I’m not at all convinced about the inevitable success of the Vision Pro (which I maintain is in its current form, a dev kit being marketed as a mass-consumer device), but this just isn’t true.

To use a few examples that have happened after Apple Maps:

* The Apple Watch — Apple was at least 2 years behind other smartwatches when it launched in 2015 and now it basically owns the category. The first version wasn’t quite there but they nailed it with the series 2 and the pivot from fashion to fitness.

* AirPods - tons of companies had been trying truly wireless headphones for years. I know, I had tested basically every option commercially available. Although imperfect at launch (and the software got better over time for once here), AirPods from the moment I first used them in September of 2016 was category defining and the absolute best truly wireless earbuds you could get on the market, at any price point — even tho the quality was mid. Even now, you can do better than standard AirPods for the price/performance, but it’s hard to top AirPods Pro 2s unless you want to spend significantly more money and sacrifice ecosystem niceties (assuming you’re an iOS user. And the Venn diagram between people who are willing to spend over $250 on truly wireless earbuds and iPhone users is basically a circle).

What I do think is instructive about the Apple Maps example is that when it does come to services, and I put generative AI in the services camp much more than hardware, is that Apple is not best-in class at services at all. As a package, Apple services can be beneficial, especially if you’re part of the ecosystem - but even tho I pay Apple $38 a month for Apple One Premier, I’m still paying separately for Spotify, Dropbox, OneDrive (part of Office 365 but still), and Netflix (and a bunch of other video services) and I don’t think I could reasonably drop any of those services in-place of just using iCloud/Apple TV/Apple Music, etc. My parents can (except for Netflix/prime video), and Apple services are definitely “good enough” for a lot of people in the ecosystem, but none are best-in-class.

Unclear if they’d be able to be “good enough” to displace other generative AI services here or not, but to your point, Apple Maps still hasn’t gotten over its bad launch. And Siri on the phone is still dog shit. Siri is so bad that I won’t even use it on platforms where it is objectively good, like Apple TV, unless I specifically remember to.