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Report: Apple CEO Tim Cook Ordered Headset Launch Despite Designers Wanting to Wait for AR Glasses
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This article is a total non-story.
The design team would never be expected to set the launch strategy for a new product.
The CEO agreeing with the COO as to whether the product launches as a standalone item or later when a 2nd similar device is ready sounds like the key people who own this decision are aligned.
The design team would never be expected to set the launch strategy for a new product.
The CEO agreeing with the COO as to whether the product launches as a standalone item or later when a 2nd similar device is ready sounds like the key people who own this decision are aligned.
What? No, there was a buzz when the iPhone was announced and a big push to jailbreak it when it was released and to get other software on it. The only people that said that were competitors and people who had no clue.
Headsets are held back by the practicality of a computer on your head, and it takes you out of a moment with others and reality. So many companies have failed trying to produce a headset. It makes people look goofy and the payoff is not great. I think Apple has a wall to climb to convince people they need this in their day-to-day life.
The aesthetics of this product are complicated like the rest of the eye-wear industry, one size fits all makes me doubt this product category. You would have to be able to minimise the technology to fit in standard frames (which probably has its own drawbacks to how effective it will be in that form factor) and I do not think we are there yet.
Apple would have to announce it as a beta product for developers but the time between that and the ideal product that customers would want to buy may be too great.
If it truly is going to remain an enthusiast product until the AR glasses launch, then interested parties better be able to hack it to work on SteamVR!
The Newton! I personally blame Steve Jobs and Tim Cook for that blunder… the fact that they weren’t at Apple at the time is no excuse! 🫠😜😝🤯🤓🙃
Exactly. Being design-driven is the essence of Apple. It’s what defines Apple. The company would not exist without it. The first and most obvious example was the Macintosh itself launched in 1984. The next most obvious example of course is the iPhone. Those products came to be because designers asked the question, engineering aside, how can we make something insanely easy and intuitive for people to use. And then they figured out how to make it happen. Releasing an AR headset just like everyone else’s just to get something into the market is antithetical to Apple‘s entire reason for being… and it concerns me greatly. That’s not the company that launched the Macintosh in 1984 and changed the world. That would have been the company that launched another beige box in 1984 that ran a CLI and would have went out of business within a decade. Not saying Apple of today is going anywhere. Of course not. But it’s sad to see them releasing a product for all the wrong reasons.
Why does this article remind me of the song from Foster The People - Pumped Up Kicks? Both seem to have an eerie resemblance.
Yeah, absolutely, so I'm willing to give it the benefit of the doubt.
However, while the iPhone revolutionised the smartphone, I think there are some caveats that we need to remember:
First, 'phone' was already a hugely popular product category. You didn't really need to convince anyone that they needed one in their life and the iPhone improved massively on the texting, which again was something people actively did a lot of.
Second, the 'iPod' was one of the most popular mp3 players and the iTunes Store hugely successful.
Third, mobile email wasn't as widespread and the mobile internet in its infancy, for the masses at least, people used both a lot so it didn't take a sophisticated campaign to anyone why that might be neat.
It's tempting to look back at the iPhone now to judge its success by all the things that came after and that the iPhone helped create, but the initial and early iPhones had almost none of that and they were still a success because they tapped and improved things people were already doing.
For the AR glasses I am not so convinced. If I had to guess I'd say this is more Newton than iPhone. It will be neat and some people will love it, but it's an idea whose time hasn't fully come because the tech isn't quite there yet. Again, we'll see, I might be wrong. But so might Apple.
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Investors, shareholders, potential corporate partners. You can make millions selling a good product; you can make billions convincing billionaires that you have the hot new thing.
I'd normally take this in a more cynical direction, but it's kind of good in the case of these goggles. Every skeptic on these boards is falling over to say this will fail as a consumer product, as if a company can't sell both consumer and commercial products and strategies.
It's okay if Apple makes a really expensive niche product that performs to some special, niche standards. If this headset becomes the gold standard for some VR surgical robot, Apple will make more in the stock market than actually selling to the handful of hospitals who can afford the whole system. Likewise if this headset is the first one deemed reliable enough for some large commercial vehicle control system (think pilots taxiing a plane and being able to "see through" walls, or a tanker pilot navigating the Suez Canal, at night, with a 3rd person model of their ship and surroundings); the value for the company is in being an industry standard.
Maybe the tech never makes a big splash on the street. Maybe Apple is successful enough to actually have the capital and desire to shrink the tech to contact lenses in 15 years. Maybe the whole thing is a flop. I dunno, but I don't have to want a product for myself to think it could have some interesting, sci-fi-y effect on the world.
We've sorta passed the era where singular geniuses can invent a thing and rock the boat; all the space ships and replicators and holodeck lovers we've been promised, it turns out, require billions invested in huge teams working insane hours for years at a time to develop. If you really want any of those things, you must bite the bullet and accept either trillion-dollar companies appealing to the market over you, or state control/coordination of industry—either way, the giant non-human social entity isn't going to share your exact wants and needs.
The thing is...you've always got a push-and-pull between the people who value a technology for its own sake versus the people who value its ability to become a good product. The second group desperately needs the first group happy to function, but without the second group's money the first group can't operate at speed. The trick is to find the threshold point where the two groups are both happy. With very rare exception Apple ships the first iteration of a product a bit before that threshold, with the first shipping version dressed up well enough to gather widespread interest. By the time the product line hits a stride there's an established base of users to give it more momentum. That early sex appeal mixed with product-line tenacity is what we'll see with AR. Examples:
iPad: Didn't hit its stride until the Mini and 4 were in the wild - the premium version with cameras, speedier chips and a retina display, the small version with cameras and genuine fit-in-a-coat-pocket portability.
iPhone: Didn't hit its stride until the iPhone 3GS, where it had an app store, workable mobile data, and could shoot both photos and video.
Mac: Frankly, if we're being honest, didn't hit its true stride for 15 years until the launch of the G4 series. But its early incarnations also strongly benefited from a few passes.
Watch: Series 1 was a bit clunky and Series 2 wasn't much better. Series 3 was a stronger outing with the introduction of standalone mobile data connectivity.
Home: Arguably they still haven't gotten anything quite right here. If you're all in on Apple Music, HomePod Mini is a pretty solid little radio replacement.
iCloud & related supporting cross-device features are pretty solid these days. .Mac and MobileMe before it? Best left forgotten.
Apple TV? It's actually been pretty nice throughout (except for that one remote, which, lets be honest, was still better than most actual TV remotes shipped at the time). You can argue its real first attempt was the Front Row feature on Macs, and that wasn't exactly setting the world on fire.
Apple TV+ ? Well, the first batch of originals weren't exactly competition for HBO. But then you've got Severance last year, demonstrating a subtle masterclass of premium television.
iPad: Didn't hit its stride until the Mini and 4 were in the wild - the premium version with cameras, speedier chips and a retina display, the small version with cameras and genuine fit-in-a-coat-pocket portability.
iPhone: Didn't hit its stride until the iPhone 3GS, where it had an app store, workable mobile data, and could shoot both photos and video.
Mac: Frankly, if we're being honest, didn't hit its true stride for 15 years until the launch of the G4 series. But its early incarnations also strongly benefited from a few passes.
Watch: Series 1 was a bit clunky and Series 2 wasn't much better. Series 3 was a stronger outing with the introduction of standalone mobile data connectivity.
Home: Arguably they still haven't gotten anything quite right here. If you're all in on Apple Music, HomePod Mini is a pretty solid little radio replacement.
iCloud & related supporting cross-device features are pretty solid these days. .Mac and MobileMe before it? Best left forgotten.
Apple TV? It's actually been pretty nice throughout (except for that one remote, which, lets be honest, was still better than most actual TV remotes shipped at the time). You can argue its real first attempt was the Front Row feature on Macs, and that wasn't exactly setting the world on fire.
Apple TV+ ? Well, the first batch of originals weren't exactly competition for HBO. But then you've got Severance last year, demonstrating a subtle masterclass of premium television.
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The Newton is a fantastic example. The stylus was a compromise driven by engineering limitations. Steve killed it because it wasn’t a joy to use. The design (and remember… design is how it works) sucked. Releasing a big clunky AR headset that probably isn’t much different from other options in the market now… when they know a truly revolutionary version that would be a joy to use is possible (just not this year) is very unlike Apple.
Go back to macrumors 2006 archives. It’s an eye opener sir
In other news, Apple hired this little fella to make sure sales are robust.
I'd like to think that Apple bats 1000 all the time but even the best trip up once in a while.
Sony's headset is something around 600 bucks, and I have absolutely no use for it. It is hard to believe that Apple's gimmicky 3000 headset can be priced so astronomically.
The Apple TV is also a flop and lets not get into some of their services. Apple Music still getting lapped by Spotify eight years after launch for example.
literally no one cares about the metaverse flop
what are they rushing for? LMAO
what are they rushing for? LMAO
Great news, 6 years is more than enough time. They can wait and wait and wait until it's too late, there is always a first step and we need the hardware to get the software development to gear up. What the design team wants is a decade away, Tim Cook is just being realistic.
all the more reason to avoid it.
i'll wait for the gen 2-3 with improved hardware, stable software, and a lower price!
you'd have to be a fool or have more money than sense to buy one of these things at launch but that sums up a lot of apple buyers so
i'll wait for the gen 2-3 with improved hardware, stable software, and a lower price!
you'd have to be a fool or have more money than sense to buy one of these things at launch but that sums up a lot of apple buyers so
you obviously have no idea what the "metaverse" is.
That’s not what the article said. I believe the bug problem stems from two years of remote working, meaning much less in house testing especially with new devices that can’t leave the building.
They did the same with the Apple Watch and it didn’t exactly go the way they planned…