Would you say Apple is in a slump?
Would you say Apple is in a slump?
With the VisionPro hype already dead (maybe forever?), bad or tasteless iPad ads, purposeless updates to iPad, Apple dropping their car project, and reaching out to OpenAI or Google for AI services ... it certainly feels like it to me. They've at least run into their limitations recently however much they want to find the "next iPhone".
With the VisionPro, I always thought it'd flop and so predicted that it'd be the end for Cook. I'm still holding onto that prediction.
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Two of those concerns are software based, and Apple’s annual WWDC developer conference is less than a month away. The hardware-focused iPad event came off like a spec bump, but they were never going to announce any of the iPad’s much needed software changes last week.
Apple’s been cautious jumping on the AI train, but their last two hardware announcements were chocked full of, “And it’s great for AI too!” We should see some AI features coming out from them next month. They’ve been publishing some research papers over the last year, so it’s not like they haven’t been doing anything internally. iPhones have a large install base, so depending on what they roll out, it makes sense they’re talking to infrastructure providers with large AI/GPU deployments. I wouldn’t write them off in this space just yet.
The iPad ad was the same exact, “All your stuff in one device!” pitch they’ve been using for decades. I’d say the backlash was less about the ad’s content, and more just how standoffish creative folks are with the tech industry right now. They handled the backlash fine and it was probably a good wake up call to them that they’re not the scrappy underdog anymore.
The entire industry’s getting over a fully self driving hangover. Apple kept that money pit around for longer than they needed to, but they weren’t exactly the only folks chasing that dream.
The Vision Pro is the only big misstep. Apple’s been chasing AR for a while now, and they clearly didn’t want to do a $500 also-ran to the Quest. The Vision Pro proved out that if you put a good enough screen on a headset, people will keep it on and use it to putz around the internet rather than just running one VR game and immediately taking it off. The excessive cost makes it a borderline dev unit though, and you’re right, we haven’t seen it “pop off” in such a way that a compelling use case has made itself clear. Their approach of starting big and trying to scale down may not have been the right call here. It really could have used a, “get it in everyone’s hands and see how folks use it” moment like the Apple Watch. It’ll be interesting to see if and how Apple can pivot with the device. Everything compelling about it right now hinges on that overpriced screen, so this particular vision for VR/AR may be a dead end.
Overall Apple seems to be doing fine. The whole “next iPhone” thing has always been a bit of a weird rubric.