Apple’s Vision Pro may ship in March, but it doesn’t matter

When is something late when a release date has never been disclosed?

When it’s an Apple product, of course, and once again we’re being told the Vision Pro Apple has always insisted will ship “early next year” is going to ship late because it is going to ship early next year in March.

Just think about the timing a little more

We’ve seen this before and while I do think the late/early articulation is incredibly lazy, given a release date has never been disclosed, I also think it makes complete sense to ship in March rather than any earlier.

Why? Because no one has any cash left in the early part of the year – most of us spend whatever we can on gifts at some point during that part of the year, and certainly in the US, which is where the product will ship first.

With that in mind it makes absolutely no sense to ship a premium all-new $3,500 product to an audience of consumers who’ve just spent all their money on iPhones, Apple Watch, and the supreme MacBook Air.

Think tactically about it

So why would Apple ship it then? Doing so just doesn’t make sense, and even the iPhone (announced Jan. 2007) didn’t actually hit stores until the subsequent summer. It just makes a lot more sense to ship Vision Pro later in the year when people have a little more cash in their pocket, particularly as so much of the success or otherwise of the product is wrapped up in the kind of experiences Apple no doubt hopes to celebrate at WWDC  in June.

If I’m completely honest, I think March may be too early, but I do expect the anticipation to begin to ramp up about then. Even Mr. Gurman concedes the device may ship “somewhere around March”, which could mean April, May, or even June.

Though I think late April is more plausible, with an Apple-generated PR blitz leading right up to an exciting visionOS 2.0 announcement at WWDC and a bunch of interesting app developer case studies at the show itself.

That’s kind of how I’d pitch it.

Though Apple’s marketing teams are proven to be far more effective and universally better paid than I. (You can help ease that pay differential with a tip right here, though you’ll be in a highly select few when you do).

What happens next?

Here’s my completely made up set of guessed predictions:

• October may (small chance, but still some chance) see the product reach other nations. (Just in time for gift season…).
• Before which you may see Vision Pro appear in retail stores worldwide, to “give everyone in the world a chance to explores spatial reality.”
• You’ll even be able to pre-order at some point, too.

In the shorter term, watch out for a Vision Pro announcement in spring.

After all, that’s when it makes sense to ship a high value, high cost device.

This should be followed by wider release later that year, with software- and content-driven enhancements likely already being scheduled to keep things spicy until news concerning Vision Pro 2.0 probably in late 2024 or WWDC 2025.

What Apple is really doing

Please don’t get too carried away by sensationalism in all of this. Apple plays a long game and already thinks spatial computing will be part of what replaces/works alongside computers in the next decade.

That is why it is investing today to claim leadership in that reality later. How can you be late when you’re building out across a decade? It’s so much better to get the dance steps right when you’re waltzing up a storm.

As Fred Astaire once said, “It takes time to get a dance right, to create something memorable.” (He also said, “Dancing is a vertical interpretation of a horizontal intention,” but there may be children present so we should move swiftly on). Spatial reality just needs a little space to grow in.

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