Welcome to our weekly Apple Breakfast column, which includes all the Apple news you missed last week in a handy bite-sized summary. We call it Apple Breakfast because we think it goes great with a Monday morning cup of coffee or tea, but it’s cool if you want to read it during lunch or dinner hours as well.
The long wait
When Apple announced the first iPhone in 2007, there was a five-month wait before the product hit stores. When the company unveiled the first Apple Watch in 2014, we had to wait seven months to see what the big deal was. But the Vision Pro headset, unveiled last week, is expected to be nine or even 10 months after launch based on a spring 2024 rollout, and there’s no guarantee it’ll be ready by then. (Think also of those of us in the UK who don’t even know if our nation is in the second group of countries to receive the helmet later in 2024.) After the Lord Mayor’s spectacle comes the long wait.
To some degree, this sort of thing is unavoidable, as suggested by similar, albeit slightly lower, delivery times for these previous big launches. (Note that the first iPad changed things in less than two months after its unveiling, so this is all relative.) While an iterative upgrade can be manufactured in relative secrecy and then revealed as a done deal, the regulatory hoop required for a whole new line of products means secrecy is essentially impossible to keep secret. You either have to announce early and live with an expectation, or have the internet do your announcement for you.
There are cases, however, where an early announcement cannot be justified simply by referring to bureaucratic red tape. Apple’s doomed AirPower project, for example, was clearly unveiled too soon, not just at a time when distribution still needed to be ironed out, but when engineers weren’t done fixing the problems. Presumably, Apple felt pushed into an announcement before it was truly ready, either because it needed an impactful product to demonstrate it could still innovate, or as a political Plan B in response to EU interference on charging standards. Either way, the decision was wrong.
Vision Pro is another matter, with several factors potentially contributing to an unusually early reveal. One is Tim Cook’s personal interest in the project. Despite leading the company to unprecedented financial success, Apple’s CEO MVP is often damned with low praise: just a logistically safe pair of hands, they say; no view; no significant launches on his watch. (And that includes the actual watch, which is somehow considered a Jobs product even though he died three years before its release.) With retirement in the cards at some point over the next few years, the affable boss of Cupertino is supposed to be thinking about his legacy, which is perhaps why he reportedly canceled the design team and demanded the Vision Pro be launched this year. Cook doesn’t want to wait for technology to catch up with the concept. He wants to start now.
More broadly, Apple is eager to embark on the next chapter of its history. The company has been enjoying profits from its iPhone line for years and understandably wants to know what’s next. As does the industry as a whole, for that matter. Mixed reality is certainly a possible future, but it has nothing to do with what mobile looked like in the mid-2000s, or personal computing must have felt like in the late 1970s. It could happen, but it could also go dramatically wrong if the world decides they don’t want to wear a computing device on their face.
As a job seeker unable to gain experience without being hired and unable to be hired without experience, Apple is in a bit of a no-win situation. The world and state of technological advancement doesn’t seem ready for the company’s vision for facial computing; batteries aren’t thin enough, displays aren’t cheap enough, and the general public is skeptical. But the best way to get these things done is to get out there and make the case. With Apple visibly behind the concept, developers will start building apps, movie studios will start creating content, rival vendors will ramp up work on their own products, and the rest of us can start to understand the societal changes needed. to switch en masse from phone to headset.
The first-gen Vision Pro is unlikely to sell many units, and Apple might seem silly to jump on the mixed reality bandwagon so soon. But sometimes you have to take a risk and the potential rewards are huge.
Foundry
The opinion corner
We won’t be able to post a review for a while, but we spent an hour testing the Vision Pro headset. And U.S didn’t want to leave.
Trending: Top Stories
VisionPro is a VR headset for people who hate VR headsets.
Jason Snell explains why the macand not Apple Vision Pro, was the true hero of WWDC.
Apple needs Mac Pro M2 Ultra more than us.
New Apple Silicone Mac Pro is both cheaper and more expensive.
Even Apple seems to hate the 13-inch MacBook Pro. It’s the forgotten laptop.
A crazy helmet, but no AI that kills the world? The buzzword that Apple didn’t utter during the WWDC keynote speaks volumes.
And here’s everything you missed during the WWDC 2023 opening speech.
Podcast of the week
Apple’s mixed reality headset is now official, and it’s definitely something to see. We talk about the Apple Vision Pro in this episode of the igamesnews Podcast – what it is, the technology behind it, what it will cost and why would you want one in the first place!
You can watch every igamesnews podcast episode on Spotify, Soundcloud, Podcasts app or our own site.
Software updates, bugs and issues
These five new iOS 17 features make us eager to upgrade.
Meanwhile, a bunch of awesome iOS 17 features didn’t even make the cut. WWDC Keynote Speech.
But the best new iOS 17 feature can be a nice toggle that automatically removes one-time passwords.
macOS 14 Sonoma brings desktop widgetsmore private Private Browsing on Mac.
Apple has redesigned the Apple Watch with its watchOS 10 update.
iPadOS 17 brings a series of new features in a better than expected update.
AirPods Noise Cancellation is about to get much smarter.
And with that, we’re done for this week’s Apple Breakfast. If you want to receive regular roundups, sign up for our newsletters. You can also follow us or on Facebook to discuss the latest news from Apple. See you next Monday, and stay Appley.
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