The next Mac, not the next iPhone

First, four Fast Company tech stories you may not have seen yet:

“Apple just announced its first major product since 2014: The Vision Pro for $3,499”
—CNBC

“The headset starts at $3,499 and marks the company’s biggest product launch since the original iPhone went on sale in 2007.”
—Reuters

“Apple’s biggest new product since the iPhone . . .”
—Business Insider

When Tim Cook was still settling into his job as Apple CEO, a tiresome meme ran rampant. Cook, the pundits carped, was failing as Steve Jobs’s successor. And the proof was that Apple wasn’t constantly releasing breakthrough products—ones like, you know, the iPhone.

Fast-forward a decade or more to Apple’s launch of the Apple Vision Pro—which the first paying customers will receive this Friday—and a different nugget of conventional wisdom is being taken as a given. As the above sound bites show, it’s widely assumed that the headset’s release is a moment akin to the iPhone’s introduction 17 years ago.

Judged purely on its level of technical audacity, the Vision Pro is unquestionably Apple’s most momentous launch since the first iPhone. But that doesn’t mean this device resembles Apple’s smartphone all that much in terms of its virtues, limitations, and potential uses. Which means that using the iPhone’s impact as a yardstick might be an unhelpful way to gain an understanding of where the headset might be going.

At least that’s my takeaway after spending a few hours with the Vision Pro—starting with a demo during a recent visit to Apple Park, and then at home with a review unit that arrived as I was working on this newsletter. I’ve already raced through a whole bunch of use-case scenarios, including shooting and watching immersive 3D videos, playing games on a virtual IMAX-size screen, using business apps such as Slack, and making a video call to my colleague Max with my “Persona”—a realistic 3D avatar of yours truly—standing in for the real me. I plan to do lots more in the days to come.

The Vision Pro experience is as all-new as it gets, from its use of eye tracking and hand gestures to the ability to dial the amount of the real world you can see up or down by twisting the headset’s digital crown. But in an odd way, the device reminds me of the original Macintosh computer.

I do cheerfully admit to having that first Mac on my mind at the moment, considering that it just turned 40. Still, the Mac/Vision Pro parallels are real—certainly more so than any iPhone/Vision Pro ones.

When Jobs unveiled the original iPhone, he famously described it as being just three things—an iPod, a phone, and an internet communicator. Conceptual simplicity trumped any initial aspiration of extreme versatility, which is why the phone didn’t even support third-party apps until its second year. Three years later, the iPad also emphasized a handful of scenarios at first: web browsing, movie watching, e-book reading, maybe a little light email.

As the iPhone and iPad added more features and got more apps, they became far more computer-esque. But that was a years-long process, not a day-one selling point.

By contrast, Apple’s boilerplate description of the Vision Pro—“a revolutionary spatial computer”—sets entirely different initial expectations. As a computer, it’s designed to be a general-purpose platform useful for an array of tasks. The last new Apple platform to start with that goal, rather than develop it over time, was the Mac.

Apple is never going to position its headset as a Mac-like computer that you strap to your face, but neither is it going out of its way to make it feel un-Mac-like. For instance, during setup, the Vision Pro’s audio instructions describe the tapping gesture as being like a Mac mouse click. And when I used the device with a Magic Keyboard and Magic Trackpad—yes, the same ones Apple sells for the Mac—the experience felt really familiar. That fundamental computer-ishness is one of the many things that sets the Vision Pro apart from Meta’s Quest 3 headset, which isn’t trying to be a computer at all. Even Apple’s own iPad took a decade to support Mac-style pointing devices.

I don’t mean the comparison of the Vision Pro to the Mac as an unalloyed compliment. In 1984, the original Mac’s imposing $2,495 price tag was one big reason it fell far short of Apple’s initial sales projections; in 2024, the Vision Pro starting at $3,995 is a problem, regardless of how dazzling the technology might be. In 1984, the Mac’s skimpy 128KB of RAM severely degraded the user experience; in 2024, the Vision Pro having a hefty external battery you’re expected to stick in your pocket when standing up—and still delivering only “up to two hours of general use”—is hardly ideal.

Computers can also struggle to find their “killer apps”—experiences so uniquely valuable as to justify a new machine’s very existence. I’m not sure if any of the Vision Pro software I’ve tried so far rises to killer apphood, especially for a device that costs far more than the computers and TVs most of us own. (A cheaper version might be a different matter.)

For now, the headset’s most jaw-dropping feature is easily the ability to shoot and play back 3D videos that feel like you can stroll right into them. Even plain old still photos—billboard-size snapshots, panoramas that encircle you—have never looked this amazing. Anyone who tries a Vision Pro is going to love this stuff. But I can’t help but think: Isn’t at least half the fun of shooting videos and photos in the sharing? The solitary nature of the Vision Pro works against that, at least until the day arrives when everyone who owns this headset has friends and family members who also have one.

Much of the coverage of the Vision Pro’s initial app offerings has focused on the reluctance of some major developers to invest in the platform. That could impede the quest for killer apps, but some smaller developers are already on board. During my demo at Apple Park, I viewed a seemingly vast topographical map of Yosemite in PeakVisor and fiddled with a dual-turntable DJ setup in Algoriddim’s djay app. While both showed off the hardware to clever effect, neither is likely to sell many Vision Pros by itself.

There’s nothing fatal about a new computer shipping without its killer app. The original 1984 Mac didn’t really have one until a breakthrough desktop publishing program called PageMaker shipped about a year and a half later. But if there’d never been a PageMaker, the Mac might have faded away before it ever found its footing.

By erring on the side of making the Vision Pro so powerful, Apple has raised the stakes in a similar fashion. Here’s hoping the company, developers, and consumers all give this headset the patience that every potentially great computer platform deserves.

First, four Fast Company tech stories you may not have seen yet:

“Apple just announced its first major product since 2014: The Vision Pro for $3,499”
—CNBC

“The headset starts at $3,499 and marks the company’s biggest product launch since the original iPhone went on sale in 2007.”
—Reuters

“Apple’s biggest new product since the iPhone . . .”
—Business Insider

When Tim Cook was still settling into his job as Apple CEO, a tiresome meme ran rampant. Cook, the pundits carped, was failing as Steve Jobs’s successor. And the proof was that Apple wasn’t constantly releasing breakthrough products—ones like, you know, the iPhone.

Fast-forward a decade or more to Apple’s launch of the Apple Vision Pro—which the first paying customers will receive this Friday—and a different nugget of conventional wisdom is being taken as a given. As the above sound bites show, it’s widely assumed that the headset’s release is a moment akin to the iPhone’s introduction 17 years ago.

Judged purely on its level of technical audacity, the Vision Pro is unquestionably Apple’s most momentous launch since the first iPhone. But that doesn’t mean this device resembles Apple’s smartphone all that much in terms of its virtues, limitations, and potential uses. Which means that using the iPhone’s impact as a yardstick might be an unhelpful way to gain an understanding of where the headset might be going.

At least that’s my takeaway after spending a few hours with the Vision Pro—starting with a demo during a recent visit to Apple Park, and then at home with a review unit that arrived as I was working on this newsletter. I’ve already raced through a whole bunch of use-case scenarios, including shooting and watching immersive 3D videos, playing games on a virtual IMAX-size screen, using business apps such as Slack, and making a video call to my colleague Max with my “Persona”—a realistic 3D avatar of yours truly—standing in for the real me. I plan to do lots more in the days to come.

The Vision Pro experience is as all-new as it gets, from its use of eye tracking and hand gestures to the ability to dial the amount of the real world you can see up or down by twisting the headset’s digital crown. But in an odd way, the device reminds me of the original Macintosh computer.

I do cheerfully admit to having that first Mac on my mind at the moment, considering that it just turned 40. Still, the Mac/Vision Pro parallels are real—certainly more so than any iPhone/Vision Pro ones.

When Jobs unveiled the original iPhone, he famously described it as being just three things—an iPod, a phone, and an internet communicator. Conceptual simplicity trumped any initial aspiration of extreme versatility, which is why the phone didn’t even support third-party apps until its second year. Three years later, the iPad also emphasized a handful of scenarios at first: web browsing, movie watching, e-book reading, maybe a little light email.

As the iPhone and iPad added more features and got more apps, they became far more computer-esque. But that was a years-long process, not a day-one selling point.

By contrast, Apple’s boilerplate description of the Vision Pro—“a revolutionary spatial computer”—sets entirely different initial expectations. As a computer, it’s designed to be a general-purpose platform useful for an array of tasks. The last new Apple platform to start with that goal, rather than develop it over time, was the Mac.

Apple is never going to position its headset as a Mac-like computer that you strap to your face, but neither is it going out of its way to make it feel un-Mac-like. For instance, during setup, the Vision Pro’s audio instructions describe the tapping gesture as being like a Mac mouse click. And when I used the device with a Magic Keyboard and Magic Trackpad—yes, the same ones Apple sells for the Mac—the experience felt really familiar. That fundamental computer-ishness is one of the many things that sets the Vision Pro apart from Meta’s Quest 3 headset, which isn’t trying to be a computer at all. Even Apple’s own iPad took a decade to support Mac-style pointing devices.

I don’t mean the comparison of the Vision Pro to the Mac as an unalloyed compliment. In 1984, the original Mac’s imposing $2,495 price tag was one big reason it fell far short of Apple’s initial sales projections; in 2024, the Vision Pro starting at $3,995 is a problem, regardless of how dazzling the technology might be. In 1984, the Mac’s skimpy 128KB of RAM severely degraded the user experience; in 2024, the Vision Pro having a hefty external battery you’re expected to stick in your pocket when standing up—and still delivering only “up to two hours of general use”—is hardly ideal.

Computers can also struggle to find their “killer apps”—experiences so uniquely valuable as to justify a new machine’s very existence. I’m not sure if any of the Vision Pro software I’ve tried so far rises to killer apphood, especially for a device that costs far more than the computers and TVs most of us own. (A cheaper version might be a different matter.)

For now, the headset’s most jaw-dropping feature is easily the ability to shoot and play back 3D videos that feel like you can stroll right into them. Even plain old still photos—billboard-size snapshots, panoramas that encircle you—have never looked this amazing. Anyone who tries a Vision Pro is going to love this stuff. But I can’t help but think: Isn’t at least half the fun of shooting videos and photos in the sharing? The solitary nature of the Vision Pro works against that, at least until the day arrives when everyone who owns this headset has friends and family members who also have one.

Much of the coverage of the Vision Pro’s initial app offerings has focused on the reluctance of some major developers to invest in the platform. That could impede the quest for killer apps, but some smaller developers are already on board. During my demo at Apple Park, I viewed a seemingly vast topographical map of Yosemite in PeakVisor and fiddled with a dual-turntable DJ setup in Algoriddim’s djay app. While both showed off the hardware to clever effect, neither is likely to sell many Vision Pros by itself.

There’s nothing fatal about a new computer shipping without its killer app. The original 1984 Mac didn’t really have one until a breakthrough desktop publishing program called PageMaker shipped about a year and a half later. But if there’d never been a PageMaker, the Mac might have faded away before it ever found its footing.

By erring on the side of making the Vision Pro so powerful, Apple has raised the stakes in a similar fashion. Here’s hoping the company, developers, and consumers all give this headset the patience that every potentially great computer platform deserves.