What hath Apple wrought?

Last pre-launch take on the expected Apple headset

This is about the last possible moment I can offer a pre-launch take on the expected Apple headset (or as Keith Teare aptly calls it, "the mask"). I'll keep this brief.

This season, coverage of AI has sucked up almost all of the air in tech news. Whatever oxygen that’s left has gone to covering what Elon is doing to Twitter. So, it’s entirely possible you’ve missed the minor torrent of rumors about Apple’s expected announcement of a mixed reality headset on Monday at WWDC (Worldwide Developers Conference).

If you have heard about it, you know that skepticism to the point of dismissal is the conventional wisdom. Too expensive. (Does anybody need this thing more than they need the rumored $3000 it will cost?) No compelling uses. Socially awkward. The category is already a proven failure. and so on. Yep. I’ve read those takes.

Surely, however, the Apple product marketing team has even more data about the likely uptake of a $3000 headset than the army of pundits predicting failure. Many of Apple’s product marketing team have been at so long, I knew them back in the last century when I worked at Apple. Trust me, they all are well-steeped in price-elasticity and adoption-curve models.

Geoffrey Moor’s version of adoption from “Crossing the Chasm”

Whatever Apple shows us on Monday, if it’s a brand new product category, you can be sure that it is aimed at only the first segment of the curve—the segment before even the early adopters come onboard—innovators and tech enthusiasts—people who simply have to have it. What will they do with it? They don't need a reason. They simply have to have it. The first batch of whatever it is will also be aimed at developers—who want to bet on creating experiences for the new platform.

For Apple, and for Tim Cook, entering this new product category is a BFD. They've been cranking at it for seven years. The saga doesn't end tomorrow. Tomorrow is only the beginning.

Take a look at what Steve Jobs told Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher in 2005 about what he saw as the key barrier to a viable virtual reality product.

I'm willing to predict that Apple will show us the first headset/mask/goggle thingy to smash through that barrier. Alan Kay famously said of the original Mac, that it was “the first personal computer worth criticizing.”

Apple's headset will be the first mixed reality device worth criticizing. Bring it on.

I’ll have another take after the announcement.