but honestly I am very bearish on AR/VR in general. Meta learned their lesson the hard way, I hope Apple doesn't do the same.
Maybe it's unrelated, but I'm finishing college and in a couple of years we've gone from almost nobody using tablets to take notes to almost everyone having a pen-enabled device to take notes with. This is because we finally got cheap enough devices that were mildly pleasureable to write with and had mildly functional note taking suites.
I think the same is going to happen starting next year. Sure, AR is a bit behind VR in the public conscience, but the moment $200 AR goggles will prove to be marginally useful people will adopt them in an instant.
> Apple’s famed industrial design team had cautioned patience, wanting to delay until a more lightweight version of AR glasses became technically feasible.
This is the actual problem.
A well executed AR "headset" has the potential to replace all consumer devices except high end desktop. I wonder if that scares manufacturers.
Could you share why you think this is true? I'm not disputing it, but I'm also not as certain as you are.
I have a hunch that manufacturers don't care one way or another. Manufacturers are going to manufacturer things as long as consumers are buying things.
Perhaps by manufacturers you meant "competitors" or "other hardware companies" - if so, I suspect they're less worried about AR in general disrupting traditional "computing hardware" models, and more concerned that it's Apple doing it.
Apple has flops, and Apple has wins, and Apple's competitors have frequently underestimated as much as they've overestimated Apple's ability to pull something off.
Personally: I don't have high expectations, as much as I'd love to see the idea itself succeed. $3K is just too much money for your typical consumer, even if the tech is some "whole new level" sort of experience for end users.
Perhaps if there are obvious "non-mainstream" uses (imagine industrial applications where an information rich, contextual OSD helps speed up processes or improve quality/yield, or medical uses that can overlay valuable info, etc), then maybe $3k makes sense.
The high price is only one issue. There's all the other stuff (well described in other comments) as well.
[+] [-] coldpie|3 years ago|reply
I'm not ready to make a guess either way at whether they'll be successful. Apple does have a history of pulling these kinds of things off after others' failures, but a $3k price tag and the article saying execs are rushing the product to market over internal objections points to another story. We'll see.
[+] [-] MikeTheRocker|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] the_third_wave|3 years ago|reply
In the end there will be several competing VR/AR systems which each target their own section of the market while more or less being off-limits to others. Those who have bought in to the Church of Apple will naturally flock to anything Apple since not doing so means they are cut off from a sizeable part of their co-religionists. Those who swallowed the Facebook Kool-Aid will blithely walk the path directed by The Company. Those who follow the "If you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear" mantra will have no problems opening up their lives and those of their peers to the Google-alphabet. Those who think that Microsoft really means it this time when they claim to have changed their ways will fall into the same trap as all the others who believed Microsoft all those previous times they made this claim did.
Me? I'll just look from the side, on the lookout for hardware to hack so it does my bidding.
[+] [-] a4isms|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shiftpgdn|3 years ago|reply
They are very natural, the camera and video feature work great, they're excellent for taking calls and listening to music. If they could achieve the AR feature set that I have in my Nreal Air's, but untethered it would be "The great leap forward" for AR/VR consumer glasses.
[+] [-] tootie|3 years ago|reply
I'll throw one counterpoint in which is the new Mario Kart ride at Universal Studios. It's dark ride featuring a spinning cart, big sets and projections and interactive gaming via an AR visor. It's absolutely incredible. They skirt a lot of issues by keeping the lights off so the overlayed image stays sharp and also the visor is tethered to the car, so most of the horsepower is not melting your head.
[+] [-] dylan604|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] karmakaze|3 years ago|reply
Sony seems to be doing fine releasing new stuff whenever it's ready. PSVR2 and Gran Turismo with foveated rendering is reported to be the killer app for PSVR2, and I'm thinking about buying all of it to play.
[+] [-] theschwa|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jjcm|3 years ago|reply
Also, VR growth is increasing steadily over time: https://www.roadtovr.com/valve-fix-steam-survey-vr-populatio...
I don’t agree with the premise of your comment.
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] dom96|3 years ago|reply
It all relies on how much the technology can be miniaturised and pushed, if there is anyone that can do it it's Apple.
[+] [-] wellthisisgreat|3 years ago|reply
Outside of gaming that Apple ecosystem sucks at there is nothing that ARVR can offer that is not improved by using a UX shortcut of a regular screen
[+] [-] melling|3 years ago|reply
That first Intel Pentium with 3.1 million transistors running at 66MHz was interesting but Windows 95 was still a couple of years away.
[+] [-] nmcela|3 years ago|reply
"Just a few years ago, going against the wishes of Apple’s all-powerful design team would have been unthinkable. But since the departure of its longtime leader Jony Ive in 2019, Apple’s structure has been reshuffled, with design now reporting to Williams. "
"Ive’s former role as chief design officer was split in two, with Evans Hankey on hardware and Alan Dye on software. However, Hankey announced last October that she would be leaving within six months, contributing to significant staff turnover in the division over recent years."
"Apple’s 12-person executive team reflects how the company’s focus has shifted under Cook, himself a former operations chief."
Wow, sounds like the 80's storyline is repeating itself. The greedy business guys took over again, drove out the best creators, and are now driving off a cliff 200km/h.
[+] [-] Runways|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] carlycue|3 years ago|reply
The Apple VR headset has been in development for 7 years. They need to release it now and see how the world is using it and tweak it accordingly. It’s going to drastically improve the product.
[+] [-] MBCook|3 years ago|reply
I don’t know. If you release something before it’s really ready you can shoot a whole category in the foot.
A 2005 iPhone would have been terrible. The 2007 iPhone was right on the edge of what was possible. A 2005 iPhone would have flopped because the tech would have held it back so bad.
Then there is the problem of why I’d want to use it.
There was a conversation on Dithering (I think) about this recently. The Apple Watch was still a watch and provided notifications. The iPhone was a phone and an iPod, plus the real internet. The iPad was a big iPhone. They all had predecessors so you sort of knew why you would want it. The value proposition was at least somewhat clear.
A VR/AR/MR headset is a totally new thing. For the vast number of people it doesn’t do what their X did but better. You have to convince/teach people why they need this and that’s a MUCH higher barrier than the iPhone/iPod/iPad/Apple Watch/Air Pods had.
The only thing that has shown some success is games. Apple is not good at games. They (as a company) just don’t ‘get it’. And if games was enough we’d see existing solutions be way more popular.
Plus the nausea issue is very real for a non-trivial portion of the population.
Maybe things have passed that magic threshold where, like the iPhone, little additions have added together enough to make Apple’s thing feel way more necessary that what existed before. But I’m skeptical.
They need Mario, VisiCalc, Word Perfect, Sonic, Page Maker, something to be their killer app.
[+] [-] jmyeet|3 years ago|reply
At the time, Angela Ahrendts, formerly the Burberry CEO, had been hired as the SVP of Retail to replace the guy who left to go flop at JC Penny. What you noticed at the time is that Ahrendts tried to position things as luxury fashion items. This was the era when you had the ridiculous $10,000 Apple Watch Edition, Hermes straps and the like. This completely flopped.
They sort of scrambled after this inevitable failure and settled on it being a device for health and fitness. I think health monitoring in particular is a huge untapped market. A later version added an ECG. If they can figure out how to do blood sugar testing without a needle that will be absolutely huge for so many people.
Preventative care and passive monitoring I expect to become huge industries, particularly with aging populations. It won't be too many years before you see such devices giving you early warnings of a heart attack, for example.
From the outside it looked like Apple never had a clear goal for the Apple Watch on launch and just stumbled into it.
[+] [-] jader201|3 years ago|reply
The Apple Watch didn’t cost $3k. It’s much easier to iterate on a product that folks can (relatively) easily replace in 1-2 years.
Many fewer folks will be ready to replace a $3k device within 2-3 years.
[+] [-] melling|3 years ago|reply
https://h4labs.wordpress.com/2015/07/28/in-the-future-everyo...
[+] [-] laweijfmvo|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dtft|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] simonh|3 years ago|reply
Within a year or two of the launch of the iPhone the tech industry went into "what have you done for me lately?" mode, on the edge of their seats for the next major iPhone level change-the-world platform from Apple. That's died down over the years. The fact that the watch merely defined the segment and was so dominant it re-shaped the watch industry is still seen in some quarters as a failure because it didn't replace the phone.
If the AR headset does launch and it just does as well and it's leading competitors that's fine. Not everything has to change the world. Maybe just having it as a really solid option for those who want one is enough.
[+] [-] will_walker|3 years ago|reply
In contrast, a watch is just a scaled down phone with skin sensors. Most of the building blocks already exist.
Sociology is another blocker. Our species has evolved to read each other’s eyes to identify attention and emotion. As soon as you block the eyes with a pair of darkened screens, you lose that ability to directly connect human to human in person. Sure there are individual used cases like biking they could be compelling, but they are niche applications.
[+] [-] billiam|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zwkrt|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] antomeie|3 years ago|reply
But who knows, if anyone can succeed with it, Apple probably can!
[+] [-] wellthisisgreat|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tfandango|3 years ago|reply
I do really enjoy movies in VR, and sometimes movies with other's in BigScreen. But generally, I am watching TV with other people in the room and suddenly VR makes no sense. Metaverse is interesting in some ways, I like Venues which kind of goes back to movies, but otherwise I only spend a few minutes poking around there. There are some cool games though, but they remind me of phone games that you would just play for a few minutes at a time.
[+] [-] melling|3 years ago|reply
I think AR sounds more interesting but getting any product that consumers will pay for will accelerate the development of the technology.
We’ve been waiting a long time.
[+] [-] ak_111|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ask_b123|3 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_Mourinho#2020%E2%80%...
> On 19 April 2021, Mourinho was sacked by Tottenham Hotspur after 17 months in charge of the club, days before the EFL Cup Final against Manchester City.
[+] [-] mcphage|3 years ago|reply
What's the source for this?
[+] [-] ngrilly|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unsignedint|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Invictus0|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wilsonnb3|3 years ago|reply
Even if you are correct, Apple makes products that are not designed to be taken out of the house (iMac/Mini/Studio, HomePod). It is entirely possible that this first generation device is not intended to be "outside of the house" mobile.
[+] [-] wellthisisgreat|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kilroy123|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] techknight|3 years ago|reply
If I'm understanding correctly: there's AR glasses that were expected, which are not happening this year, and then separately, there's a mixed-reality headset (ie VR with some exterior cameras) that apparently is happening for sure this year
I'm curious if Beat Saber is ever going to come to the device.. Like did Meta acquire it just for the potential to force some concessions from Apple? The Quest can show notifications from your phone, but the integration is overall terrible and I think Apple knows that having that tight integration is a Big Deal
(which conversely might mean they'll never accept any terms whatsoever to get Beat Saber on apple mixed reality)
[+] [-] iambateman|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zer0zzz|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dehrmann|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] robertlagrant|3 years ago|reply
[0] Ironically, Netflix might actually have the best reason to do this. You can't switch to Amazon Prime if your TV goggles doesn't support it.
[+] [-] dehrmann|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] whalesalad|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AstixAndBelix|3 years ago|reply
I think the same is going to happen starting next year. Sure, AR is a bit behind VR in the public conscience, but the moment $200 AR goggles will prove to be marginally useful people will adopt them in an instant.
[+] [-] sublinear|3 years ago|reply
This is the actual problem.
A well executed AR "headset" has the potential to replace all consumer devices except high end desktop. I wonder if that scares manufacturers.
[+] [-] buffington|3 years ago|reply
Could you share why you think this is true? I'm not disputing it, but I'm also not as certain as you are.
I have a hunch that manufacturers don't care one way or another. Manufacturers are going to manufacturer things as long as consumers are buying things.
Perhaps by manufacturers you meant "competitors" or "other hardware companies" - if so, I suspect they're less worried about AR in general disrupting traditional "computing hardware" models, and more concerned that it's Apple doing it.
Apple has flops, and Apple has wins, and Apple's competitors have frequently underestimated as much as they've overestimated Apple's ability to pull something off.
Personally: I don't have high expectations, as much as I'd love to see the idea itself succeed. $3K is just too much money for your typical consumer, even if the tech is some "whole new level" sort of experience for end users.
Perhaps if there are obvious "non-mainstream" uses (imagine industrial applications where an information rich, contextual OSD helps speed up processes or improve quality/yield, or medical uses that can overlay valuable info, etc), then maybe $3k makes sense.
The high price is only one issue. There's all the other stuff (well described in other comments) as well.