Without the NeXt Cube, we wouldn’t have the modern MacOS, or, for that matter, the iPhone (or Vision). Apple would certainly not be a multi-trillion-dollar company, and the Cube was a commercial flop.
In that case, it wasn’t the hardware, but the operating system and app development framework that made the difference.
And that will be true about the Apple Vision too, how do you get there if you don’t have the ability to put the operating system and the hardware together and then iterate, the biggest problems with the Apple Vision is that it needs to be three or four times faster performance wise than what it is, needs to be half the size and it definitely needs to be more energy efficient from a battery standpoint and last but not least half the current price how does that happen? Only through iteration over time.
AR simply has no market. Apple could sell Vision Pro for $10,000 apiece, if there was natural demand for high-quality AR hardware. But the product isn't competing for Hololens' commercial contracts, and it forfeit the consumer VR segment on release. The remainder of consumer-forward AR experiences are even less lucrative than Zuckerberg's commoditized Quests. Apple wants to build a nonexistent market with an inaccessible product.
Until that demand actually materializes, Apple's ability to miniaturize the tech is inconsequential. Vision Pro's "iPad for your face" philosophy is not enough to carve out a niche, and definitely not enough to displace the iPhone or the Mac.
Without the NeXt Cube, we wouldn’t have the modern MacOS, or, for that matter, the iPhone (or Vision). Apple would certainly not be a multi-trillion-dollar company, and the Cube was a commercial flop.
In that case, it wasn’t the hardware, but the operating system and app development framework that made the difference.