- Tim Cook wants you to know that he’s using the Apple Vision Pro every single day.
- Not enough to share photos of him in the $3,500 mixed-reality headset, however.
- The Vision Pro is a major step into virtual reality, and is Apple’s biggest launch since the iPhone.
Tim Cook wants everyone to know he’s apparently using Apple’s upcoming Vision Pro headset every day, though not enough to share a selfie.
During an earnings call on Thursday, the Apple CEO shared that he’s using the $3,500 ski-goggle-style device daily as the company tries to ramp up excitement and interest ahead of the device’s launch slated for early 2024.
A quick recap: The Apple Vision Pro is, to all intents and purposes, the company’s shot at a virtual-reality headset. The firm unveiled the device at its annual developer conference in June, with the global launch set for early 2024. It is set to be the company’s most significant hardware launch since the iPhone.
Apple’s take on all of this, which it describes as “spatial computing,” is to bring virtual and augmented reality to its existing suite of products rather than building a virtual world from scratch. That’s in contrast to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s metaverse vision, which is rooted in immersive worlds.
But Cook’s remarks indicate that he’s aware virtual and augmented reality tech has had minimal traction to date. And Apple still hasn’t released photos of him or any other company executive wearing the device.
“There’s enormous excitement around the Vision Pro,” Cook insisted during the firm’s quarterly earnings call Thursday. “We’re excited internally. Everybody that’s been through the demos are blown away, whether you’re talking about press or analysts or developers.”
Still, he declined to disclose a sales forecast or potential uptake.
“We’re not going to forecast revenues and so forth on the call today, but we’re very excited about it,” he repeated in response to a question on the Vision Pro from Deutsche Bank analyst Sidney Ho.
A July Financial Times report suggested the complexity of Apple’s new device, seven years in the making, was posing manufacturing issues. The newspaper reported that Apple had revised forecast shipments next year down by more than 50% from an initial target of 1 million.
Though the unveiling of the Vision Pro at Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference in June was well-received by fans and developers, the high price-tag and cloudy future for VR and AR means consumer adoption is up in the air. And as Insider’s Alistair Barr writes, Apple opting not to share photos of its own company executives wearing the device might be a tacit acknowledgement that they are currently “nerd goggles that make most people look uncool.”
Apple reported a 1% drop in revenue to $81.8 billion in the three months to the end of June, though net income rose to $19.9 billion from $19.4 billion in the same quarter the previous year.
Apple did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment outside regular working hours.
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