Apple's Future After The Vision Pro — With Mark Gurman

Mark Gurman is the chief correspondent at Bloomberg covering Apple. He joins Ranjan Roy and Alex Kantrowitz for a special episode focused entirely on Apple's Vision Pro announcement. We cover: 1) The Vision Pros trajectory over the next five years 2) Whether it will be the future of the computer vs. a complementary media device 3) What the device's impact on society will be 4) Why Tim Cook didn't wear the device at the event 5) Apple vs. Meta 6) The $3,499 price. Enjoying Big Technology Podcast? Please rate us five stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ in your podcast app of choice. For weekly updates on the show, sign up for the pod newsletter on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/6901970121829801984/ Questions? Feedback? Write to: [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 0:45Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 1:12Alex Kantrowitz?

  Welcome to Big Technology Podcast Friday Edition, where we break down the news in our traditional cool-headed and nuanced format. We are live here with Mark Gurman, chief correspondent at Bloomberg, and a person that scooped the crap out of the latest Apple event. We're going to talk about Vision Pro, huge week. Welcome, Mark.

• 1:31Speaker 01

  Thanks for having me. Glad to be here. Really appreciate it. Glad to finally come on here. And yeah, like you said, it was a big week for Apple, big week for tech, and looking forward to diving into all of it.

• 1:41Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, and we're also joined, as always, by Ranjan Roy of Margins. Ranjan and I, we've been talking about this for weeks. And so

• 1:48Speaker 01

  I'm ready for this one.

• 1:50Alex Kantrowitz?

  I am ready to break it down with you, because we're definitely not in agreement about where this device is going to go.

• 1:56Speaker 01

  Not at all. So we'll see. We'll see.

• 1:58Alex Kantrowitz?

  Mark, let's start it off.

• 1:59Speaker 01

  I'm curious. I'm curious who's for it and who's against it.

• 2:02Alex Kantrowitz?

  What's your guess?

• 2:03Speaker 01

  I would guess Alex is the one against it, and Ranjan's for it. You would be correct on that.

• 2:08Alex Kantrowitz?

  This is why you're the best at what you do, man. Nailed it once again. So let's start off just to get your perspective, because one of the things that you've said about this device is the thing that you saw on stage. We're really only going to know like five years from now about whether that vision is going to come to fruition. So what do those five years look like? And seeing some of the early excitement about the Vision Pro, you know, do you still believe it's going to take five years? Or can this be the, can we see the payoff a little bit earlier?

• 2:37Speaker 01

  Oh, I don't think we're going to see a major payoff until five years at the earliest from now, right? I mean, let's start with the overall design, right? This is a bulkier headset. It's on the bulky side. It weighs a bit over a pound. There's multiple straps. You have the big strap that goes on the back of your head. There's a big strap that goes over your head that they kind of hid in the keynote. They showed it for like a split second in the keynote. They tweeted a picture of it. The hands-on demos, which you couldn't take pictures of, they had them, but no one could publicize it. The only camera they let in the room was for Good Morning America. And for that scene, they didn't have the ink or wear the top headset. So they're kind of trying to hide it. It's a huge, huge device.

• 3:21Speaker 01

  If you do the AR demo on your iPhone, right? And you overlay the headset design over a place in your, in your home or whatever. I've done it. It's the size of a 16-inch MacBook Pro almost in terms of the length and the width. So it is a, it is a big device. It is a lot to carry. So you start with that. Are people really going to want to wear something on their head that A can overheat, B is heavy, and C, you know, even with the external display and the pass-through lens to see your eyes, it's really kind of social isolating and dystopian, right? And then you get to the price point, $3,500, which is a very unappealing price point for the mass consumer. And then three, it's a very nascent technology.

• 4:05Speaker 01

  Are there really people who want to work in that AR/VR spatial environment instead of working on a normal iPad or laptop? And I think that that's going to cause some serious reservations for people to adopt this, this device in the near term. On the other hand, I am very optimistic about this product long-term. I think with the right hardware modifications, I think with the right price adjustments. And the right software ecosystem, which will take a number of years. I think that this is the future of computing and has the unique potential. I'm not saying it's going to happen, potential to knock out the iPad, the Mac and the iPhone altogether and be the next phase of computing for the next several decades. But it is going to take time to take off.

• 4:51Speaker 01

  Apple did need to start somewhere, right? They could not just keep this in the lab for another five years until they get to the point of it being a proper device. Because you need to build up, A, those economies of scale for manufacturing and design over time. You need to get user feedback and you need to get the developer ecosystem running. The negative is that this is basically a $3,500 beta test or prototype. The positive is that the technology will eventually get to where it needs to go to become the computer of the future.

• 5:20Speaker 02

  Future of computing, Alex, did you hear that?

• 5:22Alex Kantrowitz?

  I mean, he's sort of like, I'm in full agreement with Mark here. Except his more optimistic view of where this can go. I'm not necessarily sold that we're going to get there in five years. But I think everything that Mark said about what we saw this week is sort of where I, my skepticism comes from. Which is that we knew we were getting a shiny demo from Apple. We knew this company, there's no better company at selling people in its devices than Apple. But in terms of the usability in the near future, that's sort of, I have the same exact issue. Which is that, yeah, the product that we were going to see is unlike Apple, which usually pushes the technology that's in play forward by a few generations. And this just, it feels like, you know, a very nice product,

• 6:05Alex Kantrowitz?

  but one that still has the limitations of everything else on the market effectively. And so that's why I'm not saying right now.

• 6:11Speaker 01

  What limitations do you think it has compared to the other devices on the market? Like, what are, what are your concerns? I'm curious, your concerns from the get go on the device?

• 6:18Alex Kantrowitz?

  I think, Mark, like your reporting basically pointed this out perfectly, which is that the company wanted, every company is trying to get to this pair of standalone glasses, that you don't need a battery pack, it doesn't look like you're wearing goggles. That even passing through the eyes, you know, on that screen on the front, doesn't really solve that problem. I think that's, that's what, you know, when Apple went from, you know, the BlackBerry era to creating the iPhone, everybody knew that this was the eventual evolution of the device. They said, this is sort of where it's going to get to and they'll just evolve on that from there. With this device, no one's thinking that this is where it's going to get to. Everyone believes that this is a step toward the future, but not the future.

• 7:02Alex Kantrowitz?

  And that's where I say, in the near term, Mark, I'm in total agreement with you. Now, we'll see where it goes in the future. I've actually become more bullish on virtual reality and augmented reality over time, because I'm starting to see those use cases. But we'll see, is this a five-year project? Is this a 10-year project? Because like your reporting points out, this is something Apple started in 2015. And to spend seven years on it, a company like Apple, right? Spend seven years on it and get here. It's a little disappointing.

• 7:30Speaker 02

  Wait, but there's two parts to that. One, when the iPhone came out, and again, as someone who stood in line for that first iPhone, it wasn't a given where it was going to go. There we go. And people were still laughing about no copy paste text at the time. The idea, everyone wanted their physical keyboard on a BlackBerry and thought, no way would people be touch typing onto a screen. So I don't think that it was inevitable. And then the iPhone took us there because that base and foundation of technology was so good. But to me, I actually think I'm more excited, the more I've thought about this, that there is a battery pack and it is a helmet. And here's why.

• 8:08Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay.

• 8:09Speaker 02

  I'm down here.

• 8:10Alex Kantrowitz?

  I'm ready to hear it.

• 8:11Speaker 02

  Here's my hot take on this one. It's, if it was standalone glasses you could wear everywhere. And the idea was this is going to be an interface between you and everyday life as you're out and about in the world. I think it would be set up for failure. I think it would introduce too many social complications. It would be, the technology would not be good enough. But it's just telling us, you're sitting at home. This is basically a computer, no different than if I'm sitting on my laptop on my couch, or if I have my phone in front of me while other people are moving around the house around me. So to me, the fact that it's still very clearly outlined is this is something for you sitting at home, not out in the real world, or not out in the world. I think that is one of the most important things where it's telling you,

• 8:56Speaker 02

  it's no different than using a computer. And it's not like you're walking around with your laptop out on the street, so.

• 9:02Speaker 01

  I agree with you there. And I see your message on the screen is future of the computer versus complementary media and productivity device. I think it is. I think it is the future of the computer, right, versus a complementary media and productivity device. I think Rajan's point about it being a productivity device at home or at work, I think those are spot on use cases, right? I would use this thing instead of a Mac or an iPad for those use cases. Where Apple lost me in the presentation were the iPhone-like use cases, the stuff about wearing it to your child's birthday party and using that to be the device to take pictures. It's great that those functions are included.

• 9:44Speaker 01

  When I heard that the i, that the headset had a camera app, I wrote that a few months ago, I didn't anticipate the use case being you're actually gonna go around taking pictures with it. My feeling was if you were already using it and you, it already has cameras and you happen to be there and you see something, you can use it to take a picture. I wasn't anticipating it to be such a core part of the product. I think that's absurd. At the same time, there were people thinking that, oh, an iPad having a camera, no one's gonna take pictures with an iPad and everyone takes pictures with an iPad now. It's not an apples to apples comparison. I for one, never thought the iPad taking pictures thing was ridiculous. This, this is absurd.

• 10:22Speaker 02

  So I think from a product marketing perspective, that was definitely the weakest point and everyone caught on it, that I think someone said like divorce dad meme, like the guy taking pictures of his children with the headset on. However, I think what this product release, like the product launch made me think about is all the ways we already intermediate reality with a screen. Like Alex, do you remember there was that famous picture we had talked about where everyone at an NBA game at the buzzer has their phone out?

• 10:51Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right, I'm sure German knows about this, it's a Lakers example.

• 10:54Speaker 01

  Oh, the LeBron, uh, breaking Kareem points thing, yeah. Everyone wants to give Phil Knight credit about not having his camera. All due respect to Phil Knight, Phil Knight was the oldest man in arena, in the arena. And 90% of his life was lived without a phone, so I think he was just used to not having that phone out.

• 11:12Speaker 02

  But, but that's the thing that right now, I've, I just had my four-year-old's birthday party. Everyone, when we're singing happy birthday, has a phone out, holding it right in front of their face. So we're already intermediating that interaction with the screen. So it's not coming out of nowhere. Again, the idea that everyone's creepily wearing a helmet, it's still weird. It's still far off. Maybe you have the one random person in the group that is assigned helmet duty or something like that.

• 11:40Alex Kantrowitz?

  Wait, Ron, John, I need to ask, so let me ask you this. You're at your kid's birthday party. You're wearing, you know, this augmented reality goggles and you're filming them with the battery pack in your eyes being broadcast in front of your kids and their friends. Are you really doing that?

• 11:55Speaker 02

  Hey, who knows? Again, 10 years ago, if you told me.

• 11:59Alex Kantrowitz?

  I was waiting for a solid yes that you were.

• 12:02Speaker 02

  I'm saying, all right, yes, yes. Five years.

• 12:04Speaker 01

  That feature is never going to take off. That feature is never going to take off. So a little bit, some Apple history here. So the original Apple Watch and every Apple Watch to date, on the right side, obviously, there's two buttons. There's the digital crown for scrolling and launching into menus and such. And then there's the, the long button, right? The elongated button. They've changed that button three or four times already, maybe five times. In watch OS 10, the newest version, you click that, it takes you to control center. The previous version took you to multitasking. The original Apple Watch back in 2015, that button was designed to launch a menu of your frequent contacts, people you want to send your heartbeat to and such. That feature never took off. The, so they changed it.

• 12:45Speaker 01

  The Apple headset, it has the button on the left side, the camera shutter button. My bet is that feature gets demoted to just being an app and that button is relegated to some other feature or some other function. Maybe launching your messages app, maybe launching a video player or another feature that people take on over time. I am sold on this device completely as a Mac and iPad replacement. Playing games, watching movies and doing all the work you would normally do on a Mac, even so much as doing conference calls, FaceTimes, things even like this. Doing your Slack, doing your email, right? A full Mac replacement, a full iPad replacement.

• 13:25Speaker 01

  This idea that this device is going to be a daily wear outside of work for taking pictures, for going to a birthday party, for going for the stroll, that is never going to take off in this form factor. So I think for what the device is good for, Apple knocked it out of the park. For this extra dystopian stuff, I think it's a failure. The good news for Apple is that you can pretty quickly shy away from that and just refocus your marketing, depending on how people use the product. So I am concerned about a society where you're wearing these things to your kid's birthday party. I am not concerned, and I'm pretty pro, a society where you're using this at work as a map replacement. I see myself using

• 14:07Speaker 01

  this at my desk, at the home office, at the office office, keeping it plugged in and doing everything on there. I don't see myself wearing this to a birthday party or date night, though.

• 14:20Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, go ahead.

• 14:22Speaker 02

  That was interesting in terms of, I remember getting the first watch and the heartbeat feature, it was almost, it ended up kind of a joke, like I would just send it to friends or because no one knew what to do with it. But that is a good reminder that, yeah, Apple evolves. Apple definitely evolves. And who knows what that the camera technology that allows for spatial computing or spatial photography like that could enable. Because I was surprised, I would have thought they would have like a real estate agent going into a house and showing some super immersive demo again, rather than creepy dad trying to take his kid's birthday photos. So.

• 14:58Alex Kantrowitz?

  Wasn't it?

• 14:58Speaker 01

  That's going to be a quick one. And I wouldn't be surprised if that feature, I'm not saying they're going to kill that feature. That is a very important feature. I think that there's a chance, and I haven't heard anything about this, but it's to switch the functionality of a hardware key is not moving a mountain. I wouldn't be surprised if that key gets, do you either of you have the Apple Watch Ultra?

• 15:22Alex Kantrowitz?

  No.

• 15:23Speaker 01

  Not even Ron John? Okay.

• 15:24Speaker 02

  I'm not an adventurer enough.

• 15:27Speaker 01

  I've got one here and I can tell you, there's a button called the action button on the side. And what you can do is you can choose the functionality of that button. You can map it to a specific workout. You can make it your flashlight. You can do it to run a shortcut command like take you to your, to work, open your map's direction, start playing a song. And so I think there's two possibilities here. Apple changes that button to a specific function, maybe to launch your frequent contacts to, to video call them, something like that. Or they make it a catch-all button like on the Ultra, uh, where you can choose the functionality and you can retain that camera shutter feature. But I think that's going to be, uh, a feature that is not used or desired.

• 16:06Alex Kantrowitz?

  So let's just talk about the dystopian part of it and then we're going to get into the battle with Meta. Because I think it's important because they've made two very different decisions. But one of the things that struck me, and I'm not the only one, is just how lonely it seemed to people using these devices. Now, of course, you had the divorced dad looking through the pictures of his kids, right? But there was also, okay, I wrote down the scenes in the promo video. I got like halfway through. Here's what we're looking at. Um, you had a woman sitting alone in a spacious room. It was 79 seconds in until you saw another person walk in and then those eyes flashed on the screen. There was a man sitting at home scrolling through big images of his family. There was a woman meditating in a darkened apartment. There was a woman watching a movie alone on a couch, pinching the screen to make sure that it took up the entire field of vision.

• 16:52Alex Kantrowitz?

  There was a woman with her feet up playing a basketball video game. There was a woman in an expensive, empty hotel room, using the Vision Pro to read the LA Times. And there was a woman on a plane, turning everybody else on the flight out.

• 17:05Speaker 01

  I don't know what the hell they were thinking with these isolated demos. I think it was a sad, an incredibly massive mistake. Uh, because I think that they could have easily. Shown people in massive office environments using this thing, which I think is where you're going to want to use it. You could have shown people using it for work from home purposes. You couldn't have shown it. Uh, people using it in bed next to their spouse and maybe both of them using it to watch different movies. I thought the only saving grace demo promo video that they showed for this was probably the airplane scene. Uh, because you were surrounded by other people.

• 17:49Speaker 01

  And I think the other part was you had that office scene with the man working on his desk, standing desk with it. And then, uh, there was a woman, maybe a couple of other people in the office. It looked like an art studio of sort. My question is, are they that short sighted? Are they that tone deaf to promote the device that way? Or does this have a little bit more to do with Apple's culture or culture of secrecy? Where in the preparation for these demos, they could not theoretically create uh, an environment where to tape these things other than isolated environments to keep the secrecy of the product.

• 18:31Speaker 01

  And so for Apple's sake, and I think for the sake of society even, and I don't think that's an exaggeration. Uh, I hope it's the latter. I hope it all boils down to safety.

• 18:43Speaker 02

  I like that theory, but again, I'm going to take the other side of this here. Um, one thing I find fascinating about this, and I don't think it's sad because what was sad was I just flew back from San Francisco to New York is sitting with a like six inch by four inch screen in front of me, cramped in economy, trying to watch Creed three and barely being able to hear what's going or see what's going on. So the idea of like a fully immersive entertainment experience with my laptop out, you know, like on the tray table. The idea of being able to have all that in full immersion is, uh, sounds amazing to me. But the other thing is like, again, going back to when you're at home, one, imagine where.

• 19:25Speaker 02

  Now it's a question of either you have this on or off. Right now, there's so many interactions in day-to-day life at home, in other places at the office where you have your phone out, you have your laptop out, you're kind of half at attention, you're, you know, like you're only half there. When you put on the headset, you're pretty much at God, right? You're pretty much immersed, the eyes or whatever, a little bit of, a little bit of access into you, but, but overall, you're saying, I'm not here, which I think is actually a better way to approach it, because you're not going to do that versus having your phone out at dinner for 40 minutes and kind of, you know, being at 50% attention. So maybe-

• 20:01Speaker 01

  It was, it was sad to see the people on their couch, watching a movie alone with this headset, I will tell you.

• 20:09Alex Kantrowitz?

  You know what was interesting?

• 20:10Speaker 01

  I can't believe Apple went in that direction, really.

• 20:13Alex Kantrowitz?

  You know what was interesting was they never showed two people in the same room using it. Like, I would think that would be interesting. You built these, this eye functionality, there was no two people in the room using it. And Gurman, I don't know if you saw this, but you and I were in the New York Post together, talking about how Tim Cook didn't wear the device, and just wondering what was behind that.

• 20:30Speaker 01

  I think they were trying to protect him meme-wise. They know how ridiculous it looks.

• 20:35Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 20:36Speaker 01

  So they let it be worn by D-list actors instead in their, in their promo videos. We'll see if he wears it one day, but as they break down in my power on tomorrow, there's a picture of Tim with the iPhone 14, Tim Cook with the Apple Watch, and then Tim Cook with the headset. And you can see the difference here. It's a headset. He's not wearing it on his head.

• 20:57Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 20:58Speaker 02

  I love the idea of like, a serious marketing meeting with a bunch of senior-level execs discussing the meme potential of, the fact that that happened, I mean, that that must have happened. And that is amazing for 2023.

• 21:11Alex Kantrowitz?

  It's Ron John's favorite type of fanfiction.

• 21:14Speaker 01

  They made a huge mistake with the promotion of videos in their marketing materials. I think a colossal mistake. However, I think there's the saving grace is if they, you know, re-architect the marketing around office environments and being home with people and multiple people using it, right? I mean, this idea that they were, the birthday party thing, ridiculous. The on-the-couch-alone thing, ridiculous.

• 21:41Speaker 01

  The gaming potential on this device is massive. They didn't show any of that, though. They showed Apple Arcade demos. And if you've used Apple Arcade, you know, you're not talking AAA gaming here. You're not talking anything of significance. You're talking blown up iPhone screen sized games on your Apple headset. So clearly, there's going to be a lot of work needed by developers to get games ported over to the headset. And I think that will be a huge use case for it, too, at some point.

• 22:07Alex Kantrowitz?

  Do you think they avoided going into gaming so as to further differentiate themselves from Meta? And the Quest in general, what the perception of VR to date?

• 22:18Speaker 01

  No, I do think there's a massive gaming component. They have, obviously, the agreement with Unity to provide their underlying gaming engine. Apple has its own Meta Metal gaming engine and such. I almost said Meta, but Metal, Metal gaming engine there. They promoted Apple Arcade on it, too. I just think that in order to have demonstrated big time games on this device, they would have needed to seed it nine months ago, a year ago, to developers. And I think they just didn't want to do that. So I think you're going to have to see the gaming story evolve over the next nine months until the release of this product. I'm sure they're pushing it to big time game devs now to get their hands on it and write really great games for it. And I think that will happen. The question for me is, are they going to stick to PS5 and Xbox controllers?

• 23:02Speaker 01

  Are they going to stick to hand and eye control? Or will they allow some more extensive gaming controllers for the device? So we'll see how that shakes out. But I think gaming is going to be a massive part of this product long term and in the short term, too.

• 23:15Alex Kantrowitz?

  Mark, it's interesting that they have decided to go this sort of enterprise route. And Meta is like on a more consumer route. And, you know, and productivity for Apple and gaming for Meta. And I thought that I've heard this comparison. And I wrote about it this week, saying that like, well, Apple is Apple and Meta is Android in this scenario. But actually, Meta is not open sourcing its operating system to other device manufacturers. And, you know, and it's also like Meta and Android are, I mean, sorry, Apple and Android are two operating systems that effectively do the same thing, let you get into apps on your phone. Whereas these are going to be completely different use cases. So I am curious how you think the battle between Apple and Meta shapes up? And do you think Meta is screwed because the Apple device, you know,

• 24:00Alex Kantrowitz?

  despite its shortcomings, looks way better than the Quest?

• 24:05Speaker 01

  I don't agree with you with all due respect. No, that's okay. Great. What Apple and Meta are doing are essentially one and the same. I mean, Mark Zuckerberg's point in his speech about the Apple headset this past week, I think was filled with inaccuracies. And I think he did have one salient point that he didn't really deliver well is that a lot of what they're doing is the same. Right? Apple's product is a much flashier, more refined, more expensive version of what Meta is already doing. I think Meta is trying to tap both productivity and consumer, which I think Apple is doing as well. I think Apple had to focus pretty heavily on the productivity and the enterprise market and the business market

• 24:46Speaker 01

  because of the $3,500 price point, seven times the price of the Quest 3. Whereas the Quest, they can go more toward the consumer market because of that cheaper price point. I don't think Meta is, I, I think Meta in long term, if they don't adapt by open sourcing their operating system and becoming the cheaper Android alternative on more types of hardware, I think they are in trouble. I think that the Apple headset eventually will come down in price with cheaper models. And with the big developer ecosystem, it's going to become more interesting to more people and it's more use cases reform. So I think that Meta's best bet is outdoing Apple the same way Android has outdone iOS by going open source, going on to other platforms, being the cheaper alternative.

• 25:31Speaker 01

  And there's nothing wrong with that. In the meantime, over the next few years or so till Apple gets the price down, you're going to see consumers lining up for Quest 3s, I think, and these other cheaper devices from Meta because they want to experience this technology. Many people didn't hear about, believe it or not, AR and VR across the world. They had no idea what it was. They had no idea what a Quest was. They had no idea what Meta was doing. Until this past week, when Apple made a big deal about augmented and virtual reality and mixed reality. Now they're going to want to try them, try it out on their own. They can say, wow, Apple is this $3,500 device. I can get something that does, you know, many of the same things and really try out this tech under the Christmas tree for seven of the price this fall. So I think that this is actually in the very short term, a good thing for Meta.

• 26:16Speaker 01

  In the long term, if Meta doesn't shift their strategy in a wholesale fashion, they're in trouble.

• 26:21Speaker 02

  So I disagree with Alex from earlier about the idea that they're trying to

• 26:25Speaker 01

  I like that. Let's just disagree with Alex.

• 26:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. This is how it usually goes. Move away from the enterprise because remember the entire launch of Meta, the company was like legless avatars in meetings and boardrooms or whatever. So, so I think they were trying to go for that. But I do think like Mark Zuckerberg, he was accurate in that they really positioned it as more of a social device. Whereas Apple positioned it more of a productivity slash consumption device. So I think they were accurate about that, but I actually think that's even more where it should be a productivity and consumption device. And I think the more Meta continues to try to make it some kind of social networky, connecting people type thing that doesn't do that well, rather than this is just a really cool

• 27:13Speaker 02

  technology to experience things, whether a web browser or a game. I think it definitely puts them at a disadvantage, but I'm curious, Mark, like, do you think now that, you know, some greater number of people are interested in the technology? Isn't that a risk when then you hear all these great things and then you use one of the lower end quest devices? And it's, it's, it's cool and you play Beat Saber and you, it's still again, and it was cool a few years ago. And some of this stuff will still be interesting, but you're not going to be computing on it. You're not going to be, you know, spending too much time in it.

• 27:46Speaker 01

  Well, I think both companies are, are marketing around their core competencies, right? Social networking, believe it or not, is the core competency, core competency of Facebook, Meta, whatever you want to call it. And so the quest is a, a hardware manifestation of the company and what they are trying to do. Why Facebook even exists, whereas Apple does productivity, they push gaming. It's computing, it's apps, right? It's video consumption. And so the Vision Pro is a manifestation and hardware of what the company is known for. And so that's why you, I think you have that big differentiation there. So I think at their core,

• 28:31Speaker 01

  in terms of how they're positioning it, they're two different products. But at the end of the day, in terms of the technology and the ultimate capabilities, it's the same stuff.

• 28:38Alex Kantrowitz?

  I got a last one for you, Mark. I'm curious. So you actually went back and tried the device. Would love to hear your A, hear your reflections of what it was like using it. Like, was it as amazing as some of the demos made it out to be? And then B, just describe what the room felt like when Apple, you know, showed that slide that said it was going to be $3,499 to buy this.

• 29:00Speaker 01

  I mean, I have a little bad news for you. I have not tried the Vision Pro. I was not there when it was announced either. I was not in Cupertino for that. You've seen the TikTok video where the crowd's biggest reaction was that $3,500 price point. It's a jarring price point. I think Apple did an awful job trying to justify the price point. I don't think they should have tried to justify it. They tried comparing it to a bunch of monitors and 4K TVs and surround sound speakers and phones and cameras and such. I think that's all BS. I think they should have just focused on this is what it costs to make. This is the price of nascent technology, you know, come down over time. But they chose the other, other direction. I think the price will come down eventually.

• 29:43Speaker 01

  It is certainly unappealing to the masses at this point. People have called it a toy for the wealthy, and I think eventually it'll come down and be a productivity device for everyone. I mean, right now, it's the price of a fully loaded, maxed out, to some degree, you can go even higher with memory and such of a MacBook Pro. If they can get it down to the price of an iPad Pro, I think they're in far better shape.

• 30:07Alex Kantrowitz?

  And so do you think that, you know, given that, it's going to cannibalize the devices that they have today? That was one question that we got.

• 30:15Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. I mean, I think long term, it can cannibalize the Mac and the iPad. And I think if they get the form factor into something like glasses and get phone functionality in that, it could cannibalize the iPhone in some respect.

• 30:27Speaker 01

  I more so lean towards a future where it's glasses, glasses and phone and watch together for the most techy consumer, and maybe the Vision Pro at home for your Mac, right? I think it's the glasses and the Vision Pro are two distinct devices rather than one in the same. So I think eventually, you know, you might have both, right? Or maybe Apple would want you to have both. But in the short term, you're not going to see much noise or much momentum. It's going to take a really long time. It's going to take far longer than the iPhone and the Apple Watch took to take off, right? The iPhone was not an immediate hit.

• 31:10Speaker 01

  It was a smash hit, though, within two years, two and a half, three years. The Apple Watch really started to take off with the third and fourth generation. So within three years, like by 2018, I think the watch was the thing.

• 31:25Speaker 01

  It's 2024 when this Vision Pro comes out. I'm not sure that we're going to see it have a big impact until 28, 29.

• 31:36Speaker 01

  I agree with what that person said, that if this headset was under a thousand dollars, everyone would buy one. It's not going to happen, though.

• 31:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think the, I like the point about the Apple Watch. Because if you remember, remember the Apple Watch initially was presented almost as like a fashion device. They had the gold plated one, I think, for, I forget what it cost, but Johnny Ive.

• 31:56Speaker 01

  Seventeen grand for the.

• 31:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, exactly. So that, so they definitely evolved the purpose and function of that. So I'm very curious to see how that goes with the Vision Pro. I really like that idea, though, that the Vision Pro is your at home computer. And maybe there are more of like a watch style lightweight device that you can actually take around. Because again, I still, things over your face and eyes at home. And then out in the real world to keep some sanity away from dystopia.

• 32:26Speaker 01

  Right. It's amazing to me how every time they're launching one of these new products in the recent era, they continue to completely miscalculate and be incredibly tone deaf at the initial product release. And then figure it out over the next several years and taper that back, right? I mean, the launch of the Apple Watch around the fashion idea and those gold versions was very tone deaf. Those were. Next in a year, right? And so I think the tone deaf aspects of this vision pro were the promo videos as well as the the father, the birthday party examples. But I think, as I tweeted, at a high level, they nailed the marketing in terms of the future of the

• 33:09Speaker 01

  computer as an at home and work device and a media consumption device on airplanes and hotels and such. So as long as they focus this thing on the real utility, the price makes a little bit of sense, I think, to more people and the product makes sense to more people. And so this is going to come down to their marketing might, as I wrote when this was announced, right? This is a mark. This is a marketing play. And if they market it correctly, they can have a hit on their hands. So I think, you know, the engineering stuff, they have a lot of work to do. But I think the marketing people at Apple, I think this is their biggest test yet.

• 33:46Alex Kantrowitz?

  Mark, thanks so much for coming on. Great to see you, man.

• 33:49Speaker 01

  Oh, my pleasure. Thank you both. And have me on again soon, please, if I may.

• 33:54Alex Kantrowitz?

  Oh, yeah. Plug the newsletter. Yeah.

• 33:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, plug the newsletter. Twitter.com slash Mark German. You can follow me there. And then you can sign up for Power On. Comes out every Sunday morning. Bloomberg.com slash Power On. And thank you both for having me. It was a pleasure to see you, Alex, again.

• 34:09Alex Kantrowitz?

  Likewise. Yeah, and I'll just plug the newsletter as well. Like, I read Power On every single weekend. It's a must for me, and I can't recommend it enough. So folks, if you're listening, go sign up for it. It's great.

• 34:22Speaker 01

  Thanks. All right. Thank you, guys.

• 34:25Alex Kantrowitz?

  Thanks so much. Thanks, Mark. Thank you, Ron John. We'll see you next time on Big Technology Podcast.

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