A respected Apple analyst just made a startling prediction about mixed reality/augmented reality: “We believe that MR/AR products could replace all display-equipped electronics in the long term,” wrote Ming-Chi Kuo in a note sent to investors Sunday.
Kuo said he expects Apple to play a big part in taking these emerging technologies mainstream. And he sees Cupertino making augmented reality contact lenses eventually, and a variety of AR products before then.
Apple’s upcoming augmented-reality glasses could make additional MacBook screens unnecessary. An AR concept video shows how virtual displays could appear next to real ones, making the user more productive without having to carry around all that hardware.
Watch it now:
Dan Riccio, one of Apple’s top designers, is reportedly now concentrating all his efforts on the company’s virtual-reality visor and augmented-reality glasses.
Previously, he headed Apple’s hardware engineering team. Then Cupertino revealed in January that Riccio was transitioning to a new role. But it wouldn’t say what that role will be.
Apple filed a patent application that could give a first glimpse of the AR glasses the company is developing. An image included with the filing shows a small, lightweight augmented-reality device about the size of a standard pair of eyeglasses.
The primary focus of the patent is the ways the glasses might detect what its wearer is doing. These will allow the wearer to interact with the head-worn device in a variety of ways.
Apple’s mixed-reality headset could cost around $3,000, solidifying its status as a niche luxury item, The Information claims in a new report.
The device supposedly will boast high-resolution 8K displays and some smart eye-tracking technology. Plus, more than a dozen built-in cameras could track wearers’ hand movements.
Apple’s debut virtual reality headset could arrive in the first quarter of 2022, JPMorgan Chase Securities tech analyst Yang Weilun claims in a new note to investors.
The report says Apple’s VR headset will supposedly boast six lenses, lidar and a time-of-flight sensor. It will allegedly retail for upward of $500.
Dan Riccio, one of Apple’s top designers, is moving to a mysterious new role in Cupertino.
After joining Apple in 1998, Riccio worked on loads of groundbreaking products, from the first iMac to last year’s AirPods Max and the M1-powered Macs. Now, he’s become Apple’s “vice president of engineering.”
Going forward, Riccio says he will be “focusing all my time and energy at Apple on creating something new and wonderful that I couldn’t be more excited about,” according to a press release Monday.
Prototype “Apple Glass” augmented reality glasses are reportedly set to enter the second phase of testing, Digitimes reported Wednesday.
The paywalled report cites “industry sources” but doesn’t reveal how many phases are involved in Apple’s testing of its AR glasses. However, since Digitimes’ sources are seemingly located predominantly in the supply chain, rather than inside Apple, this suggests that the long-rumored AR specs have moved beyond Cupertino’s initial internal mockups.
A designer’s radical new concept shows what future Macs could look like if augmented reality glasses replaced the computers’ physical screens.
Dominik Hofacker, a 24-year-old designer who just landed a job at Facebook, calls his well-thought-out virtual Mac concept “macOS reality.”
“With AR glasses on the verge of release, and eventually replacing our smartphones for almost all tasks, I asked myself, ‘How does productivity look like in the future?'” he told Cult of Mac. “GlassOS that runs on Apple Glasses is one thing, but nobody has ever thought about the next generation of Macs.”
Apple plans to release an augmented-reality device in 2021, according to a trusted analyst. This could be the AR glasses that were the subject of so many rumors in 2020.
