The Financial Times has reported that Apple’s mixed reality (MR) headset is being launched this year at the behest of Tim Cook, its CEO, as he looks to cement his legacy by producing a next generation platform for the company, one to rival the iPhone. Despite the concerns of Apple’s design leaders who think the product may not be ready.
Obviously, someone inside Apple has some major concerns to leak this news to the Financial Times. At this stage, all the speculation around the headset is either setting it up to fail or spectacularly surprise everyone.
- Is it really going to be as seminal a product launch as was the iPhone?
- Will the headset be primarily designed to encourage developers leaving the mass market appeal version to happen in future iterations?
- Does Tim Cook really care about his legacy when it should be good enough to have followed on from Steve Jobs and not breaking anything?
- Where’s any tangible evidence of MR headset technology from any company that wouldn’t mean a bulky headset or a set of design compromises that would make it meh?
- Why am I writing about this for the umpteenth time when I can wait until June to find out no one knows anything?
We all have to hedge our bets with Apple. Can’t count the company out, and go all in on, wtf, why get into headsets? On the other hand, nothing about the frenzied speculation makes you feel good about the outcome. Apple doesn’t need to convince developers to develop for its platform by launching a product to full worldwide scrutiny as a dry run. There’s plenty of dry run headsets out there, and plenty of eager developers that could have been used to corral a secret cabal of launch applications. Not to mention money. Apple has a lot of it. If the product is the next iPhone, the company could have bought enough developers, none of whom would dare break an NDA, into line for a launch.
Tim Cook’s legacy? Who knows. The guy hasn’t exactly gone around acting like the second coming of Steve Jobs and hasn’t really shown himself to be anything less than a very good CEO of a very large corporation. An Apple car would have been a better legacy than an MR headset. I mean, come on. If you can build a car, something that could be very expensive, very cool, and good enough to satisfy your millionaire demographic and the press, wouldn’t you rather do that then shove an electronic bucket over the head and shout, “You fully immersed, buddy?!”
As for tangible evidence of technologies that could help Apple change the headset world, try me. Apple Insider has an article claiming the first real leak of Apple VR headset components.
It is believed to be made in a similar way to the Meta Quest 2, namely a “ski goggle” construction, but with considerably higher specifications. This includes automatically adjusting lenses so the user has perfect in-experience vision of the high-quality OLED screens.
Apple Insider
Dice it any way you want, but this doesn’t sound like the product is going to be revolutionary. Just a Quest but better and more expensive. I have already made the point headsets are an ophthalmological solution to a problem that is caused by wearing headsets.
There’s enough research, startups, and nascent technologies out there to know what the real issues are in developing a headset, that money is not what’s holding back those technologies from being full realized, and that even Apple can’t spend enough to make a really kick-ass headset affordable or usable. The enthusiasm for MR is valid, the expectation that Apple will accelerate adoption, or drag the industry in its wake to greater things, is ludicrous.
