It’s the most amazing thing - an expensive High end product aimed at early adopters that cannot be produced at scale due to the scarcity of parts and is too high-priced for the mass market, does not sell like an iPhone. Let’s burn Apple at the stake.
For the almost prototype kind of product it is,the AVP is fantastic. It lacks many things, of course, but what it delivers is already maybe the most amazing and fresh take on interfacing with digital content I know. None of the low poly motion sickness of the Meta, integrated (if not seamlessly) into a powerful software and cloud environment, with Virtual Desktop being the most obvious use, along with consuming media… but it is the widgets, the virtual surroundings (especially by Disney), the immersive environments that show the true potential. Blending real and digital architecture or even making the real world replaceable are so consequential and powerful, it boggles the mind. And it is not expensive in terms of what a high-spec Studio or MacPro or even MBP costs, where you quickly end up at twice the cost.
Instead of stopping work on it Apple should focus on the Pro as a work tool with more power, Virtual Desktopping, 3D creation, the power of a Mac in Blended reality. There is much to do and explore here. The Vision Air would be lighter and cheaper, more focused at the mass market. Not sure if hyper creepy Meta glasses are the right choice for Apple, but in the end light AR glasses would not be a replacement for VR but a different product altogether with very different user interface and needs. I would consider it if it were integrated in regular glasses, but so far, if it not more or less replaces the iPhone experience, what’s the point? Still, with AI, some wearables might come up to replace hand held devices, Apple should forge ahead.
The frustration with Apple is that they come up with brilliant stuff that in many ways has changed the world we live in… and then just stop developing it. From minor things like the Music and Books App not being developed more actively to frustrating slowness in product evolution such as with iPadOS to actually starting new products and abandoning them, like AirPod Max or HomeKit…
The thing is to
— bring back innovation. In the sense of creatively synthesizing, fusioning, enriching, embedding already existing technologies, but also coming up with the groundbreaking new stuff that surprises and delights
And then
— put the work in and make it better. The MBP or iPhone did not start as the products we know today, in fact the iP was only acceptable after the fourth generation and MacBooks started to rival desktop class machines in recent years only. If you do not abandon hard- and software innovation and work on actually making the Apple integration better and stronger each year, the way this brand operates will still see success. No competition comes close to the experience of a shared ecosystem across multiple devices, ease of use, almost-magically integration. This is where AI will amazingly boost Apple, as a seamless part of their user experience in toto, not as some Gemini-clone.
The AVP and its further development can be a massive part of that, for consumers but absolutely for creators. Let’s not give up on that.
