Once again, it’s do-or-die time for Apple!
According to the Financial Times, “Tim Cook is betting on Apple’s mixed reality headset to secure his legacy” (subscription required).
The stakes are high for Cook.
It’s a bad yearly review to have to fill out an application at Cupertino’s Best Buy.
The headset will be Apple’s first new computing platform to be developed entirely under his direction. The iPhone, iPad and even the Watch were all originally designed by Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, who died in 2011.
It is obviously true that the first two were designed under Jobs. But was it the watch? The Financial Times cites no source for this claim, but the first reference Macalope can find to the idea is from December 2011. Two months after Jobs died, four months after he stepped down as CEO and 10 months after he he took sick leave, The New York Times claimed that a “very small group of Apple employees” were working on a wearable device that would connect to your iPhone.
Then maybe. But even though it was “engineered” under Jobs, which seems like a big effort, it was fully brought to market under Tim Cook.
It must be fun to be Tim Cook and pull out the watch and have everyone say that the first product released under your tenure is a “flop” and then eight years later after it’s clear that it’s was actually a success, people are starting to say, ‘Oh, yeah, that was all Steve Jobs.
The poor guy can’t win! Except having a lot of money.
Apple’s growth during Cook’s tenure has been dramatic, increasing its market capitalization from around $350 billion in 2011 to around $2.4 billion today. But despite the dual success launches of Apple Watch in 2015 and AirPods a year later…
Oh yeah! AirPods! Were AirPods also designed under Steve Jobs? Did Jobs leave a pad of paper he filled with random ideas so he could be credited with everything Apple came up with for the rest of eternity?
“Crank-operated Macbooks. Each sold with an organ-playing monkey.
“Edible Ethernet cables. Call the Twizzlers.
“I had a nightmare where David Packard put cigarettes out in my ears. Something there?”
I don’t know, it doesn’t look like him.
…which helped turn its accessories division into a $41 billion business, the company has been accused of iterating on past ideas rather than innovating.
IDG
Everything they make is technology products that use their technology!
Reports seem to indicate that the headset will interact with other Apple devices and will likely be based on existing software stacks, so expect some big sighs and eye-rolls soon!
The rest of the article is more stilted, however, and the Financial Times at least keeps expectations for the device’s sales relatively realistic, as opposed to some of the outlandish expectations that were set for the Watch before its release.
Apple only expects to sell around one million units of its headphones in its first 12 months…
Before the Watch shipped, some analysts expected it to sell 55 million units in the first year. When the Watch debuted, most analysts reduced their expectations from bananapants to just bananashorts. As the Financial Times shows, the Watch Series 0 ended up selling around 18 million units in the 17 months it was available. A solid start, but not enough to shake the general consensus, it was a “flop” until sales continued to grow steadily year after year.
Given that Apple’s headphones are expected to cost around $3,000 compared to the Watch’s original starting price of $349, maybe even 1 million units isn’t realistic either.
Despite the breathless implications that Tim Cook would have to tweak his resume if this headset doesn’t sell like virtual hotcakes on day one, Macalope isn’t terribly worried. We’ve heard since before the Watch came out that Apple was “missing” on AR and VR because its competitors were already shipped! Uh, devices that were basically prototypes.
Is this a big launch for Cook and Apple? Of course. Will it make or break Cook’s business or legacy? More than the Touch Bar, less than the fact that it’s already made Apple a $2.4 trillion company.
