2023-05-12 20:44:37
The inaugural WWDC keynote, scheduled for June 5, should logically be largely devoted to Apple’s mixed reality headset. The manufacturer wants to impress developers: it will be up to them to imagine the future “killer apps” that will give full meaning to the product – even if Apple should get their hands dirty with lots of applications.
It will be necessary to make people want, and even want a lot, for this helmet to meet the level of success of other Apple products (and we are not talking about the iPhone). At $3,000 per beast, the gauge of customers for what could be called “Reality Pro” is likely to be quite low. Ming-Chi Kuo had given a delivery estimate of between 200,000 and 300,000 units this year. In a sense, it’s almost so much the better: according to the Wall Street Journalthe manufacturer expects production problems.
Volume manufacturing of the headset — which would be one of the most complex products Apple has ever designed — could begin in September, with actual marketing ” earlier this fall “. Mark Gurman was talking squarely about the holiday season. In many ways, explains the WSJthe device would be “ still experimental “, which is hardly usual at Apple. The battery would thus be external and wired to the helmet, so you will have to carry it on your person, for example on your belt.
The newspaper talks about Michael Gartenberg, former senior director of global marketing for Apple, who left the company in 2016: for him, this headset ” makes no sense as an apple product “. He explains that Tim Cook nevertheless prefers to sell products that are supposed to appeal to the greatest number; the “Reality Pro” should appeal only to the most enthusiastic (and wealthy).
The WSJ also draws up the calendar that presided over the creation and development of the helmet. It all started in 2015 when Mike Rockwell, a former Dolby employee, formed a team to explore with great freedom the different possibilities of creating such a device. Many prototypes would have been developed, such as a giant device to show the ideal performance of a mixed reality headset.
Over the years, the product has been refined, as has the concept. At one point, the headset had to connect to an external box that did the heavy computing, with the two devices communicating wirelessly. Tim Cook would have encouraged the team to develop an independent product, while Jony Ive would have vetoed such an idea.
It was in 2019 that the pressure would have mounted to finalize something that could be marketable. Integration with the software has reportedly pushed back the launch of the headset several times in recent years.
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