It seems that now we are there and that the last pieces of the first project of Apple for the world of virtual and augmented reality are going to their place. The latest information in this sense comes from Mark Gurman, who published an update on Bloomberg regarding the state of work on the new mixed reality viewer being worked on at the Cupertino house, which could be presented as early as 2023.
Gurman argues that the device is now ready to arrive and that this will sanction the Apple’s first launch of a new product category in quite some time. In fact, remember that the latest categories introduced by Apple are both related to wearable devices and we are talking about the first Apple Watch (announced in September 2014, then released on the market in April 2015) and the First generation AirPods (September 2016).
With the launch of the viewer it will also be made official the operating system that will accompany the first headset and all subsequent products, and also in this case there are interesting news. Gurman has in fact anticipated that Apple has finally defined the name of the OS – previously known as realityOS -, which should be called simply xrOS.
Choosing to use xr in the name indicates that – as was legitimate to expect – Apple has thought of a single operating system for all its future devices that will fall into the category of AR / VR viewers or AR glasses, thus going to create a shared platform which lays its foundations – of course – on iOS. The acronym xr indicates the extended reality that will be embraced by this category of products.
xrOS will offer support to some of the main applications of the Cupertino ecosystem, such as FaceTime, Maps and Messages, which have been redesigned from scratch to offer a completely new user experience focused on the possibilities offered by glasses and visors. The latest rumors suggest that Apple is working on a development kit that allows xrOS to host applications and entertainment services of all kinds, however the company does not seem to be interested in focusing its next products around the theme of the metaverse, from which on the contrary, he seems to want to distance himself.
The mass production of the first viewers should start in March and at the moment it is not clear whether Apple will hold an event in advance – in order to present the viewer already in the first quarter of 2023 – or if it will wait for the next WWDC appointment to reveal his cards. In any case, we won’t have to wait much longer before learning more through official channels.
