Apple’s AR glasses deserve an Apple Watch-style ‘early access’ launch

When Apple revealed this week that its wearables segment “is now the size of a Fortune 150 company,” making over $20 billion in 2019 and $10 billion in the holiday quarter, it reminded analysts how massively successful the Apple Watch and AirPods have become, despite their ignominious launches. While the AirPods initially suffered mostly from manufacturing delays and questions about their practicality or fashionability, the original 2015 Apple Watch was basically beta hardware — a device so bad that Apple all but ignored it after launching a “Series 1” replacement in 2016.

But that original Apple Watch served several important purposes for both Apple and its customers. First, it catalyzed the company to reimagine itself in the post-Steve Jobs era, bringing on experts from the fashion and luxury retail worlds to help market and sell the new devices. Second, it gave developers a tangible early sense of what a “smart watch” would and wouldn’t be useful for. And third, for better or worse, it let Apple gauge user reactions so it could safely choose the “horsepower over battery life” path it would follow in every future model.