Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “The iPhone is dead. Long live the iPhone.”.
The iPhone is dead. No I’m just kidding you hear that a lot that 16 years after the iPhone first shipped, somehow it’s a dying business. Now. Let me just clear that up for you real fast, not even a little bit true just look at this graph. This is sales of the iPhone over time. The line may not be going up quite as fast as it used to, but that’s only because the numbers are so big. Now, in the first three months of this year, for instance, Apple sold, 51.3 billion dollars worth of iPhones and its sales were actually up. In a time where one study said smartphone, sales in general were down about 13. The iPhone is the best business. Maybe in the history of electronics and rest assured, it is doing just fine, but you know what is true about the iPhone. It’S kind of boring now hi, I’m David Pierce, and this is your status update. Every year we get a new iPhone. The cameras get a little better.
The design changes a bit. We maybe get a USBC Port because the EU is forcing Apple to add one, but that’s kind of it and it’s not just the iPhone right, there’s a kind of sameness across a lot of Apple’s products. The iPad, the watch, the Apple TV, even airpods, everything gets a little better every year, but it feels like it’s been a while, since we got a really big new idea, the Mac is sort of an exception, but only because the M series chips are so good That they seem like much more than a performance jump, but a performance jump is really all that they are and look this isn’t a bad thing. Apple is a huge company with a bunch of really mature products, and most of them are very good. But honestly, I would argue that the most interesting, Innovative cultural shaking thing Apple has done in the last few years is Ted lasso I mean a TV show about people being nice to each other in this economy. What a concept? I’M not sure you realize how psychologically healthy that actually is all that said. I do think we’re about to see Apple’s next really big swing. Its annual developer conference WWDC is on June 5th, and if the rumors are true – and I think that they’re true we’re gon na see apple launch a headset, what kind of headset exactly we don’t know, but we do know what the long-term vision is here, because everybody Seems to have roughly the same one.
It basically amounts to a pair of normal looking glasses that display digital stuff over top of the real world. It’S a little bit Terminator a little bit Jarvis from Iron Man a little bit that video conferencing scene in Kingsman somewhere in that zone. Unlike the Oculus Quest and a lot of other VR devices Apple’s going in on AR and mixed reality, it doesn’t want you zoning out and living in the metaverse. It wants to just add some digital information over your experience of the real world, but all the tech needed to make that happen in a pair of normal, looking glasses is a ways out like a long ways out. So, for now it sounds like Apple’s new headset, which is reportedly going to be called the reality. Pro will be something a bit closer to the Oculus quest mark German, the Bloomberg reporter, who has been on top of this stuff more than anybody else has said. They’Re gon na look like ski goggles.
The reality Pro will probably be smaller and lighter than most other headsets in part, because it’ll be tethered via a cable to a battery pack. That’Ll either go in your pocket or on your hip, it’s kind of like a chain wallet in 2023 or no. Actually, it’s kind of a return to what it used to be when you had those white cables running down and that’s how you knew you had an iPod in your pocket.
That’S coming back. The reality probe will also reportedly have two 4K screens in the headset and outward facing cameras to capture the real world. It might even have a feature that shows your eyes on an external screen like personalized googly eyes, so that people can see you even when you have the headset on it sounds I mean yikes, but again it’s all just rumors and reporting for now. So we’ll see there have been inklings out there that the reality Pro isn’t ready or that some Executives don’t think it should be launching at all and that it might just be a solution in search of a problem. And it’s definitely true that the big question for VR and AR in general is what is this for games, sure sort of unless you get sick wearing a headset or your brain just gets tired after 20 minutes in there communication sure fine watching movies on big screens.
Definitely, but is any of that enough to get you to strap a gadget to your face for hours at a time, especially before that looks like a pair of normal, looking glasses or anything remotely cool. Looking at all, there’s this tension out there right now between two competing ideas. Apple has a long history of being the first company to get this kind of thing right, and also it doesn’t necessarily seem, like even apple – is going to be able to pull this off. Just yet, however, it turns out. I would bet that the first version of this isn’t going to be some kind of Smash. Earth-Shaking Hit. Apple’S first tries very rarely are remember when the first iPhone didn’t even have 3G and cost, like 700 Apple, actually often launches things. A little bit before they’re, fully ready to take over the market and if the reality Pro costs three thousand dollars, which is reportedly the real price. It’S going to be a very specific thing for a very specific group of people. I would bet you see it more in like design firms and architect’s office than in your friend’s house or at work anytime soon. But here’s my favorite thing and to me the most interesting thing about what we think we know about the reality Pro. It is chock full of iPhone DNA. More than anything Apple seems to imagine the headset as a way to connect with people and consume content.
It’S going to have a FaceTime app, an Apple TV, app Apple Books, Safari and a bunch of other first party tools. Tim Cook Apple’s CEO, has said a few times over the years that he thinks AR and VR should be for connection and communication, not video games or whatever meta’s ideas about the metaverse are I mean, he’s just describing an iPhone right. The reality Pro might really.
Basically, just be an iPhone strapped to your face, and I actually think that might be a good thing, because that’s another thing about Apple, some of its most interesting and important products over the last 15 years have started out as iPhones. The iPad was just a big iPhone until Apple started, to figure out how it could be used for drawing or productivity, and now it’s morphing into its own kind of not quite laptop, not quite phone device. The Apple watch was an iPhone for your wrist literally. The first Apple watch prototypes were just iPhones, strapped to Apple employees, wrists before Apple leaned into health and wellness and figured out what it was really for. Airpods are just iPhone accessories. The whole error tags network is made up of iPhones just about everything. Apple does and makes exists and works.
The way that it does, because of the iPhone and really the story of the iPhone is not just about smartphones. The iPhone is, where Apple figured out a whole new way to do software, where it turned apps into the most important things that we run on screens everywhere, where it got us all used to being able to do everything on a gadget. That’S with us all. The time, even if in some distant future, we all ditch our smartphones, because our AR glasses get so good and so useful you’ll still see the iPhone’s Legacy see everywhere. The flip side of that, of course, is. It does suggest that the iPhone itself, maybe doesn’t have big moves, left we’re not likely to see some big thinky redesign about how phones work or how they fit into our lives, mostly because the billions of people who have smartphones already don’t want that they want their Phone to be a little faster, they want the camera to be a little better. They don’t want their phone to break when it falls. They want the battery to last longer. That’S where we are with this. These things are appliances now in a very real way, and that’s okay. It just means that the iPhone is going to keep being the iPhone for a very long time and it might be a little bit boring forever. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk. Wwdc is on June 5th, so tune in and head to, theverge.com for all of our coverage of everything apple is up to. In the meantime, I’m gon na re-watch Ted lasso, we’ll see you on the next one.
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