Welcome to our weekly Apple Breakfast column, which rounds up all the Apple news you missed last week in a handy, bite-sized summary. We call it Apple Breakfast because we think it pairs perfectly with a cup of coffee or tea on a Monday morning, but it’s also great if you want to read it during your lunch or dinner hours.
The future in hand
Stuck on a rainy island in the North Atlantic, I spent the first few months of this year watching with envy as my American colleagues dove into the world of spatial computing. But now that Vision Pro has launched in the UK, I’ve finally had the chance to try it out for myself. And while I’ll be writing more about that experience soon, the first thought that struck me was how important Apple’s retail stores were to this launch – far more so, in fact, than they’ve ever been for any previous product.
The advantage of Vision Pro, and this is both the device’s greatest strength and its greatest challenge, is that it is completely differentBefore the iPod came along, we already knew how to use MP3 players. The iPhone was reminiscent of the familiar iPod and arrived in a world already flooded with cell phones and smartphone/PDA concepts. AirPods were just wireless EarPods, and the Apple Watch is, well, a smarter watch. But the Vision Pro is unlike any Apple product we’ve seen before. Yes, it’s a headset, but it’s not really comparable to any of the competing VR and mixed reality headsets already on the market. The Vision Pro is much more ambitious (and expensive) as a universal computing and entertainment platform. Using the product is an experience that’s hard to imagine and almost as hard to describe. You just have to try it for yourself.
Luckily for Apple, the company has a network of high-end retail locations around the world where customers can try out Vision Pro in a controlled environment, with teams of trained and patient experts, cabinets full of different sizes of straps and light gaskets, and even a machine that can check your glasses to determine which lenses you need. Part of the demo process involves having your face scanned to determine which accessories will provide the best fit, and replacing them if the scan isn’t 100% accurate. In my case, the offered gasket was returned and replaced with something better within minutes.
Using the headset, on the other hand, is often counterintuitive, at least at first, but a knowledgeable Apple employee who can answer questions and anticipate difficulties makes it all intuitive. Selecting items on the screen by looking at them and then tapping with your index finger and thumb together is a bit mind-boggling, and you need someone to help you. None of this would work if you were trying to buy entirely online and test it out at home.
This all seems normal today: Apple is known for its little oases of glass and light wood furniture. But let’s not forget that it seemed like a strangely illogical decision when the first Apple Stores opened in 2001. At a time of inexorable decline in physical stores, Steve Jobs—not for the first time, and not for the last—swam against the tide, deciding to spend more When it comes to retail, the shift from stores within a store to dedicated outlets in expensive locations has happened. With more and more customers shopping online and most businesses looking for ways to downsize their physical locations, this move didn’t seem so much like a genius as it did just… insane. But it turned out to be a masterstroke.
Jobs understood the importance of Apple presenting itself as a tribe, and tribes need a place to meet and commune. The stores also served as giant showcases for the company’s values, embodied as much in the small details of the furnishings as in the (sometimes disturbing) positivity of the staff. Walk into an Apple Store and you’ll understand what the company stands for before you even pick up a product.
On a more practical level, Jobs may also have thought that a company selling high-end products needed a space where it could demonstrate that they were worth investing in…and guide less tech-savvy customers through their operations. We may think of iPads as easy to use, but newcomers are more likely to buy one if a friendly expert shows them how to operate them. The concept of the Apple Store seems so obvious in hindsight, but it wasn’t at the time. What we certainly didn’t know in 2001 was that Apple would one day launch a $3,499 product that would require potential customers to be guided through a complex half-hour demonstration; a product that would have no chance of success if the Apple Store didn’t exist.
Trending: Top Stories
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Installation of the iOS 18 Public Beta? These are the best features to try first.
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This incredible case transforms your old Apple Watch into a Modern iPod mini.
It’s not just iPhones: Apple users are holding on to their Macs longer than ever.
Apple delivers a surprise update to the HomePod mini, but it’s not the one we want.
Podcast of the week
The public betas of iOS and iPadOS 18, as well as macOS Sequoia, are coming, and you may be eager to install them. But is it really a good idea? In this episode of the igamesnews podcast, we explain why you should install them—and why you should avoid them.
You can listen to every episode of the igamesnews podcast on Spotify, Soundcloud, the Podcasts app, or our own site.
Critics Corner
The rumor is going around
The secret ingredient of the apple for make the iPhone thinner has just been postponed to 2026.
First details of next year’s edition emerge MacBook M5.
iPhone 17: Everything we know so far about the iPhone 2025.
Software Updates, Bugs and Issues
Massive AT&T data breach exposes records of nearly all of its customers calls and text messages.
And with that, we’ve wrapped up this week’s apple breakfast. If you’d like to receive regular roundups, sign up for our newsletters. You can also follow us on Facebook, Threads or Twitter to discuss the latest Apple news. See you next Monday, and stay Appley.
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