Apple’s Mixed Reality Bet Comes Due

A project seven years in the making hits primetime, but not as Apple hoped.

On Monday, Tim Cook will take the stage at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference and introduce his company’s long-awaited mixed reality device. The Reality Pro, as it’s called, will seem extremely impressive at first. Its 4k resolution, 5,000+ nits of brightness, array of cameras, and innovative stare-and-pinch controls will send the room into a tizzy. And Cook, who needs this to work, will urge developers to partner with Apple, perhaps pointing to the apps that made the iPhone great.

Yet while the introduction will resemble Apple’s previous category-defining moments, the Reality Pro will be much different and riskier. The headset is reportedly far from the one Apple set out to build. Rather than perfecting an existing category — as it did with phones, watches, and headphones — it’s simply nudging mixed reality forward, capitulating to some of the same technical limitations holding back its peers. For a company accustomed to waiting until its product is just right, it’s a perilous move.

“This could be a mess the likes of which we haven't seen since Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1997,” Michael Gartenberg, an ex-Apple executive, told me. “Quality materials, beautiful design, and an Apple logo still don't seem to provide a reason why consumers would want this.”

Priced somewhere between $2,000 and $3,000, the Reality Pro is a downgrade from what Apple initially imagined as a pair of lightweight, standalone AR glasses. The current device is “a headset that resembles a pair of ski goggles and requires a separate battery pack,” according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman. (Gurman will appear on Big Technology Podcast next week.)

Apple’s bulkier version of its XR glasses will thus look like its peers in the space — making it something of a high-end version of Meta’s Quest 3 — and it won’t feel like the step change Apple typically delivers. That could be a hindrance in a category that hasn’t yet gained mass adoption.

Historically, Apple’s succeeded by pushing existing product categories well into the future. The iPod, Mac, iPhone, AirPods, and Apple Watch are all products of Apple management’s insistence that technological limitations are often artificial, and its engineers’ ability to prove them right. Yet that ended up impossible with the Reality Pro.

Try as they might to whittle down the XR device’s size, Apple’s engineers simply could not do it. Their glasses got hot, the components proved unshrinkable, and they needed an external battery. As a pair of lightweight glasses, Apple’s device could’ve ushered in a new era of computing. But as a ski goggle-style mask with an external battery pack, it won’t meaningfully extend the use cases beyond the current spectrum. Apple is a sexy company, a battery pack is sexless.

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In a departure from tradition, Apple is still shipping the product, hoping developers and content programmers will brute force its mixed reality dreams into the future. There will be plenty of use cases to start. The device can take computing everywhere, someimagine, giving you a screen to watch TV and movies wherever you are, along with potential gaming, fitness, and productivity applications. Apple will open the device to developers and programmers to build these experiences, and it’s reportedly already enabling immersive video, “advanced” FaceTime, and the conversion of iPad apps into mixed reality. The company is effectively acknowledging it can’t move forward without the industry. It’s also just ready to ship something after seven years of work.

That very act of shipping is perhaps most intriguing here. Apple is a $2.83 trillion goliath and doesn’t appear to need a new category. It sold $191 billion in iPhones last year, and it’s poised to remain the smartphone leader for years to come. Technology changes fast though. And as Google is learning in the AI race, betting on your lead horse for too long is risky. Reinventing is not always pretty, but you must go forward nonetheless. And when you do, you learn what you are.

“This launch may well define the state of Apple,” said Gartenberg. ”Is this a company that can still innovate beyond what competitors can do? Or is management a group of caretakers? Ones that have grown the company into trillions of dollars of shareholder wealth but doing so iterating on the devices, software, and services that Jobs brought to market.”

“I guess we will see on Monday,” he said.

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Number Of The Week

33%

Fidelity marked down its Twitter stake at a valuation one third of Elon Musk’s $44 billion purchase price.

Quote Of The Week

The bags of Doritos, cartons of Tropicana orange juice and bottles of Gatorade drinks sold by PepsiCo are now substantially pricier. Customers have grumbled, but they have largely kept buying. Shareholders have cheered. PepsiCo declined to comment.

Responding to market incentives, companies are keeping prices up as their costs drop, per the New York Times.

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