The moment is getting closer and closeri Apple will announce its next big thing, something that the market still struggles to understand if it will really be the revolution that many are waiting for or just a passing phenomenon. We are obviously talking about Apple’s AR and Mixed Reality viewer, whose debut is expected in the course of 2023.
To add some information about the new device is the well-known insider Mark Gurman, who recently published an excerpt from his Power On newsletter on Bloomberg, where he explores everything that happens within the Apple universe on a weekly basis. This time the focus was on the Cupertino house’s viewersince some internal movements and job announcements have allowed us to track some of the news in store for the device.
Before going into the news, Gurman made a brief summary of what are the fixed points so far, or the adoption of an ultra premium list price that will position the viewer on figures close to those of Hololens, therefore in the $ 2,000-3,000 rangethus going beyond the price of the Meta Quest Pro (which we talked about in our preview).
The particularly high price list should be justified by the presence of high-level hardware, including an M2 class SoC, up to 10 external cameras for the tracking of the viewer and for the use of AR functions and the adoption of the most defined display ever used in a commercial viewer. In short, even in this case it will be a niche product – at least in its initial phase – but whoever chooses to buy it will have one of the best performing devices on the market in their hands (or face).
In these cases the next question is “yes, but to do what?“, since the use of AR applications and Mixed Reality is still very far from everyday life, so many struggle to find the added value in products belonging to this category.
Gurman’s indiscretions confirm that Apple is working precisely in this direction, that is, to develop particularly varied and advanced software applications for its viewer. It then goes from the realization of a real 3D worldeven if the Cupertino house will not insert it within the all too ambiguous label of metaversetowards which Apple has expressed skepticism for some time now.
On the other hand, the company does not aim to create a device that leads the user to spend more time than necessary isolated from the rest of the world, but to a product that significantly intervenes in the performance of certain activities. Among these there also seems to be the viewing of video content, given that Gurman’s rumors speak of the development of an application dedicated to this.
Beyond that, Apple is looking for engineers who specialize in the development of augmented reality applications and personnel able to work on App Intent, so that both the applications and the operating system of the viewer are fully compatible with features such as Siri, Commands and with integrated search systems.
As for the operating system, remember that this should be called rOS, or realityOS, and it seems that Apple also has two possible names in the pipeline that can be used on the final product. It is about Reality Pro And Reality Oneboth currently eligible for candidates and which show us how the company’s focus is precisely on the theme of reality and not exclusion from it.
The work on rOS is now right in the final phase, at least for the first version, since the development of Oak – the code name of the first iteration of rOS – is being concluded and everything should be ready for implementation very soon. on the final product. There are still many doubts to be revealed, but by now it shouldn’t be long before the formalization.
