Apple has a proven track record of doing almost everything with exacting precision, best-in-class design, and with the best intentions of serving thriller client base while maintaining profitability. No question, they are the most highly regarded company on the planet. For good reasons. Their staff is exceptional and their management jaw-droopingly good.
Until it cam to AR and AI. When Steve Jobs famously said that he thought Apple had solved television, he wasn’t referring to Apple TV. He was referring to the unreleased Apple Vision Pro. Its a great technology without the content to fully support it’s need for most. It’s priced for early adopters, or for larger companies to kick its tires. But it is far from a mainstream tool to satisfy many needs.
Recently it was rumored that Apple has killed its plans for wearable glasses as the delivered form factor for a future AR product. A shame, because that’s the form factor most accessible to everyone. casual out and about use. Hell, even if it could just in real-time manipulate the passthrough to accommodate for lens approximation – they could double as up-to-the-second eyeglasses for the masses who could afford it.
So AR so far hasn’t been a a big hit, but it’s decent tech. In regard to AI – Apple is slow to the game, but I believe they rushed to get something out too quickly. There was a lot more runway to use to prepare and to deliver big. Instead they announced big and are trickling out features which are not really feature compete or compelling. They missed that big wow of an initial impression. Some day it will be great, I am sure. But I wish Apple would do something…
Own the home. Bring about a home appliance that sits on your router. Or has a router built into it – and you jack in and it produces a home mesh network. It’s your Apple TV hub. It’s your local LLM for all your home automation and request needs. It learns over time and can reach out to various services to be adaptable. It has. Siri 2.0. It’s basically a Mac mini that’s kicks your home’s ass and makes it a veritable powerhouse of customized utility. It recognizes Apple devices., guest devices, televisions bough into the home – no more Apple TV boxes sprinkled around. HomePods will work better and function as repeaters and microphones – only better. Add Apple security cameras, doorbells, lights, and more. Jarvis for your house minus the Iron Man suit. Info panels (optional). When updates to anything is available they could just update on their own. It could update an Apple head unit in your car that had it equipped (a dream of phoneless CarPlay 2).
Apple owns subscription services. They are good at them. They craft a wonderful ecosystem that traps users into convenience and “just works” deployments. They could really shine in this area in my opinion. They could even offer a form of it for business (a completely different ball of wax with greater security and utility implications).