The Apple Vision Pro is “amazing, and clearly part of the future, but also expensive, impractical and clearly nowhere near ready for the mass market,” independent analyst Benedict Evans writes.
The Vision Pro is a very un-Apple product launch: it’s effectively a very polished prototype or a developer kit, rather than a consumer product, and Apple doesn’t do that. (It has occasionally sold developer kits in the past, but it didn’t sell them to consumers.)
In a sense, I think this device might function as a test for that whole general computing thesis. With every previous xR device, you could always say ‘yes, but just imagine what it can be once the tech is better!’ Well, now we have something a lot closer to that ‘just imagine’ device. It’s a lot harder to hide behind plans for the future. This thing doesn’t even have any VR games – it’s naked before us, forced to survive as an actual computer. If we cannot make a compelling general purpose computing experience on a display system this good, then the whole field might have a problem…
It’s possible than in five years this will have started to work, and it’s possible than in five years we’ll have concluded that this is a niche, and we’ll have to wait for glasses, contact lenses or neural implants.
Meanwhile, back in March 2024, have you heard about this ‘ChatGPT’ thing?
Read Evans’ full article – highly recommended – here.
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MacDailyNews Take: There are a lot of people inside and outside of Apple who think the company should have waited on the Vision Pro, but it’s fairly easy today to see why Tim Cook released this beta (alpha?) devkit: He likely knew last year, or had a strong inkling, that Project Titan was a goner and there wasn’t much excitement in Apple’s pipeline. He’d need something to point to as “innovation” while he continued on his seemingly unending quest to iterate and monetize products invented by Steve Jobs’ Apple (a very different place) while continuing Apple’s retail store buildout. He also needed something to energize developers and, who knows, they might come up with a killer visionOS app while Apple toils on the long road to real lightweight spatial computing glasses and beyond.
More importantly, Apple last year had already come to the sad realization that they’d missed the generative artificial intelligence revolution and would need a distraction while they feverishly scrambled to catch up (the fruits of which — alongside what sound like disappointing partnerships which hopefully, somehow, preserve user privacy — we’ll hopefully begin to see at WWDC this June).
You have to feel for Cook. After a decade plus of being able to iterate and monetize Jobs’ inspired products and services and continue adding retail stores around the world to spectacular effect, and being lauded for it, he now finds himself in a place that requires actual vision to be able to see which path to take. And he’s not the guy. Even the guy who put him in the position knew it.
Tim’s not a product person, per se. – Steve Jobs
Beyond the fact that Cook can’t even execute a compelling live keynote address, his big send off, the “Apple Car,” fizzled in ignominious failure. So, despite myriad misgivings and protestations inside Apple, Cook pulled the trigger early on the Vision Pro. He had to have something to point to that would buy him some time. Even Apple’s rubber-stamping board of lackeys would wake up and start asking questions otherwise.
While Cook is hemming and hawing when faced with shareholders (virtually, of course, never again in person for as long as Cook remains), Apple is currently in scramble mode trying to catch up to rivals — including the world’s most valuable company, Microsoft — in generative AI, a technology the company seems to have completely missed while focusing instead on the not-ready-for-primetime Apple Vision Pro, visionOS, its now-canceled decade-long multi-billion-dollar electric vehicle boondoggle, replacing leather in iPhone cases and Apple Watch bands with overpriced junk in a quest to “save the planet,” forcing employees to endure a constant barrage of time-wasting zero-productivity DEI sessions, and myriad other various and sundry “initiatives” which Cook deems of import. – MacDailyNews, February 28, 2024
When you lose your visionary CEO and replace him with a caretaker CEO, this is the type of aimless, late, bureaucratic dithering that ensues. – MacDailyNews, November 21, 2017
Until it gets another visionary leader (fingers crossed; Apple’s history has shown – cough, Sculley, Spindler, cough – that the next CEO could be far, far worse than the very competent caretaker Cook), Apple can afford to miss things like generative AI – which they clearly did – and then use its huge war chest to catch up – which they’re doing right now (fun times and 80-hour weeks inside Apple Park!) – and, hopefully, surpass rivals (or at least be as good). Apple will very likely unveil their catch-up work within months (this June at WWDC 2024) in iPhones (and iPads, Apple Watches, etc.) with built-in on-device generative AI and other new AI-driven features. – MacDailyNews, February 14, 2024
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Just because someone doesn’t like Vision Pro doesn’t mean it’s a bad product. Or that Tim Cook is a bad CEO. In fact, there have been a lot of glowing reviews for this product. It’s in the second or even third iteration that this product will really come into its own. That’s what it means to be a visionary.
And Apple is fundamentally an electronics company. It makes more sense for “software” companies to develop a ChatGPT.
Cook is not the visionary behind Vision Pro / visionOS.
Cook is not the visionary behind Apple Watch either.
Cook is not visionary. Cook was a good CEO for Apple the post-Steve years, 5-10 years, where stability, iteration, and monetization were required, but that time has passed.
Cook is now a hanger-on who’s overstayed his welcome.
Evans did not say he didn’t like the Vision Pro. He called it “amazing and clearly part of the future.”
MDN did not say Cook is a bad CEO. MDN says Cook was caretaker of Apple to “spectacular effect,” but “he now finds himself in a place that requires actual vision to be able to see which path to take. And he’s not the guy. Even the guy who put him in the position knew it.”
Apple is not “fundamentally an electronics company.”
Apple is fundamentally (and, clearly, to anyone with even a passing interest and a few working brain cells) a software company.
So says the guy who created it:
If you if you look at the reason that the iPod exists and that Apple’s in that marketplace it’s because these really great Japanese consumer electronics companies — who kind of owned the portable music market for a long time, invented it and owned it — couldn’t write the appropriate software, couldn’t conceive of and implement the appropriate software because an iPod is really just software: it’s software in the iPod itself, it’s software on the PC or the Mac, and it’s software in the cloud for the store, and it’s in a beautiful box, but it’s software.
If you look at what a Mac is, it’s it’s OS X. It’s in a beautiful box, but it’s OS X. And, if you look at what an iPhone will hopefully be, its software.
And so, the the big secret about Apple, of course, not so big secret maybe, is that Apple views itself as a software company.
Whatever Steve thought or Tim thinks now, Apple’s software has become extremely stale. If this was ever a pervasive idea in the company it’s hard to see that they still think of themselves this way with memojis and brainless new ways to watch TV as a highlight of many keynotes.
Apple Vision Pro is a compelling product with future potential but we’re talking 2-3 years down the road at least. I have no doubt it was rushed to release to spark some excitement as apparently Tim’s last pipeline ejection. The Titan boondoggle, AI no-show and DOJ suit have wiped that out now.
I’m less concerned about them being late to AI than whether they’re seriously looking for Cook’s replacement. This is not tech-giant, Silicon Valley legend caliber leadership. Not by a long shot.
Well said, Nick.
Could not agree more the software is “stale.” Surprising, because Apple in a never-ending treadmill under Cook releases new versions of all software every year?!?
Nothing really groundbreaking sillier emojis, how to connect to this and that and very annoying inconsequential things like moving the Safari header from top to bottom, hiding the trash icon in notes to a pulldown menu, while making calls flipping the mute button from screen right side to screen left side and hiding the search bar in Messages forced to pull down to find it!
Really stupid design moves obviously to justify yearly releases totally unnecessary in my view. That reminds me of an analogy — imagine coming home and all your furniture is moved around, forcing you to rearrange your thoughts while searching for familiar things to get comfortable and productive again.
Bottom Line: Cook has finally been exposed for what he really is, and the sad part circumstances look bleak for the creative Apple juggernaut we remember during the heady Jobs reign.
Said it announcement day, the goggles an overly expensive geek or vapid fanboy TOY with no practical purposes to replace my Pro Macs and other devices. As MDN correctly pointed out a calculated PREEMPTIVE STRIKE to prove Apple’s creative relevance under Cook (NOT), in advance of the Project Titanic demise.
Apple needs a creative CEO, not a balance sheet caretaker, the sooner, the better…
The Vision Pro retail cost is no obstacle to people with cash to burn and who want to watch video, possibly 3D, to experience a larger than life high definition tv screen, even if the 3D games are not there yet. Not everyone is a gamer, possibly without excess disposable income, and the product needs to be experienced before its developer community can properly assess what to develop and for what market.,in short, this is a chicken and egg situation for both users and Apple and its community of developers. At this point, two months in from actual availability, it has reached the next level of progress to ensure its onward and upward path, while contributing to the forward development of both hardware and software, not just by Apple. Mr Cook has done the Apple consumer a great service in initiating this exciting product. It tells of a brave new world of tv screens no longer measured in inches, the possible displacement of very large screens by this product and its successors.
As a shareholder, while I might not see a day AVP generates a massive profit after development costs, let us hear less talk about how unnovative Apple has become. This is indeed one more thing that has already changed the world.
MDN take seems, sadly, decently plausible. As many of us have been screaming, Tim Cook is a failure at business 101. He put all apple’s eggs in a hostile communist production basket, and despite screaming Didnt Earn It “diversity” on bs, he failed to diversify apple’s production against a hostile communist state. He couldnt even get that right.
I do hope there is enough amazing things in the Vision Pro that developers can make some amazing apps, and that apple can iterate it down to what it needs to be, a pair of RayBans.
Regardless, at most cook was supposed to be a transitionary CEO, and Steve Jobs likely said as much, but Cook just couldnt give up the power once the the markets got used to an apple without Steve. At the 5 year mark, Cook should have been out. Heck, back then they could have bought Tesla and had Elon controlling Apple to likely amazing visions.
Now, cook NEEDS TO GO. They need a true technology enthusiast with vision to change the world for the better at the helm. I think Craig Federighi is likely the best guy–he’s not boring, he has genuine enthusiasm, he is an ex-NeXT guy and has serious tech understanding.
Apple needs a master chef, but all they have is a lousy cook.
That’s why it is $3,499 dumb dumb and if it’s unfinished the. I have no idea what anything else out there is? Alpha level sold garbage by Meta?… The sander by his logic would be “Yes!”
The Tesla roadster is unfinished and expensive it isn’t ready for the consumer.” He would have spouted.
Engineers are never done and want – always – a little more time. Jobs showed how he can cracked and dispel that notion by motivation and leadership.
I’m glad Cook finally said “Enough! This is launching.” And now we have a 1.0 product in the market, which provides focus and clarity on wheat needs to arrive for 2.0 and 3.0 and beyond.
I am sure this guy got the clicks he wanted….
Real artists ship. — Steve Jobs
Given Tim’s a fan of pipelines, I read that last line “I’m sure this guy got the d…’s he wanted. After all, a c and a l can look like a d! At first glance.
Cook has massively increased Apple’s stockholder value. Time for him to get his gold watch and saunter off to the horizon. I’ll give him his props. A better caretaker you could not have found. He’s a genius level caretaker. Well done. Now let’s move on. How do we do so? We probably need to acquire a revolutionary company and take their CEO. I have no idea what company or what person, but I doubt the next CEO is internal to Apple. Then again, whatever it takes. Jony Ive was there all along waiting to be discovered.
Stop w/ the (idiotic) Musk fantasies. What inventor, entrepreneur and one of his level of brilliance would want to pause, sell, or confound his own achievements to piggy-back on a personal computer company that, though valuable, has a micro focus and he’s sending things into space, planting devices into the brain for enable the functioning of inert human bodies and is a leading manufacturer of a sector that Apple hopes to be a part in the dashboard…just to name a few? Would he be better that Cook? Ha! He would likely be better at at everything that Cook supposedly is king (bookkeeping & production schedule) and pick up and maybe exceed Jobs’ magic. The point? Why would anyone want to distract and confound the progress in place that’s not going to be a multiplier of progress? Few.
Apple needs a mind like Nvidia’s Jensen Huang. “Stay hungry” was one of Job’s memes and Huang has said things that are curiously aligned…even as his co reaches the sky. Cook has no hunger of value…except as an ideologue. He’s distracted as a “do-gooder”.
Is Cook a goo-doodler, given his love of pipelines? Lots of goo there.
I took the 30-minute demo. Amazing tech but I can’t Althing of a single use for it
Today’s apple is relying on the customer to tell them what their new products are meant to do.
I’m not even sure that’s true. People are telling AAPL to rigorously invent, iterate and update emojis? There are so many such examples that display a superficiality and a level of customer expectation that is best described as trite. Admittedly, it’s consistent with the culture’s trajectory, but Cook’s Apple supports the path…which is in GREAT contrast to the once Jobs’ heralded, Crazy Ones. The misfits. The rebels. The trouble-makers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules…
My biggest fear is who Tim’s apple will select as the replacement. There is no chance a young Steve Jobs has any future at apple. Steve Jobs doesn’t check any of the required boxes needed for “leadership” at Tim’s Apple.
Serious question, do we have much hope that the people that brought us this can choose the way forward ?
I have an idea!
Catch up and invent a new AI assistant for apple.
Once complete, apple brass should get in a room together with the ai assistant and ask it this, “So what should our next product be apple AI???” and see what it suggests!!!
I am definitely not a Tim Cook fan. I do t like his majority focus on Product RED, homosexually themed products, or his idiot mammoth waste of money on the incredibly stupid idea of a car with no steering wheel or gas pedal. But I don’t fault him for not being in “generative AI” when almost nobody can define it. It seems to me to be like the new field in Big Pharma where mad doctors try to replace God by injecting the world with untested chemical and technological goop that they want to become a human OS. Now, that is an idea worth shelving. Apple makes so much money I think it ought to be able to come up with some real insanely great new products that take advantage of their existing software. If only they would try.
Striving for useful AI has been around a long time, it has just finally gotten good lately. Apple launched Siri in 2011… and they’ve sat on it. It’s extremely embarrassing that it has shown minimal improvement over such a massive period of time. A decade is like a century in the tech world. I don’t want Apple to vomit out some me-too product, but one of the all-time great computing companies in the world should not have been so insanely late to the party. They still haven’t shown up and when they do they’re going to be wearing Google’s pants.
Kent ‘da Sarcasm is a new face and it plows BS pretty well.
Jordy could use an injection or AI as he has no natural intelligence.
Those goggles look silly, impractical, and they will learn that they are unhealthy for you wearing those damn fools things for long periods of time. A failure.
People bet against the iPod (myself included). “Concentrate on faster chips and market share- not a 500$ toy”. People lambasted the iPhone (everyone wants blackberry buttons not a smudgy screen….)People lambasted the iPad (no stylus? who needs it? Why is it running IOS?). Apple Watch…need I say more. The App Store and Apple services generate more annual income than may Nations GDP…. Well ,as an apple product user >30 yrs and a share holder I’m delighted with the way Tim Cook is running things. I’m not betting against the Vision Pro… in a few yrs we will all using this technology and staring at screens much less than we do now. My wife bought one to use on the road (as she can’t take external monitors with her). She’s still working through the kinks- but this is amazing technology and yes, like the Apple Watch, V1 will be sadly obsolete within a few years… But true progress doesn’t happen till you get it out in the world. The future is bright for Vision Pro and Apple….
I think Cook is doing a great job overall given the challenges. People are getting way too stuck on the woke thing. I’m anti-woke and I know that CO2 is not related to climate change in any meaningful way, so that stuff bugs me when Apple emphasizes it, but it could be way worse (look at every other company). Not to mention the power of ESG scores for the stock price (blame Blackrock, etc. for that). And when they do address ‘climate’ issues, they do it by preserving habitat, not buying fraudulent carbon offsets.
As bad as the woke stuff is, it’s just another distraction from real power, which is only kept in check with privacy, which Apple has continued leading the charge for. For this alone Tim deserves to be lauded, as I’m sure Apple gets immense pressure from authorities on this.
As for Apple’s products, they’re the best they’ve ever been, and Tim hasn’t messed anything up (services have always lagged at Apple.. where’s Eddy Cue??). Tim clearly has control of his ego, not pushing things just to make himself look better. Again, he should be lauded for this. I’m glad he pulled the plug on Titan (which seemed to be an Ive-driven product to begin with).
As for Apple Vision Pro, the haters remind me of ppl complaining about the camera bump. Go talk to physics about your issues. Apple Vision Pro is heads and shoulders above the competitors right out of the gate. Once Apple adds social features such as enhanced avatars and shared environments (probably this year), it will be much more compelling/fun/useful. Have some patience.