We’re on the cusp of the consumerization of another technology and you know what that means: Yes, Apple is late to the game yet again.
“Apple’s Virtual Reality Absence Would Be Like ‘Missing The iPhone’”
There’s this perpetual idea that because Apple doesn’t talk about what they’re working on, then they must be “late to the game”. Remember how that worked out for big phones and for smartwatches? Apple was “late to the game” on those and now does not sell large phones or smartwatches probably? Who knows, that’s almost impossible to figure out.
“If one of the other competitors gets it right (has explosive growth), right out of the gate, then it’s playing catch-up and that’s a difficult position to be in,” [Piper Jaffray’s Gene] Munster said.
It is possible in certain narrowly-defined markets for a new player to create a user experience that everyone feels they simply must roll in like a dog on a dead duck (that might sound dog-ist but the Macalope literally saw this happen once and then the dog got up and walked over to some people who were like, “Oooh, doggie!” and they petted the dog and they all had dead duck hands, true story). This is much less likely when it’s an entire platform. You need a company with a portfolio of products and most of these companies have bumbled around like Ben Grimm trying to play Jenga until Apple showed them what the product was supposed to look like.
And yet, somehow, the people and angry bees and unspeakable night terrors that lurk over at Business Insider say that “Samsung is miles ahead of Apple in one crucial way.” (Tip o’ the antlers to Nathan Larsen.)
Just one? Seems like it must be so many by now what with how they were ahead of Apple in large phones and then Apple was subsequently unable to sell large phones because Samsung already had made all the large phones.
That’s right: Samsung’s phone lineup is actually a lineup of powerful virtual reality machines. That’s from a new ad by Samsung that pushes the new Galaxy S7 as much more than just a phone: It’s a “virtual reality machine.”
Well, if it was in a Samsung ad, that’s all we need to know.
…Samsung is literally years ahead of Apple — regardless of the “hundreds” of employees Apple reportedly has working on VR — and that’s a huge problem.
How do we know this? Well, Samsung has told us, you see, in their ad. The Macalope’s not sure how much more proof you need.
The crazy thing is, we just went through this exact same exercise not two years ago with smartwatches. Smartwatches were going to be huuuge according to analysts’ estimates and Samsung was way ahead with the Galaxy Gear, leaving Apple behind in the dust. But, BONK, the technology press got hit on the head with a salmon and forgot all that and is doing it all over again.
None of that is to say that Apple is too far behind or can’t compete.
“Years” is apparently not too far. Still, it’s very troubling. But not insurmountable. It’s a dire situation that speaks to Apple’s fundamental inability to compete. Yet they could still snap back.
See this cake? Watch while I both have it and eat it. The cake both exists and has been eaten. It is Schrödinger’s cake.
Maybe Apple drops its own VR headset that works with every iPhone. Who knows!
Your child-like wonder at the state of creation notwithstanding, that should be a question mark not an exclamation mark since you clearly do not know.