One participant uses a manual tracking feature with Facebook’s Oculus Quest VR headphones during the Oculus Connect 6 conference in San Jose, California, on September 26, 2019.
Photographer: Michael Short / Bloomberg
Photographer: Michael Short / Bloomberg
The first Apple Inc. crack. a headset is 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 on the subject.
The initial device faced several development hurdles, and the company has conservative sales expectations, illustrating how difficult it will be to bring this mass of technology to consumers.
Being a virtual reality device for the most part, it will display a comprehensive 3D digital environment for games, video viewing and communication. AR functionality, the ability to overlay images and information in a real-world perspective, will be more limited. Apple plans to launch the product immediately after 2022, facing Oculus from Facebook Inc., PlayStation VR from Sony Corp. and headphones from HTC Corp., people said. They asked not to be identified discussing private plans.
The typical Apple playbook involves taking on emerging technology for consumers, such as music players, smartphones, tablets and smart watches, and makes it reliable and easy to use for everyone. This time, however, Apple is not looking to create an iPhone-like hit for its first headset. Instead, the company is building a state-of-the-art niche product that will prepare developers and external consumers for its eventual AR glasses.
Plans suggest that the first Apple headphones will be much more expensive than those from rivals, which cost about $ 300 to $ 900. Some Apple insiders believe the company could only sell one headset a day at the 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 par with other expensive Apple products, such as the $ 5,999 Mac Pro desktop computer. An Apple spokesman declined to comment.
Participants visit the Sony PlayStation virtual reality game booth at the Gamescom computer game industry event in Cologne, Germany, on August 20, 2019.
Photographer: Krisztian Bocsi / Bloomberg
Apple aims to include some of the most advanced and powerful chips in headphones, along with displays with much higher resolution than those in existing VR products. Some of the chips tested on the device outperformed Apple’s Mac M1 processors. The company also designed the headphones with a fan, which the company usually tries to avoid on mobile products, people said.
The headset, codenamed N301, is in a late prototype stage, but is not yet complete, so the company’s plans could be changed or discarded completely before launch. The AR glasses, codenamed N421, are in an early stage known as “architecture”, which means that Apple is still working on basic technologies. This product is a few years away, according to people, although Apple has previously aimed since 2023 to reveal it.
Powerful processors and the inclusion of a fan initially led to a device that was too large and heavy, with some concern about the neck strain in the early tests. Apple has eliminated the space of VR gadgets, usually reserved for users who need to wear glasses, which brought the headphones closer to the face and helped reduce the size. And to address consumers with poorer eyesight, it has developed a system where custom prescription lenses can be inserted into the headset over VR screens, people said.
This may expose Apple to regulations governing the sale of prescription products. The company usually sells its devices in dozens of countries, many of which have different prescription rules. Apple is also discussing how to implement recipes at the online point of sale and in retail stores.
Apple originally planned to include less powerful processors and download much of the work into a hub in a user’s home that streams content to headphones. But that idea was crushed by Apple’s chief design officer Jony Ive at the time, Bloomberg News reported last year. The headset is designed to work as a standalone device, which means it can run on a battery rather than being connected to a wall or Mac. It’s similar to Facebook’s latest VR product, while Sony requires a PlayStation game console.
Read more: Apple’s AR and VR headset plans are modified by internal differences
To further reduce the weight of the device, Apple intends to use a material exterior. This is a departure from the metal models that Apple uses for most products, although it has used plastic for devices such as AirPods, which must be light, and fabrics for the HomePod speaker to improve the acoustics.
The prototypes of the headphones, some of which are the size of an Oculus Quest, include external cameras to activate some AR features. The company tests using manual tracking cameras and is working on a feature in which a user can type virtually in the air to enter text. It is unclear whether this feature will be ready for the first version of the device or whether it will ever leave the exploratory stage.
The Covid-19 pandemic disrupted some developments, with Apple hardware engineers only able to work on certain days in the office. The company also faced delays in testing users and collecting data. This slowed down some decisions in the engineering process.
Also, the company is still facing what content and functionality it intends to deliver with the device. Virtual reality is still a somewhat incipient technology, with content beyond games still relatively limited. Last year, Apple acquired a company called NextVR, which recorded events such as concerts and sports games in virtual reality. There was also discussion about grouping an App Store with the device, which runs on an operating system called “rOS” within the company.
If Apple continues with the VR headset, it would be a precursor to a possible pair of AR glasses – a product that the company considers much more common, but also more difficult to launch. HoloLens 2 and Microsoft Corp.’s Magic Leap headphones, which focus on AR over VR, retail for $ 3,500 and $ 2,295, respectively. HoloLens focuses mostly on work use cases, while Magic Leap failed to reach too long job cuts last year.
A visitor tries a Magic Leap One during the Virtuality Paris 2019 show on November 21, 2019 in Paris, France.
Photographer: Chesnot / Getty Images Europe
Apple first added AR to the iPhone in 2017, allowing new mobile games and apps such as those for virtually placing furniture in the living room before buying them. Apple CEO Tim Cook said that both virtual and augmented reality have potential, but that AR is the biggest opportunity.
AR glasses must be packaged with small, powerful, and efficient electronic products to overlap notifications, map directions, and other information, while supporting internet connectivity and strong battery life. This is a huge technical challenge. Even Oculus, which launched the first all-in-one VR headset in 2019, will not include AR features in its first glasses this year.
It takes years of work on objectives, hardware and software, component miniaturization, production techniques and content creation. Critically, it is difficult to get most people to carry a computer on their face, even a small one. In part, it condemned Google’s attempt to make consumer AR glasses a few years ago.
By developing a less common initial headset, Apple can invest in the underlying technologies, consumer education, content development and developer relationships to give potential AR glasses the best chance of success – when they’re ready.