Apple has indefinitely postponed the launch of its lightweight augmented-reality glasses due to technical challenges, but is still planning to unveil its first mixed-reality headset this year, Bloomberg News reports.
Mark Gurman for Bloomberg News:
The company had originally hoped to release the AR glasses after the debut of its mixed-reality headset, which combines both AR and virtual reality, but that part of the plan is now on hold. Instead, Apple will follow up with a lower-cost version of the mixed-reality headset as soon as 2024 or early 2025, according to people familiar with the deliberations.
The initial mixed-reality device due this year will cost around $3,000. The hefty price stems from its use of advanced and high-resolution displays, more than 10 cameras, sensors to determine where a user is looking, and the use of both a Mac-grade M2 processor and a dedicated chip for handling AR and VR visuals.
The shifting plans underscore the challenges Apple faces in pushing into a new industry. The company is betting that AR and VR devices could be a major moneymaker, but the technical challenges of producing a consumer-friendly product has bedeviled much of the tech world. Apple’s initial dream of offering a lightweight pair of AR glasses that people could wear all day now appears many years away — if it happens at all.
The company is focusing on the lower-cost headset instead of the AR glasses, which were once planned to be released about a year after the initial headset, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the project is still under wraps. At one point, Apple aimed to release the glasses in 2023, before delaying the launch until around 2025. Now, Apple has postponed the rollout indefinitely and pared back its work on the AR device… Some people within Apple doubt that the company will ever ship AR glasses, but it remains a long-term goal.
MacDailyNews Take: So, Apple will ship $3,000 smart goggles for developers to use to create killer apps for AR glasses that are shelved indefinitely?
Seems like a losing “strategy.” AirPower!
Tim Cook’s Apple. Firing on all cylinders, as usual.
Maybe some more remote “work,” silly masks, lack of leadership, infantile coddling, and sanctimonious hypocrisy will do the trick?
Apple needs new, energetic, disciplined, focused leadership.
We call ’em like we see ’em. Sorry, not sorry. – MacDailyNews, January 6, 2023
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Seems like a losing “strategy” from a pencil-pushing, bean-counting, AirPower-promising, coattail-riding pushover who still can’t even manage to get employees to come into the office to do real work five days a week.
TFTFY
Honestly, not sad to here this. $3000 for Apple’s take on Google glass, during a tanking economy…LOL, who was this product for anyway?
Apple just released an updated version of HomePod, improvements across the board, this is the direction Apple should focus on…things that actually compliment the ecosystem. Resurrect Airport with private relay, while your at it.
You’re confused. Read it again.
Apple plans to release the $3,000 VR goggles for developers this year. It’s the AR smartglasses for everyone else that are shelved indefinitely because Auntie Tim couldn’t lead a pack of starving wolves to fresh meat if his life depended on it.
They’re going to release a rose colored version just for appledorknic
Well, no doubt that wearing masks contributed to the failure to deliver this product.
You’d be surprised what rebreathing carbon dioxide for 8 hours a day does to cognitive function:
When we breathe air with high CO2 levels, the CO2 levels in our blood rise, reducing the amount of oxygen that reaches our brains. Studies show that this can increase sleepiness and anxiety, and impair cognitive function.
Remote “work,” silly (worthless) masks, lack of leadership, infantile coddling, and sanctimonious hypocrisy certainly did nothing to aid in the delivery of this product.
If you are rebreathing a high level of carbon dioxide due to the wearing of a paper mask, you picked the wrong mask. Amazing that medical people have functioned quite well for more than a century while wearing masks.
I wouldn’t trust anything from Bloomberg
Or Fauxci
Ahem, “Instead, Apple will follow up with a lower-cost version of the mixed-reality headset as soon as 2024 or early 2025, according to people familiar with the deliberations.” Question answered.
Ahem, you do realize that a cheaper pair of AR/VR goggles (also for developers, mainly) are not the AR smartglasses for the masses, don’t you?
Question asked:
MacDailyNews Take: So, Apple will ship $3,000 smart goggles for developers to use to create killer apps for AR glasses that are shelved indefinitely?
Question answered:
No, they will create killer apps for a lower-cost version of the mixed-reality headset as soon as 2024 or early 2025, according to people familiar with the deliberations.
Capeesh?
When will Apple announce they are indefinitely postponing the Apple Car, but will instead offer a software update to CarPlay, after spending $20 billion in planning for a car with no gas pedal or steering wheel? How long has this project Titan been wasting money?
Should we call it Project Titanic?
If Bloomberg doesn’t write an Apple negative article every two weeks they can’t meet their quota demanded by upper management. Go back for the last five years and check on how many of these hit pieces actually ended up true. If Bloomberg was a baseball player their batting average would have sent them to the minors a long time ago.
Apple is sitting on $200B in the bank and can’t introduce new products like most other tech companies do. I’m just saying… I don’t have much interest in any VR headset but I honestly thought Apple would be able to introduce AR glasses. I had considered buying a pair if they weren’t too expensive and had some useful functions. Oh, well… I can save my money for some updated Apple product like the M2 Mac mini. I’m not upset with Apple. It’s just that I don’t really understand what Apple’s priorities are. I suppose Apple knows what it needs to do more than I do. Apple is already offering products I can enjoy using, so I have no reason to complain.
Me no complain… about complaining.
Perhaps because AR glasses are r*****ed and very much useless in a practical sense, and it was a stupid idea to begin with? Google Glass wasn’t enough? The Google Glass we were ‘all going to be using in five years’? I have utilized the AR funtions of my phone exactly twice since they were introduced. They are a total waste of time and battery.
I do not recognize the modern Apple. More and more, with every release, with every passing year under Cook, they seem to be a company making toys for children that can’t get things right on the first try and have brains that operate so scatologically they almost could not be termed sane. I have been an Apple person for decades because their stuff was legitimately better for a very long time. Windows is STILL not an alternative, Microsoft is still so creepy and behind the curve it’s laughable, and Google is worse. We may just be SOL in terms of personal technology in the future because modern engineers are flipping idiots that couldn’t genuinely relate to another human being if their tender little lives depended on it. I am NOT happy, Mr. Cook.