Report: Apple CEO Tim Cook Ordered Headset Launch Despite Designers Wanting to Wait for AR Glasses

[duffman9000]

It’s hilarious that people here are comparing a $300 Oculus with any high end VR headset. The starting price point is around $1000. Yes, that includes the PSVR2. If Apple does ship at $3000 then yes, it’s x3 more expensive than other competitors.

If Apple ships with much higher resolution panels and with the accompanying hardware to properly drive those panels (120+ fps), that price point may be justified.

 

[canyonblue737]

I've been wrong many times before and surprised when Apple products like the Apple Watch and AirPods have hit way bigger than I expected BUT I just have to say...

The VR headset seems like a disaster. In 2023 I see nothing but the smallest niche of people who have any interest in all in a device that covers your eyes completely, still remains large and awkward looking, and has little use besides gaming (and even that is niche with many having motion sickness, and Apple never being about cutting edge games anyway) and these odd little applications for VR meetings and the like. You add in costs of $2000-3000 or more for this and this is going to flop in a major way for Apple. I know, I know, they will iterate and bring the size and cost down but I just don't see "VR" headsets like this EVER being a popular thing, perhaps when you have augmented reality in a set of eye glasses or contact lenses but we remain far from that today.

I just think this isn't going to work at all. Hopefully Apple works its Apple magic and I can eat crow.

 

[Mr. Donahue]

People are not excited because of their current perceptions of “AR” personal headsets. What I think most people are not thinking about is the possibilities that could be done that may be of interest.

The few use cases that would interest me would be if you could have a conversation with shared FPV. That sounds fun. Imagine one person traveling and sharing their view with someone in real time. “ I know who wants walk around with goggles on their head?!” But it could become normal or at least the product could morph more into sunglasses as we know them today.
I use to feel so self conscious about having conversations with Bluetooth headsets and even my AirPods. Felt so unnatural compared to holding up my phone. I felt like I looked like a crazy person. But now I don’t feel that way at all.

Another use case is television. I see the future as having no television sets at all. They’re getting bigger and bigger and why have them if you can accomplish an even more immersive experience with something that covers your view and peripheral vision?
Paired with apples or Sonos theatre speakers or personal AirPod pros. You can see how the other ideas are going to make more sense. “Spatial audio” Apple TV shared viewing etc. eventually Apple TV can just be a hub for all your Apple devices and I really see by 20 years from now there will be no tvs in a home.

Gaming will be a feature but until Apple partners up with Nintendo, Microsoft,Sony, steam. It’ll just be iOS Apple game store feature cuz why not.

The last use case and the most useful for me is education/business. Imagine a camera deep faking your own face onto your face without goggles then wearing the goggles and appearing to everyone as your are in a room physically separated but virtually together. That’s what “zoom” of the future could be like.
I don’t know why Facebook is pushing this meta verse thing but it’ll be an interesting example of how someone can force something To work by throwing enough money at it. But I heard someone say once that the worse thing you can do to solve a problem is throw more money at it. I’ve never tried meta but it doesn’t look like something I want to ever try either. Time will tell.

 

[Danoc]

.

 

[Realityck]

It is Tim Cook’s Apple. He was good at what he did under Steve Jobs, but his leadership of the company has resulted in everything Apple makes since 2013 being rushed, incomplete, and loaded with design and software flaws. It just continues to get worse every year. The industry isn’t offering us anything better, because there’s absolutely zero accountability. The culture surrounding tech is fundamentally broken and irrational, while its proponents like to claim to be the most logical of all. It’s ridiculous.

Oh so the AS based Macs are rushed, incomplete, and loaded with design and software flaws. Those M2 Pro/Max Macs just continue to get worse every year right? Next time you generalize think about what you are saying. Don't try to lump experimental AR headsets into the same category.

 

[jhwalker]

I'm prepared to eat my hat if I'm wrong and plenty of people thought the smartphone in general was a product nobody needed, but I just don't see a clear use case for a product like this -- at least not from Apple and not in the consumer space.

• Immersive gaming is probably a big one, but Apple has never been a gaming platform for these kinds of games.
• Everyday AR might be neat, but not with ski goggles.
• Immersive FaceTime with long-distance partners, family or friends I can see, but the price will be too steep just for that.

That leaves all sorts of business and professional use cases. Frankly I don't know enough about that so I'm not going to make stuff up, but there does not appear to be great traction for others already in the market.

So who is this product really for?

I agree - no way I'd pay this kind of money for the bulky, niche device they're apparently going to release.

If we get to the point this tech can be layered onto a form factor that approaches "normal" glasses, I can see the appeal for augmented reality and immersive (for example) FaceTime, as you mentioned.

 

[ipedro]

I noticed people in this thread keep trying to justify this potential flop by saying people said the same thing about the iPhone back in 2006. I was around on these forums back then and that’s BS. Hardly anyone was saying that. The only skepticism I remember reading was could Apple really make a cell phone in what was seen as a very mature market with 800 pound gorillas like Blackberry, Nokia and Motorola.

There are VR headsets from Meta, Microsoft and others, yet they remain niche more than 10 years later or dying on the vine. I remember trying out HoloLens at Microsoft and wasn’t impressed.

I vacationed a couple years ago at a inn and a caretaker on the property had a Quest I believe with two joy sticks. They let me try it out. It placed me in an immersive world with a futuristic home like in the 5th Element or Star Wars. But it was meh. They had to help walk me around like Ray Charles while wearing it to avoid bumping into things or even walk into the pool.

I was here too and I vividly recall that when there were rumours of Apple making an "iPod Phone" that one section of the peanut gallery were happy with their Blackberry's, Sony-Ericssons and Nokias and the other wanted Apple to stick to Macs and resented Apple dropping "computer" from their name in January of that same year.

Of course once Steve introduced the iPhone, people could see how it was going to change everything. That's the point. Whatever Apple is building for AR needs to be seen.

There were computers before the Macintosh but none of them entered the mainstream consumer market until the Mac. Other companies tried mp3 players, but none of them became the pop-icon that iPod became. Other companies tried smartphones but none of them changed the world the way the iPhone did. There were smart watches before the Apple Watch but your grandma didnt wear one. Dismissing these glasses because something you saw before wasn't interesting is pretty naive given the repeated instances of Apple reinventing a category in ways nobody had done before.

 

[257Loner]

I feel sorry for the marketing team having to market this thing. AR goggles are:
1. Not already popular today.
2. Expensive.

And Apple's AR goggles are reportedly half-baked. So an expensive thing that nobody needs. Great.

 

[akb]

Tim Cook is not a man with vision.

He’s a bean counter, and a very good one at that. That’s his lane.

If this is his idea, his first big swing, it’s a bad one.

This is the wrong product. It will fail.

 

[Mr. Dee]

I was here too and I vividly recall that when there were rumours of Apple making an "iPod Phone" that one section of the peanut gallery were happy with their Blackberry's, Sony-Ericssons and Nokias and the other wanted Apple to stick to Macs and resented Apple dropping "computer" from their name in January of that same year.

Of course once Steve introduced the iPhone, people could see how it was going to change everything. That's the point. Whatever Apple is building for AR needs to be seen.

There were computers before the Macintosh but none of them entered the mainstream consumer market until the Mac. Other companies tried mp3 players, but none of them became the pop-icon that iPod became. Other companies tried smartphones but none of them changed the world the way the iPhone did. There were smart watches before the Apple Watch but your grandma didnt wear one. Dismissing these glasses because something you saw before wasn't interesting is pretty naive given the repeated instances of Apple reinventing a category in ways nobody had done before.

I'm saving this thread and we'll come back here a later.

 

[deconstruct60]

I’ll just leave this here

That monologue that Jobs is giving there has extremely little overlap with the current situation.

1. Operations and engineering isn't "sales and market"

Apple has no monopoly control of the VR/AR market at all.


It is the engineers and executives that are trying to actually ship a product. It is the concept-no-engineering folks that are stifling the product release.


2. Steve also famously said

"... Steve Jobs famously said; “Real artists ship”. He was referring to the fact that everyone has ideas, but real artists deliver on them or ship them, as he put it. ..."

Steve Jobs was right: Real Artists Ship!

Real artists ship! Find out who said this and the meaning behind it. The answer may surprise you.

www.creativethinkinghub.com

The industrial design team wants to kneecap the AR/VR headset because they don't have tech to make a AR only lightweight product. That would have been like don't ship the iPhone because we haven't finished the design on the iPad yet. It is two substantively different products (yes there is overlap (both will likely lean heaving on the AR aspects) , but also not). Holding up one for the other is a head scratcher.


Reportedly the industrial design of the AR/VR headset isn't the biggest problem issue. That the industrial design team is pointing at another different product only reinforces that. Supposedly software is a bigger problem. And that isn't really going to get fixed well in a super-duper secret Apple lab. Engaging more developers and users will expose and resolve issues better than even more secrecy for multiple more years.


The initial iPhone didn't really even have an app store (not anything like it is today). More time in the super-secret Apple lab wouldn't fix that. That's why ship product .. so can iterate in the 'daylight'.

Apple's strict policy not talking about unreleased products has as implicit premise that "great artists ship" .. that they will at some point push the product out so that can talk to larger/broader groups of folks about what they are working on.



3. The "monopoly power corrupts , absolutely" from the monologue is likely more so applicable the Industrial design folks, than it is the rest of the company

Six years .... they have had enough time to figure things out how to balance the available tech to the industrial design artificial constraints. One problem here is that there is industrial design to make some adjustments to the tech constraints as oppose to it just being a one way street where they are never told 'No'.

Better tech to make the AR only lightweight glasses even lighter will always be "just around the next corner". This is more a trendline of the never ending design process that doesn't have to ship mentality. Every year stay buried in the lab tinkering with the design , never having to ship.

The 'thinness politburo' from industrial got the MBP laptops the dubious butterfly keyboard that took YEARS to unwind.

And Ive in charge of Human Computer Interface created at least as many HCI regressions and any steps forward.
The style over substantive Gold Watches... a doomed dead end product that should have been as obviious as a turd in a punchbowl . that Watch didn't need that all to be a better product that was useful to a broader set of folks.

Apple car with no steering wheel or operator controls ... just completely bonehead dumb if actually want to ship a product in a reasonable about of time. ( as oppose to create a lab only product can just play with in the lab for next 7 years. )


There is a slippery slope tension between Industrial design coming up with 'insane constraints" that engineering has to stretch to come up for solutions for and just coming up with "insane constraints" so the design process is as long and as expensive as possible for 'job security'.

Reportedly Ive killed off any AR/VR headset that was tethered in any way. There are upsides to having free movement without dragging behind a cable to another unit and forced to operate in a fixed radius. But if get to the point that the tech allows to put the headset and battery on a person , it is time to 'ship'.



4. The only area where Apple has some semblance of a monopoly is USA smartphone sales. The AR/VR headsets would broaden Apple's product coverage. They are not a direct substitutable good for the iPhone. $700-1200 iPhone and $2000-3000 headset ... those are not in any way highly overlapping user bases. The price points are widely different.

This whole point of working harder trying to diversify Apple's base of product lines runs completely contrary of the extremely complacent (don't really need any new products ) attitude that Xerox had.

Neither the AR/VR or lightweight AR headset are going to get rid of the iPhone any more than the the cellular Watch did.

 

[Santabean2000]

I’ll just leave this here

100%

Profits over products; marketing over products. Tim has grown the company but has little idea of how to really move it into the next phase.

 

[Realityck]

This whole point of working harder trying to diversify Apple's base of product lines runs completely contrary of the extremely complacent (don't really need any new products ) attitude that Xerox had.

That’s a good point, however this a market akin to 8k tv. The infrastructure for it do well requires content. So this kinda like HyperCard hypertext was before the WWW greatly proliferated hypertext used in new ways to greatly expand the web surfing for information. AR examples is to increase the depth of information that isn’t available now readily interactively accessible. The first market should be around educational knowledge and scientific presentations. Eventually more interactive online shopping almost virtual.

 

[deconstruct60]

It doesn’t sound like they’re releasing this version premature, and will be riddled with bugs. It sounds like they wanted further research to be able to release the lightweight iteration. Probably so people start developing apps for it, by the time a cheaper and lighter version is ready, they have the software.

You are presuming that the SoCs in the two products will be the same. This may end up closer to the difference between the iPhone SoC and the Watch SoC. Shared function units but not the same performance profile or screen resolution overhead.

The battery sizes of the two product is not likely going to be the same at all. the number of cameras is likely very different.

People use Macs to develop iPhone software so could put some boundaries on the AR/VR headset to do apps that will scale down to the smaller , more mobile unit. But that isn't going to sustain the AR/VR headset as a product. (i.e., folks can use a Mac for far more things than just iPhone software development. )

 

[anshuvorty]

100%

Profits over products; marketing over products. Tim has grown the company but has little idea of how to really move it into the next phase.

Can you name a visionary out there that Apple can hire that can replace Tim Cook and do 70% of the work that Steve Jobs did?

I don't think so. Visionaries are hard to come by. Even if Apple coasted and did its best at releasing new products in new product segments and either failed or did a mediocre job, they would be ok. Their war chest is plenty big enough to keep them operating for decades to come.

 

[imamacperson]

I don't think this is going to turn out they way people expects. Remember when Apple Maps first come out? Disaster!

 

[Mrkevinfinnerty]

That monologue that Jobs is giving there has extremely little overlap with the current situation.

1. Operations and engineering isn't "sales and market"

Apple has no monopoly control of the VR/AR market at all.


It is the engineers and executives that are trying to actually ship a product. It is the concept-no-engineering folks that are stifling the product release.

The point Jobs was making is what happens when product people are driven out of decision making forums within companies and the focus moves away from making great products.

Sounds very similar to what is being rumoured here.

 

[GhostRaider]

This AR/VR headset won’t sell well 100%. Sorry to burst Tim Cook’s bubble but this tech is just not ready. Nobody wants to wear a strapped headset for a meeting.

 

[d686546s]

Dismissing these glasses because something you saw before wasn't interesting is pretty naive given the repeated instances of Apple reinventing a category in ways nobody had done before.

We will see. You are of course right that Apple has a history of reinventing a product and making it appealing.

I've said this before in this thread, but of the examples you give, both the phone and the mp3 player were established product categories that a lot of people actively wanted before Apple threw their hat in the ring. It's fair enough to say that there were those who wanted to keep their Nokias and Blackberries. There were also those who didn't want to use iTunes and so praised whatever other mp3 player they had. But the use case was undisputed, Apple just made it easier, better and more appealing.

The iPad, AirPods and the Watch rode on the coat tails of the iPhone. The original Mac was frankly before my time.

I think what I'm trying to say is that there are limits to how much past successes can tell us about whether an AR headset is a good idea. People aren't ARing or VRing en masse on crappy competitors' headsets.

Maybe there is a hidden demand yearning to be met. People above have given some great examples for professional use, but I just don't see it yet in the consumer space. I remember watching Ready Player One and thinking how great that would be, but for now it's still me in my lounge pants bumping into my couch table, so my excitement is muted.

 

[topdrawer]

“They saud the same thing about the iphone”


Oh right, totally same situation because everyone in the world already uses and depends on vr like they did with phones before the iphone.

 

[Silencio]

So who is this product really for?

Developers. "Version 0" VR goggles will give them the tools to begin developing software and experiences that can be somewhat polished or complete by the time more consumer-friendly "Version 1" product ships.

 

[smulji]

I trust Apple to make all the right decisions about when the time is right to ship new products.

I don't trust Apple's curerent senior leadership. When you're driven by prioritizing share price / shareholder's interests instead of making the best products that delight customers, this is what happens. Apple's software has been more buggier recently compared to what they used to be. They feel rushed.

 

[aknabi]

Cook's pay this year is estimated to be only $50 million compared to $100 million in 2022. He might be getting itchy.

Tim's channeling his inner Rihanna post Super Bowl show...

 

[d686546s]

“They saud the same thing about the iphone”


Oh right, totally same situation because everyone in the world already uses and depends on vr like they did with phones before the iphone.

Exactly. When the iPhone and the iPod launched, people didn't debate whether phones or mp3 players are a good idea. In the case of the iPhone, not even whether or not a smartphone was a good idea was in dispute.

People argued what type of device they wanted, how they wanted to control it and how open it should be, but that's not really the place we're in with AR/VR at the moment.

 

[RedWeasel]

Immersive FaceTime with long-distance partners, family or friends I can see, but the price will be too steep just for that.

With Avatars? Not really IMHO