🍎 Apple shows some alpha energy

The promise has been the same for more than a decade: Once augmented reality devices truly arrive, the world will never be the same.

A parade of contenders, from Google Glass to Meta’s Oculus, has changed the world, technically — but only in that a few million shelves have one extra thing sitting on them collecting dust.

How will Apple fare differently?

Vision Pro, unveiled yesterday, is Apple’s entry into the “spatial computing” derby, and it surely has some things going for it:

• The tech is impressive — the display alone has “more pixels than a 4K TV for each eye.”
• In a world full of lonely people, it adds dynamism to an empty room. Vision Pro will host hyper-immersive entertainment, capture vivid 3D memories, and facilitate “life-size” conversations via FaceTime.

It’s got plenty going against it, too:

• Vision Pro makes strides in blending digital worlds with physical spaces, but that has its limits; the EyeSight feature that reveals (an approximation of) wearers’ eyes when someone approaches feels… unsettling.
• At the end of the day, they’re asking people to wear oddball ski goggles all day — and often while being quite tethered (batteries have about two hours of juice before needing a plug-in).

And then there’s that price tag…

… Vision Pro will debut “early next year” with a $3.5k+ premium — and that’s pre-AppleCare.

Apple knows that’s steep and seemingly plans to be patient with its new category. Sales expectations for Vision Pro are relatively modest; it projects ~900k units sold in its first year, per Bloomberg.

This means Apple’s most important words…

… were actually “Feels like magic.”

The phrase, appearing multiple times in its keynote, drives Apple’s immediate takeaway message: that, others’ AI advances be damned, it’s still the tech king. That it sets the pace of innovation and can capture imagination unlike any other company.

Apple’s path to victory with Vision Pro may be, appropriately, that strong optics matter most.

“Vita Coco, like many great adventures, began in a bar.”

The line — a ray of light in a dense 218-page 2021 IPO filing — comes from the Vita Coco Co. co-founder (“coco-founder”?) Mike Kirban, who explains how the idea for Vita Coco was planted.

• Kirban and friend Ira Liran met two Brazilian women at a bar in 2003.
• In brief, Liran married one of them and moved to Brazil. Kirban visited Liran, Liran had Kirban drink a coconut, and Kirban liked it; the duo admired coconut water’s popularity in Brazil, said something like, “Let’s do this in America,” and, for brevity’s sake, boom.

Cracking open revenue streams

The $1.5B Vita Coco brand now holds 50%+ of the US coconut water market, according to Food Dive, with net sales up 13% last year to $427.8m, and its stock up 90%+ since that 2021 IPO.

The company now hopes to follow Ocean Spray’s playbook, leaning in to its potential as a cocktail mixer to expand its presence in bars, restaurants, clubs, and — through a canned cocktail partnership with Captain Morgan — liquor aisles.

Vita Coco is already shelling out strong growth stats:

• The company says it’s already in 11% of US homes.
• Relative Google search interest in coconut water is nearing all-time highs.
• The brand has nearly as many TikTok followers as Coca-Cola — with even more likes.

BTW: Growing up dyslexic, Kirban’s teachers once told him he wouldn’t get a job if he couldn’t read. As he wrote in Vita Coco’s IPO filing, “If only my teachers could see me now!”

There are two kinds of adults: those who attended Space Camp as kids, and those whose brows furrow thinking about how their parents’ negligence cost them the most transformational six days of their lives.

If you aren’t in either of those groups, perhaps you’re just unfamiliar with Space Camp?

• The flagship program welcomes kids ages 9-11 to the US Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama, to train like astronauts.
• We’re talking: time in moon-gravity chairs, building and launching model rockets, constructing Martian colonies, and simulated International Space Station missions.

If you weren’t already part of the FOMO club, welcome to your new feelings of deprivation.

It doesn’t always have to feel this bad, though

Since the first campers completed their missions back in 1982, Space Camp has graduated 1m+ alumni — including several who became actual astronauts.

But there’s hope for the billions of poor souls on this planet who haven’t been strapped into a multi-axis spinning machine: The camp continues to go full throttle, growing its offerings and its facilities.

• In May, Space Camp’s new 40.6k-square-foot state-of-the-art operations center opened in Huntsville.
• Youth programs, which now cover ages 9-18 and also include robotics, cybersecurity, and aviation-training tracks, are priced between $1.5k and $2.5k. Scholarships are also available.
• Special programs also cater to educators, families, and adults.

“And adults,” you say?

Parental forgiveness’s best friend, Adult Space Academy is a three-day, two-night program that runs May-September.

The experience starts at $649/person, a nightly rate not unlike a high-end hotel. And while you’ll probably have to contend with a long waitlist, a flight suit sure as hell beats a plush bathrobe.