An interesting prediction made online by Enrico Tartarotti in his online video “Apple Built The Vision Pro To FAIL, and It’s Genius” found here.
The premise of the video is that Apple is actually building the Apple Lisa version of the Mac in Vision Pro. To later release the …well…the Mac version of the Mac in a later Vision Pro product. A cheaper version of the product that has many of the same features, with refined software will be released later at a lower price. It is an interesting premise.
As someone who worked at Apple myself and whose manager was actually originally hired at Apple to work on the Apple Lisa and then just stayed on decades after that and later became my manager. I think I have a unique perspective on this.
First of all Apple Lisa being a failure and Mac succeeding it was not planned at all. That is just how it turned out in history and it is because Steve Jobs had the right idea. That idea was what everyone wanted was the Lisa but at a much lower price point as well as with some refined features and software. Which is why he pitched the Pirate Flag in 1983 and started work on Mac.
Moving to present day. At Apple they never make any product to intentionally fail. Yes the product may not have as wide a market appeal as others but they never want a product to fail. Also, it can be difficult to tell within the walls of Apple if a product will succeed or fail because you live in a bubble at Apple. I have told the story enough times that I was in the in-person audience when the original iPod was announced by Steve Jobs. Afterwards I went back to my Apple office and 15 minutes later got a run down by another Apple Engineer why the iPod was a failure of a product and would never be a success in the long run (#1 reason was price vs competitors). Needless to say this Apple Engineer wasn’t working on the iPod at Apple at the time.
Having said all that the underlying genius of why the Mac/Steve Jobs analogy works for the Vision Pro still remains. That is tied up in Moore’s Law. Especially with Apple building their own chips and minimizing hardware down to a single chip from multiple chips which is what Steve Wozniak was so famous for doing as Apple’s co-founder. What is today very expensive will later be much cheaper in a couple years with this progression. This means was true in the Apple Lisa/Mac analogy is now with the Vision Pro.
That means what costs $3500 today will in a couple years be probably $999 or less and with refined features and software will become a worldwide hit. So yes the glass is expensive as a custom mold and the chips involved are expensive. All new and first rev with all the problems that come with that. But that over time will come down in prince in line with Apple’s R&D as efforts as well as Moore’s Law and you will have the universal success in the long run that the iPhone history promises. Now whether a different competitor will be able to win out in the Augmented Reality space over Apple remains to be seen. But I wouldn’t bet on Apple especially when they release the best version of something and your #1 complaint is cost (see iPod example above, or more recently the iPhone).
