Can Apple make its headset inevitable?

Apple’s expected unveiling of a computer headset on Monday has got many a pundit proclaiming the advent of the next big tech platform shift. 

I’m as excited as the next person to see what Apple shows off at its WWDC conference next week. I’m sure I’ll be swept up in the excitement of the gizmo, but I’ll also be looking at it with a lesson from a past platform shift in mind. 

People talked about smartphones for years before the iPhone’s 2007 debut. The basic idea—a small handheld computer that you could whip out of your pocket to watch videos, find information, and communicate with—always seemed like an inevitability. If such a magical gadget existed and was affordable, who wouldn’t want one?

The limitation was the technical feasibility. Lots of people tried with varying degrees of success—from the Sony Magic Link to the Palm Pilot to the T-Mobile Sidekick. But it wasn’t until the iPhone achieved the perfect combination of features, design, price, and performance that smartphones became a must-have item and the world shifted from PCs to mobile devices.

Headsets have similar technological limitations. Dave Smith has a great piece today on the design and performance trade-offs that Apple has likely had to make with its forthcoming headset, and why that means you should keep your expectations in check.

But unlike with smartphones, I don’t sense the same inevitability with headsets. Is there a genuine unfilled desire among the general public to strap a piece of electronic equipment onto our faces and to immerse ourselves in virtual worlds? 

To true believers in AR, VR, and mixed reality, the answer to that question is yes, once the right product is available. That product probably looks more like a pair of sunglasses than the bulky, ski-goggle-like devices currently available from Meta, Sony Playstation, and soon, apparently, Apple. But it’s not at all clear that the technology to achieve the holy glasses is any nearer than the technology to create a mass-market brain-computer interface (another tech dream product that seems far from inevitable to me).

I’ve seen enough wild innovations over the years that I’m not naive enough to say that the shift to a headset-based computing platform will never happen. But even with Apple—the catalyst for the last major platform shift—now throwing its weight and know-how into the game, I think that when the dust settles after Monday’s big event, we’ll realize we have Palm Pilots, not iPhones.

Want to send thoughts or suggestions to Data Sheet? Drop a line here.

Alexei Oreskovic

Data Sheet’s daily news section was written and curated by Andrea Guzman.

NEWSWORTHY

Twitter’s head of trust and safety leaves. Ella Irwin, Twitter’s head of trust and safety, has left the birdhouse. The former Amazon director joined Twitter last year, and once Elon Musk acquired the company, she quickly became one of his top executives. As Fortune's Kylie Robison was first to report, Irwin's internal Slack account was suddenly deactivated on Thursday, and she then confirmed her departure without specifying the reason.

Amazon considers offering mobile phone service. Amazon is weighing whether it will offer mobile connectivity to those with a Prime subscription in the U.S. Bloomberg reports that Amazon has had negotiations with carriers like Verizon, T-Mobile, Dish, and AT&T about using their networks to offer mobile connectivity, but that the plans wouldn’t be launched for months and may fall through. If it did happen, Amazon would offer the service to Prime subscribers either as part of their existing subscription or for a monthly fee. This comes after Amazon increased the cost of a Prime subscription last year for a “continued expansion of Prime member benefits.”

The cost of testing Microsoft’s A.I. features. Microsoft has boasted about its Office 365 A.I. features that let users automate tasks like writing in Word or building PowerPoints. But testing it requires paying about 40% more than the classic version. Citing an anonymous source who knows about the pilot program, The Information reported that at least 100 customers are paying a flat $100,000 fee for up to 1,000 users for one year. Microsoft’s largest customers testing the features include Bank of America, Ford, Walmart, and Accenture.

ON OUR FEED

“We’ve had every possible form of investigation done. And we did not have a systemic issue with harassment—ever. We didn’t have any of what were mischaracterizations reported in the media.”

—Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick in an interview with Variety talked about the harassment and gender equality probes the company has faced from federal and state agencies over the past few years where he’s been accused of not addressing internal culture issues. Kotick said that Activision has seen a relatively low level of harassment and assault complaints for a company with 17,000 employees. 

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

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The former chief business officer at Google’s moonshot division says the need to regulate A.I. is ‘beyond an emergency’, by Rachel Shin

Elon Musk accused of insider trading (again) to rake in $124 million from Dogecoin sales by temporarily changing Twitter logo to a Shiba Inu, by Christiaan Hetzner

Workers worry that A.I. will lead to a slash in pay, even as it mints new $300,000 jobs, by Jane Thier

BEFORE YOU GO

An app that rewrites headlines. The Artifact news app’s latest feature will use A.I. to transform headlines deemed "clickbait." When users pile on by flagging a story with a clickbait headline, Artifact may show its A.I.-rewritten version to all users. The feature, which uses OpenAI’s GPT-4 large language model, launches today and comes after an option became available last month for users to mark an article as clickbait. Still, Artifact employees will review the A.I.-made headlines. 

In an interview with the Verge, Artifact cofounder Kevin Systrom, who was also a cofounder of Instagram, said he’s confident the new headlines are accurate. “In our experience in testing, it’s basically always right. I don’t think we’ve actually found an example where it hasn’t been right. We’ve found examples where it’ll rewrite the title and it’s not necessarily better, but it’s not worse,” he said.