Ivan Sutherland
According to Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman’s weekly newsletter, Apple is developing its long-delayed mixed reality headset and gearing up for a launch early next year.
Recent job postings posted by Apple suggest that the company is looking for content creation features for the device, suggesting that the core technology is set up enough for developers, producers, artists, and the like to work with it with confidence. That’s in contrast to the state of the product not too long ago, when differing opinions about the product’s feature set, specs, and design led to shifting goalposts that would have given content creators a headache.
Among those content creation roles is at least one that would focus on “the development of a 3D mixed reality world”, not unlike Meta’s Horizon Worlds in some ways. But while Horizon Worlds’ spaces exist entirely in VR, a job posting from Apple describes “connected experiences in a mixed reality 3D world,” suggesting that augmented reality may also play a role.
The newsletter speculates, based on some job postings, that Apple plans to introduce a video service for the headset, building on the company’s previous acquisition of NextVR. In addition, Apple moved key personnel to the mixed reality product team, including a former driverless car executive and a senior engineer.
Gurman also summarized many of the things already leaked or reported by him, The Information, and other credible sources: The headset will have more than 10 cameras, both inside and out; it will have “the highest resolution screens ever used in a mass-market headset”; and it will run a new operating system called realityOS, which will include mixed reality versions of Messages, Maps, FaceTime and other apps.
He also says it will be called either “Reality Pro” or “Reality One” and will cost between $2,000 and $3,000 – much more expensive than most consumer VR headsets. The newsletter didn’t mention a more specific release window than “next year,” but analyst Ming-Chi Kuo did said the device could be announced as early as January with a launch in time for Apple’s developer conference in June. DigiTimes previously reported that Apple could begin production in March.
