For more than five years, we have read several reports of Apple working on the company's next big thing-- 'Mixed Reality' headgear, but it is yet to see the light of day. The prime reason for the delay has been attributed to the delay in finalising the device's design language.
A trait championed by Jony Ive, the company's industrial design team is very obsessive about visual aesthetics and want things to have some quality of uniqueness so that anyone can instantly identity them as Apple product.
Apple's current working MR concept device is said to be a bit bulky and heavy, so the design team which now directly reports to COO Jeff Willians (after Ive's exit in 2019), wants more time to refine to make it lighter, to rest comfortably on the head for long hours.
However, the top executives of Apple want the device to be ready for shipping this year, reported Financial Times citing two executives familiar with the company's decision-making hierarchy.
The product version-1 is said to look like a ski goggle and be able to deliver 3D content, and also support Augment Reality/ Virtual Reality animated memoji-like interaction on FaceTime and other similar multimedia communication platforms.
Also, it is said to come with cameras, motion sensors, and a couple of high-resolution screens and may cost around $3000 (approx. Rs 2,47,000), making it the most expensive wearable product from the house of Apple. If things go as planned, Apple MR headgear is most likely to make its global debut at WWDC (World Wide Developers Conference). There, Apple may offer developers tools and resources to bring innovative AR/VR apps for the headset and most probably the device may hit stores in late 2023. By that time, there will be enough apps and games on Apple App Store.
It may not sell like hotcakes like the iPhones or the Watches when launched first, but Apple's mixed reality headgear has the potential to become better in following iterations, and may very well become a bigger revenue generator for Apple compared to iPhones by the end of 2030.
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