After years of anticipation Apple have finally announced the upcoming release of their VR/AR headset. It’s huge news for the industry and from the initial look at the device during their WWDC it’s everything and more than we may have wished for.

Where Apple really have things right is in producing a headset and a vision for its use that is grounded in a future we can relate to. It’s not a vision of a ‘metaverse’ that we can’t reach and is filled with floating, legless cartoon avatars (sorry Meta), rather a practical but impressive vision of the near future, now.

Sure, there was a level of ‘unreality’ to the keynote and the presenters seemed so polished and perfect as to be produced by open.ai but the headset hit the nail on the head. Apple confronted some of the key bug bears / hurdles of VR head on and I think doing so will make a big difference to mass adoption:

It’s isolating – well, not when you can see the users eyes ‘through’ the headset and not when the user can see the room/people through the headset.

It’s pixelated – not with these screens, well beyond 4k per eye but anecdotally far higher resolutions than other VR / MR headsets.

It’s fiddly to use – eye tracking, voice and hand gestures make it natural and intuitive to navigate.

It’s underpowered – not this one – an M2 and a brand new R1 chip provide the power for stunning experiences and low latency.

It’s clunky/heavy – battery is in your pocket, taking away one of the key weight drivers and Apple’s renowned design seems to have smashed it with a very attractive set of ‘ski goggles’ that are apparently very comfortable.

Crucially for us we can develop on this headset straight away – either in X-Code, with Reality Composer or with Unity, our old experiences will be adapted and new ones will be produced.

At the moment of course $3500 will be out of most consumers price range, but this is not pitched at everyone, this is a device to wet appetites and start producing content and experiences that show the art of the possible. From this platform will be launched lower value propositions and other variants but first we have to sell the dream!

Bravo Apple, it was worth the wait. :-)