> You're making a bold assumption, that someone wants to wear this headset when relaxing.
Hey - the world's biggest computer company just went up on stage along with the director of the world's biggest entertainment conglomerate and made that 'bold assumption'. They're probably pretty careful about these sorts of things.
It takes very little for Bob Iger to say he will make Disney+ available on the Vision Pro. It takes very little to deliver a streaming platform to a new device in general, but even less for one that uses the same frameworks as one of your primary existing devices. Most of what they showed was just showing you Disney+ content on a floating screen. I highly doubt they have invested that much into any sort of experience that is only possible on the Vision Pro (hence limiting anything that came close to that as a generic vaporware "What if?" trailer at the end).
With respect to the CEO of that company, I mean, sure. But you kind of take that as a given. It's not like he's only been right, and certainly his leadership so far has been business oriented, vs. "wave of the future" oriented. A good example is how the AirPods ended up being an arguably bigger success than the Watch (and how that hasn't really been fully capitalized on). The good news is that the world's biggest company is precisely the kind of place that can afford to iterate on something like this in the public. So if the theory is that the "dream" of AR is only possible by getting stuff out there to iterate on, then they certainly now have a good shot.
Hey, that’s a great point. Mine was more along the lines that they probably did not go up there on mere assumptions about what users might want. They’re not kids, they’re professionals on the tail-end and apex point of their career. Probably had an army of people do the homework to make sure that they don’t end up looking like complete fools a few years down the line.
Hasn’t there also been some executive overlap on the board level of these companies for a long time?
I was just watching a Steve Jobs keynote from 1998 the other day. And you can see exactly the same strategies implemented there, only with profit margins at <$100m and an inverse David-Goliath relationships with delegates from industry partners.
There are MANY examples of The Walt Disney Company making poor decisions. The most recent one would have to be the "Star Wars Hotel" that cost $1,200/night PER PERSON. In what world can enough Americans afford to fill up a hotel every night at that price? They did what all companies do- they got greedy. Now they have a $300M write-off as they tear it down.
DIS stock is taking a dump right now because Disney+, it turns out, isn't the savior we all thought it was (and were led to believe it was) during the pandemic when the Parks division wasn't bringing in the cash. ESPN is dead weight. They have more debt than ever thanks to the pandemic.
I did not say they’re making the right decision. I merely pointed out that the parent comment poked at this being a bold assumption.
They might be wrong, they might be making a bad play. But they’ve also probably devoted a reasonable amount of resources at finding answers to questions like whether people will want to use these or not. So, they probably didn’t make “bold assumptions”.
It's a question of semantics I suppose. So to me, it was a bold assumption on Disney's part to assume, regardless of what the data/research/surveys told them, that A) there were enough people on the planet who would travel to Orlando, FL to stay at this Star Wars-themed resort for over $1000/person/night, and B) there were enough people on the planet who would travel to Orlando, FL again and again to stay at this Star Wars-themed resort for over $1000/person/night.
It would have surprised me if such people would be interested enough in the hotel to not stay at it in the first few months of its opening, but hold off until some time thereafter, and so in that respect, Disney seems to have recognized that once that initial high demand drops off, it's GG. Demand wouldn't magically (ha) go from ~50% occupancy to ~90-100% with no change to the hotel or the pricing (e.g. any factor external to the resort itself).
>Apple has produced plenty of devices that didn't pan out.
Have they? They've launched particular versions of existing products that didn't sell too well, but have they ever launched a device which was was fundamentally new and didn't eventually sell a ton of units?
To be fair, that might as well be ancient history. I imagine more than 99% of Apple’s value comes from post-iPod activity, and I can’t think of anything post–OS X that failed, let alone post iPod.
I don’t get this HomePod hate. I have the big (old gen) and small one, and they rock.
We’re in allocated housing at the moment for my fiancées work and they have a shitty tv. I wouldn’t be able to hear the thing if it wasn’t playing through my HomePod. And that’s before the benefits of it as a speaker
Pure anecdata of course and I'm far from the average person, but I personally do not like to wear headphones if I can avoid it. (And yes, I have good headphones.) I can't even imagine having a screen strapped to my face.
I can imagine having a screen strapped to my face. I can't imagine a killer app that makes it worth the trouble & cost. I was hoping apple could help me out with my limited imagination, but they're pushing Apple Vision for watching movies, surfing the internet and facetime, so not really.
Hey - the world's biggest computer company just went up on stage along with the director of the world's biggest entertainment conglomerate and made that 'bold assumption'. They're probably pretty careful about these sorts of things.