Tony Fadell, the Nest CEO who was Senior VP of Apple’s division from 2006 to 2008, says that Apple built prototypes of a similar device to Google Glass but “didn’t have time” to turn them into actual products.
Interviewed as part of Fast Company‘s Oral History of Apple Design series, Fadell said:
From the description, the prototypes sound rather more like virtual reality headsets than Google Glass so there may be some exaggeration going on here. But it wouldn’t be a tremendous surprise to find that Apple has toyed with almost every tech idea under the sun: it has the resources needed to experiment at will.
The notion that Apple didn’t pursue the concept for lack of time seems rather more fanciful: it’s not like the company couldn’t have run out and hired a complete team for the project had it wished to do so.
Apple has always had a philosophy of doing a very small number of things extremely well. Back in 2011, iPod, iPhone and iOS product marketing head Greg Joswiak described “saying no” as one of Apple’s four keys to success.
