Apple AR/VR Headset Potentially Delayed Until 2023 Amid Development Problems

[lazyrighteye]

I can’t see myself wearing goggles out and about so I’m not too fussed about any delays.

Well that's good because I can't imagine Apple has never once intended for anyone to wear these goggles whilst running errands. I could be wrong. But the last thing we need is a bunch of yahoos driving cars and walking around with snowboard goggles strapped to their faces. 😜

Instead, I would imagine these are intended to be used in a more stationary (aka: safer) setting (i.e. one's home) - not unlike [say] Oculus. Will Apple ever offer some sort of device you wear on your face for out-and-aboutting? Maybe. Will that be this rumored device? I'd be shocked. Time will tell. Cheers.

 

[Unregistered 4U]

When you really think about it, the MAJORITY of folks using computing products today are NOT using Apple computing products. So, to hear that folks aren’t interested in an Apple product? It’s pretty much a given. Apple will release these when they’re good enough to drive a profit from the few million (out of the BILLIONS of people in the world) that want to buy them. They won’t have the features of other cheaper products, they won’t have the sales of the market leader BUT, like “almost” everything they make,
1. they will be profitable and
2. people will hate them

 

[10anta]

Apple glasses I could see myself buying in future if the price is right. A very expensive VR headset, not so much.

 

[name99]

Just another AirPower mat all over again. Will the headset ever get released?

Not at all. The AirPower mat was a fiasco because Apple announced it the couldn't deliver.
Apple has announced NOTHING about glasses. Saying these are delayed is somewhat misleading; there may (or may not) be a delay relative to an internal timeline, but the internal timeline is INTERNAL, put together as an aspiration but with the understanding that things happen and you have have to adapt.

Basically the reality of this article is "new rumor gives different date from old rumor regarding rumored product with rumored capabilities"

 

[hrMACnstuff]

the next one and done product by apple. pass.

 

[dba415]

Not at all. The AirPower mat was a fiasco because Apple announced it the couldn't deliver.
Apple has announced NOTHING about glasses. Saying these are delayed is somewhat misleading; there may (or may not) be a delay relative to an internal timeline, but the internal timeline is INTERNAL, put together as an aspiration but with the understanding that things happen and you have have to adapt.

Basically the reality of this article is "new rumor gives different date from old rumor regarding rumored product with rumored capabilities"

Makes no difference. Apple not announcing this headset means that they learned from the Airpower fiasco to not announce something until it's actually ready. It's possible that these AR/VR glasses are further along than the AirPower internally when it got delayed

 

[name99]

I can’t see myself wearing goggles out and about so I’m not too fussed about any delays.

Based on what?
Honestly we have no comparable product, so we have no idea what the tradeoffs are -- the value they provide vs the discomfort(?) of wearing them.
The closest analogy is BT headphones, which sucked for years. Some people used them because they were worth the hassle, most of us found them just too irritating in too many ways (poor sound, bad pairing, uncomfortable, ...) But none of those were problems with the idea, just problems with bad implementations.

Of course Apple could also have a lousy implementation (their first BT headset was *slightly* better than the competition, but it was no Airpods). But to imagine that Apple's version must suck because of issues you have after trying an Occulus or the headsets at The Void seems foolish.

Likewise "out and about" seems to be constraining the problem. Suppose all these did was give you a way to read content while lying on your back, and to extend your field of view while working at your iMac (eg give you 360 degrees of windows around you)? Either of those, DONE WELL, are worth $2000 to me...

 

[genzai]

With the latest rumors about this device, including processing power and price, I wonder if apple is aiming to have this device also function as a Mac/iPad replacement. I have no idea what sort of GUI magic will be at play, but it is certainly possible to imagine that there could be a mode for this that essentially covered all current Mac or iPadOS functions. If thats the case, the price becomes much easier to swallow.
g\

 

[mjtomlin71]

 

[JDHiro]

I'm fine with Apple taking their time to get this right, because as the AR/VR ecosystem exists today, it's not compelling outside of gaming and some niche business applications anyways.

If this can do to AR/VR what the iPhone did to the telephone, fantastic, do it right. And if it can't do that... it will likely just go away.

 

[deconstruct60]

But I can tell you for sure Apple surely doesn't want a fan in these units! 😅 Steve Jobs would haunt them for doing such a thing.

Errr, current ones with lower TDP processors do now. Quest 2 teardown

Oculus Quest 2 Disassembly

The Oculus Quest 2, also known as the Meta Quest 2, is a VR headset developed by Facebook (formerly Oculus) and is the 2nd iteration of the...

www.ifixit.com

Apple may not want folks to notice the fan working , but if they really are sticking two SoCs in the device then they probably will need some sort of fan (active cooling).

So thermal issues seem about right and this is perhaps believable. But you would think before thermal issues arise you'd have battery life issues since you are heating a chip up that much anyway. Headsets would have a small battery I'd imagine, not a lot of room to play with.

You also have thermal issues because the human these are attached to is also putting heat into the system. Not like it is just the narrow pads of the finger tips touching the system. This thing will "wrap up" a substantive part of someone's head.

Will want the heat the system generates to deliberately move away from the person ( where have blocked the normal airflow that moves around a person's head. )

A "belt clipped" battery pack would mean wires ( and Apple 'hates' wires about as much as fan noise ), but it would dramatically drop the weight strapped to the head. ( Hence some of the other commentary about "how can it not have a top strap. Much lower need for a top strap if the thing weights substantially less.). The rumored supposed 90W power input would make more sense if it had common usage. (besides faster battery recharging. )

[ this is similar to moving the "power brick" out of the laptop/iPad/newer iMac 24". Although that is more reduction in volume more so that shifting of weight. Although would drop volume on the headset also. ]


If Apple is picking two 4K displays to drive then has to be some "oomph" horsepower behind that to render complex 3D images at high frame rates. Apple could substantive lower the SoC thermal demands if dropped back to two 2K displays. But if engaged in a contest of "higher that almost everyone else" screen resolutions then they likely have a problem. ( even leaning on fancy upscaling algorithms .. there are two screens to drive which should have slightly shifted images.. )

Also if you thought battery swells were worrisome in a laptop, how about a headset!?

Again, basically a non issue with a waist battery pack.

 

[UltimateSyn]

Shoot, I was just starting to get excited about this.

Maybe they’ll wait for 3nm efficiency.

 

[WestonHarvey1]

nope
View attachment 1944037

We all already have internet to find, don't we?
However, since Apple has more plans for wireless and somehow uhm.. designed pair of glasses, it will take a while.

And be sure: Not only prostitution will be depopulated, there are really exciting new applications besides.

This is all totally useless junk, and at a minimum Apple would have to completely revolutionize the UI to make a compelling product based on similar underlying hardware.

 

[deconstruct60]

That's what I keep wondering every time I see this crude representation. After having the Quest 2 it's unbearable to imagine use without the top strap.

If chop the weight down then the need for top strap goes down. Millions of folks were glasses with no top strap. it is the weight and control of the weight that is one of the core issues.

if move the battery and a decent about of the power conversion and battery recharging electronics off to a belt-clip harness to the waist area then . Lose being entirely wireless , but that top strap is the trade off.

The other issue is the depth of the front side of the headset googles. The lens (an some of that power conversion/management is contributing to that ; "tall" capacitors . etc. ). Those too can be thinned out. Lower the moment of inertia trying to tip someone head forward and also don't need to do "load tranfer" to the top of the head (and put a small counter balance on the back of the head). The point is to lower the load more than redistribute it.

Supposedly Ive nixed putting the computer box on the ground and just putting what was absolutely necessary in the headset. but that is more about "style" than utility.

 

[deconstruct60]

Maybe they’ll wait for 3nm efficiency.

N3 isn't going to help them much if have overshot to the point consuming "M1 Pro" like thermals. N3 versus N5 was suppose to be a 20-35% savings in power (if dump all of the performance improvements. ) . I doubt this has (or is suppose to have) a thermal profile like a "M1 Pro" though (some stuff has probably been pruned off to save power. )

Very good chance if this was a "late 2021 / early 2022" product originally that this is probably some N4 variant and not N5 so it a few percentage points even lower than that savings to be gotten.

There is a chance that this is really early N4 variant stuff that it s on the front end of the "at risk" production. That the overheat isn't on 'production' version of the fab process and these are 'test sample' chips being pushed "too hard" for that fab process current state.

N3 isn't 100% design rule compatible with N5 ( or the related N4 tweaks) . They'd have re-target the design again for N3. ( and probably already have other N3 products consuming designers familiar with those new rules. )

Or could be that someone really did stick a M1 Pro in there as a prototyping "stub" and because the target SoC just isn't ready. If the software isn't as efficient as they thought it would be and processor is "ready" but being pushed too hard ... that is a different "failure mode" (e.g., trying to deploy a new foveated render stack and it has optimization issues to flush out) . Hard to tell with a vague "overheating" description.

 

[ocnitsa]

Build a laser thermometer into one and bingo you can see who around you has a fever and avoid them. I’m jk but everyone who says they can’t imagine why Apple would do this just can’t imagine. Apple doesn’t do stuff like other companies (oculus, etc.). They will build something that is compelling and develop it continually.

 

[urnotl33t]

Just. Wait.

The market potential is huge (I can spontaneously think of many everyday scenarios, as someone who still has a monitor on the table), but the glasses have technical requirements that can't quite be met technically at the moment to be really great. At least not those years.

Enlighten us. Some of us curmudgeons, and those of us who live in the real day to day world, can't fathom a single *useful* use-case beyond "games" and "porn", both of which require goggle-like immersion and masking of Reality.

Keyword "useful". Not "well my cousin has this thing attached to his bazillion-$ crypto mining rig for a wicked game of solitaire!" And "intestinal surgery" is not the consumer market.

(Disclosure: I'm an IT/tech nerd, too, and I still can't get onboard with this)

 

[Bmoreguy03]

It needs to get delayed until 2050

 

[urnotl33t]

Above all, you won't have to carry monitors through the aisles anymore. You won't need them anymore, they will no longer exist.

Yeah but it still doesn't work. Head-based kit is stupid for that. Way way too much motion and movement. You can't review spreadsheets and documents wobbling in the air like Wii console widgets. That's idiotic.

Stationary stuff, projection-style, makes sense. But... that's called a monitor/display and we've had that since.... 1930s(?) (it was called "the cinema"). That's also not what this fictitious device is rumored to be.

 

[Abazigal]

This is disappointing if true. Every year that Apple's move into AR/VR gets delayed is another year that Facebook (or Meta or whatever) gets to further cement its dominance of this industry..

Are we forgetting Apple’s billion strong iPhone install base?

 

[Karma*Police]

Sounds like project Titan 2.0. Without Steve Jobs, this build the next visionary product by committee doesn’t seem to be working out too well. Apple Watch was led by Jony Ive and even that was fairly flawed out of the gate… hardware stood up surprisingly well though.

 

[Chicobradley]

I don’t know what’s worse… this or the car?

 

[reyesmac]

They would have the thermal issue all ironed out if they spent real R&D money over the years cooling down the intel models and GPU's. All those years of ignoring the situation is coming back at them.

 

[scotty321]

"Development Problems" = "No Market Demand For This Product" 🤣😂

 

[Jensend]

but it still doesn't work. Head-based kit is stupid for that. Way way too much motion and movement. You can't review spreadsheets and documents wobbling in the air like Wii console widgets. That's idiotic.

Stationary stuff, projection-style, makes sense. But... that's called a monitor/display and we've had that since.... 1930s(?) (it was called "the cinema"). That's also not what this fictitious device is rumored to be.

It sounds like you don't understand how VR works.
There is no wobbling. The applications appear to be just as firm in place as on a traditional monitor. And you could still use a keyboard and mouse to control it.