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Is the Apple Vision Pro All That?

Publish Date: 2024/2/5
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On September 28th, the Global Citizen Festival will gather thousands of people who took action to end extreme poverty. Join Post Malone, Doja Cat, Lisa, Jelly Roll, and Raul Alejandro as they take the stage with world leaders and activists to defeat poverty, defend the planet, and demand equity. Download the Global Citizen app today and earn your spot at the festival. Learn more at globalcitizen.org.com.

On September 28th, the Global Citizen Festival will gather thousands of people who took action to end extreme poverty. Join Post Malone, Doja Cat, Lisa, Jelly Roll, and Raul Alejandro as they take the stage with world leaders and activists to defeat poverty, defend the planet, and demand equity. Download the Global Citizen app today and earn your spot at the festival. Learn more at globalcitizen.org slash bots. It's all easy.

hi everyone from new york magazine and the vox media podcast network this is on with kara swisher and i'm kara swisher and today because i am at heart a geek we're going to talk about apple and its new vision specifically the vision pro the company's much anticipated venture into ar vr mixed reality space

or spatial computing as the company is calling it. That's exactly what it is. I have actually had two demos of it. And I've been reporting on these VR, AR launches for more than, I think it's three decades now. I just unearthed a Washington Post article on touchable computing, where I tried to get the person at Best Buy demoing it for me to mention porn, which they did not. In any case, I know a lot about this topic, and I've been anticipating someone getting it right. And

We're going to talk about whether Apple has done that. And in fact, back at the 2005 conference that Walt Mossberg and I did, we interviewed Apple's visionary founder, Steve Jobs, on stage and asked him about getting video onto the iPhone. The fundamental problem here is that headphones are a miraculous thing. You put a pair of headphones and you get the same experience you get with a great pair of speakers, right? There's no such thing as headphones for video.

Right? There's not something I can carry with me that I can put on, and it gives me the same experience I get when I'm watching my, you know, 50-inch plasma display at home.

And, you know, until somebody invents that, you're going to have these opposing constraints. Well, they have those huge goggles you can wear. But they're lousy. But you never get a date if you ever wear them, right? Welcome to the single life, I guess. A lot of people are talking about this. Nearly 20 years later, it's also worth asking the question if the Vision Pro is the exact compromise that Steve Jobs was worried it would be.

I had a chance to demo the Vision Pro actually twice, as did two of my guests today. Wall Street Journal senior personal tech columnist Joanna Stern did a full immersion program. Vox's Nilay Patel, editor-in-chief of The Verge and host of The Decoder podcast, reviewed it as well. We're also joined by Mark Gurman, chief correspondent on Apple and other tech for Bloomberg, who's been reporting on this market and especially Apple about what it means for its business.

We'll discuss how the Vision Pro fits into Apple's vision of the future of its huge ecosystem. And we'll talk about some of the blowback the company has been facing because of its dominance in the mobile sector, such as the App Store and, of course, the antitrust actions that might be taken against it. This is the first big product launch in nearly 10 years since the Apple Watch and maybe the last one that Apple CEO Tim Cook will oversee during his tenure in

unless they get the Apple car out sooner than planned, but it looks like they're moving away from that space. So I'll ask for their thoughts about succession plans for the largest company in the world and what comes next. Our question of the week is from none other than my Pivot co-host, Scott Galloway, who has not tried the Vision Pro, but has a lot of opinions on it. You can't see it, but he's actually wearing ski goggles in this video he sent me. Okay, let's give this Apple headset a try. Siri, you porn.

Korean ladyboy, freakishly large hands, wayward hitchhiker, safe word is maybe. Okay. Oh, oh, hey guys. It's Scott Galloway here to ask you a question about the Mixed Reality headset. So my question, Apple has always been successful as the second mouse. It comes into categories that are already established, laptops, MP3 players,

phones, smartphones, it has never been successful, as far as I can tell, in an entirely new hardware. And wasn't this just an ego-driven call option that Tim Cook wanted to make sure when he greenlit this two or three years ago that the Zuck didn't establish a means of distribution and hardware that Apple would then be two or three years behind? And now that this is a giant thud, specifically the category of headsets, isn't this just a more elegant thud?

Oh, Scott, as always, it's always about the sex. Anyway, we'll ask Joanna, Neelay, and Mark about the question, though, after the break. This episode is brought to you by Shopify.

It is over.

Hello, everyone. Excited to chat. So the reason I've gathered you all here with me today, of course, is the Vision Pro. And we're going to talk about other things. But before we begin, just a reminder that this will air on Monday, February 5th. So after the official launch on Friday and after the Q1 earnings reports come out. To start out, can each of me give me your five-word story of the Vision Pro? Here's mine. I really like it.

I think it's the future of computing. I know that sounds crazy for me. But, Joanna, let's start with you. Five words? Five, well, whatever, how many words do you want? Okay, I like five. I think, no, let's keep it five. It's first generation, but really cool. Okay. Neelai?

The best VR headset ever made is still a VR headset. Oh, ha, ha, ha. And Mark, since you did not get a demo or review unit, Mark breaks a lot of scoops on Apple and they don't like giving him special favors. Talk about what you think the importance of it is.

I think mine is six words. It's going to take a while. It's going to take a while if it indeed ever takes off. The Apple Watch took maybe three or four years to really take off. The iPhone probably took two, three years.

The iPad actually took off like a rocket out of the gate and then sort of after five, six years sort of fell off. But, you know, the Vision Pro is going to take longer than all of those to take off if it does. Okay, that's a lot of words, but I like them all. Anyway, so let's get into this. Mark, this idea of spatial computing, talk a little bit about it because it is sort of a new idea, but it's not. It's

Again, I wrote a story back in 1993 about this, like this idea. And for Tim, in Tim Cook's case, he has been talking about this for a while. We had a lunch where he, the only two topics he'd talk about was AR and glasses and Auburn football. So we ended up talking a lot, because I'm not interested in Auburn football, was AR. He seemed obsessed with it. Mark, talk a little bit about the idea of space and how it's excited him. It really has in a lot of ways. Yeah.

Well, first on the term spatial computing, I think it's a pure marketing play, right? Apple needed to sort of take a headset that has existed, an idea that has existed for a decade, put a new spin on it to make it seem like an entirely new category, right? That's what their marketing people do. And, you know, it's interesting because...

It seemed like up until about a year ago that they were going to sort of own the idea that this is a mixed reality headset, that this is a reality product, right? They changed the name of the product from the Reality Pro to the Vision Pro.

fairly late in the game, they changed the name of the operating system at the last minute from XROS to VisionOS, XR standing for mixed reality, right? So there was probably this epiphany that if we're really going to sell these things, we need to market it as a computer instead of a VR or AR headset.

And in terms of the device, you know, there is some risk there with Apple coming out with a product spending, you know, eight years of development time and several billion dollars and it being a flop. But then again, the amount of money they generate with the amount of resources and people they have, you have to sometimes make a bet. And what they've done here is they've

decided that the bigger risk is not doing something. The bigger risk is not planting a flag in the ground and saying, we don't want to risk Google or Meta or Amazon or whatever in the next few years coming out with a headset that creates this market. We might as well be there too.

And by creating the Vision Pro, they've started creating the technologies and the work that will eventually allow them to get to the Glass's form factor. You know, so many people made fun of Google Glass when that launched. I think it was almost a decade ago now. They made fun of the form factor. They made fun of people using it in the shower. They made fun of the price, $1,500. Well, there was only one person doing that, but go ahead. Yeah.

Robert Scoble, thank you for that. Yes. And I just want to say yesterday he's tweeting at me about my photos. Oh, okay. All right. Yeah. We'll leave that there, but go ahead. Yes. But the point is, is that, you know, funny enough, Google nailed the form factor a decade ago. They nailed the use cases a decade ago. And we've gone completely in reverse here.

So it's so funny. 10 years ago, Google made fun of actually getting it right in so many ways, not the execution, but the vision. And 10 years from now, we'll be...

probably exactly where Google was 10 years ago. And people are going to love it. Right. It just didn't work. Mark, it didn't work. I actually have a scene in my upcoming book where I'm on a boat with all Google people wearing them, and it was like dystopian nightmare. Right. The technology was terrible. Yeah, it was terrible. And also, they didn't get it quite right. And Sergey Brin would walk around wearing it at like Oscar parties and stuff and put it on supermodels and things like that. But let's talk about that idea of meta and also –

looks and things like that. And one clear beta bomb, you talked about, Joanna, was the personas feature. Explain why Neelai said they did you so dirty. Now, it's much better than the metaverse at Facebook, but that is an extraordinarily low bar. So, Joanna, first talk about that idea and then the comparison to the meta effort, which is now gone, essentially, it looks like. Well, Neelai and I were talking about this the other day. I mean, is it better?

Meta's doing? I mean, here's the thing. I'm going to just tell you. I'm going to pay. I'm going to, I wish I could. I'm going to give it a yes, but go ahead. I should call. I'm going to call you, Kara, after my FaceTime and you can make that decision. I wish I could pump it in right here. But

When I call people with my persona, and for people listening who don't know, this is basically because there's no webcam pointed at you, they create this 3D rendering of you that Nilay says I look like a PSP. Which character? PS3. PS3. That's two generations behind. I want to be clear. And many people have said I look like Mona Lisa. I just look like a deformed, like terrible Botox character.

person. And every time I call someone now with this, if I call my mom, my dad, my sister, my wife, they are petrified and I cannot have a real conversation. All they say is, you look terrifying, please call me back on the phone. So what it is, is a version of you. It's like an AI version of you, something like that. It's your persona. But like a really bad version. And

Joanna, maybe that's what you really look like inside, but go ahead. Sorry. I said this in the video. I was like, maybe this is me. Maybe this is just, you know, I don't look, you know, you're looking in the mirror is tough. And, and that's what happens when you get older, when you get older, looking in the mirror is tough. This thing is going to cause a crisis of confidence across America. Nilay, why did you say they did you so dirty in your person? Mine didn't look good either. I looked sad and old, but go ahead. Uh,

Maybe that's the case. Well, it has a real problem with hair. I mean, all it's doing is it's scanning your face in 3D and then wrapping it around a 3D model. Yeah. So you can see where – and that's where the PS3-ness of it comes from. Like you can see how kind of fundamentally simplistic it is. There's no texture there.

I think it's rude to show up in a meeting in a persona. There's only one situation that I think this really works out in is if you don't have the optic ID so that when you put it on, it scans your eyes and unlocks. If you don't have that and you just have a passcode, you can put it on someone else and they can show up in meetings in your persona. And I was like, I need to get an intern to

And just send them to all my meetings. Good idea. Just nodding along. Yeah. And that would be great. But the thing is so – the problem they need to solve is there's no front-facing camera. So you can't go to a meeting wearing a headset. Right. So they need – so this thing just replaces that front camera in every app that calls for the camera. Right. It's just not good enough. Like I think it would be rude to call another person with this. Like it is –

It's about just to turn your camera off, have a normal conversation like a normal person. So let me ask you, Mark, you know, Meta has moved out of that business. You were saying they have to plant a flag. Is it still important even if it's not good enough?

Well, you know, first of all, in the persona thing, this is going to be interesting coming from me. I actually don't think it looked that bad. I think that, first of all, I agree with Nila that the idea that it might be rude to show up in a meeting or awkward to show up in a meeting that way, I completely agree with that. But I don't think it looked that terrible. Like, I saw, you know, all of your personas. I mean, I could see it was Joanna, it was Nila, it was Marquez, MKBHD, like...

you could really tell it's them. And if you think about it, that it's replacing the ability to have a front-facing camera, I think it's pretty cool technology.

They've shown that it's going to get better, but the little issue with that is their definition of better seems to be removing sort of that glass box around you to make you look like you're just floating. What I want to see to get better is I want to see it look more realistic. I want to see less of a delay. Well, Joanna's talking. Joanna was showing her hand movements, right? Yeah.

She had to position her hands in a certain way. So I want to see improvements there. But for a beta, it did not look awful. For a $3,500 beta, it looked awful. Okay, all right, okay. But as your starting point, it's not bad. That's a good point. But also, it's very convenient for them to slap the beta term on, right? They obviously slapped the beta term on. They were like...

I just imagine, Mark, you probably have maybe some reporting on this, that internally they were like, we have to ship this. We can't ship this without a way to do a video call. It's not really our standards. Beta it. Right. And they couldn't, to the point about meta, they have another way of doing it, right? They have these Memojis that you can use on an iPhone today. Which are terrible. But if you ship that, you get that, and you get that reaction, and then you get, oh, you're just doing what meta is doing with these avatars with no legs. So let's do these uncanny PS3 characters. At least everyone will talk about them. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. First of all, it looks like you're like an NBA 2K7, right, from 15 years ago, right? Have you ever seen those comparisons about how long LeBron's been in the league? You have his original NBA 2K character then and then what it looks like now on the PS5. That's what I think the transformation is going to end up looking like. Yeah, I agree. But,

I thought I was a little surprised they went with the personas versus the Memojis thing. Like I thought they rolled out Memojis five years ago to get people prepared for this. So I was surprised they shifted from there. The other thing that I know they considered, uh,

is a mirror accessory attachment. You put it on the headset and you have a mirror with a camera. I'm just joking. Anyway, Joanna, you said for your review you wore it for an entire day. Now, again, people will not be doing this, but how do you, because it's meant for a couple hours, right? Working or something or watching a movie or looking at pictures, etc.,

especially the immersion stuff is pretty cool. How do you compare it with other devices you've reviewed? You've tried the Snapchat ones, the Meta Facebook Ray-Bans, obviously the Oculus. How do you compare? Yeah, well, I did a similar video 24 hours in the metaverse where it was the Quest 2. And I did that at that point because everyone was like, what are we going to do in the metaverse? So, okay, I'm going to try all these things in the metaverse.

I think it goes back to you are more grounded in the real world in this. So, sure, it's kind of more similar to a Snapchat spectacles or a Ray-Ban, but not really because, as Nilay points out so clearly in the review, you're looking through a display. You're looking at this display for so many hours that your eyes start to burn. Like, truly, the cucumbers felt so good. Yeah, it's a little bit of a turducken. It's a little bit of a turducken, but go ahead. Yeah, so...

you are more grounded and that makes being in this much easier, right? You can see around your house better and, and you can, you, you can get up and walk around and you're not going to feel you're tripping over something. Obviously the quest has that kind of feature too. They have passed through, they have passed through on the quest three that's been improved, but that quality is like things get warped. It's, it's terrible quality. This is far, far better than that. So just being able to be in your real world is I think the, the difference here, but,

Look, I've tried the magic leap, and that obviously has actual lenses where you're seeing your world, and there's a lot of compromises there. But...

Look, everything's got to compromise right now. Compromise. So, Nilay, what do you think about the idea of wearing it a lot? You don't think people will wear it a lot. I don't. You have to deliver a lot of value to someone to get something on their face. Like, a lot. I don't think that this delivers that much value. There's hints of what might come. Yeah. But you've got to make that form factor look like the thing people will accept. Yeah.

and then deliver a lot of value. And it's nowhere on that curve right now. Just one thing to jump in on here. Sure. I did at the end of the review, look, I went skiing in them because they look like ski goggles. You should go skiing in them, obviously. It's just obvious what you should do with these in the review. But one of the things I wanted to try in that was recording video and photos. Because one thing that has been really successful for Meta are the Ray-Bans. I mean,

I would not say really successful. They haven't sold a massive, you know, comparatively to phones and other types of markets. But people are getting used to wearing these. I take my Meta Ray Bands every time I go skiing with my kids because I don't want to use a phone. Pull out a phone. You don't want to pull out a phone. And I could see Apple being interested one day. I mean, look, I think their goal is glasses. Glasses.

recording in a way which frees you from the iPhone. And talking to you while you're doing it. And what I do now every week is I get an expert for a question. This week is coming from my Pivot co-host, Scott Galloway, who has, let me be clear, not tried it, but has a lot of opinions about it. He sent a video for some unknown reason. He's wearing ski goggles walking around his house. Let's have a listen. Okay, let's give this Apple headset a try. Siri, you porn.

Korean ladyboy, freakishly large hands, wayward hitchhiker, safe word is maybe. Okay. Oh, oh, hey guys. It's Scott Galloway here to ask you a question about the Mixed Reality headset. So my question, Apple has always been successful as the second mouse. It comes into categories that are already established, laptops, MP3 players,

phones, smartphones. It has never been successful, as far as I can tell, in an entirely new hardware. And wasn't this just an ego-driven call option that Tim Cook wanted to make sure when he greenlit this two or three years ago that the Zuck didn't establish a means of distribution and hardware that Apple would then be two or three years behind? And now that this is a giant thud, specifically the category of headsets, isn't this just a more elegant option?

I'd love for each of you to comment on the ego-driven call option and elegant thug. Let's start with you, Mark, and then Joanna and Nilay. Yeah, with all due respect, I don't necessarily completely agree with Scott. I think the iPad was a bit similar in that the idea of tablets was around. People had been toying with tablets. I think Microsoft launched what they called the Slate a few weeks before the iPad was announced. I think the difference is that

People already knew before the iPad came out that they wanted a form factor like a tablet. It was pretty obvious a tablet was something that would become pretty popular and useful in certain markets. And then, you know, lots of people have them now. I think the VR headset market was never really proven yet.

until now. I mean, I saw some data yesterday that only 8 million shipments happened across 2023. You know, Apple sells 8 million iPhones when they first come out. So I certainly think there's some similarities there. It's a small market. I think it's an unproven market. And I think that the VR headset, they haven't changed a ton here. As Nila and Joanna said, it's still a VR headset. Joanna?

I agree with a lot of what Mark said. I think, look, we knew with the phone what it was going to be used for. Literally, phone, texting, email. Those things have been proven by other smartphones. Same with tablets, laptops, watches. Here, and this is how I took this approach of this review. I do not tell anyone to buy this right now. I don't think most people are going to buy this right now. It's an Apple diehard product.

What I did was I put this thing on. Yeah, I tried to wear it for 24 hours. That was the shtick of the video. And I will say I'm still a little bit in pain. No one's going to wear it for 24 hours, just for clarity. But here's the reason I did that. Well, maybe a couple of people we know, but go ahead. The reason I did that was, and one of the reasons I actually like doing that for my testing, is to figure out where you're going to use this in your daily life.

And it was still unclear to me after a lot of that time where someone is going to wear this in their daily life. Right now, by the way, it's way too big. It's way too bulky. The battery life sucks. You're not going to wear it in all of these parts of your daily life. It's two and a half hours, right? Is that correct? Yeah, two to three hours. Unless you're plugged in all the time, but go ahead. Oh, yeah. In my video, I was plugged in like all day. Like I was literally attached to the wall. But I tried all these things. Working. It's pretty cool and working. But as Nila and I have been discussing, we have pretty good work setups at home.

Is it great for watching TV? Absolutely. But when I started to really push the thing, and my cooking scene in the video has kind of gone viral here on this, that's when you start to see what the potential of this thing could be. And that's what the unknown is right now of this kind of form factor is,

We don't know. We just don't know. Right, right. And in a lot of ways, let me interrupt. We didn't know. If you started doing the iPhone, you wouldn't know that Uber was coming. You just don't know what's going to happen here in a lot of ways, correct? That's how I feel. And I really feel like I had this wow moment when cooking when I said, wow, there's a really cool way of putting the digital information in my real world.

There are going to be more of those examples. But right now, and Nilay did an incredible job pointing out all of the compromises in his review, there are just too many compromises. And that's for tech people. Look at all of us. We are tech people. We are not normal people. Yes, well, I am, but go ahead. Nilay, let's talk about that. Talk about the compromises and this idea of

spatial computing. Yeah. So the cooking demo, right? Joanna put a timer over a pot and then put a different timer over another pot and she'd effectively labeled the timers. It was very cool. That's the thing you want. The compromises are insane to get there. You have to perceive reality all the time through screens to do that right now. Right. You shouldn't do that. So I know, like I can look at this thing and say, this isn't it.

And do you know who agrees with me to Scott's question about Tim Cook? Tim Cook agrees with me. Tell us, tell me why. He has been saying this since 2013. I have all these quotes in my review. Tim Cook in 2016. Few people are going to view that it's acceptable to be enclosed in something. Tim Cook 2017. Virtual reality closes the world out. AR allows individuals to be present in the world. 2017. I also like the fact that AR doesn't isolate. I've never been a fan of VR because I think it does the opposite. Right. The technology to build what they want.

Glasses. That's what they want. That's where they're going. They can't build it. It doesn't exist. So they had to build this VR headset and build like a simulation of what it might be like. And that is going to totally close this market down until they can build the technology that enables the product that everybody actually wants. You talked about the tradeoffs. Give us your top three tradeoffs. I think that when you are looking at the world, you should be able to see more than 49% of the colors your eyes can see.

Okay. That's just like a huge philosophical trade-off for me. It's like you have to look at the world through screens. It doesn't work as well in a dark room. It gets blurrier. The digital information stays crisp, but the world around you gets blurrier. I'll just say this for Scott. It's controlled by your hands.

Do you want to use a computer that is always watching your hands, Scott Galloway? That's a fair question for Scott Galloway. The big question, who's going to buy the device? It's $3,500. Now, a screen, if you replace your screen with it, a screen costs that. A very good screen does. Apple says it's focused on integration into work life.

Mark, you've reported on this. They're talking about aviation surgery teaching. Where do you see the product being used and useful? And is the price point problematic? Quest Pro, which you're talking about, is selling for under $1,000. It used to be higher, but it's the high end. A lot of VR coming out of China and everywhere else is under $500.

Talk about the business part of this and the price. You know, it's funny because the use cases that they're now trying to pitch for the headset are the same exact use cases that HoloLens, Magic Leap, everyone else has been talking about for five years that went absolutely nowhere. Have you ever seen before taking off on an airplane a technician wearing a headset? Have you ever seen a doctor performing surgery wearing a HoloLens, right? Like none of these use cases have taken off.

Not yet. No, I'm going to put – because there's a lot of stuff. I'm old enough to remember the Newton, right? Not yet, but go ahead. Go ahead. Right. $3,500, I think, is an extremely –

It's a difficult price point to swallow, right? I mean, you get the topped out model, you're talking over $4,000. They are charging $200 for every accessory. So I think it's completely unappealing. If you want to get your glasses in there, your prescription. It's completely unappealing to the mass consumer. For someone like me, who's a mix of an Apple diehard, a tech fan, and someone who covers the company, it's something you have to get. And I'll

I'm looking forward to really diving deep into the device. I believe...

In this spatial computing category, I want to be able to use a device like this all day instead of a laptop, believe it or not. And it was disappointing. I'm sure it was disappointing, you know, to hear how heavy this thing is, how difficult it would to be able to be used, you know, all day, every day. To me, this seems like something that can only be used in short stints. And I think that we should have known this

in June when Apple did the original demos with the press.

And it was capped exactly at 30 minutes. And you listen to people who've used it over the last six months, and there's a reason for that. You kind of want to take it off after 30 minutes. The recent demos are longer. The recent demos are an hour at least or something like that. By the way, I just want to say one thing. I love working in this thing. Not at my desk, but today I have to go work at my mom's house, and I don't have an extra monitor there. I have to do a bunch of work. I'm going to bring this thing, and I'm going to –

I'm going to say get more work done. I always get a lot of work done. But I think it's going to be a more comfortable experience. Like I'm not going to have to run around finding a dongle to hook up to my dad's 1995 monitor. Right? Like I'm going to have that. Dell? Is it a Dell? It's definitely a Dell.

It's definitely a doubt. Like a real old doubt. Yeah, you know. You've been to your parents' house. This is what it looks like. My mom doesn't even have that. Yeah, yeah. So one of the things was, you're right, for work thing, that's where I see the applications. Besides, I happen to like immersive, the immersive videos a lot. I like them on rides when I go to Disneyland or Universal, too. I like the immersiveness of some of the stuff, which is really remarkable, actually.

One of the things I was thinking about was – I dragged the new head of CNN there because I wanted him to see it – is because you tape these things for people who don't know. If you have an iPhone 15, it has spatial video in it. So you could load it up to this thing and people could see it and you do feel like you're in it. You really – it's a very different experience.

You could, you know, war correspondent. You could see news being done that way. I just kept seeing all kinds of little things. I didn't focus on surgery or things like that. I was like, boy, people could feel like they're really in it. I don't know. But here's the thing.

It's so lonely. Well, we'll get to that. We're going to get to lonely in a minute. What I felt was super bittersweet watching videos of my daughter in this thing that I take. I took a bunch of videos at Christmas because I knew I was going to eventually have to review this thing. And I'm sitting there reliving my daughter, opening her presents and playing with the family. And I'm like, I'm –

This feels like I'm dying. Oh, well. Right? Like I'm just like reliving all these moments. Sorry to give you that news, but you are dying. Everybody is. But go ahead. Sorry. That's true. That's very charismatic. Life is fatal. It's very on brand. Something about that that's like you're going to be alone having like truly emotional experiences that I think connects to the next thing, which is you can work in it.

but no one else can see what you're doing. You can work in it, but you can't really have a conversation with someone else about what you're doing. So like two people wearing two Vision Pros can't look at the same window. All these enterprise applications that Mark was talking about, and by the way, it's for the enterprise, is like the dying sound of a headset maker.

Like, that's what you say before you die. And they've done it before it even has come out. Yeah. Right, right. So let me push back on— Wait, they don't exist because it can't actually—it can't do that thing. It cannot work together. It can't recognize the plane. Two things. But you can't see a plane and, like, label the parts. That's correct. Like, that thing doesn't exist yet. That doesn't exist yet. But it will. It will. And the idea of two people wearing Vision Pros being able to interact with each other in certain ways, I mean—

But not today for $3,500. Let me push back on Neelight. Everyone's staring at their phones and their Apple Macs does not – feels just as dystopian. No, no, because I'm sure you have this experience all the time. My daughter plays Minecraft on her iPad. She's in there. I don't know what she's doing. But she's constantly being like, look at the thing I made and showing it to me.

And if she was having that experience in a headset, she couldn't just do that. What I did find dystopian and weird is like one of their first demo videos at WWDC was the father wearing the headset to a party to record his daughter blowing out her cake or hitting the pinata or whatnot. That's not going to happen again.

Perhaps the reason they had to do that was because they didn't want to reveal that iPhone 15 Pro functionality early, right? The real use case is recording it on your phone, and it's a bit of a gimmick to have it on the headset. I mean, people would complain if the headset didn't have that ability, right? But I think no one should use that feature. Maybe if you're working and you see something and you want to turn really quick. People are working alone.

at home. Another thing, people are working at home alone. So it's not... This thing is going to be a lot of people's best TV that they own. And the fact that you can't just like watch a movie together without sitting next to each other and wearing headsets is like... I don't do that. I watch a lot of stuff alone now, which is interesting. Can I just say a positive thing on this facial video? So...

I also have been taking spatial video of my kids last couple months. For the video review, I retreated to a Poconos cabin. I did not see my kids for 24 hours. I really enjoyed watching the video of them. I wasn't there with them, right? I don't think I will feel right watching a video of them in their room. But I was gone 24 hours, work trip. I really like the sort of immersive way of watching that memory.

Was your partner sending you videos? Were you like getting them from somewhere else or you were just like re-watching? No, those were re-watching from like, you know, filming them. We went to an alpaca farm. This is the best version of this thing that has ever been made. It is closer. It is closer to what everybody wants. I just, the caution I'm making, I don't, I think this thing is really fun. I've had a lot of fun using it. The people that I made our review video with, they were, kept reminding me like, it's fun. Like get out of your critical reviewer zone. People are having, we're having a good time.

Great. It's really fun. I'm just, what I keep coming back to you is this product is not actually the next product. Okay. All right. Well, let's talk about that business. Mark, as you said, the sales of VR, AR headsets plummeted in 2023, meta slash thousands of jobs in the metaverse, reality labs last year. Mark, you've been reporting on this market. Where is it headed? It needs something, you know, earphones didn't take off until the AirPods, right? A lot of people worried about that product. Watch, the same thing as you noted. Yeah.

It was very slow, and people were worried about it. Where's your take? Yeah, I think this is going to be great for meta, right? People are going to see this $3,500 Halo product, and they're going to say, you know, I don't want to drop that much cash on this. I'm going to buy the $500 MetaQuest instead and check it out. So I think it's going to be great for meta. I think it's going to be fantastic for products like, Joanne, I mentioned, like the Ray-Ban Stories and the Amazon Glasses, right? This idea of...

wearing something, I think it could be great for wireless earbuds like AirPods and the Samsung Buds. I think this idea of head-worn devices, I think it's going to be great for that. I disagree that Neil said they're getting closer. I don't think they're getting closer. I think they're getting further away. They're doubling and tripling and dribbling down on the idea of virtual reality. It's a fake AR headset.

right? It's a VR headset. Explain that. Well, it's an AR headset has, you know, clear lenses. It has wave guides. You're actually seeing what's in front of you. And the digital content is overlaid similar to what Google glass did. Uh, but all they've done is they've taken a VR headset, not all they've done, but what they've essentially done is taken a VR headset and they put, uh,

they put cameras there to give you video pass-through, right? The real deal is when they have Ray-Ban style weighted glasses with displays that could essentially do 75% of what the Vision Pro does, but

but with the weight of real glasses. That's the magical product. And that's five to ten years away at this point. People were wrong back then. You look hot, Cara. Thank you. I'm wearing the Google Glass that I got from 100 years ago. I'm going to keep it on the whole time now. Joanna, talk about that, and then I want to get into some other Apple stuff, but the idea of where it's going. Yeah.

These things might disappear, but right now, technically, they cannot do it. Explain why they technically cannot give you this much fidelity. The immersiveness is amazing. It just really is. I love it. It's the best. It feels like you're in one of those rides.

What is the problem to get to something like not necessarily this one? I mean, it's exactly as Mark and Neelai have been saying, right? Look, there's two ends of the spectrum right now. There's at the bottom end, the Ray-Ban glasses with cameras and microphones and some small chips that can do some processing that connect to your phone. At the high end, we've got VR headsets that can do a lot more powerful things, and that's what we want the future to be.

Apple had to make a decision. They can't make the small dream right now on the bottom end of that with all the power and all the capabilities that we want in that form factor. So they went the top end. They went, hey, let's throw everything into this and try to make the experience the best experience we can today. And that's what we have now, $3,500. One thing I do want to bring up that I do think, like, you know, we've been talking about this market before and your question to Mark

I would not underestimate the power of the Apple ecosystem here. We all, many people, not we, but have tons of Apple products. We live in iMessage. We live in all of the other, the Mac and AirPods and all these things connect. Meta can't do that. No other company can really do that. Google eventually maybe.

definitely not Microsoft. And putting all those things together, like my wife said to me, what else, what is there working out in there? Is it connected with my watch? I said, not right now, but definitely one day. Yeah. Right? Soon. We'll be back in a minute.

Let me talk about the larger ecosystem, this huge ecosystem, and it's under fire a bit. Apple's boosted its revenue by getting a cut from third-party software in the App Store. Some big players said they're holding off of launching apps on the Vision Pro. Spotify's not in there. Netflix is not in there. Mark, first talk about that, is what happened here and why these developers are not rushing.

What was so interesting about the Spotify, Netflix and YouTube situation is they've bypassed the ability to even run the iPad versions on the Vision Pro. So they're not making sort of native new Vision Pro apps, but they're also actively, as a developer, you have to actively tell Apple you don't want your iPad app to run on the device. And that's what Netflix, YouTube and Spotify have done. Three of the biggest streaming services in the world. And this is for a device that's being positioned and best used as an entertainment product.

So it is a bit of a blow to the Vision Pro. I think at some point, YouTube will get an app on there. I think perhaps enough Netflix customers will complain on Twitter and what have you that they don't want to keep subscribing to Netflix without a Vision Pro app. So eventually, they'll give in. I think Spotify hates Apple almost more than any other developer in the entire world. So perhaps Spotify never gets there. But certainly, I think that there are...

of developers that are so angry and fed up with Apple that they're taking out their anger by saying, we're not going to come to this platform because they realize they don't have much to lose. You could be angrier with Apple than you've ever...

than you've ever been with anyone in your whole life and still need to get an app on the iPhone or your business is going to fold. But for a device that's going to sell fewer than half a million units or around half a million units in the first calendar year, if you're not on there, especially after Apple's commissions, you're not losing much. You're not losing much. Spotify, for people who don't know, is behind the EU suit to get them to open up a walled garden for the app. Now, Apple is being forced to open its doors of this walled garden. Neelay, can you talk about what's happened recently

It's about to happen in the U.S. and in the E.U. with the App Store and how it could impact Apple's bottom line. Just for people who don't know, worldwide App Store sales are estimated to be about $24 billion a year. Well, let's start with the E.U. because that's where things are actually happening. In the U.S., we're bad at this. But in the E.U., they're doing stuff like the Digital Markets Act passed. Apple has been declared a gatekeeper platform with the App Store and particularly on the iPhone, so not on the iPad or any of its other platforms.

So they're required to let other app marketplaces show up, sell apps. What they have done in their first proposal is make the commercial terms of doing that so draconian that it makes no sense. Right. Right. So they have something called the core technology fee where you have to pay 50 cents per download for every app that you distribute outside the store if you have over a million users, which just makes Spotify impossible to run.

run. Spotify leaves the app store. They will just face enormous additional costs in a way that you don't face any costs on a Mac or a PC just to distribute their software to people. So I think what's going to happen to the EU is Spotify is going to make a lot of noise saying this is a total bad faith compliance to these rules. They call it malicious compliance.

And they're going to continue to fight that out. What's going to happen in the US with the Vision Pro is that the thing that sells VR headsets is video games. Yes. We've been doing this for a decade. And they're in a fight with Epic, which makes Unreal Engine, which is the biggest game engine, are out.

And I don't know if Epic's ever going to bring... They're the maker of Fortnite for people, for regular people. They also make Fortnite. One of the biggest games on the Quest is called Population 1. It is just a VR clone of Fortnite. This is a real problem for them. The thing that sells the most Quest units to not kids is Supernatural, which is a fitness video game, and Beat Saber, which is a fitness video game. The meta went and bought Supernatural. Supernatural's user base is 50-50 men and women, and it's 60% over 40.

So if you're trying to mainstream a product, you need an app like that that goes and gets mainstream users. Right, you need an app. Meta went and bought Supernatural. The FTC tried to stop them, right? They said, no, no, no, this is a killer app. We want this app to be everywhere so it drives the whole market. But because the Vision Pro didn't exist...

the FCC lost. Because there's, what market are you monopolizing? We need to talk more about the gaming story on the Vision Pro. But I'm just saying, like, Apple doesn't have those either because the developers are pissed at them or because Meta was smart and bought them all before Apple had a headset app.

So they're in a really hard place. Go ahead, Mark, to briefly talk about the game. I don't agree. I think that these VR game developers, they really want hand controllers. It's very difficult. That's the other part, yeah. For people who join... Let me just join. Explain how you control this thing. Yes, they're...

I made a clear point of this in my review. You do not pick up clunky controllers and put them in your hands. You just use your hands. You can, though, right? They had a controller when I was young. You can pair like a Bluetooth Xbox controller or any third-party Bluetooth controller and play games. But there's no two-hand controllers for navigating around. So a lot of the, you know, sort of the beat saber. Explain what you do very briefly. You just...

You scan your hands, and that's it. Your hands are the controllers. They're your mouse. They're the way you get around. And so you just look at whatever you want, and then you pinch. You pinch, or you can scroll around. You can also tap. You can reach out and tap stuff. It's your eye and your hands and possibly your voice sometimes. Yeah.

Yeah, I don't use my voice that much.

uh, gaming hand controllers or developers for games are not going to come on board. You need Metal Gear Solid on this thing. You need something like Supernatural on this thing. Uh, you want it to compete with the PSVR. You want it to compete with gaming on gaming consoles. If you really want it to take off these Apple arcade games, the blown up phone games, blown up iPad games, this is not going to get it done. Uh,

They are going to be in deep trouble if they don't fix the gaming situation on this product. Because, Kara, as you said a hundred times, the most impressive thing about this device is its immersiveness. You want a game in a Vision Pro. You do. It's not going to happen until this gets sorted out. You were able to use one of the controllers in the thing. Those were light games. I'm talking about real-time.

Yes. The real deal AAA games. This was Super Mario. Yeah, but you're right. That needs to get resolved. With devices. With devices just being held back. Yeah. But we keep talking about Supernatural, but, I mean, they could just build their own. I mean, they've had a whole Apple Fitness...

ecosystem. They're working on Fitness Plus. They are working on Fitness Plus for the Vision Pro. But Apple tried, the reason Meta rushed ahead into buying Supernatural is because Apple was going to buy it. Right, right, right. Okay. So another potential pitfall in this headseat could be privacy. Mark, do you know what's happening to the data that's being collected? And also, if you're in the wild, uh,

People have been talking about this. You collect data on other people, too. And I know it shows when you're taking a picture and things like that, so people can sort of see you do it. But what is the worry there? You know, I haven't gone through the operating system personally, like ripped apart the code to see what's actually happening. So I can just tell you what they've said, right? They've said that they're not doing data collection. Everything is stored on the device itself. But obviously, consumers are worried about that.

You know, Apple said in their keynote that, you know, where you look is very private. What you're doing with your hands is very private. And I think that would be something they wouldn't want to deal with leaking in a data breach or anything like that. So I think, you know,

I know privacy is important, but they also are doing this to protect themselves, right? A data breach can destroy a company. So the less data that they collect, the less risks they have for the biggest, you know, marketing issue in their history. But by nature of this thing, if you're out in the wild, you're collecting data, correct, Nilay? Yeah, in the sense that you have a bunch of cameras and sensors bringing data onto the device. I think the worry is always...

Is that data going out to a cloud where someone else can take it? And, you know, Apple is historically very good about doing all that processing locally. I don't know. I think this is a real question for devices like this. Like, you ask most people, like, would you allow there to be a camera in your bathroom? And they're like, no. And they're like, do you ever take your phone to the bathroom? And it's like, you took five cameras to the bathroom. Right. Right. And so there's a real gap between where people perceive the problems and where the problems actually are.

I've got a bunch of cameras on my face. Feels like Apple has a lot of communicating to do about how safe that data is. But I don't think we actually know. Joanna, had you thought about that? I had thought about it. I mean, I especially thought about it sort of with these processes where you're scanning your face and they're very clear that that's all happening on the device, which is really amazing. But you are giving all of this data about your face. You're turning your face. You're moving. You're doing all of this stuff to create a clone of yourself.

I don't want that. As much as my clone does not look like me, one day it may actually look like me. And I would like that not to be on Apple or any some other company's servers. I've actually done this. I did a piece where I did an AI clone of myself. And the company, you know, has a lot of stuff in their privacy policy that they have access to this. And what if that were to get in the wrong hands? And somebody, I would, you know, be the deep fake that says, you know...

Everyone should go buy the Vision Pro. I wouldn't want that. So that was one place I definitely was thinking about it during the review. The hand thing. The hand things too. You know, in Amazon, if you go into Whole Foods now, they want to have your palm read so you could buy stuff. And I was like, no fucking way. But then I let Apple...

Scan my hands. Yeah. Right? I didn't feel quite as bad with Apple doing it, but then I probably should. Because obviously on the Amazon one, that handprint can work in any store, right? So obviously that's being cloud stored, whereas on the Apple one, it's only on your device. No, I got it. I got it. I thought someone was going to toll me around dead like I'm Weekend at Bernie's and buy things. I've got to fix it.

Cut off my hand. Whatever. Whole wheat bread. Whole wheat bread. I need to stay here. Whole foods is very expensive. It's so expensive. All right. Okay. I have a couple more questions about where Apple hasn't been involved is AI, although they are in AI, obviously. That's where Meta is allegedly going to be putting more money instead of the Metaverse. Obviously, Microsoft, Amazon, Google are already big in the race. Some people say Apple is falling behind. Others say it's a dark horse.

Each of you, I want to know what you think about Apple's AI future here. Falling behind, Dark Horse, something in between. Mark, you first, then Joanna, then Neelai. This is not the year of the Vision Pro. This is the year of generative AI at Apple. This is all about WWDC in June and September when the iPhone 16 comes out, adding AI to every app you can imagine, AI-generated music playlists.

keynote, you being able to type in some information and build a presentation for you. So I think that's the big initiative from Apple. I definitely think that they are two years behind the competition, but I think their implementation that you're going to see in iOS is going to take generative AI mainstream. And so I think they're even more than a dark horse. I think they're going to be hugely successful in consumer implementations for generative AI and

I think it's going to look very similar to what Samsung rolled out for the S24 in January. AI everywhere throughout the device. Yeah, that's exactly what I was going to say. They have to do it. They absolutely have to do it. I find myself constantly tapping over to the ChatGPT app when I could easily do some of that stuff within the apps I'm in. And to Mark's point, I've been playing around with the Galaxy S24. What they've done there is integrate a lot of the Google AI and their own

right through the operating system. So in the Notes app, you can summarize your notes. In the text messaging app, you can have it rewrite your messages, which seems a little bit ridiculous to me. They've done that throughout the operating system, and Apple, it just seems they have to do it. I'll even say in the Vision Pro version,

There is no chat GPT app. They don't have an iPad app, so you can't do that. Maybe they're working on one. I think actually also another thing that, Mark, I don't know if you have reporting on this, but I just think they should be looking to team up with OpenAI to do some sort of integration. But of course, the Microsoft stuff there might make some waves. I don't think they will. They test their GPT technology against OpenAI for comparison reasons.

I would be surprised if they partner with OpenAI in any way. I think they're going at it alone. You know, the interesting thing about the AI initiative at Apple is that it's being primarily run in terms of this Gen AI initiative by Apple's iOS teams, right? You have Craig Federighi and his top lieutenant. His name is Sebastian Maranow-Mess. You know, those are the guys running the AI implementation this year, whereas Apple's

Their head of AI, John Gianandrea, he's working on more future stuff. Obviously, he's heavily involved, but this is really an iOS project. Yeah. Well, at least the Siri team is hopefully not working on it. So, Eli, your thoughts on AI? To Mark's point, you understand why it's an iOS because AI is ready to become consumer products now in a way that it just hasn't been ready for a long time.

And this is a case where Apple does wait and get it just right. Right. You look at the AI products that exist right now. They're a canon of C-plus content. And social media does a really good job of filtering out the A-plus content and showing it to you.

But day to day, it's like a bunch of C+. And I think Apple needs to consistently deliver A+, to win, and I think that's what they want to do. And then to what Joanna was saying, what they've delivered in the past is Siri. So there's a real gap between what people expect Apple's sort of assistant-like products to do and what they can do.

and where Apple's bar for what they should do will be. And I think that is why this is the year of AI for them. Yeah. Siri's dead. She just needs to lie down. Let me just finish up talking about its future. I'm going to ask one question about succession. But first, what's the biggest risk each of you in a very short thought? What's their biggest challenge? Mark, you start short, and then Joanna and Nilay.

Apple's biggest risk is missing on the next big category, another company winning on that category, Amazon, Google Meta, and then people leaving the Apple ecosystem to whatever new ecosystem is built around that next category. Any idea what that is?

Oh, I think it's automotive for sure. I think if Apple misses out on the car and then Waymo and Google's efforts or Amazon and Zooks efforts gets consumerized, people jump into the Amazon or Google ecosystems. And I think that would be very, very bad news for Apple. So I think even though the car would probably be a money loser or contribute very little in terms of profitability, I think it's something they'll have to do. And so I think missing on that

would be a big long-term risk. One of their executives just left and went to Rivian. Nila, you go next, actually.

Yeah, I'm not so worried about that. Have you seen Google and how it operates and its ability to execute? Yeah. They're not worried about that. I think their biggest risk is a combination of regulatory and hubris. They're not going to sell more iPhones. They've sold all the iPhones that they're going to sell, and they're just going to turn them over into upgrade cycles now. So those sales are flatlined. And they're making all of their money charging a tax on every button you push on your phone. They've turned your phone into a shopping mall.

And if regulatory decisions across the world break open their ability to collect that tax or their own hubris pushes developers away or to the web, then

Something really bad happens to the financials of the company that doesn't let it go innovate and make the next platform. Now, they've got a lot of cash in the bank. Tim Cook is an excellent operator of this company. I don't think he's going to stumble into that risk. But the financial engine of the company is under attack right now because it's not selling more stuff. It's collecting more rent from the users. And I think that's a real problem. That's a good point. Joanna? Yeah.

I think it's a combination of both of those things, which is that to create those next big categories that Mark was talking about, they have to have the trust of the users and their developer ecosystem. That is the only way they continue to make home-run products. And so if they can't do the innovation on one end and then also bring along the developer community and the consumers who have been buying their devices for so many years...

Then what happens? All right. In a podcast interview with Dua Lipa, he's not talking to us. He's talking to Dua Lipa. Tim Cook talked about Apple's succession plan. It was actually a good question by Dua Lipa. He said the person would come from within Apple and they're preparing several people. There's been speculation it could be Craig Federici, as you know.

You just mentioned Mark, who's running iOS, and he's been running the AI stuff. It could be Greg Joswiak, who's head of worldwide marketing. COO Jeff Williams is another option on the table. Tim Cook was COO under Jobs. Tim Cook looks great, but there is the next person, and he's done an astonishing job 10x-ing the value of this company since Steve Jobs died. Each of you.

Let's start with you, Mark, and then Joanna, and then Nilay. What is the succession of Sam Cooke? Not to push him out the door today, but... No, no, not to push him out the door. You know, if you asked me this question two years ago, I probably would have said he was going to retire sooner rather than later. But at this point, I think he's probably going to remain at Apple closer to the end of the decade.

I think I have a pretty good idea of who the successor is going to be. It's not someone that you mentioned. Obviously, Jeff Williams. No, that's not going to happen on this podcast. But Jeff Williams has been a shoo-in for quite a while. He's Tim Cook's Tim Cook. He is now in charge of the design team. He's in charge of health. He's in charge of the car. He's in charge of pretty much all the big stuff here.

He also has the Wall Street credibility, and he has sort of that global stage. But you're saying it's not someone we mentioned, so it's not that person. Credibility, yeah. I don't think it's going to be Jeff unless something happens to Tim or Tim unexpectedly steps down in the next, you know, few years. I don't think Jeff is the long-term candidate.

successor. If he becomes CEO, he's not going to be in the role more than three to five years. So I think that Apple and the board is going to try to think a little bit broader. All right. Mystery. And I'm sure Jeff is also like the same age as Tim. That's two years younger. And so that

creates an issue there as well. They have a pretty deep bench. You know, there's been a lot of talk about Deirdre O'Brien, who's held so many roles over, you know, three decades at the company, head of retail, you know, so she's another good option as well. But I think Apple's probably going to go in a different direction. All right. Neil, I? I'm in for Greg Jostrak. I just like Jostrak.

That's it. Okay. You just pick him? Okay. He's my buddy. I'm rooting for Jaws. All right. Okay. Neal is hoping so he can get some great interviews. That's all I want. Come on. What do I do here? I don't think he's your buddy anymore after your review, Neal. Yeah. I don't think Jaws is my friend anymore. But that's what I'm rooting for.

Okay. In fact, I think they're going to be replacing your slot with me for the Vision Pro 2 review. No, I don't think so. Joanna? Joanna? I'll go with Craig. I love his hair. I think it's a nice image. Oh, all right. You guys are such...

All right. I don't know if I have a better thing, but I will say, Cara, wasn't it on your podcast two years ago that Tim told you he wouldn't be – he was basically within the decade, right? Yes, he did. He didn't get another 10 years. Yes, he did. So time's coming up. Yeah, it is. Here's what I will say. If you touch that car –

you're doomed. What do you mean? If you touch the car project at Apple, that is the kiss of death. The kiss of death. You mean you're not going to be in the succession plan? Not going to succeed. Yeah. All it is is you're blowing money and failing. Yeah, that's true. That's what you're doing. I think it's a persona version of Steve Jobs. Anyway, and they've got to get the hair right because he had terrific hair. So, final question. Tim Cook has come out of the huge shadow of legendary Steve Jobs. Yeah.

What do you think Steve Jobs would think of this Vision Pro in this direction? Let's start with Mark and then Joanna and then Nilay. I think that he would believe that it is an over-engineered product, that Apple took too long developing without a particular focus.

I think he would think it's a bit all over the place. And they, you know, waited too long to bring something to market. I think you're 100% right. I think he would think it's very cool, but I'm not sure it's a product that would ship under his watch. I think it would either have waited until the glasses form factor was ready or was a little bit less over-engineered. Yeah, he would not...

I think it's a terrific product, but I agree with you. I think it's got too many bells and whistles on it. And he didn't like that. He definitely didn't like that. Joanna? Yeah.

It's funny. There's a lot of times where I'm wearing the headset, and if you don't wear it the right way, it stops tracking your eyes and your hands. And I kept wanting to lead the review with, you're wearing it wrong, which I realized was going to be too inside baseball and wasn't going to fly with my audience. But, right, you were holding it wrong with the iPhone 4, right, when they had the antenna issues. And I think just thinking about that, I'm not sure Steve Jobs would have allowed these sort of small bugs to be there. I agree. Yeah.

They go away. You can make them go away. But that's a user thing. I kept thinking about Walt when I was reviewing because I was thinking maybe it's me. Maybe it's me. And, of course, it's never the consumer. It's never you. It's actually the tech. Well, that's not true. It's sometimes my mother with her iPhone. It's always my mother. Right. And my dad with his Dell, for sure. So I think that's where I think he might have – maybe things would have been a little bit better. Yeah.

Yeah, little glitches. You never see them in Apple because they're so A+, as I think Nilay said. Nilay? I think he would have looked at that doofy external battery pack and fired everybody in the elevator. Oh. Okay. Oof. Just be honest. You're not wrong. You're not wrong. You're not wrong.

He would have said Apple did it dirty. Did it dirty. All right. I think I agree with all of you. I'll never forget when he came out after they introduced Ping, if you remember their social network service.

And he came over to me because Walt wasn't there because he never spoke to me if Walt was around. And he said, what do you think? I said, I think it sucks. And he goes, it sucks. So he knew it and they killed it pretty quickly. But yeah, thank you guys so much. This was so full of really important information for people. Everyone will see where it goes. It's going on sale. We'll see how it goes. But as they all say, this is just the first step.

in what is going to be a long line of immersive technology. And I think that is, this seems like the beginning of that, even though it's been going on for 30 years. Thank you so much, Neelay, Mark, and Joanna. I appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks.

On with Kara Swisher is produced by Naeem Araza, Christian Castro-Rosal, Kateri Yochum, Megan Cunane, and Megan Burney. Special thanks to Mary Mathis, Kate Gallagher, and Andrea Lopez-Grusado. Our engineers are Fernando Arruda and Rick Kwan, and our theme music is by Trackademics. If you're already following the show, you get a tricked-out vision pro. If not, you get Scott Galloway's used ski glasses. Go wherever you listen to podcasts, search for On with Kara Swisher, and hit follow.

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