> That fat Nano was quirky. It was also, in hindsight, obviously a mistake. I’m quite sure that inside Apple there were designers and product people who thought it was a mistake before it shipped. Steve Jobs shipped it anyway, surely because his gut told him it was the right thing to try. Tim Cook’s Apple doesn’t make mistakes like that.
Look, I'm willing to accept a certain level of fanboyish Apple defense, especially from Gruber. It does seem like a bit of a stretch to say the fat iPod Nano was a failure for selling 10 million+ units but the Vision Pro somehow wasn't a mistake by comparison.
I love the fat nano. I was said when its battery died. I love my iPhone Mini (besides iOS being a bit too dumbed down still). Apple should make more hardware for niches.
He doesn't say the iPod Nano was a flop, he says it was a mistake. And there is a difference. For example, the iPhone 4 was a mistake (remember antenna gate?) and yet, it sold plenty units. But the 4s antennas were a new design and by the 5 they'd started moving the antennas back inside the phone. The butterfly keyboard and the touch bar were mistakes. Their models still sold millions of units.
The "general-purpose" differentiation is completely artificial and shouldn't be used except in very narrow circumstances (for example, when discussing the economic impact of the entire mobile market)
The only thing that should matter is the device's raw computing power. The user should have the same level of control over code execution that the manufacturer has post-sale. That should apply to every single appliance and product on the market that uses a chip.
What I meant by general-purpose computing not being a good benchmark is that whether a user should have the control I described should not turn on whether the device in question is considered a "general-purpose computer". It should not be a part of the criteria.
Computing power doesn't matter at all. It's the expectation of running arbitrary software.
My smartwatch has a CPU that is far less powerful than my WiFi access point. But I absolutely expect to be able to install third-party apps on my smartwatch. And I can't care less about making my WiFi AP drive an external monitory displaying spreadsheets.
FWIW, gaming consoles are not used as general-purpose devices. PS3 was probably the only console that attempted that, and it was utilized by less than 2% of users.
For me, a great criterion for "general purpose" computers is this: "Do people use the device to work with spreadsheets?" Mobile phones certainly qualify.
Installing a 3rd party OS/Firmware on a WiFi AP has been done for decades already and is mostly expected.
I don't want to run random self-made apps on my watch, I want it to work reliably at all times. And that is done by using APIs and frameworks provided by the smartwatch manufacturer.
There are fully custom watch solutions where you can program everything from bare metal up yourself. Get one of those.
---
As for the PS3 "general purpose" thing, it was 100% to get around EU tariffs. PCs were on a lower tariff than gaming consoles.
I'd posit that the PS5 and Xbox Series X are more "general purpose" than my iPhone.
Both consoles run pretty much off the shelf PC hardware, iPhone has a custom chip.
There is no valid reason why I shouldn't be able to install, say, Firefox on either of them. The architecture is there and on the Xbox even the APIs are there.
> Google allows side-loading, and Steam is completely optional. You can avoid it, even on Valve's own handheld.
OK, so, a completely optional market charges 30%. This means the market is comfortable with 30% and elects not to bypass that 30%. Why should Apple charge less for an experience buyers seek out?
A market charging 30% under constant threat of being cut out by a competitor is of very different value to vendors than a market charging 30% that they have no choice but sell on.
It would be a discount over physical CDs & floppy filled cardboard boxes on shelves too.
That doesn’t make it a win today.
The physical store vig didn’t just get you better customer access, it reflected real physical world investments by the stores to get you that.
And originally, Apple’s vig represented both new better access and innovative efforts they made to provide it.
But today Apple’s store vig only represents their gatekeeper status, not actual expenditures matching developers efforts.
The reason they’re vig hasn’t dropped to 2-3%, or alternatively they have innovated new ways to increase developer sales, is they ban alternative stores on a platform people are tied to via high switching costs. (Both reflecting real iOS ecosystem value & other walls.)
No mention of it in the article, even though they wrote:
> But it’s also why Cook’s Apple delivers fewer surprises. The delight is still there, but there’s less amazement.
For a day or two then the newness wears off quickly. It's an iPad you can strap to your face. If I thought the iPad was a real platform then I might be more interested but unless they make the Mac display thing much better and/or open up the Vision Pro to be a real computing platform then it's just a very expensive iPad and in most cases I'd honestly pick the iPad over it.
I _really_ wanted to love mine but it got boring very quickly. It's only good as a content consumption device that has numerous downsides to just watching my TV. My TV is big enough, I couldn't make a much bigger screen in the Vision Pro without having to move my head (defeating the purpose) to see everything.
It's cool, it was the sharpest text I'd ever seen in VR (I've also tried the Quest 2 and 3) but the Mac display was fuzzy and huge disappointment. I thought I could justify the cost if I could replace my monitors with it but it sucked as a monitor replacement and I never anticipated how much would be lost in a video chat. It looked like I had botox injections and my face was much less expressive. When you work remote you want every communication advantage that you can get, this added a significant degradation to all video chats.
I could go on but I already have in a number of blog posts so I'll stop here. It might blow your mind in a demo but day-to-day use? Yeah, most people barely use theirs anymore and I returned mine. I'm sure there are a number of die-hard fans but it's a tiny number of people (hell, there were only a tiny number of Vision Pro headsets sold and if 50% are still in daily use or even weekly use I'd be shocked).
> If I thought the iPad was a real platform then I might be more interested but unless they make the Mac display thing much better and/or open up the Vision Pro to be a real computing platform then it's just a very expensive iPad and in most cases I'd honestly pick the iPad over it.
The Mac screen replacement enhancement is the “killer app” for me. Mac screen surrounded by simpler (mostly Safari) windows.
I would happily pay $4500, $5500 for a true “Pro” Mac replacement Vision. With an emphasis on maximizing the value of spacial computing for productivity.
I can think of dozens of small Vision OS tweaks they could make now that would better facilitate this, even before any hardware updates.
Alas, more power for its users is not an Apple priority. “Bicycle for the mind” is a lost mantra.
“Media kiosk” is in.
Even though they essentially created a new category of VR they show every sign of leaning back into “iOS, iOS, iOS”.
I disagree. It’s inventing new multi modality such as the pinch to select and the in-the-air drag and drop. This brings us a bit closer to Minority Report Tom Cruise magic.
> I’ve been pondering this for the remainder of the week. One factor is that the iPhone defined the apex of personal computing. In the early years of PCs, everyone knew we wanted portability. Most of us — including me — thought we reached that with laptops. But laptops don’t go with us everywhere, and, it turns out, we want computers that go with us everywhere. That’s the iPhone, and the original iPhone in 2007 established the all-touch-screen form factor and general concept right out of the gate. That first iPhone blew our minds the moment Steve Jobs showed it to us.
Gruber seems to think of iPhones as portable, use-everywhere computers when such characterization puts Apple in good light. However, his opinion about what the iPhone is seems to change when dealing with sideloading and, in general, App Store shenanigans:
> The iPhone and iPad are not PCs; they’re consoles for games and apps.
Yeah, he's consistently frustrating on this issue. It seems he actively wants Apple to control general-purpose computing and will make whatever characterization necessary for that to sound reasonable. I really wish we had portable general-purpose pocket computers, but there isn't really an option on the market for that, and it's not a hardware issue.
His perspective is as pro-Apple as it gets. This article about his keynote disappointment was mostly spent fawning over apples headphones and watch and how Tim Cook is a sage. Unable to criticize Apple for anything, he even concludes his remarks blaming himself.
Honestly I think apple has become both too impersonal and too controlling.
SJ at the helm would have made things more personal, and might have headed off all the rot that has led to poor developer relations, anti-trust, and relentless profiteering without clear benefits.
Computing and the Internet have matured and become so much more central to daily life. For better or worse, that's going to put limits on the quirks something like a smartphone can have. If your photo library, banking, social media, or even job depends on your phone, it really does need to be rock solid and reliable.
I think what people forget is pre-iPhone, we all saw _something_ coming. Maybe we didn't expect it to look exactly like the iPhone, but there was a sense of excitement around what was coming next for computing. Sony Style magazine was still in print. eCommerce was picking up. Palm phones, Blackberry, Windows Mobile. Super quirky laptops and UMPCs. I remember lusting after some wildly impractical UMPCs, because it meant that everything I did on my desktop could now fit in my pocket.
Even after smartphones took off, I remember sometimes thinking "man, imagine in the future when this stuff is good and it actually just works." A lot of stuff was basically just demos back then. Well, here we are. A huge portion of my life happens on my iPhone, and that really does mean it has to Just Work.
I get it, being mind blown in this industry is getting further apart with time. It is just that the industry is becoming mature, we have picked most of the low hanging fruit and now it is a case of refining the refinded. Triple distilled design in action. More broadly this is a middle aged industry and unfortunately it is leading to some mid life crisis moments like metaverse, crypto hype and AI everything but generally it is still in decent shape, at least when you ignore some details.
The last time I was blown away by any tech would have been the first time using generative AI stuff, yes we figured out its limits, but just that feeling of being able to just type something and just have these thing created on demand was wild. The time before that, I couldnt really say, it has been that long. Maybe seeing realtime raytracing on commodity hardware and even that wasnt ground breaking.
In a way it us like the 10th season of a sitcom, we know all the characters and it is familiar but nothing much is new or fresh any more. The jokes are still fine and the catch phrases are there but it all just feels same-ish. That is ok so long as that is your expectation.
Buys a vanilla bean but get surprised when it's plain and simple. Not sure what he expected. Apple is a cash cow harvesting brand loyalty. 2 years of r&d and they got what? A usbc port and a button? Folks are joking if they think this is the peak of tech.
> I have no idea why anyone gives credence to Gruber after his history of “incredible to the point of incredulity” pro-Apple bias over the years.
Once upon a time he made a variant of textile and restructuredtext, with a lot of help from Aaron Swartz. Turns out it's a really good invention. But everything else is just mindlessly pro Apple bloviating to the point of self parody. He's probably one of a few hundred who bought the iPod hifi
And out of CommonMark John MacFarlane created djot[1], which (imo) is awesome and a solution to virtually all Markdown woes, while still being close enough to pure Markdown/CommonMark that it doesn't feel that different when using.
> If anything, under Cook, Apple more consistently achieves near-perfection. Tolerances are tighter. Ship dates seldom slip.
I'm surprised that Gruber doesn't mention the fact that Apple is now in the habit of announcing products or features 6+ months before they ship, both software and hardware (not talking about things like the iPhone which have to be submitted to the FCC). And sometimes, they never ship at all (see AirPower). This would never happen under Jobs.
Also, while Steve Jobs straight up lied in order to protect future announcements (i.e. 'we're not making a video iPod', Tim Cook will say things like 'we are very interested in the AR/VR space' for close to a decade before announcing any products).
I agree with you sentiment. That said there are two vague exceptions I can think of on this.
The original iPhone but that was because its existence would have been leaked/semi announced once they tried to get it approved for public use. So their hand was forced on that.
Also we never did get a 3Ghz G5 or mobile variant of it. This is something that Jobs mentioned when unveiling their Intel switch. As an aside, I did find it funny that PA Semi did end up designing their PWRffcient PowerPC chips with the goal of getting into Apple products. They eventually were purchased by Apple and now do all their hardware stuff. So I see the PWRffience chip has being one of the best job applications produced.
Gruber edges up to this in a footnote, but I think the prerecorded keynotes are particularly corrosive to the spirit of risk and excitement that he misses in Tim Cook’s Apple.
Jobs cared deeply about the keynotes and was ruthlessly strategic about which feature was in and which was out, who—other than Steve—would present, and which guests would be invited onto the stage. That didn’t mean they were perfect—as Gruber points out, we saw plenty of busted demos and boring partner CEO’s.
But now all the pressure to put on a high-wire act is gone, and Apple can rely on increasingly sterile and repetitive “ultra-production” to make every new supported Fitness activity seem like a headliner, which means everything’s just indistinct, cheerfully delivered mush.
The most exciting part of a jobs keynote was guessing what was coming next, and if it was a hardware demo, if it would work or not, and if not, how would jobs react
Prerecorded doesn't work. You're watching a 2 hour long ad, and you feel like you are. It was stilted, the presenters sounded borderline AI-generated, and the small bits of humor still had me feeling like the joke was on me, and that I was a sucker for tuning in.
And it's clear that Tim and co. don't understand Jobs's pacing and narrative structure whatsoever. It felt amateurish, even worse than previous pre-recorded keynotes. Jobs used superlatives, but he didn't use them like that. He also didn't scream, Tim.
It's funny. In early 2022, the Apple blogosphere loudly wondered when Apple would go back to "real" keynotes, since Covid was dying down. But Apple was already batting away antitrust concerns, devs were pissed, and WWDC was coming up. I'm convinced that Apple was worried about unenthusiastic crowds, laughter, or even a couple of boos, and decided to delay the return some more. I guess they never got that confidence back.
It's not just that Tim Cook wants to help humanity, or more accurately avoids the false positive products.
Nor should Apple aim to deliver "I'm so special!" feeling of a new product category.
The key is: Tim Cook understands the criticality of goodwill in the context of pervasive computing.
If you used computers from the 1990's-2010's, you grew to hate - hate - the fact that you had to use Microsoft. Office was king, and blue screens and viruses only evolved into more subtle pain.
Now, we just settle into our lives, as enhanced by devices we carry. That scale happens when you hit not 99% but 99.999% quality. (Yes, Android+Samsung is a copycat, one that wouldn't exist or have any direction without Apple.)
Gruber's not sure what the next thing will be. I am. It will be the natural UI's - voice and maybe vision - augmented with AI assistants. Voice computing, like speech recognition more generally, is jarring because 3-5% of the time you're dropping back into correction mode. But on-device speech-interactive AI will learn and correct all that. It will be understood as such in 2025, voice-only apps will go big in 2026, and voice-only devices will be available in 2027, along with lightweight voice+vision.
Then we'll only need to carry airpods, and we'll be happy to pay $3k for that.
I want to believe! But I think your vision goes a little too heavy on audio only side. By that I mean, the biggest problem with voice control is the lack of detailed feed back. This is why people will usually use it to check the weather, but the rest of the time it becomes a 'trust but verify' mode. That why many are happy to place appointments, dial calls and set the GPS but only so long as they can visually check it is correct.
That is the largest hurdle to over come and it is something that will in part come from sizable R&D but also be driven by a few inspired folks that can intuitively resolves some key issues.
Apple is trying, like how they had the Voice only version of Apple Music, but it still isn't there. The problem is with anything, others rush in to get to market first but not doing it right and ruin it for those trying to make it great.
This just doesn't make any sense. Even in an ideal world where voice assistants never failed, some of the most basic daily interactions become extremely complex and time consuming with audio only. When 3 different people text you it takes infinitely more time to clarify that with voice than you would be able to just read. Plus, people like social media, and young people really like tik tok. How are you going to record or meaningfully play back videos on a device where you can't see? Voice only is significantly more of a gimmick than the Vision Pro.
Nobody likes navigating call center menus. A voice only smart device would be doing that all day long.
What's worse, Apple Vision Pro doesn't even feel like a Lisa or Newton type of failure. This isn't just an expensive slice of future technology. It's a shaky foothold in a market Apple cannot confidently compete in. It might be the first time Apple released something that's just simply a dud, and nobody had the confidence or capability to stop it from shipping.
All the "innovations" in the current hardware feel destined to get removed as a cost-saving measure. Eye tracking is sketchy is frankly just worse than traditional locomotive pointing in other headset software. The passthrough screen is worse than the living devil and needs to be removed STAT. The software is fixable, but currently in a state that barely supports WebXR and doesn't support SteamVR or OpenXR. A good iteration on this headset would look almost nothing like Vision Pro, which suggests to me Apple really just doesn't know how to capitalize on their market.
61 comments
[ 4.4 ms ] story [ 148 ms ] threadLook, I'm willing to accept a certain level of fanboyish Apple defense, especially from Gruber. It does seem like a bit of a stretch to say the fat iPod Nano was a failure for selling 10 million+ units but the Vision Pro somehow wasn't a mistake by comparison.
The only thing that should matter is the device's raw computing power. The user should have the same level of control over code execution that the manufacturer has post-sale. That should apply to every single appliance and product on the market that uses a chip.
It's not.
> The only thing that should matter is the device's raw computing power.
It's not.
The software & hardware that comes together in general purpose mobile devices is non-trivially different from simple raw “computing” capabilities.
My smartwatch has a CPU that is far less powerful than my WiFi access point. But I absolutely expect to be able to install third-party apps on my smartwatch. And I can't care less about making my WiFi AP drive an external monitory displaying spreadsheets.
FWIW, gaming consoles are not used as general-purpose devices. PS3 was probably the only console that attempted that, and it was utilized by less than 2% of users.
For me, a great criterion for "general purpose" computers is this: "Do people use the device to work with spreadsheets?" Mobile phones certainly qualify.
I don't want to run random self-made apps on my watch, I want it to work reliably at all times. And that is done by using APIs and frameworks provided by the smartwatch manufacturer.
There are fully custom watch solutions where you can program everything from bare metal up yourself. Get one of those.
---
As for the PS3 "general purpose" thing, it was 100% to get around EU tariffs. PCs were on a lower tariff than gaming consoles.
Both consoles run pretty much off the shelf PC hardware, iPhone has a custom chip.
There is no valid reason why I shouldn't be able to install, say, Firefox on either of them. The architecture is there and on the Xbox even the APIs are there.
OK, so, a completely optional market charges 30%. This means the market is comfortable with 30% and elects not to bypass that 30%. Why should Apple charge less for an experience buyers seek out?
That doesn’t make it a win today.
The physical store vig didn’t just get you better customer access, it reflected real physical world investments by the stores to get you that.
And originally, Apple’s vig represented both new better access and innovative efforts they made to provide it.
But today Apple’s store vig only represents their gatekeeper status, not actual expenditures matching developers efforts.
The reason they’re vig hasn’t dropped to 2-3%, or alternatively they have innovated new ways to increase developer sales, is they ban alternative stores on a platform people are tied to via high switching costs. (Both reflecting real iOS ecosystem value & other walls.)
The Vision Pro is literally mind blowing.
For a day or two then the newness wears off quickly. It's an iPad you can strap to your face. If I thought the iPad was a real platform then I might be more interested but unless they make the Mac display thing much better and/or open up the Vision Pro to be a real computing platform then it's just a very expensive iPad and in most cases I'd honestly pick the iPad over it.
I _really_ wanted to love mine but it got boring very quickly. It's only good as a content consumption device that has numerous downsides to just watching my TV. My TV is big enough, I couldn't make a much bigger screen in the Vision Pro without having to move my head (defeating the purpose) to see everything.
It's cool, it was the sharpest text I'd ever seen in VR (I've also tried the Quest 2 and 3) but the Mac display was fuzzy and huge disappointment. I thought I could justify the cost if I could replace my monitors with it but it sucked as a monitor replacement and I never anticipated how much would be lost in a video chat. It looked like I had botox injections and my face was much less expressive. When you work remote you want every communication advantage that you can get, this added a significant degradation to all video chats.
I could go on but I already have in a number of blog posts so I'll stop here. It might blow your mind in a demo but day-to-day use? Yeah, most people barely use theirs anymore and I returned mine. I'm sure there are a number of die-hard fans but it's a tiny number of people (hell, there were only a tiny number of Vision Pro headsets sold and if 50% are still in daily use or even weekly use I'd be shocked).
The Mac screen replacement enhancement is the “killer app” for me. Mac screen surrounded by simpler (mostly Safari) windows.
I would happily pay $4500, $5500 for a true “Pro” Mac replacement Vision. With an emphasis on maximizing the value of spacial computing for productivity.
I can think of dozens of small Vision OS tweaks they could make now that would better facilitate this, even before any hardware updates.
Alas, more power for its users is not an Apple priority. “Bicycle for the mind” is a lost mantra.
“Media kiosk” is in.
Even though they essentially created a new category of VR they show every sign of leaning back into “iOS, iOS, iOS”.
Steve Balmer would be proud!
I disagree. It’s inventing new multi modality such as the pinch to select and the in-the-air drag and drop. This brings us a bit closer to Minority Report Tom Cruise magic.
Welcome to middle age, John. I'm here too, so I can't tell you what comes next, but I hope it's more fun.
Gruber seems to think of iPhones as portable, use-everywhere computers when such characterization puts Apple in good light. However, his opinion about what the iPhone is seems to change when dealing with sideloading and, in general, App Store shenanigans:
> The iPhone and iPad are not PCs; they’re consoles for games and apps.
(From https://daringfireball.net/2024/01/coming_to_grips_with_appl...)
Honestly I think apple has become both too impersonal and too controlling.
SJ at the helm would have made things more personal, and might have headed off all the rot that has led to poor developer relations, anti-trust, and relentless profiteering without clear benefits.
I disagree with the characterization.
I think what people forget is pre-iPhone, we all saw _something_ coming. Maybe we didn't expect it to look exactly like the iPhone, but there was a sense of excitement around what was coming next for computing. Sony Style magazine was still in print. eCommerce was picking up. Palm phones, Blackberry, Windows Mobile. Super quirky laptops and UMPCs. I remember lusting after some wildly impractical UMPCs, because it meant that everything I did on my desktop could now fit in my pocket.
Even after smartphones took off, I remember sometimes thinking "man, imagine in the future when this stuff is good and it actually just works." A lot of stuff was basically just demos back then. Well, here we are. A huge portion of my life happens on my iPhone, and that really does mean it has to Just Work.
The last time I was blown away by any tech would have been the first time using generative AI stuff, yes we figured out its limits, but just that feeling of being able to just type something and just have these thing created on demand was wild. The time before that, I couldnt really say, it has been that long. Maybe seeing realtime raytracing on commodity hardware and even that wasnt ground breaking.
In a way it us like the 10th season of a sitcom, we know all the characters and it is familiar but nothing much is new or fresh any more. The jokes are still fine and the catch phrases are there but it all just feels same-ish. That is ok so long as that is your expectation.
Once upon a time he made a variant of textile and restructuredtext, with a lot of help from Aaron Swartz. Turns out it's a really good invention. But everything else is just mindlessly pro Apple bloviating to the point of self parody. He's probably one of a few hundred who bought the iPod hifi
I adore that CommonMark exists too: https://commonmark.org/ .
[1]: djot.net/
I'm surprised that Gruber doesn't mention the fact that Apple is now in the habit of announcing products or features 6+ months before they ship, both software and hardware (not talking about things like the iPhone which have to be submitted to the FCC). And sometimes, they never ship at all (see AirPower). This would never happen under Jobs.
Also, while Steve Jobs straight up lied in order to protect future announcements (i.e. 'we're not making a video iPod', Tim Cook will say things like 'we are very interested in the AR/VR space' for close to a decade before announcing any products).
The original iPhone but that was because its existence would have been leaked/semi announced once they tried to get it approved for public use. So their hand was forced on that.
Also we never did get a 3Ghz G5 or mobile variant of it. This is something that Jobs mentioned when unveiling their Intel switch. As an aside, I did find it funny that PA Semi did end up designing their PWRffcient PowerPC chips with the goal of getting into Apple products. They eventually were purchased by Apple and now do all their hardware stuff. So I see the PWRffience chip has being one of the best job applications produced.
Jobs cared deeply about the keynotes and was ruthlessly strategic about which feature was in and which was out, who—other than Steve—would present, and which guests would be invited onto the stage. That didn’t mean they were perfect—as Gruber points out, we saw plenty of busted demos and boring partner CEO’s.
But now all the pressure to put on a high-wire act is gone, and Apple can rely on increasingly sterile and repetitive “ultra-production” to make every new supported Fitness activity seem like a headliner, which means everything’s just indistinct, cheerfully delivered mush.
And it's clear that Tim and co. don't understand Jobs's pacing and narrative structure whatsoever. It felt amateurish, even worse than previous pre-recorded keynotes. Jobs used superlatives, but he didn't use them like that. He also didn't scream, Tim.
It's funny. In early 2022, the Apple blogosphere loudly wondered when Apple would go back to "real" keynotes, since Covid was dying down. But Apple was already batting away antitrust concerns, devs were pissed, and WWDC was coming up. I'm convinced that Apple was worried about unenthusiastic crowds, laughter, or even a couple of boos, and decided to delay the return some more. I guess they never got that confidence back.
Nor should Apple aim to deliver "I'm so special!" feeling of a new product category.
The key is: Tim Cook understands the criticality of goodwill in the context of pervasive computing.
If you used computers from the 1990's-2010's, you grew to hate - hate - the fact that you had to use Microsoft. Office was king, and blue screens and viruses only evolved into more subtle pain.
Now, we just settle into our lives, as enhanced by devices we carry. That scale happens when you hit not 99% but 99.999% quality. (Yes, Android+Samsung is a copycat, one that wouldn't exist or have any direction without Apple.)
Gruber's not sure what the next thing will be. I am. It will be the natural UI's - voice and maybe vision - augmented with AI assistants. Voice computing, like speech recognition more generally, is jarring because 3-5% of the time you're dropping back into correction mode. But on-device speech-interactive AI will learn and correct all that. It will be understood as such in 2025, voice-only apps will go big in 2026, and voice-only devices will be available in 2027, along with lightweight voice+vision.
Then we'll only need to carry airpods, and we'll be happy to pay $3k for that.
That is the largest hurdle to over come and it is something that will in part come from sizable R&D but also be driven by a few inspired folks that can intuitively resolves some key issues.
Apple is trying, like how they had the Voice only version of Apple Music, but it still isn't there. The problem is with anything, others rush in to get to market first but not doing it right and ruin it for those trying to make it great.
Nobody likes navigating call center menus. A voice only smart device would be doing that all day long.
All the "innovations" in the current hardware feel destined to get removed as a cost-saving measure. Eye tracking is sketchy is frankly just worse than traditional locomotive pointing in other headset software. The passthrough screen is worse than the living devil and needs to be removed STAT. The software is fixable, but currently in a state that barely supports WebXR and doesn't support SteamVR or OpenXR. A good iteration on this headset would look almost nothing like Vision Pro, which suggests to me Apple really just doesn't know how to capitalize on their market.