Apple’s modus operandi is to go from the outside in. IOW, figure out the customer experience and then build the hardware and software to do it. Don’t ship until the minimum viable experience can be provided.
There’s this notion that Apple needed a few iterations to figure out what worked for the Watch, implying the initial features were wrong. I think that is wrong, and Apple basically got it right at the beginning just like they did with the iPhone.
What form it took evolved and was iterated upon - it matured - with the core tenets remaining. With maturity comes great products. The Watch was advertised as a time piece, a glancible information device and an activity device. That holds true today.
The VisionPro was presented as a spatial computer with big canvasses for apps for work, mobile and home; and, providing immersive experiences inherent to XR from games to photos. The hand and eye tracking combined with the R1 and microOLEDs is what really makes it possible.
So I see it as a computer with which you do anything you want with it. Apple has to bring its Pro apps over as well as enabling macOS like abilities. You have to be able to do everything that you do on Mac, iPad, iPhone with it.
Oh, they have to solve the nausea issues with it. The number of people who get motion sick has to be a fraction of a fraction of the nausea issues current goggles have.
When Apple Watch came out there was already Fitbit and, at around the same time, there was Microsoft’s fitness wearable. Both those products were entirely focused on the app that everyone now says was the killer app for Apple Watch, which Apple only realized later.
I'd like for you to expand on why you think fitness wasn't something Apple realized as a core app for the Apple Watch and you think it's now the "killer app" for the device.
This is the announcement and demo of the original Apple Watch. I see the activity monitor on the device as being so well thought out that they're still using the same basic rings and badging for tracking your activity.
And this video is Tim Cook talking about wellness and fitness on a wearable as being key.
- - - - -
I've been using the Apple Watch since Series 0 and if I was pressed for naming a "killer app" I'd name the Notifications as the killer app. Sure, it's not a single app in an of itself, but it is core to the Apple Watch experience and what I feel makes it such a valuable asset to have on my wrist every single day of life.
From calls, to messages, to fitness, to alarms, to calendar events, to use Find My (or the quick find of my misplaced iPhone), to even the newer features that have saved lives by notifying users of possible atrial fibrillation, a fast heartbeat, and excessive noise, to notifying others when you've taken a fall, I find that my core use since day one and to this day has been getting and sending notifications so I don't have to get my iPhone or other devices out as much and just being able to know more information than I otherwise could on just my iPhone.
Apple’s modus operandi is to go from the outside in. IOW, figure out the customer experience and then build the hardware and software to do it. Don’t ship until the minimum viable experience can be provided.
There’s this notion that Apple needed a few iterations to figure out what worked for the Watch, implying the initial features were wrong. I think that is wrong, and Apple basically got it right at the beginning just like they did with the iPhone.
What form it took evolved and was iterated upon - it matured - with the core tenets remaining. With maturity comes great products. The Watch was advertised as a time piece, a glancible information device and an activity device. That holds true today.
The VisionPro was presented as a spatial computer with big canvasses for apps for work, mobile and home; and, providing immersive experiences inherent to XR from games to photos. The hand and eye tracking combined with the R1 and microOLEDs is what really makes it possible.
So I see it as a computer with which you do anything you want with it. Apple has to bring its Pro apps over as well as enabling macOS like abilities. You have to be able to do everything that you do on Mac, iPad, iPhone with it.
Oh, they have to solve the nausea issues with it. The number of people who get motion sick has to be a fraction of a fraction of the nausea issues current goggles have.
Your comment comes closest to what I intended to write.
Apple Watch is illustrative of why I think Vision Pro will be the most successful among all offerings in its market, despite its higher price.
When Apple Watch came out there was already Fitbit and, at around the same time, there was Microsoft’s fitness wearable. Both those products were entirely focused on the app that everyone now says was the killer app for Apple Watch, which Apple only realized later.
But Apple Watch was created as an extension of the enormous and tightly integrated ecosystem that only Apple provides. Apple is a platform building monster, with products built on top. So when the Apple Watch initially shipped, with potential to provide a vast array of functionality, it was only natural for the market, and pundits, to cast about seeking a killer app beyond what the purpose-built fitness trackers provided. After all, with so much potential, so much technology packed in there, surely there must be something more to it than only fitness tracking.
And there was/is. There’s information at a glance, timers, stopwatch, hotel room access (virtual keys), walking directions, etc, AND great fitness tracking. Once the world, and Apple, figured out that fitness tracking as a central capability was the killer app, Apple won the day, because its combination of high-end hardware, ecosystem integration, build quality, elegance and ability to also do so many other tasks trumped its shorter battery life and higher price relative to the far less capable competition with minimal and fussy ecosystem integration.
Shorter battery life and higher price, yet highly capable and tightly ecosystem integrated, built upon a massive collection of technology platforms. That’s exactly what the Vision Pro brings. History rhymes, as does the history of punditry who bring forward the same objections, yet again.
Battery life Price No clear killer app.
Okay, but when a killer app emerges for this form factor, perhaps even from the development labs of other goggle makers, or from their developer community, it’s not hard to imagine that app making its way to Vision Pro, and when it does, who’s going to offer it with the best experience? Yup, the high-end, gorgeously designed, most powerful, most well integrated ecosystem Apple Vision Pro. And then it’s all over but the wimpering for those competitors without the software ecosystem, without the many underlying interconnected technology development platforms, without their own class-leading and energy-efficient silicon, without their enormous user base to sell into.
Yeah, this is gonna be fun.
Where Apple has succeeded in a big way is where its product becomes the archetype for the product category. Once the iPhone arrived it established itself as the archetype for all smartphones to follow. Despite the seemingly impenetrable shield of patents that Steve Jobs alluded to with the iPhone, once the iPhone hit the market, the other smartphone makers had no choices other than to either copy the iPhone and try to survive the patent flack, or exit the market as currently established by the owner of the archetype. This pattern was repeated with iPad, Apple Watch, and AirTag.
It doesn’t matter whether other makers were first to market or earlier to market with products that aimed to take over the market in question. Once a product becomes the archetype it becomes the standard by which all others are measured, like it or not. I always liken this pattern to the evolution of naval battleships from the end of the US Civil War until the early 1900s. Every navy iterated through competing battleship designs with an incredible number of variations, each with unique capabilities and limitations. But then the British Navy launched the HMS Dreadnought, which became the archetype of battleship design philosophy for every subsequent battleship ever built. Every navy had to essentially copy the HMS Dreadnought design philosophy or concede defeat.
One thing that should be seen as consolation for those Apple competitors who fail to land on the archetype for a product class is that, like the HMS Dreadnought, archetypes can be superseded by new design philosophies that render the previous archetype obsolete. In the case of battleships it was aircraft carriers that rendered the battleships obsolete. But it was never a case of naval designers setting out to intentionally replace battleships with aircraft carriers. It was the application of each “product” in actual real world scenarios that dictated the outcome. The aircraft carrier (with its air wing) proved to be a much more formidable and effective force when the time came to prove how each design performed under real combat conditions.
The takeaway here that applies to the Apple Vision Pro is that it still must prove itself in action. If Apple’s designers and visionaries got it just right, or close enough, like they did with iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch then Apple has a chance to define the archetype for a product category, one that it may actually define rather than simply filling a category based on current definitions. Again, just like they did with the iPhone, et al. For me it’s still somewhat of a mystery to see where the Apple Vision Pro will land because Apple appears to be defining and evolving the category on the fly based mostly on customer experience and visceral appeal. It looks amazingly appealing and exciting, but what will it do for me? I fully expect that once it gets in the hands of end users everything will come into focus. By the 2nd or 3rd release it will probably become a must-buy.
Dear Daniel, thank you so much. About 8-10 years ago I started buying apple stock, and at times the tv pundits made it hard to hold on to them but reading your articles here was one of the reasons I could see the big picture and held on to the stocks- M
Apple’s modus operandi is to go from the outside in. IOW, figure out the customer experience and then build the hardware and software to do it. Don’t ship until the minimum viable experience can be provided.
There’s this notion that Apple needed a few iterations to figure out what worked for the Watch, implying the initial features were wrong. I think that is wrong, and Apple basically got it right at the beginning just like they did with the iPhone.
What form it took evolved and was iterated upon - it matured - with the core tenets remaining. With maturity comes great products. The Watch was advertised as a time piece, a glancible information device and an activity device. That holds true today.
The VisionPro was presented as a spatial computer with big canvasses for apps for work, mobile and home; and, providing immersive experiences inherent to XR from games to photos. The hand and eye tracking combined with the R1 and microOLEDs is what really makes it possible.
So I see it as a computer with which you do anything you want with it. Apple has to bring its Pro apps over as well as enabling macOS like abilities. You have to be able to do everything that you do on Mac, iPad, iPhone with it.
Oh, they have to solve the nausea issues with it. The number of people who get motion sick has to be a fraction of a fraction of the nausea issues current goggles have.
When Apple Watch came out there was already Fitbit and, at around the same time, there was Microsoft’s fitness wearable. Both those products were entirely focused on the app that everyone now says was the killer app for Apple Watch, which Apple only realized later.
I'd like for you to expand on why you think fitness wasn't something Apple realized as a core app for the Apple Watch and you think it's now the "killer app" for the device.
This is the announcement and demo of the original Apple Watch. I see the activity monitor on the device as being so well thought out that they're still using the same basic rings and badging for tracking your activity.
And this video is Tim Cook talking about wellness and fitness on a wearable as being key.
- - - - -
I've been using the Apple Watch since Series 0 and if I was pressed for naming a "killer app" I'd name the Notifications as the killer app. Sure, it's not a single app in an of itself, but it is core to the Apple Watch experience and what I feel makes it such a valuable asset to have on my wrist every single day of life.
From calls, to messages, to fitness, to alarms, to calendar events, to use Find My (or the quick find of my misplaced iPhone), to even the newer features that have saved lives by notifying users of possible atrial fibrillation, a fast heartbeat, and excessive noise, to notifying others when you've taken a fall, I find that my core use since day one and to this day has been getting and sending notifications so I don't have to get my iPhone or other devices out as much and just being able to know more information than I otherwise could on just my iPhone.
Fitness was certainly a core app, but I don’t think Apple or the majority of the pundits considered it a killer app. A killer app is something that most would use and that is much better on a device, in this case a watch, than on substitute devices, like a smartphone. There were step-counting apps on iPhone and other smartphones, but not as accurate or readily at hand to use, and that’s about all they did; step counting, using the motion of your hip while in your pocket, mostly, but also when in your hand. The Watch, as a wearable, always in the same place on your body, can be more accurate and can do much more, from sensing and tracking other exercises to monitoring your heart rate, etc.
Notification as a killer app would, in my view, have to be more than just more convenient. That’s a significant advantage, and, like your experience, notifications on my Watch is something I rank high as a feature I love. But I don’t think, along other dimensions, notifications qualify as a killer app for the Watch. They aren’t qualitatively better on the Watch. In fact, they are a little less easy to scroll through, read in their entirety and take actions on, compared to the phone. If I get a notification of a text or FB Messenger message I want to reply to, I usually go to my phone to do so as few are of the sort that the reply is a quick emoji or short canned response. It takes more than just their convenience, their readiness at hand, to shift them into the killer app category.
And so Apple, when they first introduced the Watch, didn’t try to proclaim a killer app, but instead showed off many nice-to-have features that many of us still use and love, but it wasn’t until we owned the Watch and saw that the fitness tracking was really only compelling on this new wearable compared to on a smartphone that we, and Apple, began to see it as a killer app that would truly drive Watch adoption.
Hope that clarifies my views on the matter. It’s certainly not the last word, as I think there are potentially other killer apps (a device can have more than one). For my money, the day I don’t have to carry my wallet, keys, driver’s license or passport, having those all presented through the watch, so no authority figure needs to take my iPhone in hand or even know that I have it on me, that’s the day I’ll consider the Watch not just as containing killer apps, but to be a killer device.
Apple’s modus operandi is to go from the outside in. IOW, figure out the customer experience and then build the hardware and software to do it. Don’t ship until the minimum viable experience can be provided.
There’s this notion that Apple needed a few iterations to figure out what worked for the Watch, implying the initial features were wrong. I think that is wrong, and Apple basically got it right at the beginning just like they did with the iPhone.
What form it took evolved and was iterated upon - it matured - with the core tenets remaining. With maturity comes great products. The Watch was advertised as a time piece, a glancible information device and an activity device. That holds true today.
The VisionPro was presented as a spatial computer with big canvasses for apps for work, mobile and home; and, providing immersive experiences inherent to XR from games to photos. The hand and eye tracking combined with the R1 and microOLEDs is what really makes it possible.
So I see it as a computer with which you do anything you want with it. Apple has to bring its Pro apps over as well as enabling macOS like abilities. You have to be able to do everything that you do on Mac, iPad, iPhone with it.
Oh, they have to solve the nausea issues with it. The number of people who get motion sick has to be a fraction of a fraction of the nausea issues current goggles have.
When Apple Watch came out there was already Fitbit and, at around the same time, there was Microsoft’s fitness wearable. Both those products were entirely focused on the app that everyone now says was the killer app for Apple Watch, which Apple only realized later.
I'd like for you to expand on why you think fitness wasn't something Apple realized as a core app for the Apple Watch and you think it's now the "killer app" for the device.
This is the announcement and demo of the original Apple Watch. I see the activity monitor on the device as being so well thought out that they're still using the same basic rings and badging for tracking your activity.
And this video is Tim Cook talking about wellness and fitness on a wearable as being key.
- - - - -
I've been using the Apple Watch since Series 0 and if I was pressed for naming a "killer app" I'd name the Notifications as the killer app. Sure, it's not a single app in an of itself, but it is core to the Apple Watch experience and what I feel makes it such a valuable asset to have on my wrist every single day of life.
From calls, to messages, to fitness, to alarms, to calendar events, to use Find My (or the quick find of my misplaced iPhone), to even the newer features that have saved lives by notifying users of possible atrial fibrillation, a fast heartbeat, and excessive noise, to notifying others when you've taken a fall, I find that my core use since day one and to this day has been getting and sending notifications so I don't have to get my iPhone or other devices out as much and just being able to know more information than I otherwise could on just my iPhone.
Fitness was certainly a core app, but I don’t think Apple or the majority of the pundits considered it a killer app. A killer app is something that most would use and that is much better on a device, in this case a watch, than on substitute devices, like a smartphone. There were step-counting apps on iPhone and other smartphones, but not as accurate or readily at hand to use, and that’s about all they did; step counting, using the motion of your hip while in your pocket, mostly, but also when in your hand. The Watch, as a wearable, always in the same place on your body, can be more accurate and can do much more, from sensing and tracking other exercises to monitoring your heart rate, etc.
Notification as a killer app would, in my view, have to be more than just more convenient. That’s a significant advantage, and, like your experience, notifications on my Watch is something I rank high as a feature I love. But I don’t think, along other dimensions, notifications qualify as a killer app for the Watch. They aren’t qualitatively better on the Watch. In fact, they are a little less easy to scroll through, read in their entirety and take actions on, compared to the phone. If I get a notification of a text or FB Messenger message I want to reply to, I usually go to my phone to do so as few are of the sort that the reply is a quick emoji or short canned response. It takes more than just their convenience, their readiness at hand, to shift them into the killer app category.
And so Apple, when they first introduced the Watch, didn’t try to proclaim a killer app, but instead showed off many nice-to-have features that many of us still use and love, but it wasn’t until we owned the Watch and saw that the fitness tracking was really only compelling on this new wearable compared to on a smartphone that we, and Apple, began to see it as a killer app that would truly drive Watch adoption.
Hope that clarifies my views on the matter. It’s certainly not the last word, as I think there are potentially other killer apps (a device can have more than one). For my money, the day I don’t have to carry my wallet, keys, driver’s license or passport, having those all presented through the watch, so no authority figure needs to take my iPhone in hand or even know that I have it on me, that’s the day I’ll consider the Watch not just as containing killer apps, but to be a killer device.
1) The video I linked to shows Time Cook clearly talking up health and fitness as core aspects of wearable tech. You may not have considered it as important but Apple very much did out of the gate. Except for added to it and refining it, the fitness aspects was fully baked in from the original demo — not just a bolted on feature that they'll get to down the road.
2) Apple has never proclaimed a killer app. That's the fucking media.
Apple’s modus operandi is to go from the outside in. IOW, figure out the customer experience and then build the hardware and software to do it. Don’t ship until the minimum viable experience can be provided.
There’s this notion that Apple needed a few iterations to figure out what worked for the Watch, implying the initial features were wrong. I think that is wrong, and Apple basically got it right at the beginning just like they did with the iPhone.
What form it took evolved and was iterated upon - it matured - with the core tenets remaining. With maturity comes great products. The Watch was advertised as a time piece, a glancible information device and an activity device. That holds true today.
The VisionPro was presented as a spatial computer with big canvasses for apps for work, mobile and home; and, providing immersive experiences inherent to XR from games to photos. The hand and eye tracking combined with the R1 and microOLEDs is what really makes it possible.
So I see it as a computer with which you do anything you want with it. Apple has to bring its Pro apps over as well as enabling macOS like abilities. You have to be able to do everything that you do on Mac, iPad, iPhone with it.
Oh, they have to solve the nausea issues with it. The number of people who get motion sick has to be a fraction of a fraction of the nausea issues current goggles have.
Your comment comes closest to what I intended to write.
Apple Watch is illustrative of why I think Vision Pro will be the most successful among all offerings in its market, despite its higher price.
When Apple Watch came out there was already Fitbit and, at around the same time, there was Microsoft’s fitness wearable. Both those products were entirely focused on the app that everyone now says was the killer app for Apple Watch, which Apple only realized later.
But Apple Watch was created as an extension of the enormous and tightly integrated ecosystem that only Apple provides. Apple is a platform building monster, with products built on top. So when the Apple Watch initially shipped, with potential to provide a vast array of functionality, it was only natural for the market, and pundits, to cast about seeking a killer app beyond what the purpose-built fitness trackers provided. After all, with so much potential, so much technology packed in there, surely there must be something more to it than only fitness tracking.
And there was/is. There’s information at a glance, timers, stopwatch, hotel room access (virtual keys), walking directions, etc, AND great fitness tracking. Once the world, and Apple, figured out that fitness tracking as a central capability was the killer app, Apple won the day, because its combination of high-end hardware, ecosystem integration, build quality, elegance and ability to also do so many other tasks trumped its shorter battery life and higher price relative to the far less capable competition with minimal and fussy ecosystem integration.
Shorter battery life and higher price, yet highly capable and tightly ecosystem integrated, built upon a massive collection of technology platforms. That’s exactly what the Vision Pro brings. History rhymes, as does the history of punditry who bring forward the same objections, yet again.
Battery life Price No clear killer app.
Okay, but when a killer app emerges for this form factor, perhaps even from the development labs of other goggle makers, or from their developer community, it’s not hard to imagine that app making its way to Vision Pro, and when it does, who’s going to offer it with the best experience? Yup, the high-end, gorgeously designed, most powerful, most well integrated ecosystem Apple Vision Pro. And then it’s all over but the wimpering for those competitors without the software ecosystem, without the many underlying interconnected technology development platforms, without their own class-leading and energy-efficient silicon, without their enormous user base to sell into.
Yeah, this is gonna be fun.
Where Apple has succeeded in a big way is where its product becomes the archetype for the product category. Once the iPhone arrived it established itself as the archetype for all smartphones to follow. Despite the seemingly impenetrable shield of patents that Steve Jobs alluded to with the iPhone, once the iPhone hit the market, the other smartphone makers had no choices other than to either copy the iPhone and try to survive the patent flack, or exit the market as currently established by the owner of the archetype. This pattern was repeated with iPad, Apple Watch, and AirTag.
It doesn’t matter whether other makers were first to market or earlier to market with products that aimed to take over the market in question. Once a product becomes the archetype it becomes the standard by which all others are measured, like it or not. I always liken this pattern to the evolution of naval battleships from the end of the US Civil War until the early 1900s. Every navy iterated through competing battleship designs with an incredible number of variations, each with unique capabilities and limitations. But then the British Navy launched the HMS Dreadnought, which became the archetype of battleship design philosophy for every subsequent battleship ever built. Every navy had to essentially copy the HMS Dreadnought design philosophy or concede defeat.
One thing that should be seen as consolation for those Apple competitors who fail to land on the archetype for a product class is that, like the HMS Dreadnought, archetypes can be superseded by new design philosophies that render the previous archetype obsolete. In the case of battleships it was aircraft carriers that rendered the battleships obsolete. But it was never a case of naval designers setting out to intentionally replace battleships with aircraft carriers. It was the application of each “product” in actual real world scenarios that dictated the outcome. The aircraft carrier (with its air wing) proved to be a much more formidable and effective force when the time came to prove how each design performed under real combat conditions.
The takeaway here that applies to the Apple Vision Pro is that it still must prove itself in action. If Apple’s designers and visionaries got it just right, or close enough, like they did with iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch then Apple has a chance to define the archetype for a product category, one that it may actually define rather than simply filling a category based on current definitions. Again, just like they did with the iPhone, et al. For me it’s still somewhat of a mystery to see where the Apple Vision Pro will land because Apple appears to be defining and evolving the category on the fly based mostly on customer experience and visceral appeal. It looks amazingly appealing and exciting, but what will it do for me? I fully expect that once it gets in the hands of end users everything will come into focus. By the 2nd or 3rd release it will probably become a must-buy.
Excellent analogy and observations. And whether it’ll be a subsequent release or a further evolutionary leap before it becomes a must-buy form factor only the future will reveal. Certainly it would be great to have a lightweight pair of glasses, or much lighter weight eye-enclosing set of goggles perform many of the dreamed of and yet to be imagined killer apps, but there are significant physics issues in getting to that level of compactness and light weight. If that’s what will be required to create a mass-adoption must-buy device then we may need to wait for literal brain implants. Who knows, but the next decade in this space will surely be an interesting time.
As a forty year Apple customer (I still have my original Mac128k), I’ve watched this scenario play out in real time over and over again. Apple has almost never been first with a new product, but rather sits back and watches what other companies bring to market and then learns what’s most useful/valuable/popular with those products. It studies them, determines what’s not quite right with them, and starts to figure out how to make them better. When it thinks it has the right mix of technology, software, and features, it brings its version to market and cleans everyone else’s clock. So, those other companies are essentially a proof of concept lab for Apple to watch and decide whether those products are worth their time to invest in.
There have been several false starts over the years, as with the Newton, but that was basically a product before its time. The technology wasn’t quite ready for such an amazing conceptual tool. Today’s iPhones have assumed its place and taken over the world with realtime connectivity to the world. You’d be hard pressed to walk down the street anywhere today and not find someone using one, or one of its third party clones.
Now Apple is turning to the spatial computing paradigm, using the gaming proof of concept headset hardware as their starting place. The technology still isn’t quite there. Even with Apple creating its own hardware, the first generation Vision Pro headset is going to be a bit heavier than desired, and its killer application is still a bit nebulous. Even so, I’m very excited about getting my hands on one. My vision is definitely failing, so having a head mounted screen I can enlarge with the twist of a dial is very appealing to me, both for watching TV/movies and reading, not to mention performing my regular computing needs, which I now accomplish either with my iPad Pro or my iMac Pro with two 27” displays. The idea of sitting on my sofa and taking care of all my computing needs and entertainment desires by just flicking my fingers and typing on a virtual keyboard is very appealing to this 76 year old. It might even eventually render some of my other Apple products unnecessary for my needs. Apple has never feared competing with itself, so I think the future of this product is very exciting.
Hi Daniel,
I’m glad you are back!
Many years ago (!) your articles helped me discover the Apple’s ecosystem 🙂
Your series about the first iPhone was amazing and it did a great job explaining why that device was a revolution!
About the Vision Pro: it has potential but I am not convinced … yet.
Hey DED - welcome back! Myself and many others enjoy immensely reading your interesting and unique views. We missed you! I hope to read you soon. Take care!
Comments
This is the announcement and demo of the original Apple Watch. I see the activity monitor on the device as being so well thought out that they're still using the same basic rings and badging for tracking your activity.
And this video is Tim Cook talking about wellness and fitness on a wearable as being key.
- - - - -
I've been using the Apple Watch since Series 0 and if I was pressed for naming a "killer app" I'd name the Notifications as the killer app. Sure, it's not a single app in an of itself, but it is core to the Apple Watch experience and what I feel makes it such a valuable asset to have on my wrist every single day of life.
From calls, to messages, to fitness, to alarms, to calendar events, to use Find My (or the quick find of my misplaced iPhone), to even the newer features that have saved lives by notifying users of possible atrial fibrillation, a fast heartbeat, and excessive noise, to notifying others when you've taken a fall, I find that my core use since day one and to this day has been getting and sending notifications so I don't have to get my iPhone or other devices out as much and just being able to know more information than I otherwise could on just my iPhone.
It doesn’t matter whether other makers were first to market or earlier to market with products that aimed to take over the market in question. Once a product becomes the archetype it becomes the standard by which all others are measured, like it or not. I always liken this pattern to the evolution of naval battleships from the end of the US Civil War until the early 1900s. Every navy iterated through competing battleship designs with an incredible number of variations, each with unique capabilities and limitations. But then the British Navy launched the HMS Dreadnought, which became the archetype of battleship design philosophy for every subsequent battleship ever built. Every navy had to essentially copy the HMS Dreadnought design philosophy or concede defeat.
One thing that should be seen as consolation for those Apple competitors who fail to land on the archetype for a product class is that, like the HMS Dreadnought, archetypes can be superseded by new design philosophies that render the previous archetype obsolete. In the case of battleships it was aircraft carriers that rendered the battleships obsolete. But it was never a case of naval designers setting out to intentionally replace battleships with aircraft carriers. It was the application of each “product” in actual real world scenarios that dictated the outcome. The aircraft carrier (with its air wing) proved to be a much more formidable and effective force when the time came to prove how each design performed under real combat conditions.
The takeaway here that applies to the Apple Vision Pro is that it still must prove itself in action. If Apple’s designers and visionaries got it just right, or close enough, like they did with iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch then Apple has a chance to define the archetype for a product category, one that it may actually define rather than simply filling a category based on current definitions. Again, just like they did with the iPhone, et al. For me it’s still somewhat of a mystery to see where the Apple Vision Pro will land because Apple appears to be defining and evolving the category on the fly based mostly on customer experience and visceral appeal. It looks amazingly appealing and exciting, but what will it do for me? I fully expect that once it gets in the hands of end users everything will come into focus. By the 2nd or 3rd release it will probably become a must-buy.
Notification as a killer app would, in my view, have to be more than just more convenient. That’s a significant advantage, and, like your experience, notifications on my Watch is something I rank high as a feature I love. But I don’t think, along other dimensions, notifications qualify as a killer app for the Watch. They aren’t qualitatively better on the Watch. In fact, they are a little less easy to scroll through, read in their entirety and take actions on, compared to the phone. If I get a notification of a text or FB Messenger message I want to reply to, I usually go to my phone to do so as few are of the sort that the reply is a quick emoji or short canned response. It takes more than just their convenience, their readiness at hand, to shift them into the killer app category.
2) Apple has never proclaimed a killer app. That's the fucking media.
There have been several false starts over the years, as with the Newton, but that was basically a product before its time. The technology wasn’t quite ready for such an amazing conceptual tool. Today’s iPhones have assumed its place and taken over the world with realtime connectivity to the world. You’d be hard pressed to walk down the street anywhere today and not find someone using one, or one of its third party clones.
Now Apple is turning to the spatial computing paradigm, using the gaming proof of concept headset hardware as their starting place. The technology still isn’t quite there. Even with Apple creating its own hardware, the first generation Vision Pro headset is going to be a bit heavier than desired, and its killer application is still a bit nebulous. Even so, I’m very excited about getting my hands on one. My vision is definitely failing, so having a head mounted screen I can enlarge with the twist of a dial is very appealing to me, both for watching TV/movies and reading, not to mention performing my regular computing needs, which I now accomplish either with my iPad Pro or my iMac Pro with two 27” displays. The idea of sitting on my sofa and taking care of all my computing needs and entertainment desires by just flicking my fingers and typing on a virtual keyboard is very appealing to this 76 year old. It might even eventually render some of my other Apple products unnecessary for my needs. Apple has never feared competing with itself, so I think the future of this product is very exciting.