Apple's Fetch

I don't want to say "I told you so," and I didn't actually tell you so, so where do I get off, anyway? But I do want to say that they should have seen this coming. 

I think I might know why they didn't see this coming...

Pictured: a former Apple Vision Pro owner,
seen here making a much better decision.

Huh? What's that? Who should have seen what coming? Ok, these are reasonable questions, and the answers are as follows: Apple, and that their dumb space goggles would be kind of a disaster. I say this because according to this article from The Verge, early adopters are taking advantage of Apple's "no questions asked" fourteen day return policy to get their $3,500 dollars back and--yeah--thirty-five hundred dollars. Of money, I know. Anyway, since it's a "no questions asked" policy, I guess we'll never--

Oh, wait, the internet exists and there's no shortage of analysts, customers, and randos like myself eager to supply theories as to why. Most complaints seem to be the $3,500 price tag, eyestrain it causes, the $3,500 price tag, the difficulty getting it to fit properly, the $3,500 price tag, and the idea that waving your hands around to control apps is not ideal. Oh, and the the $3,500 price tag. 

iPads are also overpriced, but they're not $3,500 and they don't make you throw up.

Pukers, or as they're less dismissively
known: humans with inner-ears.

The site appleinsider.com actually says that the return rate is over reported, and doesn't vary greatly from other Apple products. As an Apple-focused site, I'd take their opinion with a grain of salt, but they blame two groups for the majority of returns: "pukers," that is the people for whom a wearable display causes motion sickness, and tech reviewers who bought the thing with the intent of reviewing it for their social media or whatever, and never had any intention of keeping them. 

Pictured: a 1995 trade show attendee enjoying
motion sickness at the Nintendo Booth.

Ok, but why should they have known better? You might reasonably ask me. Again, great question. I kind of feel like they should have learned the lesson of Virtual Boy. Remember that thing? It was Nintendo's attempt to bring virtual reality video gaming to the home market and it suffered from a lot of the same issues: it was uncomfortable to use, caused eye strain, and because everybody's face is different, one size doesn't fit all. It was a colossal failure, and 8% of the internet now is retro gaming YouTubers ragging on it.

I guess what I'm saying is that virtual reality is the fetch of the consumer tech industry. We, as a civilization, have been trying to get it to catch on for decades now and it never seems to end well. Look, it was a lovely dream. A dream that we might one day be able to strap a computer screen to our face and feel like we're inside a virtual world of TikTok videos and pop-up ads, but maybe it's time to let that dream go.

Above: a future just beyond our reach...