Welcome to our weekly Apple Breakfast column, which includes all the Apple news you missed last week in one handy summary. We call it Apple Breakfast because we think it pairs really well with a Monday morning cup of coffee or tea, but it’s cool if you also want to read it during lunch or dinner hours.
Slow starters
Over the years (although a little less often lately), Apple has had some of the biggest product launches ever. Iconic devices like the iMac, iPod, iPhone, and AirPods have generated positive reviews, huge sales, and massive cultural impact. Sometimes it felt like the hits would never stop coming.
But every successful product is successful in its own way, and some of the names above came out faster than others. The common idea of a Cupertino treadmill, hit after hit in uniform succession, fails to appreciate the truly unique nature of the iPhone. Never before has a single product made such an obscene amount of money, somehow combining G-force acceleration in the first stage of its existence with year-to-year consistency for a decade later.
So when we look with disapproval at recent Apple products and complain that they aren’t as successful as the classics from the golden age, it’s important to be clear about which classics we use for purposes. purposes of comparison. An ambitious innovation like Vision Pro may never match the success of the iPhone by any imaginable standard… because nothing ever has and, more than likely, nothing ever will. But there are other analogies we could draw that would make accountants in Cupertino feel rather better.
The iPod, most would agree, was a huge success. It made a lot of money, saved Apple from the brink of failure, and is so visually iconic that it’s in books at MoMA and the Smithsonian. But it wasn’t always obvious that this would be the case, and it took some time, and several versions, before it became a phenomenon.
So let’s come back to the points of simil arity between Vision Pro (flop) and iPod (an all-time classic). Both began in the face of competition from competing companies with more experience in the field: Compaq and Creative Labs in 2001; Meta in 2024. Both have faced criticism over price: $3,499 is arguably a lot for an augmented reality headset in 2024, but $399 was extremely high for an MP3 player in 2001, though than justified, in the opinion of our reviewer.
It wasn’t until the launch of cheaper, more portable mini and shuffle versions of the iPod that it really took off, and the same will probably always be true for the Vision Pro (or rather non-Pro). It’s not the end of the world if you have deep pockets like Apple, for the first generation of a product to be seen as an interesting failure, a glimpse of what’s possible rather than a flawless achievement.
Vision Pro, like the iPod before it, is doing new things, which involves both risks and a need for time for people to get used to its ideas. The first iPod was innovative in its use of FireWire, abundant storage, and clever hardware controls, so innovative in fact that after the launch of the iTunes Music Store three years later, it would ultimately save the music industry. It was designed for the technological landscape of the future and contributed to its emergence. Just like Vision Pro is designed with an eye toward the world a decade from now, when the smartphone has been replaced as the primary computing platform by… something else.
For every iPod, of course, there are a hundred other products that have tried to anticipate the future and gotten it wrong. It is entirely possible that portable computing is not it what’s next, despite Apple’s best efforts to get there, and if so, it would doom Vision Pro to utter failure. But the fact is, it’s too early to tell, and Apple might yet have another classic on its hands.
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Podcast of the week
This week we continue our Apple product tracking coverage Worldwide Developers Conference with a discussion about iPadOS 18, watchOS 11, visionOS 2 and everything else Apple hasn’t told us about! It’s all in this episode of the igamesnews podcast! Be sure to listen!
You can watch every episode of the igamesnews Podcast on Spotify, Soundcloud, the Podcasts app, or our own site.
Reviews corner
The rumor mill
Slimming is in fashion! Apple plans to reduce all of its products to match the iPad Pro.
Report: Apple kills Vision Pro 2 focus on less expensive helmets for 2025.
A technological breakthrough could mean Significantly improved battery life for Apple Watch and AirPods.
THE Apple Watch Series 10 will no longer have a small option, the complaints report.
Software updates, bugs and issues
Help! The one from my iPhone 15 Pro Max battery health is suddenly disappearing quickly.
Apple Intelligence and other key features of iOS 18 will not be available in the EU this year.
iOS 17.6 beta arrives with iOS 18 already in testing.
Apple releases macOS 14.6 beta.
And with that, we’re done for this week’s apple breakfast. If you would like to receive regular summaries, subscribe to 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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