If Apple Builds It, Will They Come?

Riffing on some thoughts about Apple’s forthcoming RealityPro…

Mark Gurman, reporting on the forthcoming Apple RealityPro (let’s just assume this is the name at this point) a couple weeks ago:

When Apple Inc. set out to develop a headset about seven years ago, it hired a former NASA engineer who had used augmented and virtual reality to explore Mars. The big question at the time: Why would an ordinary consumer need such a device?

As the company gets ready to unveil the product in June, that question is still hanging in the air. Apple hasn’t really found a killer app that will make the roughly $3,000 headset a must-have item. Instead, it’s trying another tactic: throwing everything but the kitchen sink at consumers.

Apple plans to pack the headset with a variety of features — games, fitness services, even an app for reading books in virtual reality — and hope that buyers find something they like.

At first, this sounds crazy. More like an Amazon approach (spaghetti to the wall) to product development than an Apple one (we will only ship when the product is ready). But…

It’s not such a wild approach. After all, Apple did the same thing when it unveiled its watch. In 2014, Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook pitched the original Apple Watch as a highly accurate timepiece, a fitness tracker, a way to send personal messages to other wearers — and much more. In his presentation, he talked about using it as an Apple TV remote, an iPhone camera view finder and a walkie-talkie.

It’s easy to forget now, but Apple also thought the device would be a piece of high fashion — hence the 18 carat gold “Edition” version starting at $10,000. I mean, this really happened. Apple really shipped this product. But Apple was also quick to pivot and was able to whittle the product down to what users actually wanted. They clearly didn’t intend to develop the Apple Watch in such a… um, fashion, but it ended up working. In part, I would argue, simply because unlike many of their contemporaries, they stuck with it. And now it’s a multi-billion-dollar product line which they more or less have to themselves.

One key difference here with the RealityPro: they’re not the only, nor the first, company to “stick with it”. Facebook, of course, has poured billions into the Oculus/Quest product lines over many years. And in fact, has completely pivoted the entire company around the concept, going so far as to change their name to Meta. A lot of people — and certainly those on Wall Street — think this is crazy town. But Meta has yet to back down. And Apple entering the space should only further embolden them that they’re on to something and need to stick with it. Because Apple will, regardless of how this first version of RealityPro is received.

And I laid out the case for thinking of the RealityPro more akin to the Apple Watch in terms of product development, last October:

My guess would be that Apple’s initial entrant into this world is more akin to the Apple Watch than anything else. That is, an interesting piece of hardware, tied to the iPhone, that has no idea what it wants to be yet. It will have to grow up before our eyes. Which the Apple Watch has. And Apple, much like Meta, hasn’t given up despite some wayward years. So… the fight should be on.

And I expanded on the notion back in January:

For whatever reason, my mind keeps coming back to the Apple Watch. My best guess here — having not seen the device, of course! — is that Reality Pro follows more of an Apple Watch trajectory. That is, it launches with a ton of buzz and people think it’s interesting but too expensive, a bit underwhelming, and an unclear market. And then Apple does what Apple does. Iterate, iterate, iterate. And in a few years, the device is far more compelling, at better price points, with much clearer product/market fit.

The key to this strategy is that Apple isn’t going to launch Reality Pro as a trial balloon. That is, a device in a space they think is interesting but only as an experiment. The only time Apple has really done this was famously with Apple TV (unveiled a few months before the iPhone, no less!). And I actually think that device has suffered its entire existence as a result of that wobbly commitment. It’s a solid device, but it’s not what it could have and should have been.

That said at the time of the Apple Watch launch…

“The list of features is a mile long and I’m certain when developers get their hands on the developer kit, the list will get even longer,” Cook said at the announcement.

While the Apple Watch did expand its feature set, it has largely been Apple itself and not third-party developers which have driven this. I would argue that Apple messed up by launching a dev kit before the product was ready and thus soiled the early third-party Apple Watch ecosystem in both the minds of developers and users.¹ And the ecosystem hasn’t really rebounded since despite the success of the device now.

In hindsight, Apple may have benefitted from more explicitly doing what they did with the iPhone: allowing only first-party apps to start (while working with some third-parties to co-develop apps, like Apple did with Google Maps and YouTube back in the day) and then once they have a good feel for where the product is going, opening it up to third-party developers via SDKs. Underpromise and over-deliver. Many people — certainly developers — won’t like to hear this notion, but I do wonder if it wouldn’t be the right approach with RealityPro as well.

Of course, it doesn’t sound like Apple is going down this path. And instead is going to show off RealityPro and xrOS at WWDC in part to get developers excited to develop for the platform (and perhaps launch some early SDKs/dev kits?).

One other thing it sounds like Apple will be able to uniquely leverage here, per Gurman’s reporting:

Being able to run the hundreds of thousands of existing third-party iPad apps from the App Store with either no extra work or minimal modifications.

This reminds me of how the original iPad was able to run iPhone apps in a scaled mode (and, in fact, still can!). It’s not a great experience, but it gets the job done for certain apps — there are still a number of iPhone apps I use on the iPad this way. Something else Apple can uniquely do:

A feature to use the headset as an external monitor for a connected Mac.

Huge, literally. Also, FaceTime on such a device seems fairly likely to be a pretty killer app — if not the initial killer app.

It also sounds like Apple is going to recognize from day one how important gaming will be to this device. Meta has (I think rightfully) been criticized in this regard, but you also realize why they’re trying not to pigeonhole the device into the gaming realm: they want it to be much more. Apple may be better positioned to make it much more. Though, ironically, Apple has continually failed to deliver on the massive gaming promise of their devices from the Mac to the iPhone to the iPad to Apple TV. We’ll see.²

As for that external battery pack, which has long sounded bonkers to me (and many others), it starting to sound both more real and perhaps a bit more realistic…

The headset will have two ports: a USB-C connector to handle data and a new proprietary charger. The charging cable that goes into the headset has a round tip that inserts magnetically. In order to prevent the connector from falling out during use, you rotate it clockwise to lock it in. The cable itself connects to the battery pack, and those two pieces aren’t separable.

The pack, which should power the headset for about two hours, looks like Apple’s iPhone MagSafe battery pack. It’s about the size of an iPhone but thicker. The pack is designed to be charged via USB-C and will be powered up using the same adapter included with the MacBook Pro. Given the short battery life — likely due to the use of an M2 chip and dual 4K displays — I’d imagine Apple will offer the ability to buy extra packs.

It still doesn’t sound exactly Apple-like but if it truly does make the headset comfortable to wear, you can see it. If you squint. Maybe tilt your head? This would also allow Apple to tout the fact that you won’t have a constantly heating up battery next to your brain, which might be nice. Only two hours though? Rough. And this might be what makes the external battery make the most sense: rather than have to constantly be taking off the device to charge it, you can just hot-swap batteries in and out. Still weird.³

Maybe it’s just the old fanboy in me, but I do find myself getting more and more excited about the prospects for this device as we inch towards the unveiling. Yes, there is some subtle buzz and chatter that it’s well done and going to surprise people who have low expectations given the graveyard that the space has produced throughout the years. But it’s also just the idea that Apple is going to stick with the concept and iterate it into something interesting regardless of how well the first (apparently very expensive) device is received. Just like the Apple Watch. A device I now love.

¹ Though, to Apple’s credit, they were trying to be mindful about this, as they slow-rolled the initial SDKs and tried to make it clear functionality would be quite limited at first (due to battery life constraints). But it didn’t really matter what they said, a bunch of apps launched on the device with a poor experience. So I still think they should have just waited.

² Nintendo! Nintendo! Nintendo!

³ Hopefully if it’s plugged into a Mac for use as a VR monitor, that will power the device and eliminate the need for battery swapping?