The advanced nature of the headset will likely make it expensive, with rumors suggesting a price somewhere around $3,000. Several advanced technologies are rumored to be included in the headset, including over a dozen cameras to capture and translate real-world movements to virtual movements, two 4K micro-LED displays, iris scanning, facial expression tracking, powerful Apple silicon chips, and more. It is widely expected that Apple's first AR/VR product will be a high-end niche product aimed at developers and professionals. At WWDC, Apple will detail its new xrOS operating system and introduce developers to its new capabilities before shipping the headset in the fall. A timeline set forth by Bloomberg's Mark Gurman suggests that Apple will reveal the headset prior to WWDC, which takes place in June. Genius Electronic Optical (GSEO) will supply lens modules for VR head-mounted devices, to be launched by Apple in 2023, with shipments to begin in February-March 2023, according to GSEO's supply chain makers.Īpple has been working on its AR/VR headset for several years, with a launch expected to take place this year. Is it a developer who wants to invest time in getting ready for the eventual launch of a cheaper model? Is it someone with a specific commercial need for the expensive gear? Or is it just a rich tech fan with money to burn on a cool new toy?ĭon’t expect Apple to say that last one out loud, but without clear evidence to the contrary, it should probably be taken as the default answer.Concept render based on purported leaked information by Ian Zelbo The report states that Genius Electronic Optical (GSEO) will supply lens modules for Apple's upcoming headset, rumored to be called "Reality Pro," with shipments starting as soon as next month. Who the imagined purchaser of a $3,000 Apple VR headset is will be one of the most interesting parts of the launch event. Since then, the company has never openly courted “early adopters”, instead claiming (despite occasional evidence to the contrary) that its products are ready for the mass market from day one. If true, a $3,000 launch would suggest a radically different approach to the strategy that Apple has followed since its reinvention as a consumer electronics company in 2001. Exactly this sort of mistake was made in the run-up to the iPad’s launch a decade ago, when common consensus settled on $999 as the entry price for a machine that launched at half that. Unlike hardware details, which can leak from the physical requirement of a massive international supply chain, a price can be changed up until the last minute, and needn’t be communicated outside Apple until devices are nearly ready for launch. That last point needs to come with a massive grain of salt, of course. Key points include:Ī tethered battery pack, designed to sit in the user’s back pocket, to ease the tradeoff between power and performance on the one hand and weight and comfort on the other.Ī screen on the front of the headset, designed solely to show the user’s expressions to the outside world, with the goal of making it more comfortable to interact with people wearing the device.Ī focus on “passthrough” use, where a camera on the front of the screen shows the outside world to the wearer, with apps and features superimposed on top.Īnd, most importantly of all, a price tag of about $3,000. If even half of the detail we’ve heard about the forthcoming headset is true, it’s going to be a rare example of Apple releasing something that feels genuinely surprising, rather than a refined version of a product that is already on the market. The chicken-and-egg problem of new software platforms always throws a spanner in the works for companies like Apple: do you sell a product with no apps, or do you give third-party developers the lead time to offer something on release day, and lose the element of surprise? In this case, Apple’s likely to pick the latter option, in part because the element of surprise is mostly lost already. Unless something changes at the last minute – which, given the WWDC keynotes have been prerecorded annually since 2020, is as I type this, unlikely – we will finally see Apple’s long-planned VR/AR/XR headset for the very first time.
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