John Ternus Is Remaking Apple. How Far Will He Go?

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Radio. News. If this device at this weight and price point and functionality is not what makes VR successful, nothing will. Welcome to the Power On podcast where we talk about Apple. in the consumer tech world. I'm Mark Gurman from Bloomberg. Today, we're going to dive into John Ternes' first month and change at the helm of Apple, what his changes so far have been, what he plans to do next, and what this all means for the company long-term.

We're also going to talk about Meta's new VR glasses.

Which I recently had a chance to try, and how those stack up to the Apple Vision Pro, and what this all means for the mixed reality world, as well as the AI wearable space. Joining me today is Vlad Savov, dialing in from Hong Kong. Vlad, I How much time are you spending in VR these days?

Approximately zero minutes over the past several years.

But I do feel like the conversation we're about to have today, Mark, is going to give a bit of a hint for things that may take me back.

It's interesting, right?

It felt like, I don't know, 2022. We were primed for a big resurgence of virtual reality. Then Apple came to the market with their Vision Pro introduction in 2023. They launched at the beginning of 2024, and it sort of fell flat and underwhelmed. My own usage of VR was super sky high when the Vision Pro came out.

And the months before that, I was trying to get really used to it using a Quest. But it's really, I don't know, I would say it's gone into free fall in the last several months as the use cases have become less interesting, fewer new app releases, less content. But we'll dive all into that. But first, we should take some questions. If you're just joining us for the first time, on Power On, obviously our new podcast. Here's some info for you. We're going to take questions every week.

And if you have any, email us, poweron at bloomberg.net. We get the questions and we're going to throw them into every episode. So Vlad, I know we've got a couple this week. What you got for me?

That's right.

They're both from the Discord. There is a Power On Discord. And first one comes from user eyesxr. And you can kind of tell that this precedes our recording because he was asking, Will Apple host a dedicated home event? Mark, you went and you got the scoop. There is a dedicated home event from Apple. But let's adapt the question.

What specific products should we expect from the event?

That's right.

So Apple on October 13th, so next Tuesday, if you're listening to this on the first few days of publication, next Tuesday, the 13th, Apple's going to hold a online home event and they are going to introduce their long awaited.

Flagship home devices.

It feels like I've been talking about these for two years because I have been talking about these for two years. They initially wanted to roll these out at the end of 24. They're only coming out now for a very clear reason. They'll rely on Siri AI. And Siri AI was delayed by two years, and it's just now coming to market as part of iOS 27. So the major new device, of course, is the smart home hub with the display that we spent a lot of time last week talking about. The other device is the HomePod mini refresh with Siri AI for support for a faster chip as well.

It makes that all happen.

And then the new Apple TV set-top box as well. But there is another development. In addition to the three flagship devices, Apple is going to be launching, and this is in conjunction with LG, a pretty unique, interesting partnership, sort of unprecedented. They're coming out with a doorbell, a smart door lock. They're coming out with a thermostat, a temperature sensor. This one may come later, but then also cameras.

So an indoor home camera, an outdoor home security camera, and then a floodlight camera. So this is going to be pretty intriguing. And next week, I know you and I, Vlad, are excited. We're going to dive into all of it, our impressions of what exactly they introduced.

Question number two, and this was very consistent across the power on Discord. People want to know, when this smart home hub comes out, should they get the first generation device or should they hold out for the successor? Yeah, it's really two different questions, right?

The first question is, should I buy into the Apple Home ecosystem with this smart home hub? the new HomePod mini and this Apple TV. And if I decided that I want to be in that ecosystem, should I buy the second version?

Let me start with the second question.

Given that it's taken so long for these first devices to come out, I would say it's going to be a while for the next generation versions to come out. It could be a year or two. Obviously, they have the tabletop robotic arm, which is going to be more expensive. They have a larger version of the HomePod in development with Siri AI and a faster chip. So if you want to wait for those, That makes sense. But holding out for a second version of what's coming out next week, I think would be a long wait.

And I wouldn't do that.

The better question, the bigger question is, should you even go into this ecosystem? And I would say if you're deeply enthralled with Apple and you're already deep in the Apple world, it's probably a no brainer. On the other hand, the Amazon ecosystems, the Nest ecosystems, they have more established products.

You know, you can probably put the flagship devices, the central devices from the first parties head to head and have some, you know, pretty strong comparisons. But it's really the availability of third party accessories, whereas the new Apple ecosystem is going to be quite small compared to what you're getting from Amazon and Google. We're talking about hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of different accessories that At the same time, things like Matter and Thread, these new smart home protocols, makes everything a little bit more interoperable. So I think it just comes down to which world you're living in. Vlad, you're over there in Hong Kong, but you watched the Apple event. You've been following this closely. I have a

tremendous amount of thoughts, but you first. What are your thoughts on Ternus so far?

Well, my first impressions are that he is a lot like an Apple product. He looks very polished. He looks very competent and confident. But that's because we've seen John Ternus in a very controlled environment. Like you and I, Mark, have had conversations about how it is a prepackaged video presentation nowadays an apple event versus a live in-person event we're going to talk about meta and they did live demos and this time they didn't screw them up to me that's also a sign of confidence so to my mind john turner so far it is uh what we expected from him it is very much in line with what apple wants to do they've wanted to communicate a smooth transition from tim cook That's what they're doing. That's

why they're keeping Tim Cook around. So very much in line with expectations. Apple didn't want to rock the huge boat that is this massive company. But Mark, you are the person who knows it from the inside. And you've done the reporting. You've done the exclusive reporting on his top priorities with a couple of pieces. So dive into that.

Tell us what are his top priorities from his first month and a week on the job?

Yeah, I mean, the top priorities for him appear to be making the company leaner and more efficient.

And making design the center of the company again.

Back in the summer around July, Apple had seriously contemplated doing a layoff of 5,000 AppleCare employees and replacing them with AI. These are AppleCare employees who work from home. These are AppleCare employees who could be replaced, Apple believes, using AI instead of call centers. So like when you call in, it'll be an AI assistant. And they've already been using that on their phone systems and also AI and chat support.

And it's indicative.

of him wanting a leaner organization that moves faster, that is reducing layers.

So a few things.

A couple of weeks ago, they did an actual layoff. That AppleCare layoff didn't end up happening. That's on ice for now. But they did a layoff in the hardware engineering department. That's now run by new chief hardware officer, Johnny Sruji. And so the layoff pushed for by Ternus is removing layers. So engineering program managers or EPMs have been a very key part of the Apple product development process.

They make sure the trains run on time. They're handling budgets. They're handling costs. They're handling the teams working together, but they're not doing the actual engineering. Ternus wants more people doing the engineering. And so they have laid off dozens of EPMs in the hardware engineering organization. And what I can tell you exclusively on this podcast is that I think that is the beginning of more layoffs for more efficiency to make Apple's engineering ranks, particularly on the hardware technologies and the hardware engineering side, both under Sruji, much leaner.

They want fewer people. They want fewer layers. They want things to be developed much more quickly. And I'm told that Ternus is looking very closely at this. And one of the reasons that he brought back Laura Legros, who was his EPM... The lead EPM of the hardware engineering organization until around 2022 when she retired for the first time was because he wants Laura to take a very close look at how the hardware engineering organizations could be run much more efficiently. And Apple has contemplated doing broader layoffs than these sort of small layoffs, the one they canceled in AppleCare. But it's hard to figure out for them when's the exact right time to do it. There are big PR implications here. Obviously, Apple is a multi-trillion

dollar company. From a financial standpoint, they don't need to do it. And it's very hard to sell the market. It's very hard to sell employees on doing a massive layoff that you don't need to do from a financial standpoint. And so that's really the issue at hand here. I do expect them to keep doing these sort of under-the-radar, smaller layoffs across a number of engineering departments to get to a more engineering-driven culture.

It strikes me as almost old-fashioned for Apple to be conscious about doing layoffs. Because when I was thinking about John Ternes, I was also thinking, what does it mean to be a good CEO in the modern era broadly, not just within Apple? And the fact is, he's not going to be Steve Jobs or Tim Cook because both of them scaled up the company. I don't think that there's a prospect of scaling up the company. 10x from where it is today. His point today is exactly what you're getting into, is how do we become more efficient?

How do we become quicker about what we do rather than trying to scale up yet again? But the other competitors, when you look at Google, Microsoft, and Meta, most notably Microsoft, Meta, and Amazon have made really significant in the thousands of people layoffs.

They've made really harsh, cost-cutting exercises. And maybe.

To your point, you may take a PR hit on day one, but ultimately you make that significant change and you get on with it. I didn't want to say, or ask rather, what is the vibe check? How do people feel inside Apple? And if you're doing these incremental, constantly ongoing layoffs, I don't think anybody's going to feel particularly settled.

Like, I don't know.

For me personally, if I'm within Apple, I'd rather say, okay, there's this big layoff happening today. Either I'm in it or I'm out of it. And after that, I can get on with work. as opposed to the constant threat of it. How do you feel about it?

Yeah, I would say there is not a constant threat of it. I mean, to be fair, a lot of the layoffs that have been done so far, I would characterize the vast majority of the people impacted there are what Apple would qualify as low performers. Obviously, I can't speak to that, but that is what people at Apple are saying. Apple is still one of the safer companies in Silicon Valley. They haven't announced these layoffs. This is just how employees feel That's the vibe. The vibe is they feel like there are going to be more layoffs as part of Ternus's approach to efficiency. But you raise a good point about Ternus versus Jobs versus Cook. I want to take a step back and just share something with you from someone who has pretty intimate knowledge of

the selection process for John Ternus as the next CEO and get into why he was the guy. Obviously, the first thing is age. We've talked about that for a long time. He's 51 now, which means he could easily have a 15-year runway as CEO like Tim Cook did. That can't be said for anyone else on the executive team under Cook. But Apple's board wanted a, quote, product guy who was likable because they felt that the organization...

in this current climate could not take another Steve Jobs-like figure. Tim Cook, he's a nice guy, and they needed another nice guy after Tim Cook to keep things rolling. At the same time, there was a recognition that Apple has run out of major new products and they needed to refresh the portfolio. And Ternus is the young guy, is the hardware engineering guy, was viewed as the person to be able to do this. Cook was about, as you said, diversifying the business, growing the business, new business models, Ternus is focused on new types of products, and many people are convinced that Ternus is going to be very good for Apple. He knows he needs to come up with new things. He knows he needs to figure out the

AI situation, and he's dead set on doing it. The other thing I would say for Ternus, a big difference between him and Cook, I think Cook really cared what people think. I think Cook really cared about news articles. I think Cook really cared about perception and PR. I don't think Ternus really cares. I really don't. I don't think he's in the thick of things. I don't think his mindset is driven by outside reception. I don't think his mindset is driven by what people say on podcasts.

And I think, you know, Tim Cook, the way the company was operated, a lot of it was built in a way that was responsive to what people were saying about Apple in the media or what they perceived people would say about Apple in the media or in larger culture.

Well, you say that about John Ternus, but I should mention, if he wants to come and tell us his priorities face to face, we'll, you know, we'll take him as a guest on this podcast.

We'll be happy to get involved in the media. I'm sure he, yeah, I'm sure he'll get right on that.

And, you know, just the reason I say that is because Tim Cook is still in many ways the face of Apple.

That's right.

He's the one at the White House. He's the one dealing with government officials. When the White House had their dinner for China... You know, Cook was there, but, you know, the CEOs of the other companies were there. Jensen, Wong, you know, you name it. It is interesting when you're in a room for the most part of CEOs and then the CEO of Apple is back home in Cupertino and you've got the old guy still there doing those things.

And Cook, of course, is going to London to meet with the king. It is a weird situation. I think if Ternus cared more about the perception, he would be in those meetings. He would be doing those public appearances. But he genuinely, at least for now, seems happy to pass it off to Cook. But at some point, the transition will need to happen from Cook to Ternus in terms of who is the statesman, who is the person representing the company on the world stage. But it still feels like we're a few years away from that in terms of Ternus being the one doing that.

Well, I think it's going to take also a bit of recognition for him.

I can say for myself that John Ternus is not necessarily a familiar face in the same way that Tim Cook is. And I was thinking back to when Donald Trump was calling Tim Cook, Tim Apple. Those two people have met each other for over a decade. So at least with the duration of the Trump administration, it makes all the sense in the world for Tim Cook to be the Apple representative because Donald Trump will instantly recognize him. Likewise, China being one of Apple's biggest markets, it's its biggest manufacturing hub. Tim Cook is the one who has the personal relationships.

And you said years. It probably is going to be years for.

Them to make that transition, for that handover to happen, and for John Turner's to be likewise recognizable anywhere he goes as the brand ambassador for Apple.

But we can be patient about that. I want to get back to products.

John Turner, his product focus is the thing that he's spending his time on. is the thing that gets me excited because products are the thing that got me excited about tech in the first place. It's why I care about Apple. And Mark, again, you've done the reporting and you said that he is putting the emphasis there for Apple.

It's engineering, but also design. So tell me more about that. What are his first few weeks on the job?

How is he going through them? It's so interesting.

So at the very end of 2025 is when Jeff Williams, the old COO, retired from Apple. And part of his job, other than the supply chain and operations, was he was in charge of the launch. He was in charge of design and he was in charge of the company's health teams. As an aside, you can argue that of those four things, he really only left one of them in good shape as Apple's number two. The supply chain, the manufacturing side of things is an amazing shaping run by Sabi Khan.

and Priya, the VP of operations there, who will eventually be an SVP and probably will be Apple's COO five, 10 years from now. But the other parts were kind of in a pretty bad place. I mean, Apple's health efforts are not in a good place. They're not really competitive with Aura and Whoop at this point. They're getting better, but they're far from it. The watch It's not in a great place, I would say. It's selling well, but there's a lot to be desired. They still basically have a legacy form factor there. And then design, that design team was decimated with many of the people in the design team following Johnny Ive to OpenAI and IO. And the design team now is run by two people. Molly Anderson,

she oversees industrial design. Steve LeMay, who replaced Alan Dye when he went to Meta at the end of 25, is in charge of human interface.

So it's basically.

hardware design and software design. And there was a belief by people inside Apple and close to Apple that Apple needs to bring in a new chief of design to oversee both of those teams. They haven't really had one since Johnny Ive oversaw both units. Jeff Williams replaced Johnny Ive in that regard. I'm not saying Jeff Williams, an MBA, could replace a designer like Johnny Ive, but on paper, that's what Apple chose. And The story goes it's because he was Tim Cook's bestie at Apple and Tim didn't trust anyone else. And he had a close relationship with the watch team and operations were all linked.

It's neither here nor there.

So Jeff has gone. Who do you replace Jeff with to oversee design? Well, they didn't want to reveal this at the time, but Ternus. Molly Anderson and Steve LeMay started reporting, not on paper, just unofficially, to Ternus. And over the course of the transition... Ternus, he only had a few direct reports. It was the design folks. Now, as CEO, he's had his hands deep in both human interface design and industrial design. I'm told visiting the studio, spending intimate time in the studio several times per week, even several times per day, really applying his time at Apple to the design organization and on product development. It's a really big change for Apple because the prior CEO, Tim Cook, the design teams were lucky to see him

in the studio for more than an hour a month or even outside of the quarterly reviews inside of the studio.

So that's a really big change.

I'm not trying to say Ternus is Jobsian-like or anything like Steve Jobs, but you can make the comparison at least of where he's trying to spend his time. Whether Ternus has the chops, whether Ternus has the skill, the eye, the taste for design and improving the designs of Apple products.

That's one thing.

But the fact that the CEO of the company is prioritizing design for this era of Apple is a huge deal and should be extremely exciting to Apple fans and customers as well as the whole consumer space.

And the thing that I would add, Mark, is I think strategically it is the right move. It makes all the sense in the world. Apple's whole signature is we do hardware, software, and services as a integrated, cohesive, logical thing better than anybody else because we don't separate them, right? And it makes all the sense in the world to me to have a single person in charge of that.

And we'll give you a good example from over here in China. You've done all the reporting about how Apple's car initiatives and projects started, failed, they had changes of leadership, changes of priority.

Changes of scope, right?

What happened here in China is Xiaomi did a similar thing, but one important distinction. The distinction was the Xiaomi founder, Lei Jun, who's effectively an emperor within the company, said, we're doing a car.

It's an EV.

This is the only thing that matters in the company. And it is more diverse even than Apple. I mean, you can buy Xiaomi luggage, you can buy Xiaomi.

Toilets, homewares, et cetera. But he said, EV is the most important thing in the company.

And that single focus, that The leader says, this is the thing we need to prioritize. This is the thing we need to throw everything at. We had that with Steve Jobs in the past. He's given with Xiaomi the example of how it can work. And to my mind, it's a good way when you're trying, like you mentioned earlier, Mark, to do new products and to get into new segments of the industry and to effectively invent new segments.

It makes sense. We've seen the evidence.

That if you have a single voice, single person to judge yes, no, and to steer direction, it has paid off more often than it hasn't, is my view.

And as I've been told many times about Ternus, you may love his opinion, you may hate his opinion, but at least he has an opinion and he will make a decision. And there's something to be said about being decisive. And he is way more decisive than Tim Cook in regards to product development.

One thing we haven't brought up though, and I think is going to be the biggest challenge for any CEO within tech is the AI question. And within Apple in particular, I mean, anytime I see mention of Siri on social media nowadays, it's to mock it and to say, hey, man, look, Meta is doing all these smart things. Google is doing, like Google Gemini did X, Y, and Z for me.

Anthropix Cloud is hacking things. OpenAI is hacking the Australian government accidentally. Siri can't even figure out that I wanted to do like a calendar event or whatever.

How do you see the state of Siri today, Mark?

And how do you see it panning out over the next year or so?

Okay, so I think 15 years after Siri launched, Apple has finally fulfilled the promise of Siri from 2011. Siri now works exactly as advertised from when they introduced the first version with the iPhone 4S, I believe the day before Steve Jobs passed away. But 15 years have flown by, and basically fulfilling the promise of 15 years ago obviously is not good enough. in the consumer tech landscape. And so it does what it says it's going to do, but it's in a completely different universe. I think it's unreasonable and unfair to put Siri AI in the same category that you would put Claude and ChatGPT and Gemini in.

It's two completely different worlds. ChatGPT and Claude, these can run your life. They can do your computing for you. You've got dots now. You've got basically a co-pilot throughout your day. Siri, it can finally answer your questions. It can finally look up things in your calendar. You can take a picture of something.

And add it. to your address book or your diary, right? It's a completely different universe.

Apple doesn't have a competitor to what the real AI landscape is looking like right now. And Ternus is going to need to figure that out. That is job number one, I would say, even above design. So we'll see what he ends up doing. I'll have more thoughts on that in a future episode. Speaking of AI devices, one of Apple's biggest rivals and who I think is one of the more exciting companies companies right now in AI and hardware.

Meta just held their Connect conference. They showed some pretty compelling stuff. The first thing was their Ray-Bans, their Meta Glasses strategy has matured. They now have a non-camera version as well, and you can get that in the Ray-Ban Clubmaster style, which I love. Meta has VR glasses now, which basically offload the compute and the battery into an external puck the size of the Vision Pro's external battery pack.

And then there was the Muse Charm, which is a standalone AI device. You hold it, you wear it around your wrist, you put on a lanyard, you clip it onto your backpack. And it is basically taking Muse, right, their new AI conversational assistant.

And what would it look like if it was a hardware device?

It would be like a little Tamagotchi that you pull out and talk to throughout the day. has cameras on it so you can show it the world around you and get information and do anything you would normally do with AI on that device. When you saw the Tamagotchi, and they called it the Klamagotchi internally because it was like, what would an open claw Tamagotchi be like, if that makes sense?

What did you think? Well, here's the thing.

HTC did a thing called Charm like a decade ago, and it really flopped. And anytime I see one of these devices, extra cute gadgets, I start from a position of skepticism. But I will say that it is exemplary of the entire MetaConnect event that they had recently. I will say across, I don't know, there've been dozens of these events. I personally have never gotten excited, but this one really signaled that Meta is getting into hardware in a really serious way. To my mind, I take Meta as a credible hardware company in a way that I hadn't.

Before that event. And that device is part of it.

And part of the appeal also is the way that Meta was really open about what it was doing. They spoke, I mean, Zuckerberg said, the industrial design is not finished on this thing, but we're releasing in December. So let's go guys, right? It speaks to the idea that they're moving really fast.

They are.

And they've been open with users and consumers. They cracked a bunch of jokes that actually landed and they were self-deprecating jokes. Like Zuckerberg a couple of times said, hey, we love live demos at Meta events. because they've had so many failures with live demos. And they even had one about how they're rendering legs in virtual reality.

And they said, it took us years to figure this out.

And again, it showed a bit of self-awareness, a recognition of where the company fell short. And I mean, we kind of need to get a hold of that device, but I will say this, every one of these demos that Meta did during their event showed a great degree of confidence. It wasn't like, oh, you know, fingers crossed, hopes and prayers that this is going to work out this occasion. It feels like really robust technology behind all of that.

A few thoughts. One, it feels like Meta hit the nail on the head with the S.

Laurel Exotica partnership. I felt like the Meta brand was so terrible that there was no way they could have launched these smart glasses under their own brand, and they knew that. So getting Ray-Bans, getting Oakley in there, getting other EL brands down the road, I think is going to go down as a big business textbook success story, a case study there. The other thing they've done is they've matured the product. They feel refined. They feel like they have the right features. I feel like this privacy situation in some ways is overblown, but on the other hand, it's entirely deserved for the whole Cambridge Analytica scandal and all the other data and child safety situations that Meta has had over the years and continues to have. But

from a hardware standpoint, this is a refined product. This is a good product. If you consider smart glasses and if you consider spatial computing, AR, VR, the future of computing, you have to look at meta and consider them the number one player in the space.

And I don't think it's even close.

I think that over time, Google is going to end up being sort of a third place here, right? I think the Apple brand is so strong that they'll end up launching their own smart glasses and they'll be very successful. just because of the Apple brand. But I think companies outside of Google, Meta and Apple, they don't have a shot at this point in AR, VR, non-display glasses land.

I think Apple only has a shot because of their giant user base, how sticky it is and how addicted people like myself are to the Apple brand and Apple products.

But Meta is so far ahead. It's not even close.

It almost feels like if Apple had just introduced the iPhone 4 and there were no other smartphone makers at the time, that's the reality of where we are. Like, Where are the Android XR smart glasses, right? Those are, you know, those don't really even exist. Apple is still a year away. Nobody talks about the Amazon frames or the Echo frames at this point. So if you're someone interested in that space, there's a lot to like when it comes to meta. On the Muse, I think the product is going to flop and it's going to be bought by early adopters only. But I think follow-up generations could be successful. I think what this Muse device has proven to me is that there is room for another product or device you're going to carry with you or

put in your pocket or have somewhere with you, whether it's in your bag at all times, in addition to the phone and the laptop. I think that device is going to be interesting enough and showcase quick and fast interactions and use cases that make sense. And so I think you're going to see a slew of these holdable types of AI devices in the coming years. I definitely think it's a real thing. And I definitely think that Meta is not going to have a hit on its hands for the first one. But I think subsequent generations could be interesting.

I really do. Right.

And to your point about the competitive space, I mean, Microsoft very quietly just pulled out of the consumer market. I mean, they will say, hey, we're still serving consumers. But very recently, Microsoft had a big event about co-pilots. And it made the point that co-pilot is now about enterprise. To your point, Google and Samsung are partnering to do those XR glasses, as they call them, but I don't see them anywhere. I don't see anybody getting excited about them. Metastrategy, to my mind, is very clear-cut. Meta is saying AI, and our particular AI, is the only reason we have hardware.

Like Mark Zuckerberg said, glasses, they're a style item, they're a fashion item. We need to be very conscious of how you look, and that backs up your point about why Ray-Ban is so important. But ultimately, the glasses, especially the ones without cameras, are a way to deliver meta muse to people. The muse charm, likewise. I mean, so much of this is, is this good enough to attract me?

Because I don't think I'm speaking just for myself. We don't come to Meta with a clean slate. This is not a company that has a clean slate with us.

Not at all.

We have the prejudice of knowing its past privacy practices. And as much as I felt like MetaConnect was confessional about Meta's hardware failures, that was a nice move because it made us ignore the fact that Meta never discusses privacy failures.

Well, can you imagine how successful they would be right now for this era if they had done what Apple had done over the last decade and build themselves up as some privacy champion? which in many cases Apple is. But can you imagine if it was meta walking into this current era with that in the background? They would be very successful. Speaking of failures, the last thing I want to talk about today is the Vision Pro versus the new meta VR glasses. I took a lot of heat on social media and Reddit for this. I see your comments, guys. Let me tell you something. I've had the Vision Pro since day one. I've used it a ton.

I still use it from time to time. I'm intimately familiar with the device. And probably, unlike many of the people commenting that my take is ridiculous, I really know that product well, in and out. And I know how people at Apple feel about it. I know which Apple executives use it. I know which Apple executives.

Don't use it. Here's a hint. None of them use it. Okay? I know the inside and out on this topic.

Okay?

The Vision Pro does not sell well. The only reason that they advertise it as a device for the medical field in surgeons is because that is the only use case that they have that's even interesting at this point is using these as external monitors in surgeries. They're not talking about people using this thing in the real world.

They're not talking about people watching movies on it. They're not talking about people reliving memories on it. They're not talking about people gaming on it. That's because people are not doing those things in large numbers. It's too expensive. It's too heavy. The MetaVR glasses cracked the code on that.

The MetaVR glasses weigh 100 grams.

They're comfortable.

It's like wearing glasses, not wearing a big bulky headset. You can wear it for an extended period of time. The interface is smooth, at least the prototype version that I tried. Obviously, this does not come out until spring of 2027. The gestures, they work well, completely on par with what you're seeing from the Vision Pro. As someone who has used the Vision Pro a ton, I'm telling you, it's nearly there. At $ 1299 and being made from Meta, not Apple, it's a big price gap, but it's not a big usability gap. Yes, the Vision Pro is better in some respects. It has better field of view. The hardware is obviously nicer being made from metal and glass and high-end fabrics. But once you really have that thing

on your head, does it really matter what it looks like?

No.

You just want to do the stuff you want to do in VR. It matters what it weighs. Yes. Meta has made the right trade-offs. Yeah.

And I think that if Apple came out with a $ 1, 300 device that works like the MetaVR glasses, you would be talking about the Vision Pro in the same way you talk about the Apple Watch, the iPad, and the AirPods today alongside the iPhone. That would have been a breakthrough device. But it's Meta who's done this, not Apple.

And us Apple fans and Vision Pro users have to live with the truth. And that is the reality. And Vlad, I'll let you go in a second. But the last thing I'll say is that the Vision Pro and its future is under serious review at Apple.

Right?

John Ternus never believed in the Vision Pro as a consumer device. But something that is much lighter, cheaper, more capable, something like these MetaVR glasses is under consideration. It's one of four different variants that they're testing right now under the code name N224 at Apple.

There's a debate.

Should we do a new Vision Pro enclosed headset at all? Should we do one that has the puck style for the processor and the battery like Meta? Should we keep working towards an all-in-one design that's super light like glasses? At the same time, the priority is the smart glasses. So it's to be seen what's going to happen. I'd consider this situation very murky for the future of the headset.

Well, I mean, when I saw those VR glasses from Meta, they saw the one thing. Because just out of frame, I have a bucket of cold water, which I reserve for anything virtual reality. But the usability is such a huge thing. And I'll give you a great analogy, which is headphones. All right, so there are headphones that cost as much or even more than the Vision Pro and weigh as much or even more than the Vision Pro.

And they will give you an amazing acoustic experience, but you don't use them on a day-to-day basis, right? You will put them on or you will have guests come over and they'll listen to some classical music for five minutes and they'll have their minds blown and that's it. All right, like Meta gave us VR glasses of the size and proportions and exactly like you said, they made the right trade-offs. to where people can envision themselves spending real time with them and using them as a real interactive device. The point of virtual reality glasses isn't just to like wow you for a few minutes. It's you want to play games in them. You want to do things in them. And if you put that on your head, weight is such a priority.

Walk around with them, be productive, get work done. They have this cool tabletop keyboard, right? Like typing on the Vision Pro is impossible without a physical keyboard over Bluetooth. The MetaVR glasses have like sci-fi level keyboard right on the table, right in your space. So it's an impressive device and let's not get it twisted. This is what Apple should have done. And I hope they do because that running Vision OS with Apple Fit and Finish and Polish, even if it's quite a bit more expensive than the Meta product, that too will.

Be a hot seller.

I will add one thing we shouldn't underestimate is that all the time, the years the meta has invested in trying to build a VR ecosystem, even the quote unquote metaverse, there are lingering effects of that.

There are actual products. There is an ecosystem of content, right?

So those things haven't taken off, but we are going to find out once these VR glasses priced.

At $ 1, 300.

Go out on sale, we're going to find out, was it the hardware that was holding them back or was it the content? And to my mind, I never got into the hardware because of the bulkiness, the weight, the actual usability issues. So I think a good way to encompass the entire MetaConnect event is this idea of hardware serving as a conduit from the content and the software that the companies are spending time and money, coaching Apple engineers and more other things, creating and developing. So the hardware is the thing that is going to connect you to all of that work that Meta has done. And to my eyes, all of it was promising and all of it kind of made sense.

And here's what I'll say last thing on this. This is VR's last stand. If this device at this weight and price point and functionality is not what makes VR successful, nothing will.

For more from Mark, subscribe to the Power On newsletter at Bloomberg.com forward slash Power On and follow at Mark Gurman on all social platforms. Power On is a production of Bloomberg Podcasts. Our show is produced by Alexis Haught and Keshav Pandya. Our supervising producer is Magnus Henriksen. Audio engineering by Blake Maples. Original music is by Taka Yasuzawa and Alex Segura.

Our video editor is Bobby Krause.

Our executive producer is Amy Keene. And Cheryl Brumley is our head of podcasts. Special thanks to Nick Turner and Tom Giles. Thank you for listening.

John Ternus Is Remaking Apple. How Far Will He Go?

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