The original HomePod was absolutely a flop. Doesn't mean it wasn't a great product, it was. It failed miserably though sales wise.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Report: Apple CEO Tim Cook Ordered Headset Launch Despite Designers Wanting to Wait for AR Glasses
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
The original iPhone and 3G were quickly superseded by the 3GS.
And the mini has the opposite problem! ***** product, good sales.
The most bizarre thing is they're risking their reputation, and Tim's reputation, on something nobody is interested in.
I'm guessing Tim Cook is excited to release this new product for the dozen or so new emojis it can display...
Why did you even need to wait then? You said it yourself, PSVR TWO vs a completely new product line from Apple. First gen is always the same with Apple.
To all the Chicken Littles, it was the same story before iPhone launched. Probably worse. There was a crazy deadline, no cellular deal, no app store, clunky hardware without design consensus, no working OS, and a panicky meeting in which Jobs notably seethed, “We don’t have a product yet.” And here we are 15+ years later. Sometimes a deadline does a [corporate] body good.
It matters to everyone, especially CEOs. Money represents performance. It's their report card.
Tim Cook proposed the pay cut because only 64% of shareholders approved his compensation, compared to 95% in 2020.
Sure, Sony is already limiting their projected sales of PSVR2 to 1,5 Million this year - probably because it's too expensive and doesn't have enough software and Apple is expecting to sell 1 million of a probably half-baked product at triple the price (adding the PS5 to the PSVR2)?
People were sceptical but still waiting on something like the iphone back then. I don't think that's the case for a ski-goggles mixed reality headset geared towards developers. The usecase for a smartphone before an iphone were still iphony-things like email, surfing the web, playing music... I even had a motorola a835 for this years before the iphone came out.
The use case for VR atm is gaming - something apple has not been good at since the days of Myst.
People were sceptical but still waiting on something like the iphone back then. I don't think that's the case for a ski-goggles mixed reality headset geared towards developers. The usecase for a smartphone before an iphone were still iphony-things like email, surfing the web, playing music... I even had a motorola a835 for this years before the iphone came out.
The use case for VR atm is gaming - something apple has not been good at since the days of Myst.
Last edited:
Nonsense. Nothing in my experience since the 128k Macs suggests that "Apples' products seem to be more bug ridden." Of course not always perfect, but not worse recently.
Ive chose to leave and Apple through gobs of money at him. ( even buckets after he left).
Ive is a decent designer, but there are lots of indications that he is not a good executive. He never should be put in charge of Human Computer Interact. He messed up more stuff than he 'fixed' there. The industrial design team was a hyper minimized team for a long time that nestled in a sheltered alcove of Apple for a long time.
He didn't seem to produce any junior executives that turned out well either. So again not much of loss as an executive.
Apple made Ive too rich and too bored. So he left. He gets to spend more time hanging out with the "lifestyles of the rich and famous' folks and working on arbitrary projects that happen to catch his eye. For Ive to stay he would have had to adapt to the far more successful Apple that needed to generate evolutionary products every year ( yet another iPhone version) and basically stay out of the executive zone ( give up power over larger groups and just stick with a small one). He seems to have wanted all the dictator powers of a high level executive without all of the other required obligations. So he was the 'wrong fit'.
And folks need to stop with the 'Steve' was the only thing holding Apple together. And Ive was the only personal in the company with a decently good design idea. It isn't one person by themselves that gets these products out.
It is a different metric of difficulty. The new iPhones have a fixed in stone deadline. That doesn't make it easier.
this thread's original article of pushing the AR/VR product off into the future to make the lightweight AR headset more higher priority is a 'cop out'. That isn't necessarily 'harder' design either. The apple car essentially being a $1B boondoggle... that isn't good design either.
The Apple Watch hamstrung on battery life for several years ... finally get a bigger enclosure without massive increase in price and shocker it is better user functionality.
The original iPhone was more like $1000 without a contract, in 2007. That makes $1500 today with inflation.
I don't think VR will cost 3000 for the base model, maybe a Mac-wired version for $1000 to compete with the Playstation VR.
Yet nobody seems able to explain what this product would do and who it would be for. In the case of other companies it seems to be mostly gaming related. Apple’s not a hard core gaming company. This absolutely wreaks of Tim Cook and other executives feeling the pressure to release a new product category because the last major category was the Watch and that was like 9 years ago. Even other companies trying to make VR and AR a thing wreaks of throwing something out there desperate for it to be The Next Big Thing™.
Yup, homepod. And Ping. And the ipod Hifi. And the trashcan macpro. Airpower. The butterfly keyboard and touchbar. Every mouse they ever produced...
So none of that could have been challenged or nixed? That can only happen if designers are reporting to Jeff Williams? And do you really think no one else in the company had a say something like the so-called trash can Mac Pro? When Phil Schiller announced it on stage he said “can’t innovate my ass”. Clearly the executive team thought they were going down the right path. They made the wrong bet but that was about a lot more than design.
Nobody gives good use cases for this product. Most say it doesn’t interest them. It feels like this is releasing a product for the sake of it just because they haven’t released a new product category in a while. I certainly have no faith that Tim Cook or any other exec will be able to explain why this product exists. Heck they still struggle to explain the iPad Pro. A bulky set of googles that require an external battery pack? Please.
Tim Cook will now be getting that $50million back. Tim is obscenely greedy enough to not take a $50million pay cut.
You really think millions of people are going to start wearing a bulky headset with an external battery pack just because it has an Apple logo on it? This is the epitome of a niche product with an (alleged) price point to match.
I don’t normally say this because we saw what happens with form over function (butterfly keyboards), but I’d side with the design team.
Heavy glasses have almost no chance of being used long term. Need a lightweight pair to wear.
Heavy glasses have almost no chance of being used long term. Need a lightweight pair to wear.
A made up story like this is only trying to play with investors thoughts. You really think any company goes full stream ahead with something in a marketplace not established. AR has been a dev topic since 2018.