Report: Apple Executives Cautious of Mixed-Reality Headset Amid Compromises

[HobeSoundDarryl]

So Apple executives are now cautious/wary/skeptical of their AR/VR headset?

But I thought this was going to be the next big hit product from Apple since some unknown individual was "blown away" after briefly testing it.

Apple Tester Claims to Be 'Blown Away' by AR/VR Headset, Says There Was Giant Development Leap

Ahead of the unveiling of Apple's AR/VR product, there has been skepticism that the device will be well-received, both because of its rumored...

www.macrumors.com

Again, rumors are built upon either guesses & imagination or- sometimes- a little morsel of some actual bit of quote/insight/supply chain research. It is so easy for a morsel to imply anything. To this example...

Suppose the insider quote is from an Apple store employee in Kansas or France. A little bit of information about this new product has been revealed to them from time to time in prep for the launch. In all such bits of information, they executive team has never been mentioned or involved. Maybe there's been a video presentation to get them ready and again it is done by some Cupertino employee but not the executives. From this "sources" perspective, no exec has ever been seen associated with the product, so there is no apparent interest among all executives. Pessimist rumor monger runs with that and boom: executive team has no interest in new product.

Example #2: on a train excursion from an Alaska cruise, we visited a little town in Canada. While we did not have much time there, we noticed that there didn't seem to be any women in the town. We did not see one during the entire excursion. Headline: Canada has no women.

Example #3: I've never been to China. Since I haven't seen China, it cannot be there. This one is more like a very popular one around here: Since I see no point/purpose in <whatever>, there is no point/purpose in <whatever>... or since I don't like <thing>, no one will like <thing>... and 99% won't want <thing> because my self survey of only me (or maybe me and 3 friends easily influenced by my opinions) says no one can like it.

 

[Ethosik]

I just want all this AR/VR news to stop. Where is Apple on discussing the massive increase in Mac and iOS bugs? They are already stretching themselves too thin. Where is an update on the Mac Pro? We are over their estimate and not one word recently about it. Not even a “we are still working on it”

Stick to your current products.

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

Yeeeeright! Too late for the narrative change Tim, we gotcha 😏😉..thats all Tim has been talking up for years!

Well now apparently none of them are interested... so sayeth only one rumor.

I suspect at the "big reveal", executive presenter enthusiasm- real or only portrayed- will be as if THEY believe this is the next iPhone. Whether they actually think or so or not will not get in the way of a big launch to try to create a whole new, lucrative revenue stream in a market with few existing competitors able to quickly copy whatever this thing actually is.

People in the business of selling dirt or ink pens or pillows will do so with great enthusiasm too.

 

[RogueWarrior65]

They may be wary of it because they don't want to repeat past product mistakes. Yes, the first iPhone was a game changer but the lack of 3G and being limited to AT&T may have delayed its success. The first Apple Watch was okay but wasn't a monstrous success. Same with HomePod. Who here remembers the Newton? Top brass may want to know that there are plenty of killer apps for AR/VR and consumers aren't going to want to spend a ton of money on it given Apple's history of first-gen products being less than insanely great.

 

[Nicky G]

The Microsoft HoloLens has sold about 300,000 units at about AU$7,000 and is not considered a flop…. Not everything has to be made for the gaming market. I doubt it would be targeted to 25 year olds gaming nerds working in burger joints. More like professionals with actual cash.

Microsoft ********** that team, it’s done. HoloLens was kind of a flop.

This doesn’t mean the Apple product will be a flop, but I don’t think Apple is aiming for HoloLens levels of “success.”

 

[carrrrrlos]

There is no such thing as CEO non involvement.

 

[gleepskip]

I just want all this AR/VR news to stop. Where is Apple on discussing the massive increase in Mac and iOS bugs? They are already stretching themselves too thin. Where is an update on the Mac Pro? We are over their estimate and not one word recently about it. Not even a “we are still working on it”

Stick to your current products.

Hopefully Schrödinger's quantum collapse comes in a couple of weeks and the fantasy doesn't continue because they choose to delay the launch.

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

Goggles is not the solution to that problem. I don’t know why this is being discussed as a killer privacy feature when it introduces physical concerns. And people working in such sensitive data are probably employed and won’t be able to use any headset since their IT department didn’t pay for it.

These employees need training on protecting from others seeing their work. If that doesn’t help, they need to be let go. But goggles isn’t the answer in any way to this issue.

Someone- was it you- brought up the privacy sidebar. Goggles certainly CAN address that better than any type of screen we have now if individuals are going to look at private information in public places.

Yes, people need training to NOT do that, but people who may opt to do laptop-like computing in select situations- like while flying in commercial planes- will have an easy way to work on up to the most sensitive information with a 0% chance of someone seeing their VR screen.

I don't really care about this sidebar much myself and I am careful in public settings. My interest remains the great benefit of an ANY size screen laptop-like experience in any place where I now use laptops.

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

iPhone had iPod functionality, safari, and many other built in apps to use that made it worth it. I got one so I didn’t have two devices with iPod being added.

And the recent rumor is that ALL iPad apps will work with Goggles, presumably along with iPod functionality, Safari and may Apple build in apps. ALL iPad apps.

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

Nowhere did I indicate I don’t understand the nature of rumors, or indicate this newest “info” is anything but.

I will say, though, that sometimes the articles are written as if it is known-fact, and not rumor.

“While Apple initially hoped to sell three million units within the device's first year on sale, it now expects to sell around 900,000 headsets.”

There’s quite a bit of this in the article. I understand that it would be distracting to write “reportedly” or “allegedly” repeatedly in the article; can we at least get a bit of “according to the source”? I dunno, just my perspective reading this stuff.

And was it yesterday or the day before where the rumor was that sales were expected to be up towards 7-10 million units?

Again, that's rumors. We can zoom in on the ones that support our own expectations of failure or success and use those supporting rumor numbers. But that's just being selective to support our own imaginations.

I can easily put on an extremist pessimist hat and imagine that not ONE person will buy this, not one needs this, anyone will look stupid in this, injuries and accidents, etc (it's all written countless times in all Goggle threads). I can change hats to the extremist optimists and offer how perhaps ALL of Apples major products could be available within the VR here- all Macs, all iPhones, all iPads... all folded into a single product for "only" $3K. Reality is likely to be somewhere between the extremes.

Tomorrow or the next day, some rumor may project 20 million units... though the linked one by Ming-Chi is based upon supply chain analysis, presumably in knowledge of how many Apple thinks they are ordering (or have ordered)- which seems to be a much better driver of a guess at real numbers than somebody's opinion or someone's cousin who heard or someone's own belief that these don't have a chance or are best product ever. And in that, it's already on to second generation numbers which means an Apple assumption of first generation success is good enough to be thinking about second generation models and production.

All vapor projections are right or wrong because all are rumors about vapor that hasn't even been released yet. We don't know what it is. We don't know what it can do. We don't know the price. All to be determined.

 

[cfountain72]

Abort, abort!

 

[paradox00]

So, I think I've seen this movie before. You know, where a rumored Apple product is DOA before anyone's even seen it? I think the iPod, iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch all "sucked" before they were launched too.

You seem to have a selective memory. Only the first gen iPad really knocked it out of the park. All the others were dramatically upstaged by their successors. I'll confidently state that the first gen Apple MR glasses are not the one most people should even consider.

 

[deconstruct60]

Surprised to hear that Craig wasn't personally interested in it. I prefer him over the other senior members because he seems at least somewhat genuinely excited by technology. The others feel like they are tired of the job.

More than pretty good chance Craig Federighi is luke warm about this for the almost exact same reason that Johny Srouji reported stated. From the thread's initial text:

" johny Srouji, is believed to privately be a skeptic of the device, ..... He has warned that designing the high-performance chips that the headset requires could distract from new iPhone chips that drive more revenue. .."

The new device class means forking of yet another operating systems stack and new bundled apps. If Apple is doing this right ( leaning heavy on foveate rendering ) then that also means GPU library stack changes that should propagate out into many apps ported to the new OS. If this silicon hardware under this is a forked off variant then the software layered on top of that will has to shift also ( at least at the lower levels). More software QA spread out over more hardware .

macOS (for next several years Arm and x86) , iOS , iPadOS , watchOS , tvOS (tv's and speakers ) ... and now xrOS. Decent chance that isn't coming with a huge increase in headcount. And just throwing bodies at the problem does not necessarily get good results ("Mythical Man Month"). So "Apple is rich just throw giant gobs of more money at payroll" isn't necessarily going to work well.


It is nice to have 'stretch' goals but when the "Ive and thinness politburo" design principles call for "miracle occurs here" new silicon and software adapted to new Area51 tech to be layered on top ... probably going to get folks grumbling. If get non tech folks at whiteboard whipping up solutions that requires tech that TSMC doesn't even have on the roadmap for the next 8 years but those folks are going to throw it over the wall and declare it is your problem to solve in 3-4 years. ... Probably going to get folks baulking at being tasked with that.


Additionally, both the OS/software stack teams and Silicon teams bring very high overhead with them. They are very expensive. So if have run rates like 900,000 units a year can't make large fixed costs disappear into the background. If there is some modest to heavyweight custom silicon in there and the run rate is 500-900K unit sizes per year probably do lead to $3K product price being closer to just breakeven. Normally Sroji gets to amortize his teams overhead over 100 million or 10 million run rates. This is way lower than that and there are reported TWO chips in here ( maybe one is a carry over from M-series , but that still would leave one new one).


It think those two probably are not as averse to the Reality Pro headset where have a decent sized battery pack there is more closer overlap with AR functions that iPhone/iPad already support (with same silicon), etc. At lot less 'Buck Roger's next century' and more evolutionary upgrade from what we've got now. The low run rate (and selling at cost) is still going to make them queasy. But it if far more realistic.

The whole notion that the glasses can't be tethered to a bigger container is something they may need to give up on longer term to get something practical. Trying to get something with iPhone power in something the size of the iPhone isn't crazy talk. ( maybe a Wifi 7/8 update possibly helps get rid of a wire over time. )

And that target of wear the glasses all day .... only going to get that if toss the VR aspects folks keep trying to throw at the AR glasses. It isn't that at all. Don't even get all day power on iPhone if use it constantly all day long. Or watch ... use all day long.

 

[laptech]

This article is more in tune with setting the stage for failure and allowing the directors to absolve themselves of any problems/issues.

setting the stage:
Senior directors announce to the media they were not happy or had serious reservations about the project thus took a 'hands off' approach'
Headset is launched at WWDC
Consumers are less impressed with the headset
Headset is considered a failure
When people look at who to blame, senior directors will quote from article prior to launch 'we were not happy, we had reservations therefore we took a 'hands off' approach thus not our fault.

 

[NotTooLate]

This sounds sooooo story like , this leaker is connected to what Johnny says privately, to what Craig is feeling , to Tim’s motives , are we to believe that this leaker is a staff member of Apple ?
Welp it gets clicks I guess

 

[NotTooLate]

This article is more in tune with setting the stage for failure and allowing the directors to absolve themselves of any problems/issues.

setting the stage:
Senior directors announce to the media they were not happy or had serious reservations about the project thus took a 'hands off' approach'
Headset is launched at WWDC
Consumers are less impressed with the headset
Headset is considered a failure
When people look at who to blame, senior directors will quote from article prior to launch 'we were not happy, we had reservations therefore we took a 'hands off' approach thus not our fault.

So you believe Craig and Johnny are leaking to the media about an unreleased apple product ? I think your confusing Apple with our congress.

 

[laptech]

This sounds sooooo story like , this leaker is connected to what Johnny says privately, to what Craig is feeling , to Tim’s motives , are we to believe that this leaker is a staff member of Apple ?
Welp it gets clicks I guess

or maybe it's an Apple cleaner/maintenance person who's cousin has a friend that is a cleaner who cleans Johnny, Craig and Tim's office and heard things and reported back through the chain of friends and family.

 

[Ponylover52]

I don’t understand why a company would put out a product it internally has no faith in… if the tech isn’t even there for it to be a seamless thing that alone should’ve killed it. Remember when Steve wanted the iPad back in like 2000. They tabled it because the tech for what Steve wanted didn’t exist at the time. Then look what happened in 2010. Apple is going to ruin their brand if they try to develop and have a product for every stupid flash in the pan product category that pops up.

 

[Rogifan]

I think so too. I kind of laughed when someone in an earlier thread said this was a product made for YouTube tech reviewers to gush over, but that kinda seems like the case to me now. This will definitely get the right attention from the review community. I'm sure they'll all call it a "game changer" and say it's far superior to Microsoft or Meta's offerings, and that will probably be true. But that says nothing of market adoption...

All I’ve heard from people here is being able to use it to create multiple monitors. But that seems really niche. And no matter how nicely it’s designed I’m sure it’s still going to be something you won’t want to wear for extended periods of time. I can’t see someone wearing it to write code or work in Excel spreadsheets.

 

[laptech]

So you believe Craig and Johnny are leaking to the media about an unreleased apple product ? I think your confusing Apple with our congress.

lol where on earth do you get 'leak' from!!! stop twisting the conversation around.

It is common practice that if you want to distance yourself from something, you talk about it before the thing is supposed to happen because if something does go wrong they can say 'look, i already talked about it and told you i was not happy/had my reservations about it' This way they cannot be accused of not knowing

 

[seek3r]

Coming from Apple it's probably a pretty decent AR/VR Headset. The only thing against it is the price tag.

And lack of killer features maybe, but it’s also worth remembering that the iPhone was severely limited initially, with no app store and a lot of other compromises.

I think if this is at least solid developer device it will pave the way for more complete products in the category for Apple.

Hell, the general advice for folks has always been to avoid first revision Apple products for major use anyway

 

[newyorksole]

I don’t believe any of it.

 

[Kierkegaarden]

I’ve never seen so much misdirection around a product before. The headset is reportedly apparently purportedly not ready after 7+ years of development, allegedly. And given the secrecy around this project, how is it that we’ve been reading about these things for so many months?

 

[Orange Bat]

Other companies have already tried to make these thing work with very little success in wide-scale adoption. Unless Apple has found a novel use for their version, I don’t see these being more than a toy. We’ll see soon enough.

 

[MuppetGate]

Apple wishes that users will eventually wear a head-mounted AR device continuously all day, replacing tasks currently accomplished on other devices such as the iPhone and Mac, including web browsing, gaming, email, video calls and collaboration, working out, and meditation, but does not expect this to happen immediately.

🤨 Just reminding folk of the last Apple product upon which Gurman bet the farm: the Apple Television set.

No one is going to sweat it out in a VR headset with Apple Fitness+

Why are all these rumours just about the separate battery pack? If the unit is separate then why not put the processor in there too?

If none of the executives want anything to do with it, then why not just can it? They haven‘t announced anything yet, so they can certainly do that.