Watch out, Zuckerberg. Apple unveiled a new AR/VR headset at its annual developer conference—marking its largest product release since the Apple Watch in 2015.
Apple CEO Tim Cook announced the headset—called Apple Vision Pro—during a keynote address at the Worldwide Developer Conference on Monday. The mixed-reality headset promises to blend augmented and virtual reality, allowing users to overlay digital images and videos in the real world.
The device is slated to be released early next year with a hefty price tag of $3,499—an arguably risky pricing strategy that’s sure to be prohibitively expensive for most consumers.
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The Vision Pro will retail at an eye-popping $3,499.
Apple“Vision Pro is a new kind of computer that augments reality by seamlessly blending the real world with the digital world," Cook said. "This is the first Apple product that you look through and not at.”
The device itself looks like a large pair of ski goggles and hosts an array of sensors and cameras to allow users to control the headset with their hands, eye movements and voice commands. The Vision Pro also includes a feature called “EyeSight,” which is a front-facing screen that reveals the user’s eyes so it doesn’t feel like you’re talking to a cyborg when someone is wearing one.
Unlike other AR/VR headsets, the Vision Pro is completely controller free. Users can use eye movements to scroll through menus and hand gestures in order to make certain actions. Meanwhile, the Vision Pro provides spatial audio and visuals that Apple claims will be able to replace desktop screens completely.
The Vision Pro promises to do away with those pesky and cumbersome computer screens with a headset.
AppleThe headset also allows users to see the world around them in full color, with a virtual 3D layer on top of it. Since it’s compatible with Apple’s suite of products including Mail, Messages, and FaceTime, users will be able to interact with those apps in the “real world,” so to speak.
“With Vision Pro, you’re no longer limited by a display,” Cook added, seeming to take a slight dig at Meta’s Quest 2 headset.
Even for Apple, a company that’s no stranger to ambitious and industry-changing products, the Vision Pro is bold—and fairly risky. Since Facebook’s announcement in October 2021 that it would be shifting away from its primary business as a a social media company to being a “metaverse platform,” the bet hasn’t panned out as proponents had hoped.
The Vision Pro comes with a spatial audio system so things will sound like they're coming from the environment of the users.
AppleSales of the Quest 2 headset fell in 2022. That was bookended by several rounds of brutal layoffs that saw thousands of employees in the company lose their jobs. Companies that had previously jumped on the bandwagon on the heels of Meta’s announcement—like Disney, Wal-Mart, and Microsoft—have since abandoned their own metaverse plans.
While there were many reasons behind this, the technology behind the metaverse (i.e. the headset) simply proved to be too much for most customers. It’s bulky. It’s expensive. It’s also not as intuitive to use as say a mobile phone or laptop.
The fact that Apple is willing to bet on their own AR/VR headset is a surprising one—especially since the rest of the tech world seems to be completely obsessed with all things AI. However, Apple has a proven track record of setting industry standards with products that quickly become household names like the iPhone.
It’s notable that they seem to be positioning their product mostly for work rather than, say, gaming and entertainment. While they did show how the device could be used to stream movies and television shows (not to mention will also have an immersive entertainment collaboration with Disney), it seems primarily meant to be used as an AR version of your Macbook or desktop computer.
Not only will this set it apart from the Quest 2 or the HTC Vive, but it makes the case that this is a product for more general purpose uses that could appeal more broadly to consumers. With the popularity of the Apple brand, this could be just the thing to kick off widespread adoption of AR/VR headsets—which is in dire need of some help.
