Ok, but please edit out swipes at other users ("Someone just noticed"). This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

Apple is the master of the second mover advantage. Let the existing companies burn money in R&D, but closely monitor how customers perceive their products. What pain points exist that the current companies haven't addressed? What are the pitfalls?

The first mover advantage gives you a chance to get most of the market share, but with Apple's walled garden, they don't need the first mover advantage to do that.

Even when they didn’t have that garden. Look at the iPod.

Other MP3 players existed, but flash media was too small. Other hard drive players existed, they were too big. And both had bad interfaces (by Apple standards).

Apple didn’t show up until they could meet all their goals.

They could have made a phone sooner, it wouldn’t have been the iPhone. They could have made a headset sooner, it wouldn’t be the Vision Pro.

They set their standards for what’s necessary and wait to be able to deliver that.

The first mover rarely wins in the long run.

Things are a bit different now, compared to the iPod. If Microsoft had released a competitor a year or two in advance of the iPod, Apple would have had a much harder time getting traction for their iPod because they didn't have a large walled garden back then. They only had a very small subset of the computer market, and iPods were only compatible with Macs (at first).

Apple can afford to be a much later mover, even against very well-resourced competitors, now that they have a huge walled garden. If they didn't have the walled garden, it would be very difficult for them to catch up.

I think people give way way too much credit to the walled garden for their success.

The iPod wasn’t a success because of the walled garden. They didn’t have one (once they released on Windows).

If MS had released a player that was good enough they could have stolen the market, yes. But that’s the point. No one did because everyone released something akin to a flash-based CD player. They didn’t rethink the interface much. The interface is why the iPod grabbed the hold it did.

Yeah it became cool over time.

But I contend an iPod with the interface of a Creative Nomad Jukebox wouldn’t have succeeded the way it did.

> The iPod wasn’t a success because of the walled garden. They didn’t have one (once they released on Windows).

My reading of the upthread comments is that people are saying a walled garden isn't necessary, and using the iPod as an example of Apple's success before it had a walled garden. No one is saying that they had a walled garden back then. They did have a built-in audience (Mac users), but that is different from a walled garden. On iOS, they can prevent app devs from accessing their hardware in the same way they can, effectively neutering their efficiency.

“They could have made a headset sooner, it wouldn’t be the Vision Pro“

Hmm I guess. Vision Pro seems rushed from vantage point. Odd battery pack … only 2 hour charge … limited field of vision. Also the screens that show a picture of your eyes are off putting and strange.

Think Apple may have rushed here too quickly. We need more battery life.. think we may be looking more for an Augmented Reality mode which works on top of what you see with your actual eyes rather than your eyes just looking at high def screens inside of a headset that is relaying a video captured from cameras of what is in front of you.

Looks more like a Prototype IMO

> Odd battery pack … only 2 hour charge

I agree that 3 would be nice, since it would get you through pretty much any movie, but I feel like when I'm watching a movie I don't mind plugging in. After all, I'm not likely moving around a whole bunch. I have USB-C plugs by my bed and near my couches, so it doesn't seem like this is a huge inconvenience (though it would be great if there were a "you're plugged in" warning if you start getting up while you're plugged to a wall).

But if the tradeoff is a heavier battery (or a more expensive device), I'm fine with 2 hours. No hot-swapping, that seems like a bigger miss! People don't want to shut down just to change battery packs.

That’s the tradeoffs they wanted to hit whatever guidelines they had. They clearly didn’t want to ship a 2 pound battery.

What I meant is they didn’t need chips as powerful. They didn’t need screens as high resolution or bright. They didn’t need so many cameras.

They could have released something closer to a Quest model in specs years earlier.

They waited for this.

There are always tradeoffs. First gen Apple stuff is often weak in some way (CPU, memory, battery, software) because they like to be at the edge of what’s possible. Then they improve from there.

> Vision Pro seems rushed from vantage point. Odd battery pack … only 2 hour charge … limited field of vision

Six hours of connected battery [1] (compared to days for the competition), no copy paste [2], no third-party apps.

[1] https://everymac.com/systems/apple/iphone/iphone-faq/iphone-...

[2] https://9to5mac.com/2022/06/20/apple-engineer-first-iphone-c...

Apple cooks the tech required for their vision behind closed doors. Then release it when it's ready by their standards.

It's a bit like Debian*, but closed source.

*: It's ready when it's ready.

It's also worth remembering though that neither the iPod or iPhone were really breakout products on Day 1.

I think you are spot on - looking back at all this its really interesting -like what on earth was Apple thinking when the Motorola ROKR came out?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_ROKR

From the link you provide...

>> Because of the iPod Nano unveiling on the same day, relations between Motorola and Apple were strained and Motorola CEO Ed Zander later accused Apple of purposely undercutting the Rokr.

Apple probably saw it as an opportunity for free iTunes and Nano advertising.

I don’t know about advertising. But I would be willing to bet money that Steve Jobs chose that day for the Nano to do exactly what Zander thought: screw them over.

They (whoever ‘they’ is) caused the phone to be terrible even though it had the iTunes name on it. So Jobs got revenge, as he always did if he could.

I don’t remember the story of how Apple got involved in that, but it was incredibly clear when it was released that Steve Jobs hated the thing. Even when he demoed it on stage.

Perhaps they agreed to a partnership and didn’t realize that Motorola and the carriers would ruin it? Or perhaps it was some sort of “we’ll do this to learn some of the business” kind of a thing?

I’d love to know more of the story behind how it started and it’s development.

> The first mover rarely wins in the long run

Not enough patents, tbh. It's so hard to innovate and scrap things together, that this gets left as an afterthought.

Then the giants move in and steal your lunch, leaving you with nothing.

Except with gen AI the interface is text and there are multiple companies that have equally acceptable products. Either apple solves hallucination or makes some other AI breakthrough (i doubt it since the best researchers are probably at the hottest AI companies), or else it's just losing out as other companies capture a new market.

I think the second mover will have a huge disadvantage here as companies integrate the first mover into their products.

Apple will be able to do on-device AI, but I can't see that being a game changer unless paired with AR or some other new tech.

"Hallucinations" can't be solved, they are there by design. This is how people's mind works too.

Some answers are subjective and rely on justification/argument for support. Provided the argument is sound that's as good as we'll ever get. But it's farcical to claim AI could never always be objectively right.

> A decade of crappy Palm, WinCE, and easily forgotten Java based mobile devices came and went before iPhone

Including the Apple Newton, arguably the first handheld device.

I still think the iPhone was "safer" than all those others (every single one of those listed had its ardent defenders, mind you) because so many people had iPods and it was "an iPod that can make phone calls" - so there was less risk buying it, especially after the price drop to $399 for the 8 GB (you could pick up 4GB quite cheap, then).

The iPod classic was $349 (for many more songs, admittedly), but the prices were comparable.

It's not the hardware, it's the combination of good hardware and software. That's paraphrasing Steve Jobs. He also stated that one of the primary advantages Apple had was software with better usability, generally higher quality software.

> Modern hardware is responsible for AI

No, again, it's the hardware and software. Tensorflow is what formally sparked the AI boom that we're still rolling on, and of course it needed the underlying hardware.

The hardware does nothing without the software. Python and Linux are good software, to name two.

Apple's real SOP is to make white males believe in the inevitability of Apple cultural dominance so they feel inclined to buy anything with the logo on it as a signal

i.e. you convinced yourself Vision Pro was great before ever using it

>Apple customers demographics from 2019 show that about 51% of all iOS users were female, while 43% were male. Moreover, the percentage of female users in the US was 58%. While it’s a small majority, it is the only major smartphone vendor with a majority of female users.

Strage to point out white males in your statement.

I don't 'do' Apple, neither do the vast majority of my friends.

But, having used a borrowed mac product in the past, I do recognize that using them is just... pleasant. Not enough to justify the higher price point, but the superior user experience isn't just marketing.

The Vision Pro's marketing doesn't suggest they are targeting white males. For example their landing page[0] features zero of them.

[0] https://www.apple.com/apple-vision-pro/

https://web.archive.org/web/20240207021726/https://www.apple...

Among large countries, the one with the highest Apple market share is Japan.