Comment by jarjoura
3 years ago
Oculus is accessible by targeting itself as a fun gadget. You buy it to play immersive games when you're at home alone, bored. It's also affordable and that is extremely important. You won't feel nearly as bad dropping a wad of cash on this if it turns out to be a dud.
Apple's product, on the other hand, is extremely wonky. Who is this thing actually for? Based on the demos, it just looks like a second screen for my phone. It's also outrageously expensive. So Apple is asking me to seriously buy into the ecosystem and have confidence that this will be an important device in my collection.
I don't know, to me this isn't like any previous Apple take on a well defined market. In fact, this is Apple's take on a very undefined market with an unknown trajectory. It kind of feels more like when Apple went off the beaten path and added a touch bar to the MacBook Pro. It was an interesting idea and a lot of very long man hours went into making it work, but at what cost? In the end, it turns out, people just wanted simple tactile keys.
>Apple's product, on the other hand, is extremely wonky. Who is this thing actually for? Based on the demos, it just looks like a second screen for my phone. It's also outrageously expensive. So Apple is asking me to seriously buy into the ecosystem and have confidence that this will be an important device in my collection.
that's actually the playbook for new product launches for Apple. That was the same issue with Apple watch - they had no idea who it was for when they launched the first generation. It was just a watch with a screen that told time and gave you notifications. Then, they realized people loved using it for tracking health, and each generation they keep coming up with more and more ways to use it as an all-around health tracker. Now, Apple watch is as ubiquitous on people's wrists as iPhones are in people's hands
How so? The Watch was launched as a FitBit killer at the 1.0 keynote. There was a small segment from Jony Ives touting a ridiculously priced gold variant which was a complete mis-read of the market. I could see how Apple was nervous that their core audience was fashion conscious and smart watches were the domain of the biggest nerds out there.
However, point still stands, they knew they wanted an iPod shuffle with health and personal safety device at launch. They even went all out with a Nike partnership to help promote it.
I hate the touch bar. I want my function keys back.