The Subtle Art of Failing the “Why”
Mark Zuckerberg’s recent AI Glasses presentation is a red flag on how tech leadership is no longer what it used to be.
Close your eyes for a minute and transport your consciousness—half-awake, half-baked, but teeming with anticipation—to a different time and place.
You’re going to the MacWorld Expo in 2007. A key milestone in the tech world now. But then? Just a show where Apple’s Steve Jobs was going to put an end to years of whispers around a new product.
The keynote begins. There’s a massive Apple logo bathed in mysterious fog and corona ejections, like a biblical revelation on the periphery of human consciousness. Steve Jobs, in his signature turtleneck, blue jeans, and white sneakers combo, takes an unassuming corner on the stage.
“This is a day I’ve been looking forward to for two and a half years,” he starts. Amid the uproars of applause, he then interjects, “Every once in a while, a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything.”
That product was the first-ever iPhone. And it did change the industry. The public got their hands on a new gadget that responded to their touch, sans any stylus, and felt more natural than the keyboard-heavy Blackberry devices or stylus-dependent PDAs dominating the market.
Can you imagine the modern smartphone industry for what it is without such a significant reveal? Sure, Apple has become the quintessential let’s-play-it-FIFA-safe corporation, in that they keep releasing their new phones with marginal upgrades like the FIFA video games, and are eyeball-deep in scummy practices. But you can’t deny the force and magic of that first iPhone reveal.
Fast forward to 2025, and I see another big-name CEO on the pedestal of a tech convention in unassuming clothes.
There’s a wry smile playing on his lips as he presents a new frontier in technology: AI glasses developed in conjunction with Ray Ban. These Meta Ray Bans, along with a neural wristband, were to offer a new way of communicating with a heads-up-display (HUD) built in the lenses, much like Tony Stark’s Iron Man, but less flashy and more modest.
But things don’t go as planned.
Tech Metastasis
Unlike the appeal and gravitas that Jobs had, Mark Zuckerberg flops the reveal as his tech fails to demo the features they wanted to showcase. Zuckerberg’s attempt to communicate with Meta’s CTO, Andrew Bosworth, flatlines faster than an iPhone with 2% battery.
And if this wasn’t hilarious enough, the Meta AI demonstration to make a Korean-inspired steak sauce goes bust when the AI in the glasses hallucinates an empty bowl to already have a combination of the base ingredients. It then goes on to suggest grating a pear to add to the sauce.
Meta’s newest quest to dress like Apple’s big Mac fails. But that’s okay, isn’t it? Fails happen. If anything, that’s a testament to an integral part of the tech development cycle.
It’s what Bosworth and Mark say next, however, that felt more triggering and insulting. The following is their exchange:
“This WiFi is brutal,” Bosworth said. “Yeah, I don’t know,” Zuckerberg replied. “We’ll debug that later. You practice these things like 100 times, and then you never know what’s going to happen.”
Almost nobody believed this white lie. But why was it that they blamed the WiFi instead of accepting that their product was bugged?
I think we all have a good understanding of how we—or rather the tech world—equates Zuckerberg to an emotionless lizard, what with his unflattering media appearances. It did not help that Jesse Eisenberg played him to a T in The Social Network. But surely, no tech-bro CEO has ever fallen from disgrace, right? Even when they invade your privacy, sell your data, or manipulate the content on your feed to change your political leanings, these wannabe street-smart “young’uns” are always on a pedestal.
And while there’s no absolving Jobs from his shortcomings, there’s a clear distinction in how he envisioned his products when you put the butter paper of his ideas on the card-castle AI bandwagon that everyone, like Zuckerberg, is trying to build.
Apple’s iPhone was a product of purpose—a study in convenience, user experience, and human-computer interfacing. Back then, when usable touchscreens had only broken the surface tension of tech consciousness, Steve Jobs saw a potential to topple keypads and styluses. He handpicked a few white coats from the company and set them to a clear task. The moment the fruits of this research labour were presented to him, he knew that a mobile phone was the ultimate destiny for such a technology.
Although the tech world has overshot his vision, that first breakthrough was no equivalent to wizardry.
But iPhone—and its legacy that is no longer Jobs’ vision—worked only because the product was built to improve how humans interact with computers as small as the palms of their hands. Meta AI glasses might feel like another attempt at breaking that touchscreen glass ceiling that iPhones set, but it’s nowhere near as impressive.
In fact, all you see upon viewing the announcement is a rushed product to build hype and underdeliver. There’s no potential for growth, no convenience, no globally-transforming vision here, even with AR and AI slapped on the label. It’s the mindset of a build-now-fix-later cancer that reached stage 4 seven technological cycles ago with half-baked releases of hardware and software.
And it doesn’t even answer the why.
Turtlenecks and Turtle Shells
Now, you might have come across Simon Sinek’s TED talk that glorifies the why of leadership. You might either agree or disagree with his message. And that’s fine. No doubt, his TED talk is informative, but Apple didn’t make it big just because it could sell a damned reason for why its products would matter to people.
No, that’s far from the real why. Steve Jobs wasn’t there to sell stories—it works great for ad campaigns, yes, but here, the real why was to actually care about shipping a product that worked from the get-go, about giving a damn about the product you’re bringing to the masses.
Yes, bugs may come and bugs do go, but that doesn’t mean half-arsing the launch of a product that redefines technology and how people use it.
Why should anyone care? If a product works, people buy it. Apple’s legacy and fandom are built upon fascinatingly precise and droolworthy UX principles that give its products an edge in the market. The Apple of today is far from it, but it doesn’t need to be anything more. While iMacs and MacBooks might have clearly defined niches, it was the iPhone that made the computer giant a ubiquitous name.
This why matters more than anything else. It’s the why of a designer, a developer, a marketer, and a leader cutting through the bush of contemporary zeitgeist to find the true answer.
Why would a customer care?
Because the product works, is easy to use, and meets their expectations.
Standards in the industry are seldom set by talking points. Many a car does the work of taking you from point A to point B. Yes, you could weave a mythology behind the horsepower, the engine block, or the legacy of the badge the car wears, but if it fails to do three important things—function as it is supposed to, be easy to drive, and meet a driver’s expectations—no story or PR would ever matter.
And this why is not for the customers. It’s for those pitching their product to the market.
So, in this grand scheme of things, where leaders are busy storytelling customers to sleep with their whys, perhaps they should pause and ask that question themselves.
Zuckerberg could wear a turtleneck to appear more friendly under the spotlight. But when his product fails to even impress the people, what can he do but retreat into his turtle shell, then?
I wanted to rant more about this, but I don’t think I can.
Why, you ask?
The WiFi isn’t working.
