When Tim Cook took over as Apple’s CEO from Steve Jobs nearly 12 years ago, some thought the company was in its prime.
Under Cook, however, Apple’s market value increased by more than 700% to nearly $3 trillion. The iPhone continued to be a juggernaut, fueled by new features and pricing strategies under his watch.
And Apple has built a robust services business, including paid music, TV and games products, giving the company a steady stream of revenue not dependent on the cyclical nature of hardware sales.
But what Apple lacked under Cook was the kind of massive, exciting product innovation seen during the Jobs years that could change the way people interact with technology. Until now.
Last week, Apple introduced the Vision Pro, the mixed reality glasses that the company says will usher in a new era of “spatial computing”. The headset combines virtual reality and augmented reality, a technology that overlays virtual images onto live video of the real world. It’s Apple’s biggest and riskiest product launch in years.
For years, Cook has been touting the promise of augmented reality, touting its potential to help people communicate and collaborate with one another. At his event last week, Cook called the headset a “revolutionary product” and “the first product where you look through it, not into it.”
But Cook is also better known as an operations mentor than a product visionary. Cook’s two biggest product launches before the Vision Pro were the Apple Watch in 2015 and the AirPods the following year. Those products proved to be successful moneymakers, but they didn’t quite create a new paradigm for the company or the industry the way the iPhone did for Jobs.
The Vision Pro, which goes on sale early next year, could end up being the defining product of Cook’s legacy, success or failure. And its success is anything but guaranteed.
Virtual and augmented reality remains a market to develop with little mainstream consumer adoption.
Apple plans to charge a hefty $3,499 for the glasses, which currently have limited apps and experiences and require users to remain connected to an iPhone-sized battery. And that’s not to mention the challenges of convincing users to regularly use a computer tethered to their faces.
“The headset world is a real challenge […] it proved to be a challenge to create a mass market for it,” said Margaret O’Mara, a technology historian and professor at the University of Washington.
“The iPhone came about after many years of companies, Apple and others, trying to create a kind of supercomputer in your pocket, there was a long history of attempts. And it hit the market when many people already had some kind of cell phone”.
The company’s followers are divided on what the headset could mean for Cook. It’s never wise to bet against Apple when it comes to hardware, but even if the company succeeds, it probably won’t give Cook and Apple an iPhone-level success story, some say.
“It is extremely unlikely that anything close to the [sucesso do] iPhone,” said Mike Bailey, research director at FBB Capital Partners. “The last two opportunities – the watch was good, the AirPods were good, and this is probably the third thing that’s cool. There’s a track record now where it’s extremely difficult to show any kind of massive growth that compares to the iPhone.”
But Tim Bajarin, a longtime Apple analyst and president of consumer technology research firm Creative Strategies, suggests the product showcases both Apple and Cook’s track record of innovation. “What did Apple do [com o Vision Pro] was to reinvent the personal computer,” he said. “We’ve just seen the future of computing.”
“I think, from Tim’s point of view, he does it with a mindset that says, when they come to me saying, ‘It can’t be done,’ we make it happen,” Bajarin said.
Bajarin added that the Vision Pro reflects Cook’s work to grow and improve Apple’s ecosystem during his time as CEO. The headset probably wouldn’t have been possible without the small, powerful chips manufactured in-house during its tenure.
Apple’s suite of services also makes it clearer to consumers some of the ways they can use the device, such as meditating or watching movies, even before the company’s army of third-party developers create additional experiences for the device, he said. .
By that argument, the headset could serve as the culmination of years of product initiatives under Cook and his long tenure with the company.
Cook’s legacy is already defined as someone who successfully created market value. With the headset, he has the chance to also be known as someone who presided over the creation of an earth-shattering new product. That would really put him in Jobs’ league.
Source: CNN Brasil
Charles Grill is a tech-savvy writer with over 3 years of experience in the field. He writes on a variety of technology-related topics and has a strong focus on the latest advancements in the industry. He is connected with several online news websites and is currently contributing to a technology-focused platform.
