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Or, its the same as Apple Vision Pro, that device everyone has forgotten about. Their MO has always been: We don't build products for a customer profile, we bui
by 015a 2y ago
Or, its the same as Apple Vision Pro, that device everyone has forgotten about. Their MO has always been: We don't build products for a customer profile, we build the products we want to build and expect customers to come to us. On the surface level, one problem Apple has had for a few years and I expect will continue to have is, that "we" in there used to mean "intelligent and respected product minds" but today means "supply chain experts and investors".
But on a deeper level, that strategy used to work because there was so much green field in the world of computing. Its easy to sell a vision to someone with no expectations. The iPhone was released into a world where it didn't even have copy/paste, and no one cared, because very few people had anything remotely like it. Vision Pro was released into a world where we already have sixteen Apple devices, I use my computers every day for work and play, I expect things of them, and releasing with a narrative of "it replaces other devices X Y and Z" actually maybe could never work, even if it could replace those devices, because I kinda like my X Y Z devices. Not only that, but it was released into a world where VR already exists, and has been available at your local Walmart for a couple hundred bucks: Apple never got to control the narrative for VR, so they couldn't communicate their vision.
- FireBeyond 2y ago> We don't build products for a customer profile, we build the products we want to build and expect customers to come to us Huh? Everything I heard from Jobs was the opposite. It was understanding users and building products for them, not from your employees: https://youtu.be/oeqPrUmVz-o?si=dpQevrbA84Z3qQor https://youtu.be/oeqPrUmVz-o?si=dpQevrbA84Z3qQor
- 015a 2y agoI feel my point still stands, and that video is reasonable evidence for it. Of course they think about what customers want and would buy when building products. But the difference between Apple and many other product organizations is, are they meeting customers where customers are at, or are they building for their own internalized notion of "yeah, this is how musicians should make music"? Apple has always been the latter; this is an extreme characterization of what I just said, because its probably not entirely true, but in a way they think about what customers would want without ever talking to one. And they've been eerily good at it for many years; its only recently that this strategy has stopped working. Tim Cook's Apple, especially post-2020, has embodied a strange synthesis of both models of product development. Apple Vision Pro is the purest example of this: AVP's sales numbers have been startlingly bad, and anyone with a brain in bizdev at Apple could have estimated the Meta Quest sales numbers and extrapolated to the conclusion that this market isn't chomping at the bit for Apple to release something. So: They made it because they thought it was cool. They made it because they had the technology; they maybe exclusively are the only company on the planet that could have made Apple Vision Pro. But no one talked to a customer, because there was never any "ideal customer profile" for AVP.