Apple’s Vision Pro headset is a hobby. Why won’t Tim Cook say that?

I’ve been following the press and social media coverage of Apple’s pricey new Vision Pro Augmented Reality headset, which now totals hundreds of stories and thousands of comments and I’ve noticed one idea missing from all of them: what would Steve (Jobs) say?  Steve would call the Vision Pro a “hobby,” just as he did with the original Apple TV.

You know I’m correct about this.

And the fact that Apple hasn’t gone for the H-word and no other writers are suggesting it is the topic of this column, not the Vision Pro, itself.

It would appear that nobody at Apple has the balls to call the Vision Pro a […]

By |June 16th, 2023|2023, augmented reality, Media, strategy, Technology, Television, virtual reality, wearable technology|119 Comments
Read More

The Future of Television

How is a television like a fax machine? They are both obsolete.

Remember a time when nobody had a fax machine? Then suddenly everybody had a fax machine. And now nobody again has a fax machine. What would have previously come by fax today is a PDF attachment to an e-mail or text or to one of a number of messaging services. Well the same transformation is happening to traditional television and for generally similar reasons. And just as fax machines seemed to disappear in just a few years, I’ll be surprised if broadcast TV in the U.S. survives another decade.

Technology transformations are like murders: they require motive, method, and […]

By |June 7th, 2019|2019, entertainment, Internet, Media, Predictions, Television|237 Comments
Read More

Apple knows 5G is about infrastructure, NOT mobile phones

With Apple shares down more than 20 percent from their all-time highs of only a few weeks ago, writers are piling-on about what’s wrong in Cupertino. But sometimes writers looking for a story don’t fully understand what they are talking about. And that seems to me to be the case with complaints that Apple is too far behind in adopting 5G networking technology in future iPhones. For all the legitimate stories about how Apple should have done this or that, 5G doesn’t belong on the list. And that’s because 5G isn’t really about mobile phones at all.

Just to get this out of the way, I see Apple […]

By |November 21st, 2018|2018, competition, mobile technology, strategy, Technology, Television|148 Comments
Read More

After surgery, a visionary finally sneaks back to work

I’m sorry it has taken me so long to return to this page. My eye surgery is finally complete and I am more or less fully recovered. I can probably see better than at any other time in my life, though it is still far from perfect, but so what? I can see! I can drive! I can fly! Best of all, I am still alive.

During my first try at surgery in early November, they said my blood pressure was too high and sent me home with an extra pill (my fourth) to take for that condition. Two days later I was suffering horrible back pain and passed out. My kidneys had gone into overdrive and […]

By |January 2nd, 2018|2018, Family, Health, Television|98 Comments
Read More

Why Apple doesn’t sell televisions

appledolbyAt least twice over the past decade Apple has been close to announcing its own television. Not the Apple TV set top box but actual big screen TVs with, well, big screens. But both times I’ve heard about this Apple backed away at the last minute. And the reason why they did was because even an Apple television would be just another television with an Apple logo. Steve Jobs realized that TVs had become a commodity and there didn’t seem to be an obvious way to make Apple’s television special. I’m not here to say Apple has finally found its TV design path as suggested in Walter Isaacson’s book and will be doing […]

By |February 10th, 2016|2016, Companies, entertainment, Intellectual Property, Movies, strategy, Television|57 Comments
Read More