[ghaff]

Tim Cook was probably mostly disinterested because it didn't seem like a real business opportunity. Wherever AVP fell on the VR/AR spectrum, VR (while having other opportunities) was mostly a niche for high-end gamers and AR, whatever the possibilities in some future idealized form with fashionable glasses that give you lots of information about what/who you're looking at is a long way from reality.

[sd2ff]

It was released to appease investors.

Ultimately as a manager you are held accountable to your investors and the cost-benefit analysis is such that it was the right action to take.

[ghaff]

I think you're absolutely right. Apple couldn't be seen as ignoring the gamer geek (or other potential opportunities) space as it wasn't very interesting to them at their scale and that automagical AR was a decade or more away.

[59percentmore]

I think it's the opposite. None of the players in XR wanted to be Apple'd, least of all Apple. That is, create a base product that someone else would refine in order to drink their milkshake. Apple delayed the AVP multiple times hoping to avoid getting sniped by Meta and Google et al., each time requiring a partial rebuild as the underlying tech advanced. They would have loved to have been able to get something out when Robert Scoble was initially raving in the late 2010s, but everyone was on the same page about not wanting to sink billions into development only to have to cede the market to someone responding to your strategy. So, instead, they all dragged their feet.

If XR companies had been as "reckless" with their product strategies as mobile companies in the 90s and 2000s, AVP would have had its iPod moment 6 years ago and we'd be hurtling towards the facephone. The market suffered because of the entrenchment of incumbents with all-too-clear memories.

[whywhywhywhy]

Think Apple fell for the trap of assuming they would eventually solve the glasses form factor and then fell for the second trap of convincing themselves that passthrough VR was the same as their real XR vision.

[59percentmore]

I think they weren't naive enough for either, and that they released exactly what they wanted to release. It's just that what they wanted to release was as much about preempting their rivals' strategies as it was about releasing a viavle product (or even more so). They wanted to win the market, but they were desperate not to lose it.

[ghaff]

I think that's a good shorthand. Apple needed cool glasses that could do useful xR in ways that weren't just useful to gamer geeks.