Finally, a new Apple device really worth talking about

By Dave Lee

February 4, 2024 — 11.38am

By now, we all know the routine: An early start. A line down the street. Apple store employees whooping and hollering.

Those at the front of the queue seem like shills – set up by Apple and primed to talk to the media. But then, such is the loyalty to this company, it’s just as likely they’re happy to repeat the spiel of their own free will. And then the media, corralled in a little pen, arguably (and probably) doing Apple’s marketing for them.

Oh, yes, we’ve been here before. How fitting that today – February 2 – is Groundhog Day. I guess we should be grateful at least that this isn’t just another new black rectangle for your hands or wrist. Apple is now on your face with its Vision Pro headset.

But here’s the thing: Look away at your peril. It may no longer be the most valuable corporation in America, but no single company holds as much sway over our habits as Apple. What it does next is important – and this kind of morning, at the company’s stunning store on New York’s Fifth Avenue, may well be yet another turning point in how we interact with technology and one another.

It may also provide Apple with some much-needed oomph as its legacy businesses face headwinds that show no signs of going away easily, if at all. That may have been on chief executive officer Tim Cook’s mind as he bounded out of the store’s doors to welcome in the first customers. What greeted him wasn’t a new iPhone-esque line, snaking around the block and littered with the remnants of an overnight camping stay. No, this was more like turning up for a doctor’s appointment — a 20-minute session and you’re out of there, $US3500 ($5373) lighter.

How many people will do this? Apple hasn’t provided guidance; analysts give estimates in the realm of 600,000 or so for the first year. Cook is not, in contrast to how Steve Jobs pondered the first iPhone, seeking to convince every person with a head and two eyeballs that this is something they need today.

Apple says Vision Pro, an augmented- and virtual-reality headset, is the company’s most ambitious product.Credit: AP

The company would never describe it as such, but this is the most public experiment Apple has ever conducted. Its reputation for quality means those in line acknowledged – perhaps relished – their guinea pig status.

“Maybe you just use it for a couple of minutes at a time, and hopefully over time, you can use it for a few hours,” said Luca Bartek, who, incidentally, was one of the few women lining up and the only one I found who didn’t immediately point to her male partner as the one actually buying it. I’m used to male-dominated tech launches, but this seemed overwhelmingly so. A small sample size, granted, but a question that might be worth keeping an eye on.

Is Apple the only company innovating? No, of course not. And indeed I’d say its headset – the version consumers can buy today – is a less attractive prospect than the less expensive and more versatile Meta Quest 3. But tech history is littered with examples of Apple taking existing technologies and giving them the necessary refinement and sheen that had eluded companies with lesser panache.

As one analyst noted, those writing off the Vision Pro in the long-term risk sounding like blinkered fans of phones made by Nokia or Blackberry, who claimed Apple was doing nothing new with the iPhone. Who can forget former Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer describing it as a “not very good email machine” – a hall-of-fame bad take.

Whatever becomes of the Vision Pro, it matters. Maybe Apple has grossly misjudged the future. Maybe we want to be less connected, not more. Maybe we crave better ways to get together in person rather than through creepy 3D renders of our likenesses. Maybe Cook, eager to prove he’s every bit the innovator Jobs was, is about to prove his doubters correct. Maybe it’s a masterstroke. I don’t know. But I tell you what: a boring black rectangle it isn’t.

Bloomberg

Dave Lee is Bloomberg Opinion’s US technology columnist. He was previously a correspondent for the Financial Times and BBC News.

Get news and reviews on technology, gadgets and gaming in our Technology newsletter every Friday. Sign up here.