Apple has finally taken the cover off its much-hyped augmented reality headset—the Apple Vision Pro—at its WWDC 2023 event. The headset is the company’s first new product line in years, following the launch of the Apple Watch in 2015.
Apple has finally taken the cover off its much-hyped augmented reality headset—the Apple Vision Pro—at its WWDC 2023 event. The headset is the company’s first new product line in years, following the launch of the Apple Watch in 2015. The iPhone maker claims that it is a ‘spatial computer’—designed to blend the digital with the physical world—while staying present and aware of their surroundings.
“Today marks the beginning of a new era for computing,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. He added, “Just as the Mac introduced us to personal computing, and iPhone introduced us to mobile computing, Apple Vision Pro introduces us to spatial computing.”
Apple Vision Pro will be available next year, in 2024, and will retail for $3499 (around Rs 2,88,000) in the United States.
On the inside, the Vision Pro headset gets two micro-OLED screens with a total of 23 million pixels. “This technological breakthrough, combined with custom catadioptric lenses that enable incredible sharpness and clarity, delivers jaw-dropping experiences,” Apple claimed.
It also gets a wire that leads up to the battery pack—designed to stay in your pocket, which can power the headset for up to 2 hours. But, users can keep using the headset if they stay plugged in.
It also features a crown, which is quite reminiscent in design to the one on the Apple Watches, and it lets users adjust different metrics. “A twist of the Digital Crown lets a user control how present or immersed they are in an environment,” the company said.
The Apple Vision Pro is powered by the M2 chipset, which is Apple’s second-generation in-house chip. Apple has also included a new R1 chip for increasing the immersion and making things feel realistic, and “processes input from 12 cameras, five sensors, and six microphones to ensure that content feels like it is appearing right in front of the user’s eyes, in real time.”
The headset also features a “three-dimensional camera,” which facilitates the Apple Vision Pro to let “users capture, relive, and immerse themselves in favorite memories with Spatial Audio.”
The headset runs on visionOS, which is the iPhone maker’s new three-dimensional interface “that makes digital content look and feel present in a user’s physical world.”
“By responding dynamically to natural light and casting shadows, it helps the user understand scale and distance. To enable user navigation and interaction with spatial content, Apple Vision Pro introduces an entirely new input system controlled by a person’s eyes, hands, and voice.”
“Users can browse through apps by simply looking at them, tapping their fingers to select, flicking their wrist to scroll, or using voice to dictate,” Apple said.