5 ms·

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 de

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.

kj99 3y ago
The Apple Watch was 2 years behind other smartwatches? How so?
- bombcar 3y ago
  Fitbit and various other "exercise-aimed" smartwatches were already out way before the Apple Watch, and there were other smartwatches (such as Pebble) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smartwatch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smartwatch has a whole listing. Apple came in quite late and slurped up much of the market. If their watch was Android-compatible, it'd be even more.
  - kj99 3y ago
    They may not have been the first in the category, but those products were arguably a generation behind what apple introduced. Fitbit in particular was like comparing a flip phone to an iPhone.
    - bombcar 3y ago
      That's usually what they do (from a small number of examples, to be sure) - come in polished enough that it feels (or is) a generation ahead to those who haven't been watching. I don't know if they've been able to pull this off with AVP, as most people are just ignoring it.
      - kj99 3y ago
        I'm not sure why you'd draw that conclusion. I overheard a random group of people talking it at the dog park yesterday morning. Then I had breakfast with a friend today who isn't in tech at all, who does corporate conflict resolution, and he asked me if I'd tried a demo. Two other friends, also in no way connected to tech asked me about it and I did a demo to them over FaceTime. I think if you personally are ignoring it, you probably don't notice how much other people aren't. That said, I can't think of any of my friends who I would recommend to buy one at this stage, but I see Apple having no trouble selling as many as they can make.
        bombcar 3y ago
        I’m sure they’ll sell, and people know about it, but by “ignoring it” I was referring to the whole virtual reality goggles market, which while it’s ahead of the VirtualBoy just hasn’t really made anything near even “Apple Watch” waves, let alone smartphone waves.
rchaud 3y ago
I agree that Apple software has a big hill to climb when it doesn't have the iPhone halo to buttress its bugs. The Apple Watch has a big advantage: it's one of the cheapest things they sell. It is the iPod Shuffle of its time. But as it doesn't work without an iPhone, I cannot agree that it owns the market.
- tiltowait 3y ago
  It doesn't own the market (not by a long shot), but it has the highest market share by far. Not bad for being locked to a single platform. https://www.statista.com/statistics/910862/worldwide-smartwatch-shipment-market-share/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/910862/worldwide-smartwa...
0x457 3y ago
I don't think Apple Watch owns the smartwatch category, I think it exists in an entirely separate category: a wearable companion to iPhone. AirPods...I have about 6 different "true wireless headphones". AirPods IMO worse than cheap version of Pixel Buds that google give away for free just for existing. Max and Pro are alright, but the original and 2nd gen AirPods are my least favorite headphones. Their nice seamless device migration is nice, but only possible because they control all sides of it. Also, doesn't work well if connected to Apple TV for some reason - doesn't automatically switch when you pickup the phone.
- seec 3y ago
  I agree with you as someone who had Airpods and still use an Apple Watch. For Airpods I fell for the hype in a moment of need and weakness: I needed new earbuds for a travel because they couldn't swap my old ones that needed a warranty return. I regreted it pretty fast after the honeymoon period. Sure, they wouldn't drop too much and the 2 buds were perfectly in sync (but that's a low bar to clear for earbuds...) but most of the rest sucked big time. In fact, their poor battery life made me regret the wire pretty fast and their mild sound quality doesn't really help being more forgiving of its shortcomings. Nowadays they make no sense for their price, and the "Pro" version is alright, but to get half decent battery life they had to increased case size wich was basically the only useful difference and in the end, they perform like buds half their price for sure. I think the iCloud sync bullshit to be unreliable and a stupid "feature" at that because it guarantees that it will only be useful with other Apple products when I definitely do not want to limit my tech to only one brand especially when said brand only sells at luxury pricing... What you really want is Bluetooth multipoint, a feature that many earbuds at this price have anyway. I bought the Watch to track swimming because it seemed like the thing that would integrate easier with iOS and it seemed not too bad quality tracking. But in the end after years of using an Apple Watch for sports tracking (including thousands kms of running) I don't think the Watch is really good and most will get it to show off or because it's actually the only that can properly integrate with iOS thanks to limitations put in place by Apple themselves. Considering the price, the only really useful features (health/sports tracking) is extremely lacking, especially if you do not spend time looking for 3rd party solutions. The only reason it got such success is because of Apple brand recognition and other secondary factors like social status. In the end it's not a completely terrible product but if evaluated on its own at its price point its really not great... Suffise to say I'm rather disenchanted with today's Apple gear and I feel they really need to make their products MUCH better for the price or lower pricing across the board. In the long term something will have to give because people won't be captivated by the brand forever and désillusion has already started.

kj99 3y ago

The Apple Watch was 2 years behind other smartwatches? How so?

bombcar 3y ago
Fitbit and various other "exercise-aimed" smartwatches were already out way before the Apple Watch, and there were other smartwatches (such as Pebble) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smartwatch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smartwatch has a whole listing. Apple came in quite late and slurped up much of the market. If their watch was Android-compatible, it'd be even more.
- kj99 3y ago
  They may not have been the first in the category, but those products were arguably a generation behind what apple introduced. Fitbit in particular was like comparing a flip phone to an iPhone.
  - bombcar 3y ago
    That's usually what they do (from a small number of examples, to be sure) - come in polished enough that it feels (or is) a generation ahead to those who haven't been watching. I don't know if they've been able to pull this off with AVP, as most people are just ignoring it.
    - kj99 3y ago
      I'm not sure why you'd draw that conclusion. I overheard a random group of people talking it at the dog park yesterday morning. Then I had breakfast with a friend today who isn't in tech at all, who does corporate conflict resolution, and he asked me if I'd tried a demo. Two other friends, also in no way connected to tech asked me about it and I did a demo to them over FaceTime. I think if you personally are ignoring it, you probably don't notice how much other people aren't. That said, I can't think of any of my friends who I would recommend to buy one at this stage, but I see Apple having no trouble selling as many as they can make.
      - bombcar 3y ago
        I’m sure they’ll sell, and people know about it, but by “ignoring it” I was referring to the whole virtual reality goggles market, which while it’s ahead of the VirtualBoy just hasn’t really made anything near even “Apple Watch” waves, let alone smartphone waves.

rchaud 3y ago

I agree that Apple software has a big hill to climb when it doesn't have the iPhone halo to buttress its bugs. The Apple Watch has a big advantage: it's one of the cheapest things they sell. It is the iPod Shuffle of its time. But as it doesn't work without an iPhone, I cannot agree that it owns the market.

tiltowait 3y ago
It doesn't own the market (not by a long shot), but it has the highest market share by far. Not bad for being locked to a single platform. https://www.statista.com/statistics/910862/worldwide-smartwatch-shipment-market-share/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/910862/worldwide-smartwa...

0x457 3y ago

I don't think Apple Watch owns the smartwatch category, I think it exists in an entirely separate category: a wearable companion to iPhone. AirPods...I have about 6 different "true wireless headphones". AirPods IMO worse than cheap version of Pixel Buds that google give away for free just for existing. Max and Pro are alright, but the original and 2nd gen AirPods are my least favorite headphones. Their nice seamless device migration is nice, but only possible because they control all sides of it. Also, doesn't work well if connected to Apple TV for some reason - doesn't automatically switch when you pickup the phone.

seec 3y ago
I agree with you as someone who had Airpods and still use an Apple Watch. For Airpods I fell for the hype in a moment of need and weakness: I needed new earbuds for a travel because they couldn't swap my old ones that needed a warranty return. I regreted it pretty fast after the honeymoon period. Sure, they wouldn't drop too much and the 2 buds were perfectly in sync (but that's a low bar to clear for earbuds...) but most of the rest sucked big time. In fact, their poor battery life made me regret the wire pretty fast and their mild sound quality doesn't really help being more forgiving of its shortcomings. Nowadays they make no sense for their price, and the "Pro" version is alright, but to get half decent battery life they had to increased case size wich was basically the only useful difference and in the end, they perform like buds half their price for sure. I think the iCloud sync bullshit to be unreliable and a stupid "feature" at that because it guarantees that it will only be useful with other Apple products when I definitely do not want to limit my tech to only one brand especially when said brand only sells at luxury pricing... What you really want is Bluetooth multipoint, a feature that many earbuds at this price have anyway. I bought the Watch to track swimming because it seemed like the thing that would integrate easier with iOS and it seemed not too bad quality tracking. But in the end after years of using an Apple Watch for sports tracking (including thousands kms of running) I don't think the Watch is really good and most will get it to show off or because it's actually the only that can properly integrate with iOS thanks to limitations put in place by Apple themselves. Considering the price, the only really useful features (health/sports tracking) is extremely lacking, especially if you do not spend time looking for 3rd party solutions. The only reason it got such success is because of Apple brand recognition and other secondary factors like social status. In the end it's not a completely terrible product but if evaluated on its own at its price point its really not great... Suffise to say I'm rather disenchanted with today's Apple gear and I feel they really need to make their products MUCH better for the price or lower pricing across the board. In the long term something will have to give because people won't be captivated by the brand forever and désillusion has already started.