The vision for an Apple mixed reality headset may have its origin in its famed design department under Jon Ivey. Since then it’s been nothing but hype and leaks, with a level of uncharacteristic insider angst that hints all is not well among the Apple faithful. There is enough uncertainty to make an upcoming launch, if it happens in June as rumored, an impossible opportunity for Apple to realize. This is an ongoing saga, going all the way back to 2018 when Apple first started to talk up mixed reality headsets and an AR future. Everything comes to a head this year (no pun intended unless you think it is a pretty good one).
There is so much baggage that is accumulating around Apple’s headset that you have to wonder what can the company have possibly come up with to make this product stand out. Let’s start off with the level of leaks that are pouring out of the company. The New York Times is leading with a story on dissent within the company, one that would have probably ended in a shift of tectonic plates at the company if this was a Steve Jobs product launch.
Some internal skeptics have questioned if the new device is a solution in search of a problem. Unlike the iPod, which put digital songs in people’s pockets, and the iPhone, which combined the abilities of a music player and a phone, the headset hasn’t been driven by the same clarity, these people said.
New York Times
To be fair to the people driving the creation of the headset, there is a widely held assumption that the CEO, Tim Cook, is the driving force behind the product—Apple is no longer the same company that it was under Steve Jobs. Despite what Apple stans may want to believe, the company is not the stuff of dreams but the world’s leading smartphone company with a very healthy stable of proprietary software and services, and a rich legacy in personal computing devices. If anything, Apple is the preeminent manufacturer of mobile computing devices. Maybe, in that light, it isn’t hard to understand why it would be so adamant about entering the headset business. But, Apple hasn’t been visionary since Jobs. It never had a replacement for him in that way.
Headsets and AR glasses may be the mobile computing devices of the future, Apple could be right about this based on the flexible logic that it is the evolution of mobile interface from hands-free calling to arm-waving intensive air-poking user experiences. Apple’s manufacturing partners—Asian powerhouses like Samsung and BOE—all have big stakes in future mixed reality and AR devices themselves, and in the case of the Chinese, there is a definite feeling that these products will be adopted more rapidly and in larger numbers in that country before anywhere else.
Samsung’s got an XR headset in the pipeline and we recently covered a company with AR glasses that came out of one of the company’s internal research incubators, Prazen. You can take a look at Xiomi’s AR glasses, too. These are serious products with genuine IP and commitment to the market. There’s plenty going on in Asia, at least it seems that way based on the amount of activity. Maybe all these companies are just positioning themselves to surf along in Apple’s wake. Maybe Apple is thinking it might get left behind or sees them as a threat. We won’t know until there is a palpable market to study and analyze.
For Apple, with manufacturing power comes engineering, and that’s another piece of baggage that the company has to drag along for any headset launch. You see, Apple is known for its design and its engineering was always second fiddle to its appeal as a company that made computing useful to all. It is etched into the soul of the brand. Yet, if you believe the leaks, its headset is being driven by manufacturing and engineering. The people running these departments are bound to feel, as they should, that they can crack some of the inherent problems with existing headsets because they’re Apple, dammit. For example, that means Apple’s headset will have displays that are better than anything on the market today. By another measure, if the product costs $3,000 to be one giant leap for mankind, then it will cost $3,000 while Meta tries to sell off its inventory at heavily discounted rates after burning through billions of dollars in investment. None of that sits well with someone who thinks of Apple as nurturing life-changing design and not just meeting the demands of a spec sheet.
I have said repeatedly that the market for AR/VR/XR products is chasing an application that hasn’t been identified for the masses. Apple may be banking on its product being something that will eventually get there and that its early adopters will be professionals who will appreciate having a totally new way of looking at the world. In other words, it’s an enterprise headset.
Okay. That’s great. If Apple can prove genuine productivity advantages to its core following of designers and creatives, that could work. It’s a very tall order. You’re talking about a very expensive user interface for work that is often intricate and done by people who are not that great at being early adopters. They have work to do. They’re not testers. They’ll buy an overpriced Apple display but that’s because of the design. It’s the design of those displays, and how they look on your desk, when you have clients over to the office, or you want to impress talent to come work with you.
So, we get back to the same question: what can Apple possibly do in 2023 to change the existing shortcomings of mixed reality devices, the very issues that the New York Times is claiming insiders feel have not been addressed? There’s nothing in the research or startups or any existing products that would give a hint of what that could be. Sure, Apple could have a singular product that could change the whole industry. That’s a very, very, very big challenge, even for the world’s most successful, and biggest technology company.
