(Preview) Apple And Its Lack of Vision, The Transformation of United Airlines, Q&A on Grok, Meta, and Streaming Economics

Summary

Episode Overview

In this episode of Sharp Tech, Andrew Sharp and Ben Thompson dive into three main areas: a critical assessment of Apple’s Vision Pro strategy (with a focus on immersive sports content), the transformation of United Airlines, and a Q&A on topics including Grok, Meta, and streaming economics. The preview focuses almost exclusively on Ben’s impassioned take about Apple’s Vision Pro NBA broadcasts and where Apple is misfiring on its hardware’s content strategy.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Apple Vision Pro & Immersive Sports Content

Starts ~01:23

A. Frustration with Apple’s Approach

• Ben reprises his open letter to Apple about their handling of Vision Pro’s sports video content, lamenting Apple’s chronic lack of compelling content and their TV-style production choices, which undermine the unique strengths of immersive video.
  • “The core mistake Apple’s making with all these videos ... is there hasn’t been enough of them. Now, they went like a year without nothing. I was like, what are you doing? ... And number two, the problem ... is it’s cut for TV.” (05:22–05:43)

B. History & Nature of Sports Viewing

• Ben contextualizes with a brief history of televised sports and the transition from the live, in-stadium, 360° experience to the 2D, multi-camera format optimized for TV viewers.
  • He emphasizes that traditional TV sports succeed by leaning into what TV uniquely enables: curated perspectives, countless camera angles, and slick replays.
  • “It's actually a really brilliant example of accepting this is an inferior product if measured on the basis of being there in person. But let's lean into what is possible given technology and what we could do.” (10:01–10:23)

C. The Missed Opportunity of Immersive Live Sports in Vision Pro

• Ben details how Vision Pro’s immersive capabilities could provide a true sense of presence—something TV cannot.
  • Greatest in-person sports moments: courtside at an NBA game (“the incredible grace of these giants ... impossible to really get when you're watching ... on TV” (11:00–11:23)), or feeling the presence of a player like LeBron James controlling a finals game in person.
  • Instead, Apple’s overproduced, hyper-edited broadcasts break immersion with abrupt camera cuts, heavy editing, and unnecessary TV-style producers and studio shows.
  • “Instead of being able to sort of luxuriate in that feeling ... boom, it would cut to another camera angle ... It was so frustrating and it was kind of uncomfortable to watch.” (12:48–13:48)
  • Andrew relates that even watching those sizzle reels in 2D makes him feel vertigo, questioning who the actual audience is.

D. Prescription: Go Simple, Go Broad

• Ben’s central thesis (and ongoing crusade): Apple should focus on volume and simplicity, placing a single immersive camera at as many events as possible, limiting switching and overproduction, and letting audiences experience a rawer, more authentic sense of being at the game.
  • “I would rather have 10,000 things that are pretty good ... than 10 things that are way overproduced ... Give me just a camera at every game. That’s it.” (17:54–18:24)
  • He connects this to the economic opportunity: live, unique digital experiences are rare and valuable, and Apple is squandering the market by overcomplicating the product.

E. Strategic Ramifications

• Ben argues that user acquisition must come first (“Once you have users, you’ll get developers ... It’s not a chicken and egg problem. It’s a one-way street.” (19:13))
• By chasing overproduction, Apple is making less content (due to higher cost and complexity), which is fatal for platform momentum.

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2. Memorable Quotes & Moments

• “I am aware no one in the world cares about the Vision Pro except for maybe me.” — Ben Thompson (03:35)
• “This is caring about things long after they are cool.” — Ben Thompson (04:13)
• “[Apple] made these cameras ... They built this pipeline ... They could build a marketplace to sell live tickets to basically everything on earth. ... The only thing standing in the way is Apple’s refusal to lose over-engineering.” — Ben Thompson (18:38–19:13)
• “Please, for the love of God, save this device.” — Ben Thompson, addressing Apple (19:40)

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3. Host Interactions and Tone

• The tone is passionate, breezy, and nerdy:
  • Ben alternates between technical analysis (“TV is a 2D flat panel ... brilliantly create[d] an entirely new way to experience a sporting event” (08:01–09:41)) and personal anecdotes (his sports fandom, being in the stadium, etc.).
  • Andrew frames, prompts, and grounds Ben’s commentary (“The experience of using that hardware is undeniably really cool ... There’s just no content for me to consume.” (20:09–20:23))

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4. Listener Feedback & Meta-Discussion

~20:23

• Listener Aaron writes in, agreeing with Ben’s critique and lauding his insights on “lower cost, higher volume, and a differentiated viewing experience.”
• Andrew asks Ben to Steelman Apple’s reasoning for their current approach—a question that would be tackled were the full episode unlocked.

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Vision Pro Immersive Video Frustrations — 01:44–08:30
• TV vs. In-person Sports Experience — 05:45–12:48
• How Immersive Could Work & Apple’s Flawed Execution — 12:48–15:00
• Ben’s Prescription & Rationale for Simplicity — 15:09–19:13
• Platform & User Acquisition Dynamics — 19:13–20:13
• Aaron’s Listener Feedback & “Steelman” Query — 20:23 onwards

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Summary

This preview of Sharp Tech is a masterclass in applied product criticism. Ben Thompson, with Andrew Sharp teeing up questions and reactions, spends nearly the entire episode detailing the ways in which Apple’s Vision Pro could revolutionize live event viewing experiences—particularly sports—but is hamstrung by a misdirected obsession with overproduction and a misguided attempt to shoehorn TV logic into a fundamentally new medium.

The conversation is a blend of tech criticism, sports fandom, media history, and product strategy. Ben is relentless, at times comically so, about his “one man crusade” to get Apple to simply place more cameras courtside and just stream the raw immersive feed. The stakes, he argues, are existential for Vision Pro: without abundant, compelling, differentiated content, there will be no sustained user base, and thus no developer momentum.

For anyone interested in how technology, product management, and media intersect—and how great ideas fizzle due to corporate inertia—this episode preview is both entertaining and instructive.

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Notable Quotes:

• “The only thing standing in the way is Apple’s refusal to lose over engineering ... Please, for the love of God, save this device.” — Ben Thompson (18:38–19:40)
• “It is still disorienting … then as you make that adjustment, it switches again. And it apparently was like that the entire game.” — Andrew Sharp (13:48–14:13)
• “I would rather have 10,000 things that are pretty good ... than 10 things that are way overproduced ... Give me just a camera at every game.” — Ben Thompson (17:54–18:24)

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For more, subscribe to Sharp Tech for the full discussion, including segments on United Airlines, Grok, Meta, and streaming economics.

Transcript

[Andrew Sharp]

Hello and welcome to a free preview of Sharp Tech.

[Ben Thompson]

Hello and welcome back to another episode of Sharp Tech. I'm Andrew Sharp and on the other line, Ben Thompson. Ben, how you doing?

I'm doing pretty well, Andrew. I don't know, I'm thinking. Do you think that I've been playing around with my headphones? I have regular headphones on now. I did get a haircut over the break. I thought the regular headphones were making me look very bald. It was unfortunate, but I didn't put the in ear ones. But then I look at you. You're wearing your stupid earpods.

That's right.

And I can't decide if this is the least professional looking setup ever or if you've gone full circle and it's actually the most professional.

Do we need to have a more unified look? Should you be wearing earpods or should I switch to the over ear dorky look that you're wearing?

No, no, I have those in ear monitor things. But the problem is they always fall in my ear. I need to fix them. I need to ones like custom mobile

earpods, you know what I mean? But I will continue wearing these purely out of spite until the end of time.

It does irritate me that during COVID everyone started doing these like, like you watch like espn. Like the reporters are doing these hits from home and they all look terrible. Like why, why, why is it's we have much better video equipment and we're not even publishing video. It's. It drives me up the wall.

Yeah, get your shit together, Legacy media. For now, Sharp Tech will hold people down as far as a are concerned, headphones notwithstanding. But in any event, it's great to be back and Ben, we've got a lot to work through today. A robust mullet section. But we will begin with Apple and the Vision Pro.

Literally the front of the head. Nice indeed.

Here we are. Pass through Vision all the way, Todd says. And this came in 10 days ago. And he wrote in and said after Ben saw the Apple immersive video sizzle reel In June of 20, Ben wrote the company was fairly mum about how it planned to make those cameras and its format more widely available. But I am completely serious when I say that I would pay the NBA thousands of dollars to get a season pass to watch games captured in this way. Yes, that's a crazy statement to make, but courtside seats cost that much or more. And that 10 second clip was shockingly close to the real thing.

It was more like 3 seconds by the way. I think now that I Think back to it.

And that's all a reference to immersive video in the Apple Vision Pro from your original Apple Vision Pro article in June of 2023. And so fast forward 30 months, Todd says, and it's finally happening. And here he links to a press release from Apple that was headlined Los Angeles Lakers Games on Spectrum Front Row in Apple immersive tip off January 9th. So Ben, it finally happened. But did it really happen? You have now soapbox about this feature on a bunch of different platforms. Great to see you on TBP and this week. And you also lit into Apple on dithering. Do you have a Cliff Notes version of your complaint about the Vision Pro NBA broadcast for the audience here on Sharp Tech?

Wait, I thought this was my long form opportunity.

You're telling me feel free to go long form. You did go long form with an article an open letter to Apple on Monday this week that is the biggest

testament to how strongly I feel about this because I am aware no one in the world cares about the Apple Vision Pro except for maybe me.

So I am giving valuable Just for the record, you earlier this week you described yourself as being on a one man crusade to resuscitate the Vision Pro. There was overwhelming agreement from the strategy and Sharp Tech audience with your takes on the Vision Pro. But I really enjoyed one guy who wrote in and said, ben, that was quite good. Writing about a product literally nobody cares about. Here we are again talking about a product that no one uses.

Well, look, you know, you know I cared about things before they were cool and now, you know, I think thinking back to the App Store, I was focused on those issues a ton but before they became mainstream 10 years in advance, this is caring about things long after they are cool. So it's you're going to get sort of both, both sides of the equation. But I look, I have to write what I'm interested in number one and number two, I am more fired up than ever. I'm not just fired up about being right and being irritated that yes, I wrote this take before I wrote it when the Vision Pro came out, I wrote it when they released that year in review MLS video which was atrocious like it was. It was published by a zoomer on crack. It was unbelievable. Just like 57 gazillion cuts even on the same play, you didn't even know where you were. It was discombobulating. I wrote it about the Metallica concerts. Super cool. Except that the moments, it got really cool where you felt like they were there, they Started cutting to different cameras. The core mistake Apple's making with all these videos and they're actually intertwined. Mistake number one is there hasn't been enough of them. Now they went like a year without nothing. I was like, what are you doing? They published these things that was like, chapter one or episode one. And then like a year later, you're like, is there an episode two? What's going on here? So, number one, they haven't had enough content for the Vision Pro. And number two, the problem with the content on the Vision Pro is it's cut for tv.

Right?

What is tv? And I actually went back and looked at what was the history of sports on tv. And the first ever broadcast was a college baseball game on NBC at Columbia in New York City. And they had one camera and they had the radio broadcast. And at the time, pretty amazing. You can watch something and not be there. What a concept. I'm not being sarcastic. I'm saying, like, that. I'm sure that was absolutely relative to

radio, which people had been relying on for decades at that point.

Well, so immediately the next game that NBC did, the second ever sports on TV in the US was a major League baseball game, this time in Brooklyn. The Brooklyn Dodgers versus the Cincinnati Reds. And what did they figure out in that intervening three months between broadcast number one and broadcast number two? What, two cameras? Because like, you, you have this ability to give different perspectives. And that's important because you're not there. When you're there, it's a 360 degree, every sense, sort of immersive environment. I still love going to baseball games. I go to multiple baseball games a year. What's the whole thing? Part of it is you go in and it's the concourse and in your seat, and there's the guy, like, selling drinks or popcorn or whatever it might be, and it's talking to the people next to you. And the last game I went to was the brewers being the Cubs at game five. Fantastic experience. All the better. Almost sucked because there was a lot of Cubs fans there, but the brewers won, so you got to rub it in their face. And, you know, like, that's part of the experience is sort of being there. And even if you go to a game in the middle of summer, it's like you're. It's a beautiful day and you're sitting outside and you can talk and you could be on your phone or you can sort of do whatever you want to do.

It's a full immersive vibe.

[Andrew Sharp]

There's no question.

[Ben Thompson]

It is a vibe. But even you go to go to a football game. I went to the packers versus Steelers in Pittsburgh. So I was the annoying Cubs fan, right? You're there and I, you know, I, Tucker Craft was amazing that game. I had a Tucker Craft jersey on. I'm like pointing to it. I'm sitting in the front row of the section just being a total like annoying person, right?

And see this is the stuff that would never even be possible even if the vision pro did get it right. But yes, it's all part of the experience.

It's part of the experience. The funny thing is is going to football game is. Is actually. Well, football is kind of interesting because you do see more because you see the whole field. You see stuff develop in certain ways. You also don't see like good close ups of things like sort of what's happening, all these crazy cameras that they got. But it's an experience of being there that that TV can't capture. TV is a 2D flat panel in front of you. And what they've done brilliantly is create an entirely new way to experience a sporting event or any sort of event that takes that sort of accepts this isn't real life. But because it's not real life, there's lots of things we can do. So like for the Super Bowl I talked about they have like 130 cameras or some crazy amount, right? And you get the crazy. Like football again is so well suited to tv. You can show the play then they always show a replay like of the play like right away and it's queued up and it all seems so seamless. And they show like the All 22 viewer. They show a close up and they're seeing the guy actually catch the ball or not. And then we can have a debate was that a catch? Was that not a cat, whatever it might be. Or baseball. You see the replay or I love those videos of the massive like in the playoffs when there's like a game winning home run and everyone's going crazy and sometimes they'll show it on Twitter like the product, the producer truck view of that. It's like cut to camera three, camera five. But it feels totally seamless. As a viewer, that's our expectations and it's part of what makes it great is we get to see the or a college football right now, college football playoffs going on. No one knows because they put too many teams in the playoffs and completely killed the product. Whatever.

Two week gap between the semifinals, finals, suboptimal as far as momentum's Concerned what

is the classic college football shot. The crying coed in this co ed. That's right. Like. And that. That's just. That's part of the college football TV experience. Right. And all this is taking advantage of. It's actually a really brilliant example of accepting this is an inferior product if measured on the basis of being there in person.

[Andrew Sharp]

Yeah.

[Ben Thompson]

But let's lean into what is possible given technology and what we could do. And so you end up with move

around the stadium up and down the field in ways that fans sitting there in a seat cannot. And so there's obviously some advantages and something.

So something's like football. I would argue both by and large football's better on tv. Right. With a big group of people. Now that varies. You know basketball I. Basketball I think is probably the best one in person, especially if you're courtside. But like just you. There's so much like. Of the physicality and power and like the incredible grace of these like giants like striking the court. That's just like impossible to really get when you're sort of watching. Watching on tv. But it varies by sport for sure. But you have. They're totally different experiences. What makes the vision pro amazing is it actually gives you a legitimate facsimile to being there in person. You get that feeling when you're. You got this in the Bucs Lakers game. You could be sitting there and Giannis has the ball. Giannis taking the ball down the court on a transition or separation opportunity is one of the most incredible basketball experiences you will ever have. Particularly if you're close to the court. It's impossible that someone this large, this powerful moves the way that he moves. It's breathtaking. LeBron James. Very, very similar. Like experience just. And a thing you get when you're at a game that's hard to get on TV is the degree to which certain players control the game. Like the all time great example was. I never felt this more tangibly. I think it was the 2015 Finals game one where the warriors this huge breakthrough. No one expect them suddenly they're in the finals, they're playing. The Cavs seemed overmatched and LeBron's control of that game was so like I was there in the stadium. It was so tangible the way he. Every single second of that game had his fingerprints on that. And it's something that was. That I met. You can get that through TV a bit. But in person it's like you can sort of. You feel that. Yeah. And I will lean on basketball. It's the sport I know the best. It's the one I've had the most sort of like, I have had courtside experiences and being there and knowing what it's like.

And also the sport that Apple was trying to broadcast with this product here unsuccessfully.

Well, no, you. You get that feeling. And what was so frustrating about this presentation was the exact same thing that frustrated me about every other Apple immersive video that I've seen is that instead of being able to sort of luxuriate in that feeling and to sort of lose the sense. Yes. It's a little pixelated. Yes. In your peripheral vision. It's not perfect. Yes. If you move your head really quickly, there might be a little bit of tearing. You could get the suspension of belief that you were there. And the moment you would start to feel that, boom, it would cut to another camera angle and it would switch to a replay and it would like. And it was so frustrating and it was kind of uncomfortable to watch. Like, you would be in the middle of. I mean, there's one thing in a fast break where I'm on one camera and it suddenly switches to another camera and I literally missed the basket because I was discombobulated as to where.

I mean, hearing you and reading you describe your experience, it seems like something that would just drive me completely insane because as immersive as the Vision Pro can feel, it is still disorienting. And so you have to kind of adjust to whatever the view is. And then as you make that adjustment, it switches again. And it apparently was like that the entire game. Well, so here's the thing. Maddening that they would do it that way. And the sizzle reels you were complaining about earlier, like, watching that and the jump cuts and everything else, and like, even watching it in 2D, I feel like I'm getting vertigo. I don't know who that is supposed to appeal to. And all of it comes back to Apple's penchant to over engineer and overproduce this content, which flies directly in the face of your recommendation literally 30 months ago to just put one camera on the baseline or courtside and allow people to experience the game that way. Like.

Well, here's the thing. Here's the deal.

Makes.

It's not just that. It's not just that they're making it worse. They're also exacerbating problem number one, which is not having enough content.

Yeah.

So you, you, you. So when you start this broadcast, there is a dedicated studio show for the Apple Vision Pro.

[Andrew Sharp]

Mm.

[Ben Thompson]

Why do I want this sort of like B list studio presenter to be giving me a presentation about the. You know what I like. You know what I like to do when I'm at a game? I like to watch the players warm up. Right. Like to use another Warriors Cavs example. I was at Warriors Cavs. I think it was game five, the game that Draymond was suspended for.

Okay.

And in that game, I remember I was with another guy. This is the worst seats I ever had. We were literally on the second to last row at the top of. At the top of the stadium for this game. But. And I know a second to last row because we got towels for that and we went to the bathroom. Whoever was behind us, store towels. But anyhow, so Kyrie did not miss a shot the entire warmup. It was believable.

Kyrie game?

No, but you could. Before the game, my buddy's like, this is the most, like, we've seen Steph warm up. Whatever. It was nuts. He's like, kyrie might go off tonight. And he 100% went off tonight. Went off that night. Like, made some crazy shots going on. And you know what, being in the stadium and seeing that happen or seeing him warm up and like, talking about it and then him actually doing it was amazing. Right? Like, just like the whole. It was the totality of the experience. Guess what would have been less amazing? Oh, we're going to put you in a widow room before the game so you can watch some presenter talk about what's going on.

Yeah, yeah, it's, it's, it is. It's more overhead for Apple to do it that way.

So you have multiple cameras to have a studio show, to have dedicated announcers. All of this makes it worse and also reduces the amount of content available. I don't under. All I want and I'm more convinced than ever that I'm right about this, but even if I'm not right is put a camera at every game. That's it. Just. And nothing else. I don't need a play by play announcer. I can listen to the crowd. I can listen to the PA announcer. I don't need a scoreboard. I can look up at the scoreboard, which is, by the way, what I did in this game. In this game, they did have a scoreboard bug. It was way at the bottom, so you had to, like, weirdly look down to see it. I just looked up at the scoreboard around the Rainbow Tron in the stadium. Yeah. I looked at the ones around the edge. Right. Like where you normally. If you're sitting courtside. That's where you look anyway because it's a pain in the neck to look up that high. But like, like the. And so they could solve both problems. They could I think have a better product and they could have way more stuff. And this is why like I'm super worked up about this. It's not just that I think I'm right and I'm disappointed I'm not getting what I want. To me, this is a reason to buy the Vision Pro. And I would rather have instead of like 10 things that are way overproduced even if they were awesome and they're not awesome, but even if they were awesome, I would rather have 10,000 things that are pretty good. And I can experience all these things that I couldn't otherwise. And the funny thing is the whole world is conspiring to make this an opportunity. Everything digital is commoditized. There's a gazillion things like why was we talked about this with Taylor Swift and the ERAS tour. Like there's something about live having this sort of experience. Now is the Vision Pro the same as being there with a bunch of crazy teenage girls and getting friendship bracelets? No, but there, there, there is live. And something that's happening in the moment is increasingly rare, is increasingly special. And I think Apple has the capabilities. They've built all the pieces. They made these cameras which by the way are dramatically smaller is actually pretty amazing how small they are compared to the way they used to be. You could see it like dangling from the basket and things on those lines. They built this pipeline. They've now shown they can do it live. They have these devices that are these incredible experience. They, they could build a marketplace to sell live tickets to basically everything on earth. Like and they would also have users

for the Vision Pro which they don't currently have. And then who knows what flowers from there from that.

Once you have users, you'll get developers. Like that's the there there is. It's not a chicken and egg problem. It's a one way street. You need to get users first which means you need that core use case. And to me this, this core use case, it's there. The only thing standing in the way is Apple's refusal to lose over engineering to over. So that's why I put it on the front page. I'm like look, I already wrote this daily update. Look, maybe you're not subscribers, whoever's in charge of this and you didn't read it like let me address it directly

to Apple, directly to Cupertino. Please, for the love of God, save this device. I mean, just for the record, I care about the Vision Pro and will always enjoy talking about it because it was a product that I thought was stupid. Reading about it and hearing people you don't want it to succeed and Gruber rhapsodize about it, I was like these nerds. But then I tried it and the experience of using that hardware is undeniably really cool. And as a tech podcast, it remains

one of the best 30 minute demos of all time. It's like it's my totally.

And like you and I, we're on here talking about software and cost structures and regulations. Like if I think about the coolest piece of new tech hardware that has been released this decade, it's pretty clearly the Vision Pro in my book. Now, Apple has not given me a reason to spend $4,000 on a headset to date and you offered to buy one for me and I was like, you know what, I don't want to waste the company's money on something that I'll use once every six months and so I would be a customer and there's just no content for me to consume. Related to all this though, I'll read this note from Aaron. He says, guys, I wholeheartedly agree with Ben's takes on live events and where the Vision Pro has gone wrong. His solution is lower cost, higher volume, and a differentiated viewing experience. It's so baffling a decision that I can't figure out what could possibly be driving it. One of Ben's axioms paraphrasing here is don't assume people are stupid. Assume they are smart. So assuming the Apple execs sort of know what they're doing, what is the possible Steelman argument for why they've hitched the Vision Pro to this terrible wagon? Can you make a Steelman argument? Do you have theories on why Apple is here?

[Andrew Sharp]

All right, and that is the end of the free preview. If you'd like to hear more from Ben and I, there are links to subscribe in the Show Notes or you can also go to SharpTech FM. Either option will get you access to a personalized feed that has all the shows we do every week, plus lots more great content from strikeri and the structechary plus bundle.

[Ben Thompson]

Check it out and if you've got

[Andrew Sharp]

feedback, please email us at. Email sharptech FM.