Helpful to keep in mind amidst the Apple Vision Pro hot takes
Via Daring Fireball, Do Wall Street Journal Reporters Read The Wall Street Journal?
The pattern for Apple’s entries into new product categories generally goes like this:
- Apple releases the first version. It’s expensive. It’s missing a few obvious features. It has a few obvious limitations. But it’s a breakthrough.
- Early adopters wait in line outside Apple Stores overnight to buy it. Online sales are backordered by weeks or even months soon after they launch.
- That early fervor aside, it’s an early adopter product, and sales are less than those of Apple’s established products.
- After a few months or maybe a year, the immediate-gratification-obsessed business press runs articles declaring the product a dud.
- Apple releases a second-gen version that’s better. Sales go up. Word continues to spread.
- With each successive year, Apple releases improved models. Those obvious missing features are added. The obvious limitations are removed. Older models stay on sale at lower price points. It becomes a hit product.
- Years later, when Apple is poised to release another altogether new product, the last one — the one written off as a dud after its first year — is held up as a product that was universally hailed as a sensation and smash hit from day one.
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