One participant uses a hand tracking feature with Facebook’s Oculus Quest VR headset during the Oculus Connect 6 conference in San Jose, California on September 26, 2019.
Photographer: Michael Short / Bloomberg
Photographer: Michael Short / Bloomberg
Apple Inc.’s first attempt at a headset was designed to be an expensive niche precursor to a more ambitious augmented reality product that will take longer to develop, according to people with knowledge of the subject.
The initial device faced several development obstacles and the company has conservative sales expectations, illustrating how challenging it will be to bring this nascent consumer technology to the masses.
As a virtual reality device, it will display a comprehensive 3-D digital environment for gaming, watching videos and communicating. AR functionality, the ability to overlay images and information about a real-world view, will be more limited. Apple planned to launch the product in 2022, going against Facebook Inc.’s Oculus, Sony Corp’s PlayStation VR. and HTC Corp. headsets, people said. They asked not to be identified discussing private plans.
The typical Apple manual involves taking emerging consumer technology, such as music players, smartphones, tablets and smartwatches, and making it reliable and easy to use for everyone. This time, however, Apple isn’t looking to create an iPhone-like hit for its first headset. Instead, the company is building a sophisticated niche product that will prepare developers and outside consumers for its most conventional AR glasses.
The plans suggest that Apple’s first headset will be much more expensive than its rivals, which cost about $ 300 to $ 900. Some Apple members believe the company can only sell one headset per day by retail store. Apple has about 500 stores, so in this scenario, annual sales would be just over 180,000 units – excluding other sales channels. That would put it on a par with other expensive Apple products, like the $ 5,999 Mac Pro desktop computer. An Apple spokesman declined to comment.
Participants visit the Sony PlayStation virtual reality games booth at Gamescom’s computer games industry event in Cologne, Germany on August 20, 2019.
Photographer: Krisztian Bocsi / Bloomberg
Apple intends to include some of its most advanced and powerful chips in the headset, along with much higher resolution screens than those of existing virtual reality products. Some of the chips tested in the device outperformed Apple’s M1 Mac processors. The company also designed the headset with a fan, something the company generally tries to avoid in mobile products, people said.
The headset, code-named N301, is in a final prototype stage, but has not yet been finalized, so the company’s plans may change or be dropped altogether before launch. AR glasses, codenamed N421, are in an early stage known as “architecture”, meaning that Apple is still working on underlying technologies. This product is several years away, according to the people, although Apple has already planned until 2023 to reveal it.
The powerful processors and the inclusion of a fan initially led to a device that was very large and heavy, with some concern about neck strain in the first tests. Apple removed the space that VR devices typically reserve for users who need to wear glasses, which brought the headset closer to the face and helped to decrease the size. And to serve consumers with vision problems, it has developed a system in which personalized prescription lenses can be inserted into the headset over VR screens, people said.
This may expose Apple to regulations governing the sale of products with recipes. The company typically sells its devices in dozens of countries, many of which have different prescription rules. Apple is also discussing how to implement prescriptions at the point of sale online and in retail stores.
Apple originally planned to include less powerful processors and download much of the work to a hub in the user’s home that would wirelessly send content to the headset. But that idea was crushed by Jony Ive, Apple’s head of design at the time, Bloomberg News reported last year. The headset is designed to function as a standalone device, which means it can operate on battery power instead of being connected to a wall or a Mac. This is similar to Facebook’s latest VR product, while Sony requires a PlayStation game console.
Read more: Apple’s AR and VR headset plans altered by internal differences
To further reduce the weight of the device, Apple is planning to use a fabric exterior. This is different from the metal designs that Apple uses for most products, although it used plastic for devices like AirPods, which need to be lightweight, and woven for the HomePod speaker to improve acoustics.
The headset prototypes, some of which are the size of an Oculus Quest, include external cameras to enable some AR features. The company is testing the use of cameras for manual tracking and working on a feature where a user can virtually type in the air to enter text. It is not clear whether this function will be ready for the first version of the device or if it will ever leave the exploratory stage.
The Covid-19 pandemic stopped some developments and Apple’s hardware engineers were only able to work on certain days in the office. The company also faced delays in conducting user tests and data collection. This delayed some decisions in the engineering process.
The company is still struggling with the content and functionality it plans to ship with the device. Virtual reality is still a rather incipient technology, with content beyond games still relatively limited. Last year, Apple acquired a company called NextVR, which registered events such as concerts and sports games in virtual reality. Also discussed is the grouping of an App Store with the device, which runs on an operating system called “rOS” within the company.
If Apple goes ahead with the VR headset, it will be the precursor to an eventual pair of AR glasses – a product that the company sees as much more popular, but also more difficult to launch. Microsoft Corp.’s HoloLens 2 and Magic Leap headsets, which emphasize RA over VR, cost $ 3,500 and $ 2,295 respectively. HoloLens focuses mainly on work use cases, while Magic Leap fell far short of the initial hype and reduced jobs last year.
A visitor experiences a Magic Leap One during the Virtuality Paris 2019 show on November 21, 2019 in Paris, France.
Photographer: Chesnot / Getty Images Europe
Apple added AR to the iPhone for the first time in 2017, allowing new games and mobile applications, such as those to virtually put furniture in your living room before you buy them. Apple CEO Tim Cook said that both virtual reality and augmented reality have potential, but that AR is the biggest opportunity.
AR glasses should be packed with small, powerful and efficient electronic components to overlay notifications, map directions and other information, while supporting Internet connectivity and high battery. This is a major technical challenge. Even Oculus, which launched its first all-in-one virtual reality headset in 2019, will not include AR features in its first glasses this year.
Getting to that point requires years of work on lenses, hardware and software, miniaturization of components, production techniques and content creation. Critically, getting most people to use a computer on their face, even if it’s small, is difficult. This, in part, condemned Google’s initial attempt to create consumer AR glasses several years ago.
By developing a less conventional starter headset, Apple can invest in the underlying technologies, consumer education, content development and developer relationships to give your eventual AR glasses the best chance of success – when they’re ready.