Apple should pull the plug on the iPhone (2007)
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Reality is the best teacher and cynics (as opposed to honest critics) are best disregarded and downvoted. When unsure, I remind myself it’s best to reserve judgement and see how things play out and not overgeneralize from my own limited preferences. I tell myself that I am one small speck in the market — i do not represent the market.
Because even if cynics turn out to be right, their reasons for being right are random and we learn nothing from them. In financial market for instance it’s not enough to be right (it’s a coin toss) but to have the right reasons for being right.
Here's some data: When the iPhone was introduced, the global mobile phone market moved over a billion devices a year. The iPhone solved very real problems that people were having, and delivered a device that did everything better than the competition. They put a real browser in the thing, removing the need for WAP and other shitty technologies for consuming content on mobile. They got the form factor and keyboard right. It was expensive, but not 10x more expensive. The iPhone replaced a device that everyone was already willingly carrying around in their pockets, and had been carrying around for over a decade at that point.
The global VR headset market moved 20 million devices last year. For most people, VR headsets are a gimmick, a novelty, they bought one, tried it, put it on a shelf. People aren't carrying one around, people aren't using it as their main computing interface, people aren't throwing away their monitors or TVs or gaming consoles. If someone has a VR headset, it's a non-essential plaything.
The Apple Vision is ~10x as expensive, in a market that's 1/50th of what the mobile phone market was in 2007, and it's still not solving obvious pain points that are stopping people from getting a VR headset. What problems does it solve? What device does it replace?
> When unsure, I remind myself it’s best to reserve judgement and see how things play out and not overgeneralize from my own limited preferences. I tell myself that I am one small speck in the market — i do not represent the market.
"God^H^H^HApple moves in mysterious ways, it's best not to question The Lord!"
Come on. Apple Vision entering the VR market is fundamentally different from the iPhone entering the mobile phone market, which is why posts like this, trying to make Apple Vision criticism equivalent to iPhone criticism, are completely wrong.
To me the market is still being discovered. There are many products whose business models are not what is apparent. We make category mistakes when we pigeonhole new products into known existing categories. Right off the bat for me the Vision Pro is a multi monitor replacement that you can travel with — that’s just the one thing that hits my gut.
Though it does seem like this also does AR things well, and with ease.
The *WHOLE POINT* of this HN post is to poo-poo Dvorak's take on the iPhone *AS IF* the introduction of Apple Vision is comparable to the iPhone's introduction.
"iPhone critics were wrong then, therefore Apple vision critics are wrong now" is *NOT AN ARGUMENT*. It's emotional manipulation where you are supposed to reminisce about the glorious smartphone revolution that Apple ushered in, and apply that to this product launch. That is what is going on here.
And every time I press the point on what the hell the Apple Vision thing is for, the only thing I get back is mealy-mouthed corporate bullshit like what you just wrote.
"It's gonna be revolutionary, trust me, bro"
No. There is zero reason to believe that these things won't end up collecting dust on a shelf somewhere, just like the majority of VR headsets are already doing.
Not completely. This article is a great example of how meaningless unsubstantiated analysis is. The author makes a lot of anecdotal claims similar to the ones made regarding VR (“one time gimmick, a shelf decoration”)
I don’t think we’ve seen the complete potential of VR/AR technology and Im looking forward to see if Apple stepping in can normalize it.
Will it be successful? No one knows. Pretending that they do by either calling it a success or not a success this early is bound to be wrong.
You're not describing a problem though.
That's like saying:
"Mr Coffee designed a new coffee maker that attempts to solve a problem: it works underwater"
In 2007 carriers were giving away phones for free to those signing up for a plan, and the initial $500 price tag was mocked and lambasted as being way too expensive. There were all kinds of phones that it was far more than 10x pricier than.
> VR headsets are a gimmick, a novelty, they bought one, tried it, put it on a shelf.
Most shelf ridden cast off Quest 2s are there because they were found to be grainy and nausea inducing. A leap in latency and resolution could very well prompt revaluation in the space.
Eventually, he pissed of his editorship about 5G advertorial and was fired. [1] [2]
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMQv0j29WHA
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20181007013846/https://medium.co...
For those of us who knew what a leap ahead it was - the capacitive touch screen alone changed everything, let alone the usability and functionality like the physical mute switch - it was an uphill battle to convince decision makers how much of a paradigm shift it was. In fact my first boss, the CTO based in Palo Alto where I worked - had a boardroom showdown about it and lost, resigning immediately after.
Dvorak wasn't the only one with his head stuck in the sand. A lot of actual industry players just couldn't get it either. Blackberry for example.
The most amazing thing to me, honestly, is how quickly Google shifted gears. Android first launched with an emulator that looked exactly like the Nokia E71, Symbian phone with the exact same UX. I posted a video of it on Vimeo back then [1] (it's still there!!!). Within the year they had turned 90° and copied the iPhone in almost every way. That's Silicon Valley flexibility and drive which Nokia and other established mobile companies just couldn't match.
Incredible. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_C._Dvorak
> What Apple risks here is its reputation as a hot company that can do no wrong. If it's smart it will call the iPhone a "reference design" and pass it to some suckers to build with someone else's marketing budget. Then it can wash its hands of any marketplace failures.
Sometimes opinions are wrong in hindsight but they could have been totally logical at the time. But that guy.
This is not really worth then.
Even the closing sentence is funny; consolidated into bankruptcy. But hey, at least the article is consistent in getting everything wrong.
It's hard to be so wrong 100% of the time.
Replacing those with a headset would not only give me even MORE room to work with, but it would also save room and clutter in my home because I have a small desk in a small space.
As for TV, it doesn’t matter how big your screen is… a headset can always go bigger, give you better 3D, and do better sound as well unless you already have a surround sound setup. Which you may, but many of us don’t have any of those things. The only real downside I see is the inability to watch with someone, but if my wife and I could both wear headsets and sit on the couch together while ALSO both being in a shared virtual space, somewhere exotic with a giant theatre-size screen? Sounds pretty compelling to me.
I don't look at it as a headset but as a new kind of computer-like device with included display, and it's not even 1.0 yet. The cost seems crazy, but my Mac Studio+Display cost me more. If you think of it as equivalent to that, it's not all that out of line.
Now imagine what it will become, similar to how the iPhone changed massively over the years.
In 2022, there were 20 million VR devices sold globally. Apple has now entered this market with a device that's 10x as expensive as the competition, and one that doesn't solve any existing obvious pain points.
The iPhone out-competed dumb phones and communicators and blackberries and stylus notepads and, eventually, pocket cameras. It did all of that, better, in one device.
What exactly is the Apple Vision replacing in an obviously better way? If I buy one, what device can I throw away? I have yet to see an answer to that question.
Not everyone. The article being discussed is an extreme, but there were many similar opinions along these lines, for example form people claiming the lack of a physical keyboard would kill this as a business phone.
This is a completely empty statement. That's a flimsy corporate wish.
Do you not understand how completely different the introduction of the iPhone into the mobile phone market was, compared to the introduction of Apple Vision to the VR market?
The iPhone introduced with concrete examples of what it could do that the competition could not, it wasn't half-baked and aspirational, it solved existing problems, it was better than the devices that billions of people were already carrying around in their pockets from the start.
I'm writing this comment from my home office. To my right is a window where I can look out on the street below, I see cars and people, I see birds flying over the trees, and a couple of blocks away is the beach and the ocean. It's a pretty view. I can relax my eyes and my brain and look away from work or HN for a bit. How does Apple vision improve this experience?
1X - they’re in the same market as the HoloLens, not low-end gaming VR like Oculus, which is why the hardware costs more. It’s definitely far from a proven market but I would treat this class of device as the first serious contender — for example, the infinite display concept is appealing but a device like the Oculus Pro doesn’t have the resolution to make sharp text or refresh quickly. If this lives up to the promise, it might tempt anyone who wants a portable or private alternative to setting up a bunch of external displays, especially if they work on 3D things or collaborate. It’s not going to be an instance best selling gadget but I think a lot of the people I’ve known who have jobs involving things like mechanical engineering, architecture, interior design, medical or scientific imaging, data visualization, modeling, etc. are going to consider it and these devices are cheap when you’re paying more than that annually for software licenses and it’s a few days billable time.
>Apple Inc.'s past successes have been in markets that were emerging or moribund. Its biggest hit has been the iPod.
Recency bias aside, Apple clearly has experience to take on markets like this.
>doesn't solve any existing obvious pain points.
I mean, if you pay attention to any of the people that have tried hands-ons, they all say the UI interaction is leaps and bounds better than anyone else. Hand tracking, clarity, and pass-through too - this isn't a Meta Quest competitor, it's an improved Varjo XR3 for half the price. This price isn't really a blunder as much as a signal as to who this is for.
But really, the point is that this isn't the device Apple wanted to make. They wanted to wait another 5-10 years to get the miniaturization and price down so it can just be a pair of glasses. But they don't have that luxury; Zuck is trying to own the market, and Apple needs developers now rather than later. They know this device won't have high volume (and they've told shareholders that for months) but they're investing for 5-10 years from now when the tech is at the point where it does.
>If I buy one, what device can I throw away?
I mean from the way Apple is currently marketing it, the answer is "Your tablet, probably laptop, and even TV, (and eventually, your phone)"
This is the best defense of the device that I've seen. I can absolutely see the appeal of AR in a pair of glasses, that's a form factor and convenience that makes sense.
But how will Apple retain excitement for this device and retain developers doing stuff for it, if the install base is tiny compared to the competition? Over ten years? Once this thing ends up on people's shelves, why should any company develop for it? "Trust me bro, Apple Vision Air 5 is finally going to kick off!"
The iPhone introduced the app store, which allowed for a literal gold rush, it suddenly became a whole lot easier for developers to earn money for their software, of course developers flocked to it, even though the install base was small. There's no such mechanism in place this time, all the other VR headsets have app stores. So what's the draw? All the Apple Vision owners are rich, so you can price your apps higher?
I understand the long term goals of Apple, they have to make this bet in case VR becomes the next revolution, but VR has been a solution looking for a problem for thirty years now at least, and this product is not going to become successful, and yet this thread, and every other one like it, is full of people predicting the VR revolution.
Most of which were dumbphones — in 2007, 122 million smartphones were sold worldwide, which represented only about 10.6% of cell phones. In other words, the iPhone entered a product segment in its infancy, then helped define and grow it just as Apple Vision will.
> What exactly is the Apple Vision replacing in an obviously better way?
This sounds like Dvorak in 2007, who clearly looked at the iPhone as a "faster horse". Like the iPhone in 2007, Apple Vision will never have greater unrealized potential than it has today. This first Apple Vision Pro will sell fewer units than any subsequent generations, and that's fine — it's a line in the sand, a call to arms, and a place for innovators to play.
Apple solved the problem of wanting a large screen,
a full keyboard, in a small device
Yes, Apple did those things. I disagree that they only solved "pain points." They took the concept of a smartphone into a new direction by in many cases explicitly disregarding what the public wanted. I don't love the iPhone, actually. I wish it was open instead of closed. This is not meant as a defense of Apple per se but I feel you've got the history a bit wrong.
Generally speaking, folks did not want a large screen. A lot of people, particularly men, explicitly wanted the smallest phone possible.
Many "power users" were hardcore members of the Blackberry camp. They didn't really care about fancy screens. They wanted hardcore messaging devices geared toward people who needed to be in constant communication via text, email, etc.
There were also hacker types who wanted to use their phones as open software platforms, SSH terminals, etc.
Apple disregarded all of them and did something different. Love them or hate them they did a lot more than just "solve pain points."
Now, with AR/VR I think the skeptics aren't saying Apple's product won't be good, but that even if it's the best product in the category there's still just not much of a market for it.
Cisco IOS (for network gear) was created in the 1980s.
It was possible to run Linux on the 1st gen iPod (2001). IIRC the Archos Jukebox also had a 2.5" drive enclosure with audio (and then video on a color LCD) decoding.
I've never seen someone be so right and so wrong at the same time.
The PC was a general purpose device that replaced a whole office full of fairly expensive specialty devices (word processor, fax, teletype, calculator, intercom system, etc...). iPhone was no different. General purpose that could replace a bunch of expensive specialty devices (anyone else have a PDA, phone, music player, camera, GPS, etc...) at a personal level. It was obvious iPhone would succeed and it was equally obvious that Android was running the Wintel play and Apple was playing the Apple play with iPhone.