Visionary Steve Jobs created breakthrough versions of the personal computer, portable media player, music store, smartphone, and tablet that people actually wanted to use — sending Apple on its way to becoming the $2.7 trillion juggernaut it is today. Now, just as everyone seems to be tiring of the metaverse, Steve Jobs’ successor comes up with the company’s first mixed-reality headset.
Dave Lee for Bloomberg Opinion:
[Tim Cook] is yet to come up with a bold new idea of his own. Tim Cook, the steady-handed supply chain expert, has instead built on top those existing successes. Even the Apple Watch, which came out almost four years after Jobs’ death, had the late visionary’s input in the development, if not the execution.
See also: Contrary to popular belief, Steve Jobs knew about Apple Watch – February 13, 2023
Finally, we may be about to see a Cook innovation. And boy, what a risk it is: a punt on a new technology quite unlike any in Apple’s past.
In June, at its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), Apple is expected to share long-awaited details of its mixed reality headset; a device that offers both augmented reality and virtual reality. The first overlays imagery onto your real surroundings; the second immerses you in a fully digital environment.
At the onset, Apple’s headset will not be a mass-market product. At $3,000, according to reporting by Bloomberg News, it will be almost seven times as expensive as Meta Platforms Inc.’s Quest 2, the biggest selling VR headset — 18 million units to date, according to CCS Insight.
Quite how much we’ll see of the headset at WWDC is not clear. Shipments in 2023 are expected to be a tiny fraction of Apple’s other products. But we can expect a product pitch outlining why we might one day want one. This will be a challenge: Other Apple products had a proven utility before hitting the market… There is no such enthusiasm for a mixed reality headset.
MacDailyNews Take: Is it really a risk? If it doesn’t catch on, Apple can afford hundreds of write-offs at this point. This isn’t like iMac, a bet-the-company product.
Smartly, Apple isn’t interested in the “metaverse” – escaping reality – as much as they are interested in augmenting reality to help improve myriad experiences from work to play. – MacDailyNews, April 19, 2023
After all, Second Life is so 2003. – MacDailyNews, January 10, 2022
Don’t expect Apple’s headset to be laser-focused on precisely the right things as launch:
The glaring lack of a visionary who is immersed and invested in product design who is a single point of approval – Steve Jobs – means that early adopters have to take Jobs’ place en masse to perform similar functions – albeit over a significantly longer period of time – à la Apple Watch. – MacDailyNews, March 28, 2023
“Tim is not a product person.” – Steve Jobs
The Apple Watch certainly found its way – we, the users, were the Apple Watch alpha and beta testers, collectively standing in for Steve Jobs, doing much of what the singular genius would have done before release by brute force and sheer numbers after release. It took four generations of Apple Watch, but we’re here now and we wouldn’t trade the experience for anything! The same goes for Apple Glasses! — MacDailyNews, January 31, 2020
Please help support MacDailyNews. Click or tap here to support our independent tech blog. Thank you!
Support MacDailyNews at no extra cost to you by using this link to shop at Amazon.
So the Apple Watch, AirPods, HomePods, AirTags, Apple silicon M1 Series all under the Tim Cook CEO era?
Every one of the products you mention above was started under Steve Jobs.
This is a niche product and makes no sense as a product for Apple. Zuckerberg threw billions at this “metaverse” and it just became a black hole for the whole company that they are still trying to escape. Is Apple now going to compete with Sony and Microsoft in the gaming industry? Or do they plan on going after the alt business that deal in VR/AR.. Did they talk to Buffett about this move, since he is one of the biggest share holders. He hated the whole notion of bitcoin and if he disapproved of this and Apple is going rogue this put even more risks on this product.
It doesn’t sound like you understand Apple or the potential of this product at all. It’s a risk but it absolutely fits the company profile. This isn’t a window into an ad-fueled social network, it’s an AR/VR iPhone/iPad/Mac headset that will let you do everything that you can do on those devices and more in an entirely new way. Whether they can deliver on the promise remains to be seen but mature Apple (the company turns 50 in a few years) doesn’t release products that don’t sell well. I’m confident this will be the best AR/VR product ever released by a country mile and everyone else will be playing catchup until the end of the decade.
You are totally wrong, Nick, Apple is making a product that no one else but the gaming industry makes. Everything up to this point that Apple has made was an item that Apple thought they could make better. What is there to make better with AR/VR glasses? If they were trying to make everyday glasses that would have AR in the lens then that would be an exciting product that all people that wear glasses would want to experience. If Apple thinks there’s some pent up demand for AR/VR they’ve done the wrong group studies.
I agree w Nick. We aren’t going to be staring at little screens forever…I remember thinking- “who wants or need an iPod”…”who wants a phone with no buttons”…”who wants a tablet” (and I had the newton, lol). I now know better than to bet against apple. This will be another example of showing up late the party and defining the category. Can’t wait to see this thing!
A partial list of Apple’s Biggest Failed/Flop Products. Remember any of these?
The Apple Newton
Apple Pippin
Round Mouse
The Apple Macintosh Portable
The Power Mac G4 Cube
The U2 iPod
Apple eMate
Macintosh TV
eWorld
The Apple III
FireWire
Apple Lisa
20th Anniversary Macintosh
iTunes Ping
MobileMe
Performa x200 Series
iPod Hi-Fi
The point is Apple has plenty of history of introducing products that flop. Many of their greatest successes were predicted to flop, such as the iPad. Steve (the dunce) Ballmer even predicted that iPhone would fail because it was over priced.
Personally, I’m not excited about this new headset. But maybe I’m simply a future customer who doesn’t yet know yet what I really want.
Steve Jobs once said, “Some people say, ‘Give the customers what they want.’ But that’s not my approach. Our job is to figure out what they’re going to want before they do. I think Henry Ford once said, ‘If I’d asked customers what they wanted, they would have told me, ‘A faster horse!’ People don’t know what they want until you show it to them. That’s why I never rely on market research. Our task is to read things that are not yet on the page.”
Patience. Time will reveal all.