And the iPhone was a product worth shipping, as is. This is essentially the device created to demo the software for a product they can't build yet. And Tim said ship it.
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Report: Apple CEO Tim Cook Ordered Headset Launch Despite Designers Wanting to Wait for AR Glasses
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No one knew outside of Apple knew it was worth shipping because before the reveal Apple's only phone was the Moto Rokr with an iTunes button. No one outside of Apple, and certainly not these rumor mongers, knows if the first headset will be worth shipping.
Yes, there is. And the device Apple wants to make but can't (yet) is the one you would wear in public. The one Tim Cook decided to green light is the one you won't. And cant, actually.
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All you know is rumors.
No one outside of the project knows which things they are actually working on, what has been green lit, if anything has been green lit, what Apple is going to launch, or even what TC has decided to do. No one even knows the cost but people are still parroting $3000 like it's printed on the website.
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Makes me wonder if Apple has planted the rumours to make it look cheap at 899$
Give me a break. Every single person who had seen the iPhone before its release knew it was an absolute game changer, and so did the entire audience at its announcement 15 minutes into the keynote. This doesn't even belong in the same conversation. I hate when people try to make these comparisons.
That's what they did with the iPad. Every single journalist was running with the same $1000 price tag for the iSlate from "reliable sources" up until the day of the announcement, when Apple unveiled the iPad at $499.
Yes. People at the announcement knew it was great... however, before the announcement they did not.
Are we currently before or after the announcement?
Just stop. You haven't made a single point yet in this conversation worth exploring.
Hyperbole, like innovation has a sliding scale, where each of has our own definition.
Amazon did not ‘win’ any crown…they gave away their cheap data-mining-sales-boxes-with-sound for less than they cost to manufacture! That’s not winning a market, because it was unsustainable. Hence Amazon’s severe curtailing of their ‘smart’ speaker products recently and huge staff eliminations. What they did should be illegal, since it conditions the consumer to expect dirt-cheap ‘similar’ devices—from manufacturers who cannot afford to give away their products for less than they cost to make. Never mind that devices from other companies were and are generally much better.
Homepod should not be compared with any of the Amazon speakers, they’re an entirely different class.
As to the smart speaker market, I don’t think it is as compelling as any manufacturers thought it was. I don’t know what Sonos’ sales numbers are, but they do make a lot of different types of speakers at different price points, giving some evidence that one product line isn’t ‘enough’ for profitability.
I’ve never listened to a Sonos speaker, so I can’t compare it to a Homepod or Homepod pair, but in stereo the Homepod is quite pleasant. It’s not a true high-end speaker, but very (very) easy to set up and use, especially for streaming-only.
Siri…is a disappointment. But I knew that going in when I bought my HPods. So I can’t say I was suprised.
Yes, glasses are a real problem for eye-glasses wearers. I sometimes wear glasses, and that wouldn’t work at all for me.
I agree that if the experience had been (much) better, then the higher cost would have been worth it. But once I saw my first few movies in 3D (because the largest true IMAX screens were only showing films in 3D!, which was very irritating), and read about how the technology was applied for the most part in post-production, not via the actual filming(!) I could see why it was so lackluster and unimpressive.
Yes, someday, true immersive VR with 3D surround will be amazing, once we have the processing power and mass manufacturing to make the tech affordable and widespread.
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Let me get this straight… 3 grand for ski goggles to watch “3D” videos, trip over while doing a workout and to have a zoom call with a cartoon version of your mates.
You know what I hated about the IMAX experiences, how loud everything was. It seemed like instead of creating a true surround sound experience they just boosted the volume at times to an annoying level.
And keep in mind I regularly, or at some point in my life, regularly frequented smaller venues for Punk and Metal shows.
RIP my hearing and rip CBGBs 🥲
Nah.
They absolutely own the smarthome space. Amazon is winning that market absolutely no question about it.
Are they also going to a add a virtual notch with Face ID? I wouldn't be surprised if they did...
If it’s as bad as my Apple Watch it’s bound to fail. Raise-to-speak works like one out of five times. 'Hey Siri' has like a three second delay before the watch responds, and by then it’s already too late to give your command. The crown is just garbage for setting timers and such, there’s no precision. I don’t have single useful app besides 'fitness', Pay and music control. ALL notifications have the same stupid sound, so you can’t tell what app is sending a notification without raising your wrist within five seconds, actually a downgrade from just using an iPhone in many situations.
Now $3000 for an even worse product from Cook? Good luck with that.
Now $3000 for an even worse product from Cook? Good luck with that.
They weren't selling the Mac mini for app development and testing, they were selling a kit with the M1 chip which was the new product.
Expectations are different today than they were when the iPhone and iPad were released. People expect a ton of third party support at launch and that's only possible if Apple unveils it to the world as a long lead because they have to give hundreds or thousands of developers dev kits and they could never keep that bottled up. Dev kits are probably the new normal for new product categories.
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If true this seems extremely short-sighted.
Apple CEO Tim Cook sided with operations chief Jeff Williams in pushing to launch a first-generation mixed-reality headset device this year, against the wishes of the company's design team, the Financial Times reports.
The timing of the mixed-reality headset's launch has apparently been a cause of considerable contention at Apple. The company's industrial design team cautioned that devices in the category were not yet ready for launch and wanted to delay until a lightweight AR glasses product had matured several years later. On the other hand, Apple's operations team wanted to ship an early version of the product in the form of a VR-focused ski goggle-like headset that allows users to watch 3D videos, perform interactive workouts, or make FaceTime calls with virtual avatars.
Tim Cook, who served as Apple's operations chief prior to becoming CEO, reportedly sided with Jeff Williams, overruling objections from Apple's designers and pressing for an early launch with a more limited product. Speaking to the Financial Times, former Apple engineers who worked on the device described the "huge pressure to ship."
Upon the departure of design chief Jony Ive in 2019, Apple's design team now reports directly to Williams. While design led the direction of Apple's products under Steve Jobs, employees have noticed that operations is increasingly taking control over product development under Cook's leadership. One former engineer said that the best part of working at Apple was devising engineering solutions to meet the "insane requirements" of the design team, but that has apparently changed in recent years.
Apple's headset has reportedly been in active development for seven years, twice as long as the original iPhone prior to its launch. The device is seen as being tied directly to Tim Cook's legacy, as Apple's first new computing platform developed entirely under his leadership.
The company is still expecting to sell only around a million units of the headset during its first year on sale at a ~$3,000 price point. Nevertheless, Apple is purportedly preparing a "marketing blitz" for the product later this year.
Article Link: Report: Apple CEO Tim Cook Ordered Headset Launch Despite Designers Warning It Wasn't Ready
What is the reasoning for the “huge pressure to ship”? Is there a market clamoring for whatever this thing id supposed to be?
The only thing that would make any sense to me is introducing something like alongside an announcement of direct support from BIM software like Autodesk Revit and fully immersive gaming with support from major studios cause I have no idea what part of Apple’s current users care about a darned headset.
Thankfully they lead with design early on and can use the same form over and over with minor changes and still look good.
The software could def use a bit more polish, however. I’d love for it to “just work” again.
In all fairness, one could argue that VR headsets are never ready (because stupid, especially outside of gaming, which Apple isn’t good at), so they might as well just get it over with now, release the headset, watch it fail, and bury the product.