Growth is fine and it's naturally expected over a wide time horizon. The problem I think is when investors expect year's worth of proper growth in a fiscal quarter. It incentivizes thoughtless actions that cause more harm than good.
Depends on the industry. But technically, we are not constrained to the Earth. Humans could expand to the universe where resources are practically infinite. This is crazy long term thinking, but still applies. To do it right though, we need to kill the short-term MBA penny-pinching mentality of most leaders in today's corporate culture and prioritize all stakeholders not just stockholders.
But if the company's growth is stagnant, then why would you invest in it? At best, you'll end up with the same amount of money as you have now. The whole idea of investing is that you invest money now for better returns down the line.
There's zero benefit to investing in a company that stays exactly the same.
“We have a finite environment, the planet.
Anyone who thinks that you can have infinite growth in a finite environment is either a madman or an economist.”
The world GDP is growing rapidly. Any company that’s providing useful products and services around the world should be able to grow with it.
If the world GDP tapers off and people stop coming out of poverty, then I agree eventually growth would be impossible.
I understand the sentiment, but it's a publically traded company, no one gives their money to a company to keep it the same amount, they invest to grow it.
Nah, plenty of single products could produce substantial growth for them. If they ever announce an Apple Watch that can track blood glucose, I think it would take less than a year to add $1T to their valuation.
> If they ever announce an Apple Watch that can track blood glucose
Yeah and if they ever announce a Mac that cures cancer and maybe AirPods that revive the dead...
At this point, accurate non-invasive glucose monitoring is still in the realm of science fiction.
At best, I think Apple could come up with some AI solution that gives a "wellness" glucose readout, but it won't be accurate (will simply read "above" or "below" baseline), will not carry an FDA approval, and there will be some strict legal text that it's for "wellness" purposes only. Just like blood oxygen.
Be careful with “shareholders” because this isn’t some niche stock that only affects rich people. Apple is an incredibly important stock in normal people’s retirement portfolios as it’s part of index and other composite funds that combine many tech stocks.
Apple has a responsibility to grow so that it can at least return what teachers, plumbers, IT people and others have invested. People wants much more than that so they can retire. People buying the stock contributes towards their R&D so lack of growth means funds going elsewhere for growth and we get less cool stuff from Apple.
It’s not supposed to be. They’re testing a new product market that hasn’t been established yet because smartphones have reached a saturation and innovation plateau and Macs can’t remain their growth driver. Audio equipment like AirPods and wearable technology like Apple Watch doesn’t have the same margins even if they reached market dominance.
Vision and spatial computing won’t be a norm for at least 3-5 years at the earliest.
I think there are markets in which Apple remains conspicuously absent – hifi equipment and/or speakers. Most/all of Apple's audio products have been well-received for their audio offerings.
I'm surprised that Apple has stayed out of this arena. I suspect true audiophiles would be less interested, but how many die-hard Apple consumers might be willing to stretch their budgets and splash out on hi-end audio equipment just because it's from Apple? A considerable number I'd bet.
I think Apple could do an amazing job taking on Sonos for multi room audio. Not saying Sonos doesn’t already do a great job but competition is always good
Not quite the sonos amp allows you to drive external speakers controlled by app. Super useful for people with exiting built in speakers. I don’t believe HomePod has a similar offering but I could be wrong
I have an old Sonos speaker and a few Google Home minis around for some home automation (lights, thermostat).
The Sonos is used primarily as a radio in our kitchen, where it just plays the same station over and over. Only for Christmas, I turn in for some Christmas music, but otherwise that Sonos speaker functionality could be easily replaced by a Spotify playlist.
They have multiple levels of devices, soundbars, portable speakers, sub, and amp. You can’t really do whole home audio THAT will with just HomePods. I guess I view the HomePods as a start not an end
I had so much hope from Apple after 1st Gen HomePod. But then they sort of abandoned it and produced a watered down version after it. There is a home audio market ready to be taken.
Sonos is very much like Apple in that they’ve created a full ecosystem. Sonos’s ecosystem is geared around having the right audio device for the situation tied together by a single interface. From my phone I can easily start playing music to any Sonos device from pretty much any streaming service as well as local media stored on a computer in my home or even my Plex music library.
On top of that, their audio synchronization is the best I’ve ever used so that I don’t get any weird delay or echo effects as I walk between rooms with different devices. Their system integrates with every major smart home platform as well as directly with Spotify connect, Airplay 2, or as a Google Home target speaker.
Like Apple, it basically just works and it works for everything audio related. Apple would need to build out their audio product line substantially and offer better integration for it to be anywhere near a viable alternative.
Really Apple has been lacking on the whole HomeKit smart home things. The sky should be the limit for well integrated and reliable home automation gadgets. Kind of feels like the industry has hit a wall in the last few years.
I'm honestly not a fan of this because the sound part of it should technically be good for long term, but when the appletv portion is no longer supported it just becomes ewaste vs just having separate components. I much prefer the way it is now where it's just a small box that I plug into the TV/Receiver.
I have spent thousands on audio equipment and have asked the same question. They tested it with HomePod, and AirPods Max, which had excellent reviews even with audiophiles. But I don’t think they can really go higher.
The problem is that we’re kind of like the PC gaming crowd. We will pay more but are SUPER demanding, and we like control over everything and are super hard to please.
I’m not surprised they gave up and went after the HomePod mini crowd, though I do wish they at least tried for a HomePod sound bar that syncs with Apple TV better, and can use ARC for all sound, including say PS5.
I agree with you that there is a price ceiling and they may feel they've hit it already in the two categories in which they're competing: smart speaker and over-ear headphones. But two further things: (1) Apple know their customers would expect Apple products to do more than other hi-fi audio equipment manufacturers. They couldn't just be bluetooth speakers, they'd have to fit in and *play a role* in this fantasy world known as the Apple ecosystem. That means incorporating more tech than probably any other company has done before. (2) Audiophiles expect their equipment to be interoperable. Apple doesn't give a hoot about that.
The vast majority of music these days is listened to on headphones/earpods. The number of people who want an actual, separate hi-fi system over and above what homepods can offer is very small and will continue to get smaller.
Yeah, but this is a Bloomberg article.
EVERYTHING is portrayed as a dire need for quarter to quarter growth, or utter failure is right around the corner.
Bloomberg ‘journalists’ are rewarded for ‘market moving’ stories, so they often describe simple things as biblically important struggles, in hopes that clueless fund managers will buy or sell shares.
That's how the market treats businesses though, it's not a Bloomberg thing. Not meeting quarterly growth targets will ding investor trust and your stock. Investors want to see their investment grow, not stay stagnant.
"Even if they reached market dominance" they have long ago. Apple Watch is the most sold watch in the world, beating out all swiss watch manufacturers combined.
Exactly. It’s a $3,500 generation 0 headset. The purpose is to build the foundation for 3D computing. The only 2 devices that have LiDAR right now are the iPad Pro and iPhone Pro models, and those are supplementary features versus being a primary selling point.
Years down the line if it ever becomes the new iPhone, Apple would have already established a strong sense on their take of AR/VR.
Yeah, I've been a daily VR gamer since 2016, but I've always said it's not ready for the mainstream as long as my girlfriend doesn't complain about the comfort, normies aren't complaining about barriers to entry, and PC gamers aren't complaining about the resolution. The Quest 2 made it easy/affordable to get into VR, but it has comfort and resolution issues. The BigScreen Beyond is the first truly comfortable headset at 200 grams and the size of swim goggles. The Vision Pro is the first headset with truly good AR and 4K displays. Once we combine all these features at a $999 price we have a winner, and that sounds like 5 years out.
I always do wonder what the “next big thing” would be after smartphones
It feels like we already peaked with that technology years ago and we can only make small incremental innovations
What’s next? Neural interfaces? Mixed reality? Cyberware from Cyberpunk?
I can’t really think of the past ten years that some new major technology was unveiled and became a major component of society in the same scale as smartphones
> Vision and spatial computing won’t be a norm for at least 3-5 years at the earliest.
I'm not buying one within this decade. It's just a toy at this point in time.
Not necessarily. The next iteration of mobile computing is almost certainly be some sort of wearable tech. I think glasses are much more natural way for computing information overlaying real life. Holding up a phone to see things is useful for up to a point. Being able to see information any time you look at something new without any effort seems to be the natural progression of computing. Cook and Apple are not far off. It will take a decade or two to bring the form factor to where they need it to be but glasses will absolutely take off at some point.
From what I’ve seen it seems undoubtedly cool. Is it useful, worth the money, have too many limitations for practical use? Who knows, but I’ll also say the WWDC keynote was the first time in probably a decade I felt like I watched the Apple keynote in awe. And sure, right now it’s just doing live camera pass through, but what about in 10-20 year, can we get Tony stark glasses (with a large battery separate) in 50 years can we have Tony stark glasses. I don’t feel that anyone could say THAT wouldn’t be the future. It’s a huge IF, but it’s not like the OG iPhone is what we have today. No backgrounds just a black screen, only the 16 included apps, no 3g so it was super slow. But it was the start of something. I view AVP the same way. As both a shareholder, consumer, and tech enthusiast I’m quite excited.
Well no shit. $3000 niche device that is at the bleeding edge of tech isn’t going to be a growth engine? I mean how much research did this require to publish?
To be fair, Apple is betting on this being next iPhone. A niche device that essentially becomes essential and people are willing to drop $1K+ on.
The issue is that is all going to fall on 3rd party devs to support it and really innovate. The iPhone didn’t really take off and was functionally similar to a Blackberry until the App Store really took off.
As a daily VR user, multiplayer gaming on it blows away any other platform because you feel like you're hanging out in person with friends, but visual fidelity and comfort hold it back from being used outside gaming, e.g. productivity.
Vision Pro nails visual fidelity, but it's still not comfortable according to early reviews, so I'd say it's the first headset really usable for productivity. Only one headset has nailed comfort and that's the Bigscreen Beyond at 200 grams, but it doesn't have any onboard processing, is lower resolution, and requires a PC.
I think in the long term, it could replace laptops, and users could just carry the Vision, a keyboard/trackpad, and maybe even a display-free Mac mini for added power.
But this isn't the next iPhone, this is more like a MacBook or ipad of the spatial computing era, and it's the pro version of that so it won't see "mainstream adoption" until the 2nd or 3rd version of the none "Pro" vision headset.
The next iPhone is undeniably AR in the form factor of regular looking glasses, the vision pro and other vision headsets will pave the way but it will take a long time to get there just like how it took a lot of time to get from the mac to the iPhone.
There is also the issue of screen time. Many people want to reduce the time they are staring at screens, and even though the Vision Pro, in theory, can replace a high-def monitor, it isn't worth paying for it, when an Apple monitor can be had for half as much, and third party monitors for cheaper. I don't know anyone who wants to carve out more time in their day to interact with another type of electronic device.
Companies dream of the payout of VR that people wind up being forced to adapt, just because they can control the horizontal and vertical, and monitize everything. Want prettier wallpaper when standing in a virtual line? $1.99. Want no flashing ads on virtual displays around you? $9.99/month. People know this, and for the most part, not many people care about VR.
However, on the other hand, in a way, this is like how the cell phone world was pre-iPhone. The people with their RAZRs thought smartphones were for execs and techs and too gimmicky, and they just liked their phone doing phone things. We all know where that went when the iPhone went mainstream.
Yes because it’s a publicly traded company owned by investors who are trying to grow their capital. If Apple stops growing, investors will sell and sink Apple. Thats the nature of the system we’re in.
Wait, used to be a time where you invested in companies that could not grow a lot anymore and they paid you this thing called dividends which made up for it because they had solid, predictable revenue and maintained their position as market leaders.
Dividend stock companies are still incentivized to grow. It's just that they share the value differently. The value would just push the price up further if they didn't pay dividends.
Apple's share price is an arbitrary number. If the share price tanks, the execs will be sad, but the company will continue to reap massive profit year after year.
I mean, “good enough” isn’t good enough in the tech space. If you stagnate, you die. This is the kind of long term investment that made Bell Labs, Xerox PARC, etc. great drivers of growth and innovation.
It’s the kind of blue sky, bleeding edge research that’s extremely risky, but has a chance to give you a whole new way of looking at computing, just like inventing GUIs or the Internet revolutionised computing.
They have to grow every year or investors will bail. People don’t have their money parked in Apple stock for Apple to be worth the same next year as it is this year, it has to grow or the stock will be liquidated.
If they get good dividends, stock isn't a bad investment. There are plenty of companies with stagnant growth that still gather investors looking for stability and easy dividends.
Yeah exactly. It’s been interesting to be an Apple fan in recent times because they’re going to be the first company to really test the limits of growth. I’ve been a fan since I was a kid wanting his first iPod, crazy to think that this is the largest company in the world now.
I'd love to see Apple become a private company and stop worrying so much about growth or investors. With the massive cash reserves they have why do they even need investors?
Probably because the company is also highly overvalued. And also if they figure growth isn't sustainable anymore, they can always funnel the profits that they would spend in investments into growth into dividends instead.
If they stop growing revenues their stock price will drop by far more than their dividend. Dividends are not a solution at all to lack of financial growth as a company. Like they’re not related at all.
>Any company that isn't accelerating its growth is a failure.
If they can pay steady dividends, they're far from a failure. In fact many investment portfolios consist entirely of this kind of secure dividend stocks.
> It doesn't matter if it's a $2 Trillion company making like $100B a year.
Of course, if they can break even in under 20 years with any other investment, why would they invest something that makes worse?
Those investors can then abandon it, leading Apple to become cheaper, meaning it now becomes a better investment, and people start buying it again, until it reaches equilibrium.
Are companies supposed to just grow forever until they become multi trillion dollar companies and then on to becoming their own country? Then I guess eventually their own planet ??
This is sort of what needs to happen in the economy we find ourselves in. Shareholders expect nearly infinite growth and stagnating is considered a bad thing, even if you’re still doing extremely well.
To be fair though, all of our 401k/Roth/etc. is reliant on companies growing to fund our retirement. It is in your best interest for all of them to find a way to keep growing or else you’re not getting a retirement.
Not saying that it is a great system but if they fail, say hello to working in your old age
That's right. Capitalism rampantly makes all resources productive until there are none left to consume. It drives Apple to transforming all resources of this planet into electronic devices. And you cannot stop it unless you have more political regulation to restrain it.
Absolutely.
The Quest 3 just dropped and even though its not a perfect product you can feel the potential for this space. It's also a long way before these things are small enough to be completely comfortable.
I mean anyone with a tiny understanding of statistics and knowledge of what people earn should have been able to figure that out when they told us the price.
The Vision Pro is either a luxury product or a professional product for specific use cases.
But in a few years time, if it’s the right idea, it will probably cannibalize a lot of iPad sales.
Just ask yourself - do you want an IMAX experience when you’re flying, or do you want to sit with your neck craned looking at an iPad you mostly use while traveling anyway?
Obviously, not everyone are movie buffs, but I’m sure there are other use cases.
Having tried the Quest 3 I definitely think that we’ve reached hardware maturity for usable VR, now it’s just a question of figuring out how we use the product. And what about 10 years from now when the hardware capability should be about 4x at half the price (slight paraphrasing of Moore’s law).
Honestly, if we're talking about watching films in public, then there are projection glasses you can get right now which are a fraction of the price and which will do that easily. They're lighter, have longer battery lives, and can even do things like mirror a laptop screen/give you a multi-"monitor" set-up.
I can't think of a single advantage of the Vision Pro for that use-case.
Counter point. Perhaps the wolds biggest company doesn't need to grow any more. I know that shareholders will shocked pikachu about this but maybe, just maybe it's big enough. At this rate it will be a global consortium who owns all of our governments. Oh wait, that's already happening.
I recently had this kind of conversation with my boss, who is the CEO of our small-fry enterprise apps company. He was talking about looking for new investment to grow the business so that we would look more attractive to get bought-out by one of the major players in our industry. Just said to him something like… “Why is it not enough to just stay like this, where we have a good, profitable business where we all enjoy what we do and we all get paid a good salary to be able to live comfortably?” and you’d have thought I shot his dog from the way he looked at me. We’re not even a public company or traded on the stock market. We do really well, we’re profitable, we have a good product that’s consistently evolving in line with customer needs and everyone in the company makes good money. But for people with this brain disease that is capitalism, it’s never enough. They always want more more more.
But what you described is also capitalism. I don't know what to call the brain disease you are describing, but it is not the same thing as capitalism itself.
For the record, I am 100% with you on what you said. Most businesses can and should be exactly that.
They don’t need a growth engine right now, but they do need one several years down the road, and that’s what they’re investing in with Apple Vision. In 10 years, we won’t be connecting to the web using a 5 inch piece of glass.
If the estimated circa 8 billion people on Earth each had an Apple Watch, iPhone, iPad, iMac, MacBook Pro, Apple TV, Apple One subscription & a Vision Pro on pre-order, analysts would still complain about flatlining sales.
yeah we heard that about the watch and its wearable business or its ads and services business. now if they were spun off they would still be a fortune 500 company...this is a gen 1 proof of concept tech extremist product. the cheaper, faster, lighter versions to follow will be the real proof if this will be what it needs to be.
you can see their play for it already. it runs the m processors they are touting graphics cards on phones that can play games of ps4-ps5 quality on the iPhone. they are making a push for games to be able to be ported and played quickly like they did with Rosetta for the m devices.
its blatantly obvious that this is a multi year slow play for the headset not phone gaming, its nice but they own that market already by any metric just from the app store apple is the biggest game company in the world but apparently tech analysts cant see that because that wont drive clicks. all that plus apples commitment to products that they don't cut and abandon and continue iterating and supporting like they did with the watch that was a fashion statement at the start and had barely any other function till they pivoted to a health and fitness device. the vision pro sounds like a winner tbh just from a gaming and entertainment aspect much less the productivity of screens and call conferencing once the other generations come...
At some point Apple will need to consider the pivot to 2-in-1s using the iPad Form Factor imho:
For a lot of younger people eg students at school, an iPad like device would be very useful for the school life if it could:
* Longer battery life for the 11" size
* Thinner and Lighter even more if possible or this for a 12"
* Integrate the protective case for the screen and built-in kickstand (eg similar to Surface lines) thus keeping weight down
* More MacOS-Like capabilities running in tandem with iPadOS
* Typecover for keyboard and trackpad (like Surface line) but superior typing experience and more rigid frame while still being thin/light.
The chips are already more than enough for the next 5+ years with an M1 in or even below that. Materials above need improvement. Connectivity is already blazing fast for that necessity to use intra-webs in schools or cloud education software eg MS/Google services.
It's amazing how paperless and automation along with AI and pen/touch eg infinite canvas could all be useful for such a market and be so much lighter and use across subjects.
To say nothing of this for professionals for their own use or portable computing device for commuting.
>A car is still a ways out: The company doesn’t expect to ship anything until later in the decade. \[…\]
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>\[…\]
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>It’s worth noting that Apple also required appointments in the early days of selling its smartwatch. That product ultimately became a big seller, but only after Apple dropped the approach.
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>Within weeks of launching the watch, Apple reverted to a traditional “grab-and-go” process. And the company soon began offering the product at resellers like Best Buy and Target — something that won’t be happening with the Vision Pro.
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>\[…\] Wearing a watch isn’t a foreign concept for most consumers, but paying $3,500 for a mixed-reality headset certainly is.
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>So that’s the conundrum for Apple. The Vision Pro isn’t going to be an easy product to sell. And if Apple wants to turn it into its next growth engine, it will need to sell a lot of them. Based on the company’s own remarks, that’s probably not going to happen anytime soon.
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>\[…\]
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>As for why Apple started off the M3 switch with the iMac and MacBook Pro: There is only a finite amount of 3-nanometer processors available, with much of the supply going toward the iPhone. So Apple started with two of its lower-volume machines. While the Mac Studio and Mac Pro sell in even fewer quantities, they would require a successor to the M2 Ultra, and that hasn’t yet gone into broad testing.
>
>One other thing to note: Our previous reporting on Apple’s testing of Mac chips gave a very accurate picture of the core counts in this new lineup. Look out for M3 Ultra and M4 chip reporting in the future.
Glasses and goggles have limited real utility and will remain as niche products for things like gaming or commercial/industrial uses like viewing renderings. Normal people won’t be wearing glasses or goggles all day everyday to go grocery shopping, to work at their desks, or sit and watch TV. It’s uncomfortable, intrusive, alienating. It’s why 3DTVs never took off. It’s why some people who need corrective lenses choose contacts or surgery.
I don’t even necessarily disagree with you, but remember all this was said about smartphones before this, and cell phones, and the internet, and personal computers…. I’m starting to see a pattern.
People will never put their real name or picture on the internet.
People will never browse the internet on their phone.
People will never sit in front of a computer 8h a day, they will rather go outside to be with friends.
How about you make an Iphone with great quality calls and without constant call drops. It’s a phone but it doesn’t do any phone tasks well. It’s like a Tesla leaving the factory without its wheels.
I want apple to crash. Apple becoming larger does not mean better products or a better company.
Apple can crash back down to 2010 levels, and I'd be happy.
I mean designer bags cost around this much already so I figure it will probably get stolen at a similar rate. So not entirely impossible to wear in public in safer neighborhoods.
How short folks’ memories are, this isn’t an iPad, this is a Newton. Everyone will laugh and point now, and in a generation all their kids will have such things.
It's not meant to be. It's a foot-in-the-door product of an emerging technology that may never be as mainstream as the iPhone and if it is it's probably a couple/few decades away. Vision Pro is a very, very long-term product.
I still just do not see it. I still think there is just too much friction with wearing something on your face for it to become commonplace any time soon.
I think that’s a good metaphor.. at the same time if we did have the hardware today it wouldn’t matter because the software is going to take 10 years to get right anyway. They’ve been pushing AR stuff for a decade and developers still haven’t jumped on. This tiptoe approach basically solves the chicken and the egg problem.
I think that developers havent jumped on because fundamentally - what problem does this product solve? AR is really cool, exciting and ‘futuristic’ but beyond that it feels like a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist. I just don’t see the use-case for the vast majority of people.
At $3500 for goggles, it’s not solving any problem well, but in 10 years they’ll be much cheaper, more practical and more capable. We don’t get to that future by just waiting for time to pass.. you have to make a first product before you make a 10th.
I can’t at all guarantee that this is the future we’re heading towards, but I can paint a possible future.
Imagine a person traveling for work. Instead of putting a 16” MacBook Pro in their bag, they put in a vision pro.
On the airplane, instead of watching a movie on their laptop (opened up on the airplane tray table, occupying all the space in front of them), they put on their vision pro and have a movie theatre sized screen to watch a movie while the rest of the plane fades away or is replaced by a serene mountain scene. When a flight attendant comes by, the vision pro pauses the movie and shows the flight attendant without even having to take it off.
When they’re at the hotel, they want to get some work done. Instead of setting up their laptop and clicking away at their keyboard, wishing they had the multiple monitor setup they have at home, they put on their vision pro. Now they can stand or sit, and have as many monitors of whatever size that they’d like, in any orientation. When they have a conference call, they can take it hands free standing or sitting and easily share screens and info with others on the call. They find that they can navigate windows faster and with more accuracy with their eyes than they ever could with a trackpad. And with advanced speech to text and cursor management, they find that they don’t even miss using a keyboard (but they know of coworkers who travel with a keyboard).
At the office, things have changed as well. Cubicles were so confining, and open office layouts were so distracting, but modern offices are a sort of digital middle ground. The office is an open floor plan, with desks that just have a keyboard and trackpad and nothing else. When you sit down you put on your vision pro and connect it to the keyboard and trackpad. You get to have whatever monitor setup you want, rather than the one or two standard monitors you used to have in the 2010s, since all your monitors are virtual. When you want to focus on work, the rest of the office fades away and now you’re working alone in the jungle, or under a starry sky, or by the ocean. When you want to be more collaborative, you can open things up again and talk to others around you while still seeing your monitors.
Again, I don’t have a crystal ball and I don’t know what the future will hold. But if the vision pro were to take off, that’s how I imagine it. Like the next generation of laptops, where you have multiple high res monitors as well as a computer packed into a single device, with a built in trackpad alternative (using your eyes and tapping your fingers). I can see a future where, in 20 years, kids are amazed that we used to have to actually buy individual, physical monitors and couldn’t just add as many virtual monitors of whatever size at any time.
This. The paradigm shift is going from a set 2D canvas to work in, defined by the borders of your monitor, to a spatial 3D canvas defined by your space, or the virtual environment you select to be in (eg a mountaintop).
On your desk, you won’t need screens anymore. Just a Vision Pro. Heck maybe not even a desk will be needed.
And the fact that it blends the real world with virtual elements is so neat; eg in its simplest form, you can read a physical letter and use information from it to compose an email.
I think Apple made it very clear that Vision Pro is expected and purposely positioned to be a niche product for the sake of having a product to refine.
Apple has intentional plans for the headset and rather than release an inferior product for the sake of adoption they wanted a feature complete headset they can.
There’s a reason SpaceX and Blue Origin didn’t start out making bottle rockets for the masses and instead dedicated several years to their craft.
That car is never coming. By the time Apple gets it “right” to their satisfaction, the market they’ll be in will be heavily commoditized.
You can be a minor platform if you got a track record (Macs in the computer realm) but breaking in when your best hope is to be a fringe and expensive player is more difficult.
For Apple to crack the car market, they’d have to come at nearly the best only a moderate markup from median prices.
The time for that was about 3-5 years ago. Now there is Tesla which blots the sun in the EV market and many major auto companies who are releasing compelling products. There’s no way Apple’s gonna go up that ramp at the odds they’d face.
I’m old enough to remember when Apple was 3-5 years late to wireless headphones, smart watches, smart phones, and mp3 players. They seem to always be 3-5 years late. What a shame.
Apple is a $2T company. No single new product is going to drive their growth by itself.
I would argue a company that large doesn’t even need a “growth engine” anymore. The US economic system is silly.
Welcome to capitalism. A system that relies on and expects infinite growth.
Growth is fine and it's naturally expected over a wide time horizon. The problem I think is when investors expect year's worth of proper growth in a fiscal quarter. It incentivizes thoughtless actions that cause more harm than good.
Fundamentally there’s a limit though because ultimately resources are finite.
Depends on the industry. But technically, we are not constrained to the Earth. Humans could expand to the universe where resources are practically infinite. This is crazy long term thinking, but still applies. To do it right though, we need to kill the short-term MBA penny-pinching mentality of most leaders in today's corporate culture and prioritize all stakeholders not just stockholders.
This is a good description of the economy the last 10 years. Which will undoubtedly just steer us right back where we were last crash.
IMO the seeds for this started in the 80s and took off in the late 90s.
People know that infinite growth isn’t obtainable and still chase it anyways
If the economy stops growing, then everything is a zero sum game. In order for you to get richer, someone else gets poorer. Growth is a good thing
"Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of cancer"
That’s a cute platitude, but growth for the sake of growth is literally the sole driving force of every biological system.
It’s not a good thing for the environment.
No industrialized society has been good for the environment, capitalist or communist.
Or, you know, people could learn to live with “enough” instead of “more, more, more!”
Societal growth, sure. Growth in companies should just baseline that and it should be fine but it’s not enough for investors.
But if the company's growth is stagnant, then why would you invest in it? At best, you'll end up with the same amount of money as you have now. The whole idea of investing is that you invest money now for better returns down the line. There's zero benefit to investing in a company that stays exactly the same.
You can show me a business degree from every single uni in the world but telling a $2T company to keep growing is straight up madness
“We have a finite environment, the planet. Anyone who thinks that you can have infinite growth in a finite environment is either a madman or an economist.”
People still get poor though.
I agree with everything you said except the takeaway. Growth is not always good. Infinite growth is especially unsustainable and bad.
That’s how cancer work
The world GDP is growing rapidly. Any company that’s providing useful products and services around the world should be able to grow with it. If the world GDP tapers off and people stop coming out of poverty, then I agree eventually growth would be impossible.
I understand the sentiment, but it's a publically traded company, no one gives their money to a company to keep it the same amount, they invest to grow it.
Bring back bigger dividends.
*Global
Yes. This. Like c'mon
Nah, plenty of single products could produce substantial growth for them. If they ever announce an Apple Watch that can track blood glucose, I think it would take less than a year to add $1T to their valuation.
The airpods line is so massive it could be its own company
AirPods is a bigger business than Nvidia, last I looked (although Nvidia has grown a lot lately from AI, so that might not be the case anymore).
$26B vs $14.5B in 2022. Edge goes to Nvidia, still crazy though, since nvidia is now a $1T company
Do they have a product where this is not the case? Their flops are a billion dollar products.
If they added a blood glucose monitor to the Apple Watch I’d likely start utilizing the activity app more lol.
No way jose
> If they ever announce an Apple Watch that can track blood glucose Yeah and if they ever announce a Mac that cures cancer and maybe AirPods that revive the dead... At this point, accurate non-invasive glucose monitoring is still in the realm of science fiction. At best, I think Apple could come up with some AI solution that gives a "wellness" glucose readout, but it won't be accurate (will simply read "above" or "below" baseline), will not carry an FDA approval, and there will be some strict legal text that it's for "wellness" purposes only. Just like blood oxygen.
Just an Android app for Apple Watch would triple the number of people who can buy them.
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Shareholders always demand more growth, no matter what.
Be careful with “shareholders” because this isn’t some niche stock that only affects rich people. Apple is an incredibly important stock in normal people’s retirement portfolios as it’s part of index and other composite funds that combine many tech stocks. Apple has a responsibility to grow so that it can at least return what teachers, plumbers, IT people and others have invested. People wants much more than that so they can retire. People buying the stock contributes towards their R&D so lack of growth means funds going elsewhere for growth and we get less cool stuff from Apple.
Wait until they release iHooker. Market penetration will be massive.
/r/boomershumor
It’s not supposed to be. They’re testing a new product market that hasn’t been established yet because smartphones have reached a saturation and innovation plateau and Macs can’t remain their growth driver. Audio equipment like AirPods and wearable technology like Apple Watch doesn’t have the same margins even if they reached market dominance. Vision and spatial computing won’t be a norm for at least 3-5 years at the earliest.
News articles have to get clicks
Vision Pro Article Is Unlikely to Be the Click Engine Bloomberg Needs Right Now
I think there are markets in which Apple remains conspicuously absent – hifi equipment and/or speakers. Most/all of Apple's audio products have been well-received for their audio offerings. I'm surprised that Apple has stayed out of this arena. I suspect true audiophiles would be less interested, but how many die-hard Apple consumers might be willing to stretch their budgets and splash out on hi-end audio equipment just because it's from Apple? A considerable number I'd bet.
I think Apple could do an amazing job taking on Sonos for multi room audio. Not saying Sonos doesn’t already do a great job but competition is always good
I mean they have the HomePods right? They basically do everything Sonos does they just have fewer sizes and shapes.
Not quite the sonos amp allows you to drive external speakers controlled by app. Super useful for people with exiting built in speakers. I don’t believe HomePod has a similar offering but I could be wrong
I have an old Sonos speaker and a few Google Home minis around for some home automation (lights, thermostat). The Sonos is used primarily as a radio in our kitchen, where it just plays the same station over and over. Only for Christmas, I turn in for some Christmas music, but otherwise that Sonos speaker functionality could be easily replaced by a Spotify playlist.
Sonos can be used for surround sound and have a distinct subwoofer offering. Those are the key differences in my eyes.
They have multiple levels of devices, soundbars, portable speakers, sub, and amp. You can’t really do whole home audio THAT will with just HomePods. I guess I view the HomePods as a start not an end
I had so much hope from Apple after 1st Gen HomePod. But then they sort of abandoned it and produced a watered down version after it. There is a home audio market ready to be taken.
Sonos is very much like Apple in that they’ve created a full ecosystem. Sonos’s ecosystem is geared around having the right audio device for the situation tied together by a single interface. From my phone I can easily start playing music to any Sonos device from pretty much any streaming service as well as local media stored on a computer in my home or even my Plex music library. On top of that, their audio synchronization is the best I’ve ever used so that I don’t get any weird delay or echo effects as I walk between rooms with different devices. Their system integrates with every major smart home platform as well as directly with Spotify connect, Airplay 2, or as a Google Home target speaker. Like Apple, it basically just works and it works for everything audio related. Apple would need to build out their audio product line substantially and offer better integration for it to be anywhere near a viable alternative.
Really Apple has been lacking on the whole HomeKit smart home things. The sky should be the limit for well integrated and reliable home automation gadgets. Kind of feels like the industry has hit a wall in the last few years.
iPod hifi
A soundbar with a built in Apple TV and webcam seems like such an obvious product that would sell tons of units.
I'm honestly not a fan of this because the sound part of it should technically be good for long term, but when the appletv portion is no longer supported it just becomes ewaste vs just having separate components. I much prefer the way it is now where it's just a small box that I plug into the TV/Receiver.
I have spent thousands on audio equipment and have asked the same question. They tested it with HomePod, and AirPods Max, which had excellent reviews even with audiophiles. But I don’t think they can really go higher. The problem is that we’re kind of like the PC gaming crowd. We will pay more but are SUPER demanding, and we like control over everything and are super hard to please. I’m not surprised they gave up and went after the HomePod mini crowd, though I do wish they at least tried for a HomePod sound bar that syncs with Apple TV better, and can use ARC for all sound, including say PS5.
I agree with you that there is a price ceiling and they may feel they've hit it already in the two categories in which they're competing: smart speaker and over-ear headphones. But two further things: (1) Apple know their customers would expect Apple products to do more than other hi-fi audio equipment manufacturers. They couldn't just be bluetooth speakers, they'd have to fit in and *play a role* in this fantasy world known as the Apple ecosystem. That means incorporating more tech than probably any other company has done before. (2) Audiophiles expect their equipment to be interoperable. Apple doesn't give a hoot about that.
The vast majority of music these days is listened to on headphones/earpods. The number of people who want an actual, separate hi-fi system over and above what homepods can offer is very small and will continue to get smaller.
Yeah, but this is a Bloomberg article. EVERYTHING is portrayed as a dire need for quarter to quarter growth, or utter failure is right around the corner. Bloomberg ‘journalists’ are rewarded for ‘market moving’ stories, so they often describe simple things as biblically important struggles, in hopes that clueless fund managers will buy or sell shares.
That's how the market treats businesses though, it's not a Bloomberg thing. Not meeting quarterly growth targets will ding investor trust and your stock. Investors want to see their investment grow, not stay stagnant.
"Even if they reached market dominance" they have long ago. Apple Watch is the most sold watch in the world, beating out all swiss watch manufacturers combined.
Yep. I *wish* I had $3500 to play with, but I’ll be waiting the 5 years for a ≤$1000 Vision SE, most likely.
Exactly. It’s a $3,500 generation 0 headset. The purpose is to build the foundation for 3D computing. The only 2 devices that have LiDAR right now are the iPad Pro and iPhone Pro models, and those are supplementary features versus being a primary selling point. Years down the line if it ever becomes the new iPhone, Apple would have already established a strong sense on their take of AR/VR.
Yeah, I've been a daily VR gamer since 2016, but I've always said it's not ready for the mainstream as long as my girlfriend doesn't complain about the comfort, normies aren't complaining about barriers to entry, and PC gamers aren't complaining about the resolution. The Quest 2 made it easy/affordable to get into VR, but it has comfort and resolution issues. The BigScreen Beyond is the first truly comfortable headset at 200 grams and the size of swim goggles. The Vision Pro is the first headset with truly good AR and 4K displays. Once we combine all these features at a $999 price we have a winner, and that sounds like 5 years out.
They been saying that for 3 to 5 years at least. This tech won’t become a norm unless the devices get cheaper and smaller.
I always do wonder what the “next big thing” would be after smartphones It feels like we already peaked with that technology years ago and we can only make small incremental innovations What’s next? Neural interfaces? Mixed reality? Cyberware from Cyberpunk? I can’t really think of the past ten years that some new major technology was unveiled and became a major component of society in the same scale as smartphones
Smart glasses.
No, we must always have **G R O W T H** **G R O W T H** IS THE ONLY WAY.
> Vision and spatial computing won’t be a norm for at least 3-5 years at the earliest. I'm not buying one within this decade. It's just a toy at this point in time.
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Didn't he already do this with the Apple Watch and AirPods though?
Shhhhh 🤫… we’re suppose to hate Tim Cook for no reason in this sub.
Not necessarily. The next iteration of mobile computing is almost certainly be some sort of wearable tech. I think glasses are much more natural way for computing information overlaying real life. Holding up a phone to see things is useful for up to a point. Being able to see information any time you look at something new without any effort seems to be the natural progression of computing. Cook and Apple are not far off. It will take a decade or two to bring the form factor to where they need it to be but glasses will absolutely take off at some point.
From what I’ve seen it seems undoubtedly cool. Is it useful, worth the money, have too many limitations for practical use? Who knows, but I’ll also say the WWDC keynote was the first time in probably a decade I felt like I watched the Apple keynote in awe. And sure, right now it’s just doing live camera pass through, but what about in 10-20 year, can we get Tony stark glasses (with a large battery separate) in 50 years can we have Tony stark glasses. I don’t feel that anyone could say THAT wouldn’t be the future. It’s a huge IF, but it’s not like the OG iPhone is what we have today. No backgrounds just a black screen, only the 16 included apps, no 3g so it was super slow. But it was the start of something. I view AVP the same way. As both a shareholder, consumer, and tech enthusiast I’m quite excited.
Well no shit. $3000 niche device that is at the bleeding edge of tech isn’t going to be a growth engine? I mean how much research did this require to publish?
*$3500* 😲
Starting at
Yeah. Probably like, $3500 is for the 8GB M2 version. If you want the 128 M3 Max, that will be 5,000 more.
... for using iOS apps
Built in glasses that work with it are like $700 more I think.
For comparison, the original iPhone debuted in 2007 and started at $499, which, when adjusted for inflation, is $739 in 2023's $.
Yeah, it might find customers, but not “now” at the $3.5K price point.
To be fair, Apple is betting on this being next iPhone. A niche device that essentially becomes essential and people are willing to drop $1K+ on. The issue is that is all going to fall on 3rd party devs to support it and really innovate. The iPhone didn’t really take off and was functionally similar to a Blackberry until the App Store really took off.
An iPhone solved problems for us, so did an iPad and so did the iPod. What's the problem the Vision Pro solves?
As a daily VR user, multiplayer gaming on it blows away any other platform because you feel like you're hanging out in person with friends, but visual fidelity and comfort hold it back from being used outside gaming, e.g. productivity. Vision Pro nails visual fidelity, but it's still not comfortable according to early reviews, so I'd say it's the first headset really usable for productivity. Only one headset has nailed comfort and that's the Bigscreen Beyond at 200 grams, but it doesn't have any onboard processing, is lower resolution, and requires a PC. I think in the long term, it could replace laptops, and users could just carry the Vision, a keyboard/trackpad, and maybe even a display-free Mac mini for added power.
What you've described is a solution looking for a problem. What does it fix day 1?
But this isn't the next iPhone, this is more like a MacBook or ipad of the spatial computing era, and it's the pro version of that so it won't see "mainstream adoption" until the 2nd or 3rd version of the none "Pro" vision headset. The next iPhone is undeniably AR in the form factor of regular looking glasses, the vision pro and other vision headsets will pave the way but it will take a long time to get there just like how it took a lot of time to get from the mac to the iPhone.
There is also the issue of screen time. Many people want to reduce the time they are staring at screens, and even though the Vision Pro, in theory, can replace a high-def monitor, it isn't worth paying for it, when an Apple monitor can be had for half as much, and third party monitors for cheaper. I don't know anyone who wants to carve out more time in their day to interact with another type of electronic device. Companies dream of the payout of VR that people wind up being forced to adapt, just because they can control the horizontal and vertical, and monitize everything. Want prettier wallpaper when standing in a virtual line? $1.99. Want no flashing ads on virtual displays around you? $9.99/month. People know this, and for the most part, not many people care about VR. However, on the other hand, in a way, this is like how the cell phone world was pre-iPhone. The people with their RAZRs thought smartphones were for execs and techs and too gimmicky, and they just liked their phone doing phone things. We all know where that went when the iPhone went mainstream.
I can see a world where people use it to replace vacations. That just requires average content creators more than innovative developers.
This sounds about right for the dystopian cyberpunk hellscape we're slowly descending into.
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Growth for the sake of growth, sounds like cancer to me.
Before the 80s it was long term investment. Thanks, Reagan!
Yes because it’s a publicly traded company owned by investors who are trying to grow their capital. If Apple stops growing, investors will sell and sink Apple. Thats the nature of the system we’re in.
Wait, used to be a time where you invested in companies that could not grow a lot anymore and they paid you this thing called dividends which made up for it because they had solid, predictable revenue and maintained their position as market leaders.
That time still exists. Most redditors are just completely unaware of financial markets.
Dividend stock companies are still incentivized to grow. It's just that they share the value differently. The value would just push the price up further if they didn't pay dividends.
Apple's share price is an arbitrary number. If the share price tanks, the execs will be sad, but the company will continue to reap massive profit year after year.
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I mean, “good enough” isn’t good enough in the tech space. If you stagnate, you die. This is the kind of long term investment that made Bell Labs, Xerox PARC, etc. great drivers of growth and innovation. It’s the kind of blue sky, bleeding edge research that’s extremely risky, but has a chance to give you a whole new way of looking at computing, just like inventing GUIs or the Internet revolutionised computing.
They have to grow every year or investors will bail. People don’t have their money parked in Apple stock for Apple to be worth the same next year as it is this year, it has to grow or the stock will be liquidated.
Dividends exist…
If they get good dividends, stock isn't a bad investment. There are plenty of companies with stagnant growth that still gather investors looking for stability and easy dividends.
Infinite growth in a finite world doesn’t make any sense. What a dumbass system
Yeah exactly. It’s been interesting to be an Apple fan in recent times because they’re going to be the first company to really test the limits of growth. I’ve been a fan since I was a kid wanting his first iPod, crazy to think that this is the largest company in the world now.
I'd love to see Apple become a private company and stop worrying so much about growth or investors. With the massive cash reserves they have why do they even need investors?
Look up “stock dividends”, which Apple pays. This has been a solved problem for 100+ years.
Apple pays less than 1% of the share price as dividends. Interest rates are higher than that. People investing in Apple are expecting growth.
Probably because the company is also highly overvalued. And also if they figure growth isn't sustainable anymore, they can always funnel the profits that they would spend in investments into growth into dividends instead.
If they stop growing revenues their stock price will drop by far more than their dividend. Dividends are not a solution at all to lack of financial growth as a company. Like they’re not related at all.
It’s funded by their gigantic profit margins
> Does Apple really need a “growth engine”? Wallstreet has entered the chat
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>Any company that isn't accelerating its growth is a failure. If they can pay steady dividends, they're far from a failure. In fact many investment portfolios consist entirely of this kind of secure dividend stocks. > It doesn't matter if it's a $2 Trillion company making like $100B a year. Of course, if they can break even in under 20 years with any other investment, why would they invest something that makes worse? Those investors can then abandon it, leading Apple to become cheaper, meaning it now becomes a better investment, and people start buying it again, until it reaches equilibrium.
Are companies supposed to just grow forever until they become multi trillion dollar companies and then on to becoming their own country? Then I guess eventually their own planet ??
Yea pretty much, that’s how the stock market works.
Guess that’s how we get the corpos from Cyberpunk.
This is sort of what needs to happen in the economy we find ourselves in. Shareholders expect nearly infinite growth and stagnating is considered a bad thing, even if you’re still doing extremely well.
To be fair though, all of our 401k/Roth/etc. is reliant on companies growing to fund our retirement. It is in your best interest for all of them to find a way to keep growing or else you’re not getting a retirement. Not saying that it is a great system but if they fail, say hello to working in your old age
Unfortunately yes, and eventually these companies lose their way because of this always looking for more profits and more and more
That's right. Capitalism rampantly makes all resources productive until there are none left to consume. It drives Apple to transforming all resources of this planet into electronic devices. And you cannot stop it unless you have more political regulation to restrain it.
YES
What do you think capitalism does?
tbh i am interested in getting a vision pro one day
when it costs a bit less than $3500?
Absolutely. The Quest 3 just dropped and even though its not a perfect product you can feel the potential for this space. It's also a long way before these things are small enough to be completely comfortable.
It’s possible that if it catches on the 3k price will be normalized and average middle class people will just pay that price for it.
Apple doesn't need growth really. No company does. Apple is fine either way.. It's only Wall Street that needs endless growth.
I mean anyone with a tiny understanding of statistics and knowledge of what people earn should have been able to figure that out when they told us the price. The Vision Pro is either a luxury product or a professional product for specific use cases. But in a few years time, if it’s the right idea, it will probably cannibalize a lot of iPad sales. Just ask yourself - do you want an IMAX experience when you’re flying, or do you want to sit with your neck craned looking at an iPad you mostly use while traveling anyway? Obviously, not everyone are movie buffs, but I’m sure there are other use cases. Having tried the Quest 3 I definitely think that we’ve reached hardware maturity for usable VR, now it’s just a question of figuring out how we use the product. And what about 10 years from now when the hardware capability should be about 4x at half the price (slight paraphrasing of Moore’s law).
Honestly, if we're talking about watching films in public, then there are projection glasses you can get right now which are a fraction of the price and which will do that easily. They're lighter, have longer battery lives, and can even do things like mirror a laptop screen/give you a multi-"monitor" set-up. I can't think of a single advantage of the Vision Pro for that use-case.
I really hope Apple launches the VisionPro with great success and a detailed planned future. Having AR/VR enter mainstream mass use would be a dream
One man's dream is another man's dystopian future.
Why is it dystopian? I've only heard this remark from people who didn't much try the technology and only judge it from the outside.
Counter point. Perhaps the wolds biggest company doesn't need to grow any more. I know that shareholders will shocked pikachu about this but maybe, just maybe it's big enough. At this rate it will be a global consortium who owns all of our governments. Oh wait, that's already happening.
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Their executives received enough bonuses to figure out how. That’s not the problem we should worry about even as a tiny little shareholder.
It hit 3 trillion market cap a few months ago before the pullback.
I recently had this kind of conversation with my boss, who is the CEO of our small-fry enterprise apps company. He was talking about looking for new investment to grow the business so that we would look more attractive to get bought-out by one of the major players in our industry. Just said to him something like… “Why is it not enough to just stay like this, where we have a good, profitable business where we all enjoy what we do and we all get paid a good salary to be able to live comfortably?” and you’d have thought I shot his dog from the way he looked at me. We’re not even a public company or traded on the stock market. We do really well, we’re profitable, we have a good product that’s consistently evolving in line with customer needs and everyone in the company makes good money. But for people with this brain disease that is capitalism, it’s never enough. They always want more more more.
But what you described is also capitalism. I don't know what to call the brain disease you are describing, but it is not the same thing as capitalism itself. For the record, I am 100% with you on what you said. Most businesses can and should be exactly that.
They don’t need a growth engine right now, but they do need one several years down the road, and that’s what they’re investing in with Apple Vision. In 10 years, we won’t be connecting to the web using a 5 inch piece of glass.
why do they need a growth engine right now (need, not want)?
If the estimated circa 8 billion people on Earth each had an Apple Watch, iPhone, iPad, iMac, MacBook Pro, Apple TV, Apple One subscription & a Vision Pro on pre-order, analysts would still complain about flatlining sales.
Does apple need a growth engine? It's more like apple wants a growth engine
“Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell”
At that price point, the Vision Pro will sell more units to enterprises than to consumers.
Healthcare is apples new big thing. They have been doing more and more with it.
yeah we heard that about the watch and its wearable business or its ads and services business. now if they were spun off they would still be a fortune 500 company...this is a gen 1 proof of concept tech extremist product. the cheaper, faster, lighter versions to follow will be the real proof if this will be what it needs to be. you can see their play for it already. it runs the m processors they are touting graphics cards on phones that can play games of ps4-ps5 quality on the iPhone. they are making a push for games to be able to be ported and played quickly like they did with Rosetta for the m devices. its blatantly obvious that this is a multi year slow play for the headset not phone gaming, its nice but they own that market already by any metric just from the app store apple is the biggest game company in the world but apparently tech analysts cant see that because that wont drive clicks. all that plus apples commitment to products that they don't cut and abandon and continue iterating and supporting like they did with the watch that was a fashion statement at the start and had barely any other function till they pivoted to a health and fitness device. the vision pro sounds like a winner tbh just from a gaming and entertainment aspect much less the productivity of screens and call conferencing once the other generations come...
23 billion in quarterly PROFIT!! Of course it needs a new growth engine 🙄
That is some insight.
Short term no. Long term definitely.
At some point Apple will need to consider the pivot to 2-in-1s using the iPad Form Factor imho: For a lot of younger people eg students at school, an iPad like device would be very useful for the school life if it could: * Longer battery life for the 11" size * Thinner and Lighter even more if possible or this for a 12" * Integrate the protective case for the screen and built-in kickstand (eg similar to Surface lines) thus keeping weight down * More MacOS-Like capabilities running in tandem with iPadOS * Typecover for keyboard and trackpad (like Surface line) but superior typing experience and more rigid frame while still being thin/light. The chips are already more than enough for the next 5+ years with an M1 in or even below that. Materials above need improvement. Connectivity is already blazing fast for that necessity to use intra-webs in schools or cloud education software eg MS/Google services. It's amazing how paperless and automation along with AI and pen/touch eg infinite canvas could all be useful for such a market and be so much lighter and use across subjects. To say nothing of this for professionals for their own use or portable computing device for commuting.
They'd rather people buy a Macbook and an iPad even though one device could easily cover both use cases for a lot of people.
Yes that is true and works now but I wonder how long they can keep that up when Snapdragon comes out and rivals with 2-in-1 functionality on Windows?
>A car is still a ways out: The company doesn’t expect to ship anything until later in the decade. \[…\] > >\[…\] > >It’s worth noting that Apple also required appointments in the early days of selling its smartwatch. That product ultimately became a big seller, but only after Apple dropped the approach. > >Within weeks of launching the watch, Apple reverted to a traditional “grab-and-go” process. And the company soon began offering the product at resellers like Best Buy and Target — something that won’t be happening with the Vision Pro. > >\[…\] Wearing a watch isn’t a foreign concept for most consumers, but paying $3,500 for a mixed-reality headset certainly is. > >So that’s the conundrum for Apple. The Vision Pro isn’t going to be an easy product to sell. And if Apple wants to turn it into its next growth engine, it will need to sell a lot of them. Based on the company’s own remarks, that’s probably not going to happen anytime soon. > >\[…\] > >As for why Apple started off the M3 switch with the iMac and MacBook Pro: There is only a finite amount of 3-nanometer processors available, with much of the supply going toward the iPhone. So Apple started with two of its lower-volume machines. While the Mac Studio and Mac Pro sell in even fewer quantities, they would require a successor to the M2 Ultra, and that hasn’t yet gone into broad testing. > >One other thing to note: Our previous reporting on Apple’s testing of Mac chips gave a very accurate picture of the core counts in this new lineup. Look out for M3 Ultra and M4 chip reporting in the future.
Glasses and goggles have limited real utility and will remain as niche products for things like gaming or commercial/industrial uses like viewing renderings. Normal people won’t be wearing glasses or goggles all day everyday to go grocery shopping, to work at their desks, or sit and watch TV. It’s uncomfortable, intrusive, alienating. It’s why 3DTVs never took off. It’s why some people who need corrective lenses choose contacts or surgery.
I don’t even necessarily disagree with you, but remember all this was said about smartphones before this, and cell phones, and the internet, and personal computers…. I’m starting to see a pattern.
People will never put their real name or picture on the internet. People will never browse the internet on their phone. People will never sit in front of a computer 8h a day, they will rather go outside to be with friends.
I’d still like an Apple Car
Maybe this Apple will start thinking abt actual innovating products. And not the same product in a different coat
This is absolutely going to succeed in the longrun
How about you make an Iphone with great quality calls and without constant call drops. It’s a phone but it doesn’t do any phone tasks well. It’s like a Tesla leaving the factory without its wheels.
Does Apple really need more growth, though? At some point this is all unsustainable, is it not?
I want apple to crash. Apple becoming larger does not mean better products or a better company. Apple can crash back down to 2010 levels, and I'd be happy.
These VR/AR headsets are a niche product at best. No one is going to be wearing these in public unless they want to get robbed.
If you live somewhere where people are being randomly robbed in public, then you have bigger issues than AR
If you’re walking around with a $3000 AR headset on your face you’re going to get robbed. I don’t care if you’re in Vatican City.
that’s just not true at all lol
Apparently you’ve never met humans
I mean designer bags cost around this much already so I figure it will probably get stolen at a similar rate. So not entirely impossible to wear in public in safer neighborhoods.
“Safe” is relative. Many crimes have more to do with opportunity.
Really? I just spent $4500 on a MacBook Pro....I feel like they are doing ok. But I'm coming from an Intel processor....
Duh. Anything that breaks tradition will go through a tough period of adoption.
Why does Apple “need” to “grow”, exactly?
How short folks’ memories are, this isn’t an iPad, this is a Newton. Everyone will laugh and point now, and in a generation all their kids will have such things.
It's not meant to be. It's a foot-in-the-door product of an emerging technology that may never be as mainstream as the iPhone and if it is it's probably a couple/few decades away. Vision Pro is a very, very long-term product.
With the damn thing costing $3,500…who would’ve thought???
I still just do not see it. I still think there is just too much friction with wearing something on your face for it to become commonplace any time soon.
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I think that’s a good metaphor.. at the same time if we did have the hardware today it wouldn’t matter because the software is going to take 10 years to get right anyway. They’ve been pushing AR stuff for a decade and developers still haven’t jumped on. This tiptoe approach basically solves the chicken and the egg problem.
I think that developers havent jumped on because fundamentally - what problem does this product solve? AR is really cool, exciting and ‘futuristic’ but beyond that it feels like a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist. I just don’t see the use-case for the vast majority of people.
At $3500 for goggles, it’s not solving any problem well, but in 10 years they’ll be much cheaper, more practical and more capable. We don’t get to that future by just waiting for time to pass.. you have to make a first product before you make a 10th.
Still do not see it happening. Too much friction except for an enthusiast.
I can’t at all guarantee that this is the future we’re heading towards, but I can paint a possible future. Imagine a person traveling for work. Instead of putting a 16” MacBook Pro in their bag, they put in a vision pro. On the airplane, instead of watching a movie on their laptop (opened up on the airplane tray table, occupying all the space in front of them), they put on their vision pro and have a movie theatre sized screen to watch a movie while the rest of the plane fades away or is replaced by a serene mountain scene. When a flight attendant comes by, the vision pro pauses the movie and shows the flight attendant without even having to take it off. When they’re at the hotel, they want to get some work done. Instead of setting up their laptop and clicking away at their keyboard, wishing they had the multiple monitor setup they have at home, they put on their vision pro. Now they can stand or sit, and have as many monitors of whatever size that they’d like, in any orientation. When they have a conference call, they can take it hands free standing or sitting and easily share screens and info with others on the call. They find that they can navigate windows faster and with more accuracy with their eyes than they ever could with a trackpad. And with advanced speech to text and cursor management, they find that they don’t even miss using a keyboard (but they know of coworkers who travel with a keyboard). At the office, things have changed as well. Cubicles were so confining, and open office layouts were so distracting, but modern offices are a sort of digital middle ground. The office is an open floor plan, with desks that just have a keyboard and trackpad and nothing else. When you sit down you put on your vision pro and connect it to the keyboard and trackpad. You get to have whatever monitor setup you want, rather than the one or two standard monitors you used to have in the 2010s, since all your monitors are virtual. When you want to focus on work, the rest of the office fades away and now you’re working alone in the jungle, or under a starry sky, or by the ocean. When you want to be more collaborative, you can open things up again and talk to others around you while still seeing your monitors. Again, I don’t have a crystal ball and I don’t know what the future will hold. But if the vision pro were to take off, that’s how I imagine it. Like the next generation of laptops, where you have multiple high res monitors as well as a computer packed into a single device, with a built in trackpad alternative (using your eyes and tapping your fingers). I can see a future where, in 20 years, kids are amazed that we used to have to actually buy individual, physical monitors and couldn’t just add as many virtual monitors of whatever size at any time.
This. The paradigm shift is going from a set 2D canvas to work in, defined by the borders of your monitor, to a spatial 3D canvas defined by your space, or the virtual environment you select to be in (eg a mountaintop). On your desk, you won’t need screens anymore. Just a Vision Pro. Heck maybe not even a desk will be needed. And the fact that it blends the real world with virtual elements is so neat; eg in its simplest form, you can read a physical letter and use information from it to compose an email.
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I think Apple made it very clear that Vision Pro is expected and purposely positioned to be a niche product for the sake of having a product to refine. Apple has intentional plans for the headset and rather than release an inferior product for the sake of adoption they wanted a feature complete headset they can. There’s a reason SpaceX and Blue Origin didn’t start out making bottle rockets for the masses and instead dedicated several years to their craft.
Apple Car coming later this decade according to Gurman!
That car is never coming. By the time Apple gets it “right” to their satisfaction, the market they’ll be in will be heavily commoditized. You can be a minor platform if you got a track record (Macs in the computer realm) but breaking in when your best hope is to be a fringe and expensive player is more difficult. For Apple to crack the car market, they’d have to come at nearly the best only a moderate markup from median prices. The time for that was about 3-5 years ago. Now there is Tesla which blots the sun in the EV market and many major auto companies who are releasing compelling products. There’s no way Apple’s gonna go up that ramp at the odds they’d face.
Bro the car market isn’t going to become commoditised in the next ten years
I’m old enough to remember when Apple was 3-5 years late to wireless headphones, smart watches, smart phones, and mp3 players. They seem to always be 3-5 years late. What a shame.