https://techcrunch.com/2023/06/05/apples-vision-pro-headset-seems-too-good-to-be-real-because-it-basically-is/

Apple unveiled its new Vision Pro augmented reality headset on Monday during its annual WWDC keynote, along with visionOS, the operating system that’ll power it. The hardware looked extremely impressive, and if the highly-polished demos of how the software will work at all reflect what it’s like to use one in person, then this will be an amazing device that truly exceeds the performance and expectations of anything that has come before it in AR. But even if it works exactly as well as Apple would have you believe from its highly-produced debut, and even if it ships next year as planned and people can go ahead and buy it, the vision that Apple’s selling here doesn’t really exist in one fundamental way — owing to the tearjerking $3,499 price tag Apple Vision Pro carries alongside its laundry list of impressive specs.

Expectations were high for the final price of Apple’s headset leading up to this event, but ‘high’ generally meant estimates around the $2,000 mark, or up to $2,500 for some. $3,499 basically exceeds any predictions, and had the effect of instantly deflating most of the excitement and anticipation from those of us in the newsroom watching the event unfold live and commenting on the news via our shared Slack channel. Apple did a fantastic job with the lead-up — so much so that it convinced more than a few of us that this was a product we wanted (“needed,” we said somewhat facetiously) in our lives. But the price reveal turned any ‘would buy’ in the room into a ‘definitely not’ without hesitation.