Tech
Apple Launched Mixed-Reality 3D Headset Despite Designers Objections
According to a new Financial Times report, Apple CEO Tim Cook and COO Jeff Williams overruled design team objections to proceed with a new mixed-reality headset before designers thought the technology was ready. However, the report is insufficiently detailed to provide a nuanced picture of what’s happening inside the company.
Here’s the image it does create: Executive departures and other factors have resulted in a once-powerful industrial design team reporting to the company’s operations chief rather than a top-level design executive.
We’ve written about the gradual departure of famed design chief Jony Ive, a close collaborator with former CEO Steve Jobs. In addition to Ive, Apple lost Ive’s successor, Evans Hankey.
According to a recent newsletter from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, who had often reported accurately on Apple’s internal workings, when Hankey left, Apple leadership either decided against or was unable to fill Hankey’s role, and the design team ended up reporting to Jeff Williams, the company’s chief operating officer.
The Financial Times article also mentions that Hankey’s departure prompted other departures from the design team. It also claims that at some point since the company began working on its mixed-reality headset in earnest in 2016, members of the design team tried to discourage Cook and the rest of Apple’s leadership from moving forward until the technology for a lighter, more practical form factor for the device was available.
According to the report, Williams and Cook overruled them, believing it was time to proceed with the first iteration of the device. Last year, The Information published a similar story, but that one specifically mentioned that Jony Ive was a particularly vocal advocate for keeping the device to a small, standalone form factor—a stark contrast to the device expected to ship this year, which some reports claim will come with a battery pack attached with a wire.
In any case, the Financial Times article claims that Cook and Williams’ decision to proceed is an example of a power shift in a company where the design team used to have more say in the company’s direction. The Financial Times cites two people familiar with Apple’s decision-making and a former Apple engineer—though it is unclear whether that source is one of those two or another.
According to the publication, Cook’s desire to secure a legacy for his time as CEO before his current shares vest in 2027 is a key driver of the push forward with mixed reality despite the objections of some designers.
However, there could be other factors at work. Cook and Williams, for example, may wish to release a more specialized headset this year to pique the interest of creators and developers and to get a head start on both development resources before releasing a more mass-market product later in the year.
Holding off on putting those building blocks in place until the underlying technologies have reached the ideal state for a consumer breakthrough could mean handing over the future of mixed reality to companies like Meta, which are already shipping products and developing an ecosystem.
According to recent reports, Apple plans to release some mixed-reality headsets by the end of this year. If the device and its associated software platform are intended to be an early stab at attracting developer interest, it may make sense to debut them at the company’s annual developer conference, which is expected to take place this June.
