On April 7th, former senior Apple employee Megen Leigh was interviewed by Wired magazine and talked about the insider story of the "disastrous" debut of the Vision Pro headset.
The Apple Vision Pro headset was released at WWDC 2023, but it was not released in the United States until February 2, 2024. A month before its release, Apple summoned hundreds of retail store employees to Apple Park headquarters in Cupertino, California to receive training on the Vision Pro features.
It is reported that Apple's confidentiality during the training process is extremely high. Employees must sign a confidentiality agreement before entering the campus, not only cannot disclose device details, but also cannot even say where the training is taking place. During the training process, the mobile phone must also be placed in a Faraday bag that blocks GPS signals. After completion, the experience cannot be described to colleagues who are about to participate in the training, in order to maintain a "freshness".
Meghan Leigh's feeling after the training was: 'When I came back from Cupertino, I realized that this is the coolest thing I've ever seen. I can't describe how stunning this device is.'.
However, senior employees like Leigh need to organize a 4-hour training course for sales personnel after returning to the store. Afterwards, employees will have one hour to familiarize themselves with the demonstration process and two opportunities to simulate demonstrations among colleagues.
On paper, this training sales plan is impeccable. But in practical implementation, the launch of Vision Pro has become a "nightmare" for many stores.
Apple's demonstration process involves a lot of details that employees often find difficult to grasp. Before customers start using Vision Pro, employees need to scan their faces and correctly select 25 different sizes of shading pads. Both large and small sizes can affect the display effect. And the interaction of the entire device is completed entirely with fingers and eyes, which is not intuitive enough for people who are new to it. And Apple also wrote a more than ten page notebook for the entire demonstration.
Even more complicated is that during the Steve Jobs era, Apple took pride in having sufficient staff and comprehensive training in its Apple Store. But during the Cook era, Apple Store gradually streamlined its workforce and relied on more highly mobile employees.
By the time the Vision Pro was launched in early 2024, many salespeople had just transitioned from temporary to full-time positions and had no experience with new product launches. An employee said, 'Many people are memorizing scripts for the first time in their lives, and they don't have the ability to do so at all.'.
Due to a shortage of manpower, many employees are unable to access the originally planned training time. A salesperson from an Apple Store in Chicago said, 'I only watched the demonstration for 20 minutes, then spent 30 minutes looking at the notebook, and then demonstrated it again to someone who has been to Apple Park before going straight to work.'.
The final data shows that in 2024, the sales of Vision Pro will be less than 500000 units, while the first year sales of Apple Watch will be about 10 million units, and the annual sales of iPhone will exceed 200 million units.
However, the reason for the success or failure of Vision Pro's popularity goes far beyond poor execution on the retail end. This headset weighs about 1.5 pounds (about 680.4 grams) and is not comfortable to wear for a long time; The number of applications is limited; The video call performance is poor, and the generated persona is somewhat 'uncanny valley'. In addition, its high selling price is also an important factor in its failure: the basic version is $3500 (about 24111 yuan in current exchange rate), and after adding common accessories, it approaches $4000 (about 27556 yuan in current exchange rate).
But Vision Pro exposes a deeper problem for Apple: the company itself has deviated from Steve Jobs' initial vision nearly 25 years ago.
When Steve Jobs founded the Apple Store in 2001, he did not see it as a simple retail storefront, but rather as a place to "preach" to users, allowing more people to understand and use Apple products and express their creativity.
Initially, almost half of the space in the Apple Store was used for teaching. Employee benefits are generous, recruitment conditions are strict, and temporary workers are generally not used to ensure service quality.
However, after Tim Cook took the helm, Apple gradually shifted towards cost control and increased investment in services such as Apple Music, iCloud, and App Store to obtain more stable cash flow.
And the on-the-job training method of Apple Store has also changed, from classroom training led by instructors in the past to employees browsing computers for learning on their own. Previously, employees needed to undergo three weeks of face-to-face training before starting work, but now they only need to look at their computers for a week to get started.
After the change of retail management, Apple Store gradually moved closer to the traditional retail model and emphasized sales indicators, such as how many new phones were activated, how many accessories were sold, and whether AppleCare+was successfully promoted.
An employee said, "Now when you buy an iPhone, you may be asked 57 times, 'Do you want to buy AppleCare+along with it?'? ’”.
Another landmark change is the shift in the position of 'Creative'. In the past, this position was similar to private teaching, where users could receive unlimited one-on-one teaching by paying $99 per year (equivalent to approximately RMB 682 in current exchange rates). But later it was replaced by the free group course "Today at Apple", and the content gradually shifted towards promoting their own products.
Returning to the main topic, when Vision Pro was first launched, the store environment was described as "chaotic", with frequent customer onlookers, noise interference, and uneven presentation quality. Some employees needed about an hour to complete a presentation.
As user interest declines, stores may even need to actively engage customers and even relax the age limit of 13 years old. An employee said, "I gave a demonstration to an 11 year old child whose face was too small to fit, and the situation was very awkward
The sales performance of Vision Pro is also not ideal, with multiple Apple Stores reporting dozens of demos but no one buying it. We may sell one unit per week. "" No, we don't have any at all. If there is a return, it will still be negative.
