To hear newspaper reports tell it, Tim Cook only has eyes for AR glasses, as the Apple CEO puts his focus on developing the company's next big product. But as a long-time iPhone user, forgive me for fretting that Cook and company risk losing sight of their most important product right now.
That would be the iPhone, which even after a quarter of flat revenue, still accounted for nearly 56% of Apple's $124.3 billion in net sales during the holiday quarter that ended in December. Phones remain a big business for Apple, with plenty of things like software updates and this year's iPhone 17 launch clamoring for the attention of executives.
Yet, the iPhone doesn't appear to be at the top of the agenda for Tim Cook if you go by a recent report from Mark Gurman in Bloomberg. The article details how Apple plans to follow up on the Vision Pro headset that's yet to light the world on fire, with the company leaning toward releasing a Vision Pro sequel alongside a lower-end version that would plug into a Mac.
Apple's ultimate goal, though, is reportedly standalone glasses — the long-rumored Apple Glasses — that you would wear all day and that would overlay information over your field of view. And that product has a very important backer in the form of Apple's CEO.
"Cook has made this idea a top priority for the company," Gurman writes, "and is hell-bent on creating an industry-leading product before Meta can." The Bloomberg reporter goes on to quote an unnamed source who calls the glass project "the only thing [Cook's] really spending his time on from a product development standpoint."
At this point, I feel like I should acknowledge a few key points. First, Apple is a very big company with many resources at its disposal, so just because its chief executive may be all-in on AR glasses at the expense of the iPhone, that doesn't mean everyone else is, too.
It's possible to work on multiple things at once, so I'm not for a minute arguing that someone's hung a "Gone Fiahin'" sign outside the iPhone department at Cupertino so that everyone can spend their days thinking lofty thoughts about unreleased products.
Still, I would argue that this report about Apple Glasses taking up the CEO's attention comes at an awkward time for Apple. Because right now, there are a lot of issues surrounding Apple's phones that would seem to require an all-hands-on-deck approach.
Apple Intelligence: Still work to be done
For starters, there's Apple Intelligence, the suite of AI tools Apple announced last June and started rolling out to various devices last fall, the latest iPhones included. A charitable verdict would be that Apple Intelligence is off to a promising start, with some interesting features that show a lot of potential.
The more common view, though, is that Apple Intelligence is pretty underwhelming at this stage. For the most part, the features don't deliver thing that other phones don't already do better — see our comparison of Apple's Image Playground vs. Google's Pixel Studio for an example of how the same tool is more polished elsewhere.
And that's just the features that have launched. Other promised Apple Intelligence additions like a revamp to Siri that makes the digital assistant a more responsive and context aware agent didn't materialize with iOS 18 and likely won't until iOS 19 arrives later this year. Even then, the Siri-related improvements may not arrive until a later update to iOS 19 after the initial release this fall.
Apple Intelligence has plenty of room to improve, and it's a safe bet to assume we're going to hear about those improvements sooner rather than later. But getting your AI house in order seems like an item of more immediate concern than an AR glasses project that's still on the drawing board.
Time to think different with iPhone hardware?
Apple's software struggles come at a time when the iPhone hardware is looking a little long in the tooth. This fall, it will have been eight years since the iPhone X ushered in a new look for Apple's phones, and we've had three consecutive year of iPhone releases with the standard, Plus and Pro models. A shake-up seems to be in order.
In fairness to Apple, that shake-up sounds like it's in the works. An ultra-thin iPhone 17 Air model appears set to join the iPhone lineup this fall. And a lot of Apple watchers seem to believe that a foldable iPhone will follow in 2026, whether it's called the iPhone Flip or iPhone Fold or something else.
That's a good start, but those new designs bring their own set of challenges. With the iPhone 17 Air, Apple's going to have to figure out an argument in favor of buying that particular model beyond just the fact that it's thin. And a foldable iPhone enters a very competitive market where Samsung, Google, OnePlus and Motorola already have devices competing for attention. How does Apple make its foldable stand out from the crowd?
These are all solvable problems, even if you're devoting research and development resources to other products. But there is an issue of perception — why talk up AR glasses, even off the record, when your phone efforts require so much attention?
All eyes on WWDC
That's why WWDC 2025 in June looms so large on the calendar. We could hear more about Apple's mixed reality plans, since visionOS is likely due an update just like any other Apple software. But the more crucial part of the developer conference keynote — at least to me — will be when Apple focuses on iOS 19 and Apple Intelligence.
If Apple outlines a clear set of goals for what it wants to achieve with AI and this year's iPhone software update, we can rest assured that the company's not taking its eye off the ball while it concentrates on long-range efforts like Apple Glasses. And if it falls short of that, then we'll know it's time for Apple to rethink its focus.
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