apple vr headset Archives

Apple’s upcoming mixed reality headset has been the subject of many reports and rumors over the past few years—that’s just the nature of the Cupertino-based black box. Now a new report from the Financial Times alleges we may see the company’s first XR device unveiled this summer.

The headset, which is still unnamed, is allegedly nearing its big unveiling, which is said to take place in June 2023, or around when the company traditionally holds its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC).

The report maintains Apple CEO Tim Cook is the principal force pushing the device’s launch forward this year, which has apparently been a source of tension since as far back as early 2016.

The company’s operations team reportedly found itself at odds with the industrial design team, the former wanting to push out an early version of the headset while the latter hoped to delay in order to slim down the device.

Cook is ostensibly backing the operations team, as he allegedly hopes to push out the first version of the company’s XR headset, which is said to be targeting enthusiasts at an eye-watering $3,000 price point.

Citing sources familiar with Apple’s plans, the company is expected to only sell around one million units of the XR headset over the course of 12 months.

Relatively low sales targets notwithstanding—Apple sells 200 million iPhones per year—the company is expected to go in for a “marketing blitz” to attract prospective users.

According to a Bloomberg report earlier this year, Apple may be putting its plans to release a full AR headset on hold, as the company is allegedly planning what is described as a “lower-cost version” of its MR headset first. That cheaper version is said to target a 2024 or early 2025 launch window.

Note: This list of the headset’s prospective features and specs have been gathered from a few disparate reports. None of the below has been confirmed by Apple, so please take anything you read here with a large grain of salt:

Reported Apple MR Specs

Resolution: Dual Micro OLED displays at 4K resolution (per eye)
FOV: 120-degrees, similar to Valve Index
Chipset: Two 5nm chips. Includes a main SoC (CPU, GPU, and memory) and a dedicated image signal processor (ISP). Chips communicate via a custom streaming codec to combat latency.
Battery: Waist-mounted battery, connected via MagSafe-like power cable to the headset’s headband. Two-hour max battery life, although hotswappable for longer sessions.
Passthrough: ISP chip contains custom high-bandwidth memory made by SK Hynix, providing low latency color passthrough
Audio: H2 chip, providing ultra-low latency connection with the second-generation AirPods Pro and future AirPods models. No 3.5mm and possible no support for non-AirPod BT headphones.
Controller: Apple is said to favor hand-tracking and voice recognition to control the headset, but it has tested a “wand” and a “finger thimble” as alternative control input methods.
Prescription Lenses: Magnetically attachable custom prescription lenses for glasses-wearers.
IPD Adjustment: Automatic, motorized adjustment to match the wearer’s interpupillary distance.
Eye Tracking: At least one camera per-eye for things like avatar presence and foveated rendering
Face & Body Tracking: More than a dozen cameras and sensors capture both facial expressions and body movements, including the user’s legs.
Room Tracking: Both short- and long-range LiDAR scanners to map surfaces and distances in three dimensions.
App Compatibility: Said to have the ability to run existing iOS apps in 2D.

Design Rumors

Outer Shell: Aluminum, glass, and carbon fiber to reduce its size and weight. Cameras are largely concealed for aesthetic reasons.
Presence Displays: Outward-facing display can show user’s facial expressions and also presumably eye movements. Said to be an always-on display similar in latency and power draw of Apple Watch or iPhone 14 Pro.
Dedicated Passthrough Switch: Digital Crown-like dial on its right side to switch between VR and passthrough.
Headstrap: Various available, including consumer-focused headstrap similar in material to Apple Watch sport bands with built-in speakers. Unspecified, but different headstrap targeted at developers.

Apple is a notorious black box when it comes to internal projects, although sometimes details based on supply chain rumors shed a sliver of light on what might be happening with the company’s AR/VR headset behind closed doors. Much less common coming from Apple are direct internal leaks, however a report from The Information alleges that 10 people on Apple’s mixed reality headset project team have detailed some of the past design challenges and possible direction the headset may take moving forward.

The report (via 9to5Mac) details some anecdotes reaching back as far as 2016, when the company allegedly first showed off a number of AR and VR prototypes to industry leaders and Apple elite.

Former Vice President Al Gore, then–Disney CEO Bob Iger and other Apple board members walked from room to room, trying out prototype augmented and virtual reality devices and software. One of the gadgets made a tiny digital rhinoceros appear on a table in the room. The creature then grew into a life-size version of itself, according to two people familiar with the meeting. In the same demo, the drab surroundings of the room transformed into a lush forest, showing how users could seamlessly transition from AR, in which they can still view the physical world around them, to the more immersive experience of VR—a combination known as mixed reality.

It was more of a conceptual showcase at the time, the report maintains, as some prototypes ran on Windows while others were based on the original HTC Vive. Like the ‘The Sword of Damocles’ built by Ivan Sutherland in the late 60s—the founding father of virtual reality—one such prototype was also supposedly so heavy it was “suspended by a small crane so the Apple board members could wear it without straining their necks.”

None of that’s particularly uncommon practice when it comes to hardware development—just ask Magic Leap insiders from the early days—however the report notes the company’s MR headset hasn’t gained the same support from Apple’s current CEO, Tim Cook, that Steve Jobs had for iPhone’s development. The report says Cook “rarely visits the group at its offices away from the main Apple campus.”

There’s also allegedly been some political infighting that has stymied development, which we’ve heard in a previous report from 2019 when it was alleged Apple was pumping the breaks on the headset due to discord between then-Apple hardware designer Jony Ive and project lead Mike Rockwell. Ive has since departed the company in 2019 to pursue his own design company, LoveFrom.

Rockwell, Meier and Rothkopf soon encountered pushback from Ive’s team. The three men had initially wanted to build a VR headset, but Ive’s group had concerns about the technology, said three people who worked on the project. They believed VR alienated users from other people by cutting them off from the outside world, made users look unfashionable and lacked practical uses. Apple’s industrial designers were unconvinced that consumers would be willing to wear headsets for long periods of time, two of the people said.

While the teams proposed adding passthrough cameras to the front of the headset, codenamed N301, Apple industrial designers were decidedly more intrigued with a concept for what sources tell The Information was an “outward-facing screen on the headset. The screen could display video images of the eyes and facial expressions of the person wearing the headset to other people in the room.”

The report doesn’t go any further than 2019, however The Information’s Wayne Ma is supposedly publishing a piece soon that covers “pivotal moment for the Apple headset.”

Like we said, Apple is a black box, which means it doesn’t comment on on-going projects or respond meaningfully to media requests for clarity. Looking back at previously reports however may provide a rough picture of what to expect. The information below is based on reports, so please take it with a grain of salt.

Report: Apple’s MR Headset Could Come as Soon as This Summer

Reported Apple MR Specs

Design Rumors

Report Details Apple MR Headset Design Challenges & Internal Hurdles

What We (think we) Know About N301 Mixed Reality Headset