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Hello and welcome to a

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free preview of sharp tech.

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We're going to start with

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Jake who writes, In light

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of Friday's news from Mark

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German, I guess Ben was

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right in his interview with

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Hugo Barra last year. Apple

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wasn't willing to risk

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compromising the iPhone to

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make tethered AR glasses work.

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And I suppose it makes sense,

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but between this, the cancellation of

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the Apple Car Project and lagging

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behind an AI, I can't help

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but feel like Apple stagnating innovation,

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other than the fantastic M-series chips,

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of course, he puts in

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parentheses, is going to catch up to

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them over the next 10 to 15 years. I

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know I'm saying this in the wake

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of record earnings, but am I missing

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something? Do they have anything cool on

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the horizon? Or are they cementing themselves

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as a legacy player as the next

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paradigms of computing really come to bear?

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I'd love a quick take on this.

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So for people who aren't familiar,

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I'm going to read the news

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brief from German at Bloomberg on

1:06

Friday afternoon. just want to compliment

1:08

you for being familiar given that

1:11

this is news that's right down

1:13

over the weekend so I died

1:15

just in it Friday five o'clock

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you know you're an accomplished multitasker

1:19

yes happy hour for some people

1:21

but I was still grinding he

1:23

wrote on Friday Apple has canceled

1:26

a project to build advanced augmented

1:28

reality glasses that would pair with

1:30

its devices marking the latest setback

1:32

in its effort to create a

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headset that appeals to typical consumers

1:36

The company shuttered the program this

1:38

week according to people with knowledge

1:41

of the move. The now canceled product

1:43

would have looked like normal glasses

1:45

but include built-in displays and require

1:47

a connection to a max, said

1:49

the people who asked not to

1:51

be identified because the work wasn't

1:53

public. The project had been seen

1:55

as a potential way forward after the

1:57

week introduction of the Apple Vision Pro.

2:00

$3,499 model that was too cumbersome

2:02

and pricey to catch on with

2:04

consumers. The hope was to produce

2:06

something that everyday users could embrace,

2:08

but finding the right technology at

2:10

the right cost has proven to

2:12

be a challenge. So Ben, can

2:14

you refresh people on the back

2:16

and forth you had with Hugo

2:18

last year as to what Apple's

2:21

considerations might be as they decide

2:23

whether they want to enter this

2:25

smart glasses space going forward? Yeah,

2:27

it's interesting because there was actually

2:29

quite a few interesting bits of

2:31

information in this article. You focused

2:33

on sort of the main part,

2:35

which was... the project as it

2:37

was, was about sort of a

2:39

Mac paired glasses. But what is

2:41

notable, and what I think that,

2:44

you know, Jake is referring to,

2:46

is that these glasses started out

2:48

as an iPhone paired idea, and

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what was the problem they had

2:52

with the iPhone? That it would

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take away too much processing power,

2:56

it'd take away too much battery

2:58

power, there just wasn't sufficient, and

3:00

whereas the Mac would have more

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of a surplus of those things.

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And that is basically, to Jake's.

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you know in our interview at

3:09

last fall very prescient sort of

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take appears to be completely right

3:13

we'll put a link in the

3:15

show notes you can go check

3:17

it out but um so i

3:19

think just to call out that

3:21

it's it makes sense like apple

3:23

has this massive franchise that is

3:25

the iPhone even you know yes

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it's down 1% year over year

3:30

but that still is worth you

3:32

know billions of dollars and and

3:34

tens of millions of millions of

3:36

millions of iPhones they're not going

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to compromise that compromise that for

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a smaller product and that's I

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think that I didn't fully appreciate

3:44

until Hugo brought that up and

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this seems like direct verification of

3:48

that. That said I find this

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very disappointing and the reason I

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find it disappointing is I think

3:55

that what the sense you get

3:58

from this article and again we're

4:00

dealing with telephone tag from Mark

4:02

Herman about a product that never

4:05

watched so it's always sort of

4:07

iffy to read too much into

4:09

these sorts of things but it sort

4:11

of speaks to this this go-big or

4:14

go-home mindset that honestly seems a

4:16

little weird in why the Vision

4:18

Pro but maybe explained some of

4:21

the Vision Pro sort of laxadaisical

4:23

follow-up in my respects over the

4:25

years where Apple is so accustomed

4:27

to and used to shipping things

4:30

at massive volume that it's like,

4:32

well, if it can't be big,

4:34

we're not interested. Why bother? Right.

4:37

Yeah, because to my mind, what's

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kind of bugs me about this

4:41

is that it feels like it

4:43

started out as an iPhone adjacent

4:45

project. It got killed for

4:48

very good reasons, which

4:50

Hugo explained. And then, what were

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the very good reasons that they killed

4:54

it as an iPhone adjacent product? Because

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it would seem to be like a

4:59

natural outgrowth of the iPhone and people

5:01

were talking about maybe meta needs a

5:04

phone. Like technically speaking, what were

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the concerns that Apple had about

5:08

tying this to the iPhone going

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forward? Well, because the idea is you're

5:13

pairing it to it. So you go back

5:15

to the Orion Glasses, it has its own

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sort of brick. And this was sort of

5:19

the context of my conversation with Hugo, which

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is, well, you know, meta is disadvantaged because

5:24

they have to have this brick you carry

5:26

in your pocket. The brick contains all the

5:29

battery, it contains the sort of more powerful

5:31

processor, like there's processors in the lenses, but

5:33

then there's a more powerful one to do

5:35

the actual computing in the brick, and it

5:38

contains the battery. like to do so you

5:40

can have a light thing on your

5:42

head. And so the initial response to

5:44

that is this is great, but are

5:47

you really going to carry a

5:49

phone and a brick? Exactly. Apple

5:51

has a big advantage because you

5:53

already have a phone in your

5:55

pocket. And Hugo's point is that

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the problem is that these devices.

5:59

take a lot of battery and

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they take a lot of processing power.

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And if you're powering it from the

6:06

iPhone, you're making the iPhone. You're screwing

6:08

with the performance of the iPhone and

6:11

that's right. Okay. That's right. And so

6:13

if you want to make a better

6:15

iPhone that can do both, it's going

6:18

to be bigger, it's going to need

6:20

a much larger battery and suddenly you're

6:22

compromising a product that people buy on

6:25

its own. to support a much smaller

6:27

product that only a few people are

6:29

going to buy. So do you have

6:31

like the AR iPhone, that's this big

6:33

bulky thing in your pocket? Like like

6:36

there, it's just a much more challenging

6:38

question than your sort of surface level

6:40

analysis would suggest. And if you look

6:43

in here, like this project, the N107

6:45

device, they say in here, it started

6:47

out with the idea being that it

6:50

paired to the iPhone. And what they

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found is that if you paired to

6:54

the iPhone, It takes too much processing

6:56

power and it takes too much battery

6:58

power. And so the, so the, so

7:00

being right points go to Hugo for

7:02

sure in the wake of last year's

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conversation. Absolutely, yeah, absolutely. And so the,

7:07

what sort of depresses me about this

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article is the way, again, we're depending

7:11

on German sort of framing of what

7:13

happened. And again, there's no one better

7:15

than him. So, so we'll roll with

7:17

it, but it's still an internal decision

7:19

making process, not a public product. that

7:21

carrying out of the way, what you

7:24

get from this is you had a

7:26

team making these glasses, the iPhone team

7:28

is basically like, no, no way, not going

7:30

to happen. And so then they're like

7:32

casting about for a reason to still

7:34

do it, like, what if we did it

7:36

with the MAC, right? And then, you know,

7:39

I don't know what the, why it got

7:41

killed then, maybe it's some aspect of, well,

7:43

that market's not that big, the MAC is

7:45

a legacy product, we still support, I don't

7:47

know, we're just sort of theorizing, we're just

7:49

sort of theorizing, Not that they killed

7:52

the iPhone integration in part because

7:54

Hugo primed me to understand why

7:56

that was a much bigger problem

7:58

than you realized, but But because,

8:00

and again, maybe this is

8:03

personal preference speaking, this is what

8:05

I want. I want a Mac accessory

8:07

where I can get that, like the

8:09

thing with the Vision Pro, the

8:11

most compelling use case that I

8:13

see for the Vision Pro right

8:15

now, is that widescreen Mac display,

8:17

which by the way, almost everything

8:20

about the Vision Pro is. Not

8:22

necessary for a Mac external display. Like

8:24

it doesn't need all this on its

8:26

own processing. It doesn't even need a

8:28

battery. You could just plug it into

8:30

the Macbook Pro or whatever it might

8:32

be. It doesn't need the eyesight thing.

8:34

Like all these bits and pieces, it

8:36

could be paired down to basically,

8:39

like it's like the Vision Pro

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should not be a standalone category.

8:43

If you go to Apple.com and

8:45

click on other headers, it should

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be under displays. You have the

8:49

studio display. you have the not

8:51

cinema display, whatever the the crazy

8:53

pro display is. And you should

8:55

have an apple nerd to know

8:57

the tabs on the Apple website.

8:59

But yeah, that's okay. Are you

9:01

envisioning like a plastic, a plastic

9:03

like high res display that you

9:05

could use? I want the vision

9:07

display right next to the studio display

9:09

where you can buy this accessory for

9:12

a Mac. To me, that's like, like,

9:14

and then you lean into the productivity

9:16

use case. Apple can do all the,

9:19

you know, all these sort of integration

9:21

that they're so great at. It actually

9:23

fits in my bag. Like, what are

9:26

the big problems with the Vision Pro

9:28

where I want to retry the virtual

9:30

display thing, but I'm not gonna do it

9:32

at home. At home, I have four monitors,

9:34

I have like, I'm drinking coffee, I'm getting

9:37

up and down. Like, like, like, I, but

9:39

I, on the road, would I like, would

9:41

I like, would I like, Yeah, that'd be great

9:43

absolutely but then there's this big bulky

9:46

thing that's kind of like I got

9:48

a way small travel counts Well not

9:50

just that but it's like a square

9:52

it doesn't like fit in my fit

9:54

in my bag and and like if there was

9:56

actually a device built from the

9:59

ground up to be Mac accessory. That

10:01

feels like number one, it's immediately

10:03

useful today. Number two, I think

10:05

there's a market for that today.

10:08

And number three, it's a place

10:10

to start where there's an aspect

10:12

of the Vision Pro that was

10:15

too ambitious. And it had to

10:17

do like, it was trying to

10:20

do too many things while not

10:22

doing the things that it like,

10:24

things that would help people today.

10:27

Yeah. Right. And the fact that.

10:29

What I get from this article

10:31

is number one that they didn't

10:34

go this route. I'm personally disappointed.

10:36

Number two, it really feels like

10:38

you have this team in Apple

10:40

that really believes this technology and

10:42

no one else at the company

10:44

wants to support them and believes

10:46

in them. And again, maybe that's

10:48

justified given the Vision Pro sales,

10:50

but you don't get the sense

10:52

of a whole of company effort.

10:54

You get the sense of a

10:56

very dedicated team pushing on this

10:58

and no one else in the

11:00

company is helping them out. And

11:02

that's kind of what we seem

11:04

to see in the market and

11:07

that's just kind of a bummer.

11:09

Well, and Mark said on the

11:11

other side of the spectrum here,

11:13

Apple is canceling its plans for

11:15

smart classes. Isn't this major news

11:17

for meta? The stock barely moved

11:19

at all. Do you think this

11:21

is major news for meta? I

11:23

think the bigger question for meta

11:25

is, is this ever going to

11:27

be a category? That's the question

11:29

I have. It's like, why should

11:31

the stock spike years in advance

11:33

of this product actually hitting shelves

11:35

and gaining a following? And I

11:37

don't know whether that will ever

11:40

actually materialize. I think it's interesting

11:42

because what you've laid out for

11:44

Apple, where they tie it to

11:46

the Mac. and potentially see more

11:48

adoption among their customers, that could

11:50

be sort of an intermediate step

11:52

to really like throwing their weight

11:54

behind something that people use every

11:56

day because if smart glasses are

11:58

going to be like. the way like

12:00

the point of integration and the

12:03

way a lot of people interact

12:05

with technology in their daily lives

12:07

10 years from now then Apple could

12:09

really be way behind and just

12:12

missed the boat entirely on that

12:14

market if they don't have anything

12:16

in the works and so tying

12:18

it to the Mac would have

12:20

been kind of an interesting halfway

12:22

commitment to investigating that market,

12:25

but they've chosen not to do that

12:27

at all and look like they're just

12:29

gonna double down on the iPhone ecosystem.

12:31

Well, just one more thing to sort

12:33

of double down on this point. All right,

12:35

and that is the end of the free

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