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What might have been more effective in terms of attracting subscribers would have been to charge a modest enough amount for the service to ensure many consumers would have seen signing up for it to be a no-brainer.  So many services have come along and tried increasing cost. Bad combination. Make the monthly cost so modest that it isn't worth the bother to only carry the service for a few months of the year. Increase cost and it becomes necessary to only carry the service let's say every other month. Right now I am doing something like that with Prime and Apple. Disney+ is included with my cable package and Netflix has an ad-supported tier that at $5.99 a month here in Canada I just keep year round. With Crave (a Canadian service that offers programming from among other sources HBO) I have a grandfathered ad-free package that I would not be wise to drop. Seems to me that if you could substantially increase the number of year-round subscribers, getting less from each individual subscriber would still work well considering how many more of them there would be. Netflix was in a lot of trouble at one point because it kept increasing cost. I believe Netflix is doing better now that it has an attractively priced ad-supported tier. There is a limit to how much us consumers can afford to put towards streaming services. Costs have spiralled out of control on so many fronts. Not paying for a streaming service you can get by without is an obvious way to alleviate that problem. Charge less Apple and it could possibly pay off, especially considering one of the strengths of Apple is a massive installed base of existing Apple customers. 

It's about price point. Reasonably, one would expect to pay more for an Apple Vision Pro than a top-spec iPhone. Yet, there is a limit to how much more if what one is seeking is greater sales volume. In the Canadian market, the iPhone Pro Max checks in at a range of $1,749 - $2,349. From that perspective, a $3,000 Vision Pro (i.e. $2,999)  doesn't seem at all out of line. The catch is, the Vision Pro checks in at $4,999 - $5,798. I don't see it as necessary to drop down to the iPhone price point to see a significant uptick in sales. Yet it does need to be an incremental step up from the iPhone rather than pretty much a doubling of the price. The drop down from $5,000 to $3,000 is considerable, though. It may take a few generations to get there but if Apple can do that, it will have a significant addition to its product line. 

What's going to happen is that as the technology and manufacturing processes catch up, Apple will figure out how to deliver a quality experience at a price point that will entice far more consumers to buy in. At the same time, I suspect the goal with this first iteration is to demonstrate what is possible. If you diminish the experience with a more affordable design you weaken the intended message. Apple has looked to unveil what it would like to be doing with this sort of technology, get things started, if you will. It's just a first step but let's not underestimate the invaluable feedback from putting many thousands of these devices in the hands of consumers in the wild. The way this sort of thing goes, though, is that in time the technology catches up to what entities like Apple want to accomplish. At a given price point, the capabilities of components take significant strides with each new version. Maybe today the needed display tech is excessively costly but two, three, four years from now, less so. I do expect that Apple will provide a couple of grades of experience, as it tends to do, but even the cost of the prohibitively expensive pro version of this technology will come down to some extent. Maybe not enough to result in the pro iteration outselling the lesser version but enough to make for a viable entry all around. 

Under Tim Cook's guidance, Apple has been less manic than during the Jobs glory years. But one thing has not changed. Apple remains committed to pursuing excellence. It's why 13 years after Steve Jobs' death, Apple remains a viable entity with serious clout. The process isn't quite the same but the end result quite similar, if a bit slower in playing out. 

It's a good thing that iPhones last for years considering how expensive they are. It's a win, really, for Apple in that if you get five or six years of quality performance out of an iPhone, there's a high probability you will replace it with another iPhone. Even better for Apple, you would also be inclined to buy other Apple products and services. With smart phones now costing as much as a decent big-screen TV it would be absurd if it was regarded by consumers as pretty much a one-year device. In today's inflation-ravaged environment, it's unrealistic to think you can convince consumers to invest in a product with pretty much a one-year lifespan costing in excess of $1,000. Rather than thinking you have to wow consumers enough to get a new phone every year, giving consumers value for their dollar is a sounder business model. Besides, what does it say about the quality of your offerings if within a year of being released, they are deemed to be inadequate measured against the latest versions. I want to believe that the phone I buy today will not be eclipsed by the capabilities of next year's model. Refinements annually, sure. But you don't want to do a product so weak that it looks poor measured against next year's model. 

Could it be that Apple overestimated the initial interest in the iPhone 16 based on the addition of Apple Intelligence in the coming months? If so, shorter lead times does not automatically mean the iPhone 16 is not selling well. They may have set up for higher demand and are now seeing shorter lead times as a result. It's certainly reasonable to posit that we will not see a lot of demand for the new models as a result of AI at this time on account of the AI features are not yet available. It's also the case that those features, to be of interest, consumers have to feel there is a meaningful upgrade in the user experience. With few users in the wild having access to Apple Intelligence, how is that supposed to happen exactly.  Apple plays a long game, one that has proven effective yet isn't for those looking for dramatic instantaneous results. Take the Apple Watch as an example. Initially it didn't seem like it was all that big a deal but today many - myself included - regard the device as indispensable. Over time, Apple has enhanced the value of the product and afforded upgrades to products several years old. My fourth-generation watch only now is ineligible for any future upgrades but I've had it for several years and it still does what it does. I'll probably upgrade to a new one in the next year or so. AI will be like that. Start off modestly but evolve into an indispensable must-have that will motivate current long-time iPhone owners to upgrade. It's just not going to happen all at once.