I Don’t Want an Apple Reality Pro Headset
It’s just not there, Tim
It feels like it’s been years since the first ‘Apple Headset/AR Glasses’ story was published — because, well, it has been. On Sunday, Mark Gurman of Bloomberg published what I feel is the ‘final frontier’ of headset rumors, with new information on apps, charging methods and battery pack, and other practicality things. The truth is, I don’t want an Apple headset, and I feel extremely pessimistic about this product’s launch. Here’s why.
I: VR is dumb, and Apple doesn’t have a place in this market
The truth is, VR is dumb technology — or at least, I think so. Why are we so focused on having a product that is essentially just an iPad strapped to your face? What is the utility of having an edge-to-edge screen that, in reality, just takes you further away from actual reality and that makes it harder to connect with the real world? Am I missing something? The only practical application for something that “transports” you to another realm of reality is games — but here’s the truth that accompanies that statement: Apple isn’t a gaming company, and every time they’ve tried to enter the gaming space, they’ve failed. People don’t develop games for the Mac, they develop them for the iPhone due to its portability, and none of the games developed are AAA titles that people actually want to play. Apple can’t succeed in the gaming market because nobody thinks of Apple as a gaming company. Many will try to point out that the future of VR is meetings, and I just don’t simply buy that. No matter how realistic the avatars that represent people are, it’s extremely difficult to actually replicate a face-to-face meeting with a screen. 3D is hard — spatial awareness is hard to replicate, and all this is going to do is make Apple look like a company that experiments with finicky technologies that’ll ultimately fail. Apple is not an entertainment business — they’re a company focused on bringing polish to everything they do and making practical applications out of existing technology — think 1000 songs in your pocket or full desktop Safari on iPhone for the first time. This is not a space where they can successfully achieve that. This product feels like a stepping-stone to the future that Apple is actually working on and believes in, which is AR glasses. That product has real potential — potential where it’s the only product you’ll have to carry and potential for ambient computing. Imagine glasses with Apple’s own, in-house LLM built-in that can guide you throughout your day, wherever you are — essentially, an Apple Watch turned up to 11. It feels like it has actual utility. But a VR headset? Well, it’s made for entertainment, and the technology just isn’t there to make this a must-have productivity device.
II: This product is rushed
Tim Cook seems to be focused more on leaving a legacy than actually making great products that, in Apple’s own words, “enrich people’s lives.” This is not a product that’ll seem to enrich people’s lives and rather feels like a rushed endeavor to ship something that’ll make Apple more prominent in the AR/VR space. This isn’t a good thing — people don’t buy Apple products because they’re first, they buy them because they’re good. Gurman, who’s been on a roll with Reality Pro leaks, states that the headset will have a battery pack that you strap to your pants, and that’ll connect to the headset via a proprietary barrel-like connector. Excuse me? Why is Apple letting Meta (Facebook) seem like the more technologically-competent company here? This isn’t polished, it’s rushed — and it will provide for a worse experience that makes the product seem cheap. But… it isn’t cheap! Gurman projects the product will cost $3,000, more than the Mac Studio or 3 iPhone 14 Pros. He projects that the first iteration is meant mainly for developers and enthusiasts who want to be the first to see what Apple has to bring to this market, but that’s a stupid move. Apple should never focus on having a product that simply shows off what they can do — they never do that, they never make something half-baked for the sake of saying it exists. If they plan on shipping this product like this, Apple enthusiasts who genuinely care about the Apple touch aren’t going to be bothered by it.
III: The software experience is hard to nail
Apple software has been terrible as of late — anyone who uses modern copies of macOS and its comically terrible System Settings has to agree with me. As pointed out by Jason Snell and Myke Hurley on the Upgrade podcast on Monday, the software experience as a whole is the killer app. If Apple can’t nail the software, with the reality dial and other shenanigans they’re planning, this product is going to be a flop. I’m not necessarily concerned that the product doesn’t have a clear “focus.” Rather, my concern is that the overall OS that runs on the headset will essentially just be a forked version of iPadOS with some cool apps and gizmos. Apple can’t and shouldn’t count on 3rd party app developers to make a value proposition for this headset — if they do that, it’s going to be an abysmal failure. I’m really worried about what Apple’s going to do here — how will the home screen be unique? How will launching apps and games work? How would widgets be displayed? These are all important questions that nobody’s really asking, and that’s disappointing. This isn’t an “ambient” device like iPhone, Apple TV, or Apple Watch — it’s a device used with intention. When it’s picked up, it’s meant to be used, not just worn, providing helpful information throughout the day. How is Apple going to use this device to its maximum potential and what value is it going to deliver? This is why I’m overly pessimistic about VR — you have to actively work to make the device feel like part of reality. I’m not super confident that Apple will be able to pull that off in a delightful way. I don’t want them to rely on developers to be the saving grace here — this is table stakes — if Apple doesn’t make a UI that delights and is useful 100% of the time, I’ll have no interest in this product.
IV: It’s going to make other products suffer, at least in the short-term
With Apple focusing so much of its time on the headset and trying to prepare its services for new functionality unique to the headset, I’m worried about how this might affect QC for their other products, namely, the Mac. We’re already starting to see this in modern Apple software — the Mac doesn’t have Apple Music Classical, Fitness+, Apple Music Sing, and other features that this headset is sure to support. I don’t like this reality and I don’t want more of it. The Apple Watch never stole the limelight from Apple’s other products — it always was and still is marketed as an accessory to the iPhone, not a stand-alone product (even after the introduction of cellular in 2017). This product, without a doubt, is going to require a lot of manpower to develop for, and that deeply concerns me. Apple’s other products shouldn’t suffer, and this product shouldn’t be marketed as a stand-alone product. It should be an iPhone or Mac accessory, at least for now, and it should be developed alongside iPhone and Mac features. In other words, the headset should enhance the experience of using other Apple products and services, and it doesn’t seem to be doing that from what we see on the outside. I’m interested to see how Apple is going to attempt to market this product — is it a completely new product à la iPad, or is it like the Apple Watch, an extension of the iPhone that’s meant to do different things and be useful to different people? Right now, I think the most promising take is for the headset to be an extended Mac monitor that could help with VR video editing and the development of AR apps. Perhaps it could also be a controller for AR apps on iPhone, iPad, and Apple TV? I’ll remain skeptical until Apple shows off how they think people are going to use this product and who they’ve developed it for.
Apple apologists are going to come after me for this take — but I really don’t see the vision and how this product can successfully become a reality. It needed to be said — Apple isn’t always right. And I think they’re wrong here. We’ll have to see what they cook up at WWDC this year. 💣
