As a result, Apple will instead provide mixed reality, a hybrid of augmented and virtual reality. The headgear will be a virtual reality system at its heart, but it will also employ cameras to create a kind of augmented reality experience.
When Apple first entered this market approximately seven years ago, the goal was that AR glasses will be able to replace the iPhone by beaming information into the user’s field of vision, allowing them to make and receive calls, and serving up content.
Cook began advertising that concept in 2016, telling Good Morning America that AR is preferable to VR because it “allows both of us to sit and be very present.” Later, at a conference in Utah, he condemned VR goggles, stating that “few people are going to think that it’s OK to be enclosed in something.”
Nonetheless, Cook’s critiques about VR started to fade as Apple decided to produce a product that would take that approach – the enclosed headgear design that the CEO had considered unsuitable.
The rationale for the move is obvious: true augmented reality glasses are still several years away. Miniaturization of components, battery technology, lenses, software support, and manufacturing capabilities are all far from ready for prime time.
Or, as Cook put it a year ago, the technology for AR glasses “doesn’t exist to do it in a quality way.” The display technology necessary, as well as placing enough things around your face, present significant problems. The field of view as well as the display’s quality, still are inadequate.”
Rather of waiting until 2025 or later, when genuine AR glasses may be viable, Apple will take the pragmatic path and produce a stopgap product using the greatest mixed-reality technology available now. And it seems that Apple made the correct option, particularly considering that it does not want to relinquish a lucrative hardware market to Meta.
