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Programming Apple Technology

Apple Sets June 5 WWDC To Debut Mixed-Reality Headset (bloomberg.com) 46

Apple set a June 5 date for the event where it plans to unveil a mixed-reality headset, the first major new product since its smartwatch debuted eight years ago. From a report: The company scheduled its annual Worldwide Developers Conference, better known as WWDC, to kick off on that Monday and run through Friday, June 9. It typically uses the first day of the conference to discuss its next-generation platforms and operating systems. This year's conference will be held as an "all-day experience" at headquarters in Cupertino, California. Central to the agenda this time around will be the headset, likely to be dubbed the Reality One or Reality Pro, Bloomberg News has reported. Apple will also showcase the accompanying xrOS operating system and a way for developers to write apps for the device.
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Apple Sets June 5 WWDC To Debut Mixed-Reality Headset

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  • by kiviQr ( 3443687 ) on Wednesday March 29, 2023 @12:39PM (#63409304)
    Apple is great at taking well established product (mp3 player, phone/pda, fitbit) and creating user friendly version. VR product never reached even minimum threshold of adoption.
    • Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Wednesday March 29, 2023 @12:43PM (#63409318)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • The only practical use I can think of for VR happened while my partner and I were at Disney's Hollywood Studios a few weeks ago. We overheard another guest mention that the Star Wars section of the park "is confusing because nothing is in English." Some VR translations for all the alien text would actually be pretty neat. Of course, that'd require getting the technology down in price to something people would be willing to buy as a novelty in the gift shop, which isn't even in the same universe as what Ap

        • by _xeno_ ( 155264 )

          . We overheard another guest mention that the Star Wars section of the park "is confusing because nothing is in English." Some VR translations for all the alien text would actually be pretty neat. Of course, that'd require getting the technology down in price to something people would be willing to buy as a novelty in the gift shop, which isn't even in the same universe as what Apple is doing.

          You mean AR? Because guess what, that already exists. Google Lens [lens.google] can already translate languages it knows as seen in the camera in real time, and paste the translated languages it sees onto the images, all on the phone. I think Apple has some similar feature, just with a much smaller set of languages because Apple insists on doing everything in-house and is very bad at building AI models.

          But it would be a very jarring experience in AR, because it doesn't really "attach" to the real world that well, and it

          • Whoops, autocorrect got me a few times there. That should all be "AR" in my original post.

            The theme park implementations could rely on hardcoded data and geofencing, so you wouldn't have the issues that Google Lens runs into. I do agree it could all just as easily be done on a smartphone, but there'd be a greater sense of immersiveness to having it on a heads-up display.

            The main issue is that the rumored price for this thing is going to be $3k. That pretty much rules out the "it would be neat to use at a

            • by _xeno_ ( 155264 )

              The theme park implementations could rely on hardcoded data and geofencing, so you wouldn't have the issues that Google Lens runs into.

              Won't help. The problem Google Lens has is that it only sees the image, and it's limited to identifying text within the image and placing translated text back over the original text. This kind of "shifts" as the camera moves, and that causes it to move around.

              Various AR solutions already exist. You can already use ARKit on the iPhone, and it has the same "things shifting around" problem with 3D models placed over the real world. Even with LIDAR, it's just not quite accurate enough to place an object and hav

        • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • by Dusanyu ( 675778 )
      I am skeptical as well my mind tends to think of gaming when I look at tech like a VR headset, and apple is not someone that jumps to the forefront of my mind when I want to buy a piece of gaming tech. so apple is going to have to offer up a compelling use case for this headset for productivity use. and yes I understand these are "mixed reality" but I don't think there is a market yet for people who want to be seen running around in public with Apple branded Spaceman goggles.
    • and creating user friendly version

      Could not disagree more. Maybe use words like "minimalist" or "stylish" I'd give you that, but the iPod (pain in the arse thanks to that stupid wheel and lack of buttons), phone (doesn't even have a back button, only today I was asked by a new apple user how to not answer the call since there was no hangup button), and fitbit (seriously, there's a 224 page book on how to use the Apple Watch [amazon.com]) alternatives are not what I would say "user friendly", not unless you're one of those think different people who don'

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • How about tablets?

  • But I have to believe Apple has a vision or knows something I can't see. Maybe they have some killer apps no one else has thought of. Apple isn't dumb and they generally don't do anything small potatoes. Which seems like this is.

    • by Bahbus ( 1180627 ) on Wednesday March 29, 2023 @12:50PM (#63409344) Homepage

      Apple isn't dumb

      Lmao, yes, they are. But their customers are dumber, soooo...

    • Re:I don't get it. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by _xeno_ ( 155264 ) on Wednesday March 29, 2023 @01:03PM (#63409396) Homepage Journal

      But I have to believe Apple has a vision or knows something I can't see.

      Why? When Steve Jobs was still alive, maybe, but nothing that Apple's done in the past 10 years has shown anything indicating that they have anything visionary left in them. From what we know, all the visionary types have been pushed out of Apple under Tim Cook. Even Jony Ives is gone now.

      The last new product from Apple was a home speaker that bombed. (Remember the HomePod? No? No one else does either.)

      From everything that's been leaked about this, it's not ready for general use, and it doesn't solve any problem. And, wow, is it expected to be expensive, at around $3000 a headset. No other VR headset comes anywhere near that price. And this isn't even supposed to be true VR, it's supposed to be some sort of AR thing.

      There are a lot of killer apps people can come up with for AR, but none of them are remotely feasible with today's technology, as they pretty much all require much better mapping of the real world to the virtual world. It needs to be millimeter accurate. ARKit already exists, and even on the most expensive iPhones with LIDAR, ARKit is at best accurate to a few CM. This also means models kind of float around as you move the phone around them, failing to remain attached to whatever real world thing they're supposed to.

      There's no reason to believe this won't be anything other than a flop. Releasing it now appears to be an attempt to get what would essentially be a "dev kit" out, in the hopes that maybe someone, somewhere, can come up with a "killer app" that will make the entire thing fly as it exists today. But it didn't really work for Meta and VR, and I see no reason to believe it will work for Apple.

      • Apple Watch is reasonably successful.

      • I will never forget the first time I plugged in a pair of Airpods Pro and activated noise cancellation on a busy sidewalk.

        The ease of setup, the way they fit, the way they snap into the case, the way the case serves duty as a pairing and charging mechanism, and with the second version the astonishing ability of the noise cancellation to cancel out almost all the noise usually created by stuffing earplugs in your ears... They are an absolutely killer product, and they are f*#@% everywhere now.

        Now I suppose

  • Sadly, I can see certain fanboys deciding that Apple owns reality if that's the case. And no amount of blunt force trauma in actual reality will dissuade them from that belief.

    Reality Pro? Seriously? Like, those of you not wearing a Reality Pro really don't even know what reality is. You're getting an inferior reality by only interacting in meat space. Come join your betters in Reality Pro. Where realists go to find real reality!

  • I haven't had this level of excitement about a new Apple product since the iPod Hi-Fi. I can't wait to watch the Ghostbusters 2016 reboot on it, while drinking an ice cold Pepsi Blue.

  • Aren't they and Gurman the ones who said we were getting slab-sided Apple Watch for certain? Grain of salt folks.
  • HomePod? (Score:4, Informative)

    by Merk42 ( 1906718 ) on Wednesday March 29, 2023 @12:55PM (#63409360)

    the first major new product since its smartwatch debuted eight years ago

    HomePod was released 5 years ago (and discontinued 2 years ago), but since it wasn't a runaway success, it doesn't count/exist.

    • I guess homepod mini and homepod 2 mean nothing then. They might not be flying off the shelves like other devices, but they are still active and under development.
    • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

      by thegarbz ( 1787294 )

      The "HomePod" was not a new product. It was a "meeeee tooooo" product and they very very much last to market. The Apple watch on the other hand was in a class and category of its own causing a lot of other companies to fall over themselves to join the wearables market. And no the Pebble didn't come close to comparing, though these days there's some serious competition for features on the market.

      • by Merk42 ( 1906718 )
        Other VR/AR headsets have existed for while, and there were other smart watches before Apple Watch.
        Any metric to include this upcoming product and Appl Watch as "major product" would also apply to HomePod.
        Literally the only reason not to is some fanboy mentality of "Apple cannot fail, so HomePod does not count".

        Should this Mixed-Reality headset not do well, just watch articles in a few years time, when the Apple Car is going to be shown, that the car will be "the first major new product since its smartwatc
        • Other VR/AR headsets have existed for while, and there were other smart watches before Apple Watch.

          You're guessing and generalising. At this point it's clear not even you know which industry Apple is chasing with their product, you called it VR/AR they are not the same.

          You may be right, I'm not saying you're wrong, but if you are it would be a fluke, not based on any prior knowledge of what Apple is about to release or which other products are in that hitherto unknown market.

          If this is a VR headset, you'd be bang on. If this is an AR headset you couldn't be more wrong given that most AR attempts to date

    • AIRTAGS!

      Apple creates new products all the time that are sorta/kinda also-rans in the market. I don't really look for this headset to be that different.

    • by ddtmm ( 549094 )
      Releasing a speaker is not exactly an innovation, or even notable for that matter - especially considering they failed and cancelled the product. How embarrassing is that?
    • by leonbev ( 111395 )

      Apple fans like to consider Airpods to be a "major" recent product release because they were successful.

      Unsuccessful products like the last two Mac Pro model redesigns and the HomePod get relegated to "minor" product status because of their lack of success.

  • This speculation has been around for a decade, and nothing to show. Each year the spec keeps getting reduced. I figure it will debut by the time it is on par with the Quest 2’s horrible specs.

    • In time we will have hardware that permits high quality real-time voice translation, pointing out physical objects on store shelves, navigational lines on the ground, dangerous traffic situations, an article of clothing in a cluttered pile, and all the like. That time is not now, or five years from now.
  • While mixed reality by definition yields mixed results, its a missing piece on the table of Tech. HUD gets more interesting, more technology use-cases emerge drives more technology imaging finds a pathway to enhance humans.
    In an A.I. race to obsolete the human from error-prone safety loops AAPL are betting on a good thing.

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