Because with the iPhone, a lot of people think that Apple earned the benefit of the doubt - if Apple thinks they can pull this off, then liklier than not, considering what they've done in the past, they probably can.
Primitive smartphones existed before the iPhone and were popular, e.g. the blackberry. There was a time when every self-respecting businessperson owned a blackberry. Apple just took an existing popular product category and executed well.
VR glasses have not yet gained mainstream acceptance among the general population in the way that phones had achieved before the iPhone. Practically nobody is saying that the Vision is a bad product, all of the skepticism is whether it’s a good product category.
> VR glasses have not yet gained mainstream acceptance among the general population in the way that phones had achieved before the iPhone.
The same could be said about the iPad and Apple Watch, no? Tablets and smart watches weren't popular before their introduction. With that said, I don't think the skepticism is unwarranted. Just because Apple has been successful in introducing new product categories in the past doesn't inherently mean that they will be this time.
There were tablets long before the iPad, which was supposed to eventually replace desktops/laptops, although sadly that still hasn’t happened and doesn’t even seem to be on the horizon.
As for the watch, watches are a very popular accessory generally, and there have been plenty of entrants before the apple watch, all the way from the casio calculator, to fitbits and pebbles to android wear.
If you were already into watches, and were already in the apple ecosystem, which I have to imagine was a large set of people, the apple watch was basically an insta-buy, not only because of its integration but also it’s customizability.
I don’t see those same variables present for VR as were for the watch, but I do see similarities between AVP and iPad in how it’s billed as a pro device, and I imagine it will suffer a similar fate of falling short of expectations.
I suspect the reason the iphone was so popular was execs who weren't allowed to install games (angry birds etc) on their corporate blackberrys due to them being locked down by Corporate IT then got an iphone, then felt they didn't want to carry the blackberry as well, so laid it down to their corporate IT to "make email work on here"
>if Apple thinks they can pull this off, then liklier than not, considering what they've done in the past, they probably can.
Or you can consider an even longer past; has any company in history ever been able to consistently "hit-it-out-of-the-park" with products? Or is there an element of luck here that distributes these things.
In other words, does one game-changing innovation make it more likely or less likely to produce a second?
They didn’t invent any of those, and they didn’t invent the innovations that made their products successful. But the user experience of all of them was so much better than existing products that they went from nothing to dominating the category in just a few years.
Are you aware how successful those products have been? They don't match iPhone revenue by any means, but they move a ton of units and are the market leaders for their categories.
Then we can consider it a forgone conclusion that headgear iPhone (Vision) will be a runaway success as just another variant of Apple Thing With Screen (iPhone).
Maybe the iPad, but large phones became popular and the whole tablet hype sort of disappeared.
The Apple Watch? The only people I know who own one are people so deep in the Apple ecosystem they need it all. Seemingly good product (everything Apples makes is), but not a game changer.
The best estimates I could find were around 35 million a year. At a conservative $400 APU that’s a $14 billion dollar a year business and no one doubts its profitable.
