Can Apple make headsets cool?

Hey y’all, it’s Austin Carr in Boston. Apple’s Vision Pro is finally available in stores, a big test for whether people will want to be seen [View in browser]( [Bloomberg]( [by Austin Carr]( Hey y’all, it’s Austin Carr in Boston. Apple’s Vision Pro is finally available in stores, a big test for whether people will want to be seen wearing it in public. But first... Three things you need to know today: • Meta authorized $50 billion in [share buybacks]( • Tesla faces 2,400 [steering defect complaints]( • Nvidia’s landlord will sell [Silicon Valley offices]( Bugging out On Friday, after [Apple Inc.’s mixed-reality headset went on sale]( at its retail stores, a Vision Pro-wearing tech reviewer was giving a glowing demo to a [local news station](. Then, as he listed off the product’s cooler features, the television anchor couldn’t help but interrupt. “I don’t know what the heck this is for,” she said. “You look like an ant!” This is an important test for Apple. As the $3,500 product enters the wild, what people see inside the goggles is, in some ways, as important as how they’re seen wearing them. “It is impossible to look good wearing a VR headset,” Elon Musk [wrote]( on X. Yes, it’s a superficial challenge. But Apple’s success has often relied in part on its products being objects of desire. The silhouettes in the iPod commercials looked cool dancing with it. The iPhone was a status symbol. The Apple Watch was explicitly pitched as a fashion accessory to start. By contrast, strapping a computer to your face makes you feel awkward the first time you try it. [Google Glass]( was forever associated with a [blogger in the shower](. Oculus VR co-founder Palmer Luckey’s cringey Time magazine cover became [an internet meme](. Apple Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook had never even been photographed wearing a Vision Pro until last week for a Vanity Fair [article](. “Who wore it better?” [Luckey joked](, comparing his and Cook’s magazine spreads. One step Apple took to address the aesthetic and social awkwardness of headsets was to install a screen on the front that projects a digital representation of the person’s eyes. Maybe your family will tolerate it, but the office or the subway is a very different context. That could explain why Apple’s initial advertising has [mostly played up Vision Pro]( users in the privacy of their own homes, watching movies in the living room or [doing work in the kitchen](. Family and friends appear in the background, apparently not noticing the person nearby swiveling their head and pinching their fingers at nothing in particular. There’s a brief scene of a passenger wearing the device on a flight, again, as her seatmates seem not to notice. In the real world, I suspect normies will, at least at first, have a much more bewildered reaction to someone wearing a Vision Pro on a plane or in any other public venue. It’s easy to forget that people were once wary of an Apple product as [subtle as the AirPods](. Those were just earbuds without the cord. The headset is a different thing entirely. But AirPods quickly caught on and, like all successful Apple products before it, grew into a status symbol. The Vision Pro will either evolve the same way — or just make you look like a bug. —[Austin Carr](mailto:acarr54@bloomberg.net) The big story Apple’s $3,499 Vision Pro headset is finally available for sale, marking the company’s first [new major product category since 2015](. “It works the way the mind works,” said Apple CEO Tim Cook. “People put it on, and they instantly know how to use it.” One to watch [Watch the Bloomberg Technology TV analysis]( of Apple’s Vision Pro release. Get fully charged Diamond Sports, the local sports operator, will continue to broadcast Cleveland Guardians, Minnesota Twins and Texas Rangers [games through 2024](. 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