If you purchase a Bentley Bentayga, you get the Mulliner Tourbillon Clock as an $30,000 option. But, hey, what's $30,000 between friends when the Bentayga will lighten your wallet by $550,000?
By the same measure, when you purchase the Apple Car, you get the Apple Ring thrown in for free.
Let's face it, Cook has kept Apple afloat quite nicely. But the reality is that since Job's passing the only innovative product that Apple has released to date is the Vision Pro. All the others have been upgrades upon upgrades upon upgrades. Forget the watch it's not innovative.
And truth be told, Apple has botched what could have been a multi-billion product had they released it in a smaller form factor without all the bells and whistles at $1500-$2000. Pitching it at $3500 USD is the same mistake when they sold the Gold Apple Watch for some outrageous price. However, they did offer the Apple Watch at a more affordable price range which made it a hit.
The Vision Pro US market has dried up. So now they are offering the Vision Pro around the world. They will sell a few. But not enough to offset the R&D effort and not near enough to move the needle by much when Apple releases their Dec. 2024 numbers.
The moral in this: start small, grab market share, get an audience then slowly increase the features and price to achieve a $3500 price point. If you already own an Apple Vision Pro 1.0 then you have trade-in value. Right now the only thing you have to trade-in is the shirt on your back. And Apple does not want that!
Wow. This is all so utterly baseless and mindless, it's hard to know where to start so I just quoted it all.
Vision Pro. So, according to your brilliant business mind, "smaller, simpler, cheaper" is the path to success! Well, my friend, both Meta and Microsoft--you've heard of them, right?--have been in the "smaller, simpler, cheaper" headset game for years. So where's the killer product that owns the market? OH... that's right. It doesn't exist.
I am not going to address the other points you raised about the Apple Watch and Air Pods. That was not the focus of my post. I was only reiterating what many highly-placed folks at Apple felt and said, 'that the product is not ready for release'. Which is what I have been thinking all along. This product has the potential to become a great money-maker for Apple. It's just that it is not fully baked. But Cook wanted a headline grabbing product and this was sitting on the lab bench being worked on and he shoved it out the door.
It made headlines alright, but the wrong kind. As did the infamous Apple Car.
My point on growing a product is that is the way to go. Rather than releasing the top-end.
I am not even going to address the points you made about Microsoft and Meta. The former has an abysmal record with hardware - remember the Windows phone, which Microsoft bought from Nokia and then on-sold for $1.5 Billion (classic buy high, sell low) and so far as Meta goes I am astonished that this company is still around with all the bad press they are getting.
Finally, to round it off. You have forgotten to mention the Google Graveyard. It has grown so large that future products won't be buried for the lack of space, they will just be cremated and placed in an urn.
"I was only reiterating what many highly-placed folks at Apple felt and said, 'that the product is not ready for release'"
Really? Please share with the rest of us who these "many highly-placed folks at Apple" are who said that the Vision Pro was not ready for release. Names please. And please link to publications or sources where we can see those quotes. I'll wait. You do realize that simply because you put something in quotation marks doesn't mean that someone said it, right?
If you had bothered to read the lead-up to the now clearly half-baked release of the Apple Vision Pro you would be in know. The general feeling amongst several people at Apple was not to release the Vision Pro for a variety of reasons, the main one being that it is too expensive for commercial success.
Seeing this, Apple's PR machine swung into full damage control and started telling all and sundry that a good many fortune 500 companies had purchased the device, along with several medical facilities. Well, let's break that down: fortune 500 and medical facilities. The former would not blink at buying several of these at $3500 a pop. They regularly spend thousands of dollars on equipment that gets obsoleted the next year and chucked in the tip. I worked for one, I ought to know. So far as the few stories peppered about how revolutionary the VP in performing micro surgery. Well, again, medical facilities have enormous budgets to throw at equipment at all levels from $10,000 to $10,000,000. The VP would hardly make a dent.
My comments throughout was that if Apple had intended for the VP to become a hit with prosumers it failed and failed miserably. Peppering the internet with stories about how fortune 500 companies and medical facilities bought it and marvelled at it hardly makes the case, other than Apple's well-oiled PR machine is doing the best it can with a poorly conceived release.
My contention and I stand behind it 100% is that Cook wanted a headline grabbing product after the dismal demise of the Apple Car and pushed it out the lab before it was ready for primetime. No doubt, Apple has the money and resources to make lemonade out of lemons. Come mid-2025 and possibly early 2026 we will see a new and improved Vision Standard at the affordable range existing side-by-side with Vision Pro for companies and medical establishments.
The problem with that is that people have soured on this product, like they have on Apple Maps and the old saying applies: 'you only get one chance to make a great impression.
Added to that, I am sure you have read that Apple has reaped a great many benefits from the failed launch of the Apple Car. I would luv to know what benefits, other than a tax deduction and how to not build a car when you are not in that space. Period.
No surprise. You didn't name a name--not even a single one!-- because there are no "highly placed folks at Apple" who claimed the Vision Pro wasn't ready to release. You fall back on nonsense beliefs for which you have no data and evidence to support. If I'm wrong, then please: present your data and evidence that Vision Pro has "failed" as you claim. I'll wait. But like the names I asked for, you won't have anything, you'll post some nonsense like, "Well it was out there if you would have read it." You are the poster child for people who believe whatever headline they read online without questioning the source and the evidence behind it.
I would be all over an Apple ring. I wear an Apple Watch at night for sleep tracking because I wear a traditional watch during the day. I am on my 2nd Oura ring, and they work great but the addition of a subscription is a deal breaker for many people (I’m grandfathered in). What bugs me the most though is after about 2 years the battery life is terrible and you need to get a new one - with no new features and at full price.
at least with an Apple ring I wouldn’t mind getting a new one every couple of years, because of the increased functionality and what I assume would be new features added over time.
I would be all over an Apple ring. I wear an Apple Watch at night for sleep tracking because I wear a traditional watch during the day. I am on my 2nd Oura ring, and they work great but the addition of a subscription is a deal breaker for many people (I’m grandfathered in). What bugs me the most though is after about 2 years the battery life is terrible and you need to get a new one - with no new features and at full price.
at least with an Apple ring I wouldn’t mind getting a new one every couple of years, because of the increased functionality and what I assume would be new features added over time.
I've thought about an Oura from time to time, but have never bought one. I'm not surprised about the battery issue--it's sort of the AirPods problem of tiny batteries having a more limited lifespan, especially in a product like Oura Ring that you need to keep charged constantly. But I'm stunned "the solution" is that you have to buy a new Oura at full price when that happens. You can complain that AirPod battery service is expensive, but at least it's possible. The other deal breaker for me is that Oura now requires a subscription, so you're never done paying for the product. I don't know about you, but I'm in full backlash mode to subscriptions of any kind ever since EVERYBODY decided that having consumers pay a never-ending monthly fee was the golden ticket of a business model. I don't have subscription fatigue, I have flat out subscription exhaustion, and I've been quitting subscriptions for every app and service that's not an absolute "must have."
Had two generations of Oura (pre subscription). Data collection was good but masking it with “scores” was lame. Then it’s decreasing battery life led them to a trash can. Got a RingConn and battery life of 7+ days is excellent with no subscription. Still too much “scoring” instead of just reporting standard metrics but does report a lot more. Unobtrusive and, at 55, appreciate having more data points to add to my Apple Watch, Qardio, and other tools.
Health ain’t just visiting a doctor once or twice per year. If you get into your sixties in bad health, the latter years are going to be absolutely awful.
The Apple Ring is shaping up to be a candidate for the Apple Graveyard. Like the AppleCar and the perpetual rumour that Apple is going to buy Netflix. The Apple Graveyard is scantily populated in comparison to the Google Graveyard that every other month has another funeral. I have been keeping track of the Google Graveyard Population since 2002. Thus far 254. Google's MO is to rush to market a me-too product. They give it a few months then the coroner steps in and it's DOA. That said I couldn't have a digital life without Google Search & Google Maps. I would be totally lost without either.
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at least with an Apple ring I wouldn’t mind getting a new one every couple of years, because of the increased functionality and what I assume would be new features added over time.
Google's MO is to rush to market a me-too product. They give it a few months then the coroner steps in and it's DOA.
That said I couldn't have a digital life without Google Search & Google Maps. I would be totally lost without either.