- Top Apple reporter Mark Gurman noted there are no photos of Tim Cook wearing the Vision Pro headset.
- The Apple CEO may want to avoid the ridicule Mark Zuckerberg faced when he wore Meta's VR headsets.
- These headsets suffer the same problem: They are nerd goggles that make most people look uncool.
At the end of a busy day covering Apple's latest gadget, reporter Mark Gurman noticed something strange: There were no images of CEO Tim Cook or other Apple executives wearing the company's new Vision Pro headset.
"Unless I missed something, it is very curious to me why there are no photos of Tim Cook or other Apple executives actually wearing the Vision Pro. If that is indeed true, that was of course a calculated decision. The question is why?" Gurman, the top Apple reporter, tweeted late on Monday.
This is a radical departure from the way Apple has introduced products over the years. When Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone in 2007, he held it in his hands and demo-ed it live on stage.
This time, the Vision Pro device was shown on the faces of various models, who were mostly women. There are a few shots of Cook standing next to the new device, which is perched on some sort of white stick-like structure.
Various theories are being floated on why Cook and other Apple executives haven't been pictured wearing the devices.
Some observers said live demos of new products are dicey, so Apple may have wanted to avoid any snafus on stage.
"They need it to look cool, and old white guys don't pull that off," wrote Apple blogger Zac Hall.
Gurman, and others, suspect Apple is trying to avoid the fate of Mark Zuckerberg, who has been photographed wearing Meta's VR headsets many times.
Images like these have contributed to a sense of Zuck being an out-of-touch tech billionaire who is more interested in a digital metaverse than the real world. And as Meta's VR business has struggled with massive losses, he's been ridiculed online with memes showing his goggled face.
—Mark Gurman (@markgurman) June 5, 2023
A simpler explanation is that these headsets make people look decidely uncool. Who wants to wear something like that in front of other people?
"Nobody looks good wearing a headset. We all look like big nerds," tweeted Phillip Shoemaker, a former Apple App Store executive.