You've really hit on the key change.
Everything under Tim is yet another new way to squeeze juice from the loyalty lemon that Steve's Apple grew from the ground.
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Kuo: Apple Vision Pro Unlikely to Receive Major Upgrades Until 2027
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You've really hit on the key change.
Everything under Tim is yet another new way to squeeze juice from the loyalty lemon that Steve's Apple grew from the ground.
The key here is "major upgrades," which likely means a significant change in the form factor. I doubt Apple wouldn't at least do a spec bump from now until 2027. Apple Watch also didn't get that significant upgrade until Series 4.
It might have helped if he'd prioritized fixing the leak:
"Apple is like a ship with a hole in the bottom, leaking water, and my job is to get the ship pointed in the right direction." - Gil Amelio
If your only metric is financial, then Tim Cook is the best CEO anyone has ever had. If you're more concerned with the products and customers than the financials, then Tim Cook is the worst CEO Apple has ever had.
This is such revisionist history/Jobs mythology. Apple products have always been overpriced compared to the competition and Apple has always gouged its customers on upgrades like storage and memory. Many Jobs fans conveniently forget everything about him prior to his return to Apple. He obviously was an amazing leader during those years, having learned a whole lot from his previous failures, both at Apple and NeXT.
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With a gap that big, one would hope they would use that time to focus on some serious bug fixing of the rest of their product line, instead of Tim's giant boondoggle...
As a fellow long timer, I'd say the perception of actual value (ecosystem and products) has decreased under Cook.
People don't absolute, or relative, high pricing if the overall value is there.
Things like not having ProMotion everywhere by now are an example of Tim's style vs Steve's
Steve was VERY much about getting the best products out there and upgraded to what is "best for the product" once it was feasible. Tim sees those same situations as price tier creation opportunities instead.
It's just the difference between a Product person and a Financials oriented leader like Tim is.
Different styles and proclivities and talents
I think Tim is a phenomenal CEO for the financials and stock price -- there's really no way to dispute that angle.
That's ridiculous. I got 8 years out of my last Mac and the device itself was in perfect working order when I retired it. Show me another company whose products last that long. No one in the industry has been able to approach the overall quality and user experience Apple's ecosystem offers to the customer.
Who is doing a better job? Who out there has such an incredible vision, is executing upon it, and is delivering all of these amazing products and experiences to customers better than Cook? I've said if before and I'll say it again. I'm still waiting for a single Cook hater to tell me who in the entire tech world is delivering all of these great experiences and better products that Apple would surely deliver if it weren't for the villainous beancounter Tim Cook!
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I think the honest reply is that the entire industry has been pretty unimpressive the last 10-ish years
We have a lot of monopoly's who are busying rent seeking and resting on laurels and occasionally hoping for a "next big thing" -- which is really hard.
So much innovation has been "acqui-hired" and hoover'd up before we see what could come from it. Apple has been very participatory in that competition inhibitor technique as well.
Even Apple hasn't been able to come close to replicating and "iPhone moment" -- and in their defense, it's a nearly impossible prospect.
As expected, visionOS is where we'll see the most innovation of this platform for the foreseeable future. The hardware is there. The foundation, set. The software will offer the best bang-for-their-buck over the next few years.
That said, I fully expect we'll eventually see a less expensive option at some point - be it Apple Vision, Apple Vision Air, or whatever. Regardless, they're likely going to have to get much closer to a $1,999 starting at price point if they want actual adoption.
That said, I fully expect we'll eventually see a less expensive option at some point - be it Apple Vision, Apple Vision Air, or whatever. Regardless, they're likely going to have to get much closer to a $1,999 starting at price point if they want actual adoption.
The Bean Counter strikes again. Apple really should've taken a hint from some other recent products and sold these at a minor loss to make the price palatable to more people. That way, developers would've been more incentivized to jump in and more people would have one of these in their house to play with and get to know/like.
Apple is a trillion-dollar company. They can afford to invest A LITTLE in getting a wider adoption rate. Short-sighted move to make this a luxury item.
Apple is a trillion-dollar company. They can afford to invest A LITTLE in getting a wider adoption rate. Short-sighted move to make this a luxury item.
I think you're looking at it through the wrong lens. If you're all-in on Apple, everything works very nicely together, much better than any other set of products out there. When you're that far ahead of everyone else, it's frankly easier for others to catch up than for you to stay ahead. Big leaps don't happen very often. In the interim, your competition starts to catch up.
If anything I think Cook has done a great job of maintaining the value perception in the face of ever-increasing competition. There's no argument that other products are getting better and better. Despite that, Apple has maintained it's dominance in the mobile phone market. The top selling phones are still always iPhones. How can you argue that the perception of value has decreased under Cook when the market clearly disagrees? If that perception had decreased, people wouldn't continue to pay top dollar for Apple products and Apple's devices wouldn't consistently be top sellers in their respective categories.
Other options are getting better, but that doesn't negate Apple's value perception and I think Cook has done a great job of preserving the perceived value of Apple's hardware and ecosystem despite the competition making significant improvements.
Steve's style was somewhat utilitarian and it was just what Apple needed when he returned. But would that be the right path in today's world? In Steve's world, we probably would have just one iPhone. There'd be no SE, no Pro, no different screen sizes, no differentiating features. Would that approach have taken Apple to where it is today? I don't think so.
Yes, under Cook, there are differentiating hardware features and certain ones cost a premium. If every device had ProMotion every device would cost a lot more. Eventually every device will, just not today.
Steve didn't see the need for a big product mix. He thought everyone should pretty much have the same device. Would that work today? And why is that approach better than Cook's? In Steve's world, "best for the product" also meant the product was destined to be very expensive. Cook's approach makes Apple products more accessible.
Not at all. It's Apple's diverse product mix that has made Apple successful. Under Cook Apple started giving customers a lot more options and guess what happened? They grew into a multi-trillion dollar company. Honestly I have no idea what you're complaining about. Cook is clearly much more of a product guy because under his leadership Apple has sold A LOT MORE products!
By that time companies will start releasing AR/AI smart glasses. Who would want to wear a headset at that point? Apple is really falling behind… 🤷♂️
Cook is riding on the legacy of products that Jobs left. For the first several years, all he had to do was maintain the status quo and the growth machine and product DNA that Jobs left behind. What few contributions he's had to the product matrix have hurt them, not helped. He's succeeded in milking blood from stone. But almost all of the products and product lineups are worse for it. Fortunately, there are thousands of OTHER people at Apple who do the actual work, and make sure the products are still the best they can be.
100% agree. So why is Tim Cook a bad CEO and why would Apple be better off without him?
The idea of replicating the "iPhone moment" is silly. No one has managed to do that, although I think CHAT GPT was another one of those moments. The difference is, the iPhone moment happened before mobile internet was a big thing, before social media, and people need to keep that in mind. The landscape was very different and we were at a point where society was primed to be amazed.
Things are very different now. We're all in it 24/7, so big leaps don't even seem that big these days because the firehose of information is so intense overall. The "iPhone moment" would need to be 1000x today just to get the public's attention.
Your assumption that Apple will only make headsets like the VP is probably faulty. Leaked documents show that smart glasses have always been Apple's end-goal.
I don't think that the sharing aspect is that important... I don't share my eyeglasses, but they help rather than hinder my daily activities at a reasonable cost.
I say that as a guy who wears a basic watch. I tried the Apple Watch and it doesn't improve my life over what iPhone already does for me. I do have an Apple Watch... it sits on my nightstand, permanently.
I think wearables have to be more of a personal statement, and that's another problem with VR... it's a gigantic wearable that obscures from view the most personal part of you: Your face. In that sense, it's unlike other devices that accompany your look. That's even less appealing.
In short, the design problem with VR is that right now the masses see this:
When it needs to be this:
New product line that is DOA per the comments.
Pull the 24th anniversary post from last week and source the original comments.
All 3 product lines were dead. “Take it to the bank.”
I will one day walk into my shared office, put on glasses and my empty desk will transform into multiple monitors and work stations. This is the future, starting with a ski goggle.
Exactly. AirPods and Pros are cheaper and more commercially relevant. The Max is the high end niche product that still sells. The Vision line is a month old and the ragers are desperate to declare it dead.
For an eighth the cost of an AVP, right now, I have multiple 4K monitors connected to my M2 MacBook Pro.
While I've been critical of Vision Pro, I think you're probably right. A lot has to happen between now and that day and these clunky, weird, socially awkward headsets are the beginning. At the same time other technologies have to mature as well. I don't think the AR glasses vision of the future works unless we have a fully conversational UI to go with it and that's where AI comes in.
Why are you challenging me to justify it? I didn’t make them. I just pointed out that they exist.