WWDC 2023 | Is Apple’s rumoured mixed reality headset the next ‘one more thing’?

Passthrough or mixed reality devices let you interact with the real world via high-powered cams mounted on the device. (Representational photo: Laurens Derks via Unsplash)

Tim Cook’s recent interview to GQ hints at something big brewing at Apple. “We don’t really look back very much at all in history. We’re always focused on the future and trying to feel like we’re very much sort of at that starting line where you can really dream and have big ideas that are not constrained by the past in some kind of way,” Cook is quoted as saying.

Analysts and industry experts are calling the upcoming WWDC (World Wide Developers Conference) 2023 - that kicks off on June 5, 2023, one of the most significant moments in Apple history. One of the ‘One more thing’ moments that are now part of Apple folklore.

Steve Jobs made the first ‘One more thing’ announcement back in 1999. These announcements have since been made towards the end of a big event, to launch new Apple products - for example, the unveiling of the iPhone came as a 'One more thing' announcement.

Apple will hope that this moment will be as pathbreaking as the iPhone unveil. A few years ago I met Alysha Naples (former senior director of UX at MagicLeap and an acknowledged AR pro) on the sidelines of the DesignUp Seminar in Bengaluru. She told me about how all our tech experiences and interactions – like ‘pinch to zoom’ – with devices are currently largely two-dimensional. It’s why the extra dimension (that AR will bring) is going to shake things up. That moment still hasn’t arrived.

Mark Gurman from Bloomberg has kept a close eye on Apple. He expects the headset to be priced around $3,000 (around Rs 2.5 lakh). Yes, it’s likely to be expensive, even by Apple standards. But it’s expected to be better ‘specced’ than headsets that we’ve seen, with 10 cameras embedded inside and outside the device.

The mixed reality headset is also likely to boast of the highest resolution displays we’ve seen in a consumer headset and likely be powered by Apple’s formidable M2 chip that’s currently the heart of Apple’s high-end MacBooks.

Gurman also reported that the device is likely to be propelled by a new operating system with mixed-reality versions of Apple apps we’re accustomed to. Everything from Messages to FaceTime. The pricing should come as no surprise, given that Microsoft’s HoloLens 2 is also in the same ballpark.

The big clincher is likely to be Apple’s mixed reality appeal. It’s expected to feature high-definition screens in front of the user’s eyes. It will also let you interact with the real world via high-powered cams mounted on the device. It’s this convergence that’s also called passthrough or mixed reality.

The internet has also seen an old Tim Cook interview with New Yorker do the rounds. “We always thought that glasses were not a smart move, from a point of view that people would not really want to wear them. They were intrusive, instead of pushing technology to the background, as we’ve always believed.” Cook was quick to clarify in the GQ interview; he said he learned never to get married to your convictions of yesterday from Steve Jobs.

The upcoming headset (Reality Pro is one of the names that’s being doing the rounds) could be part of Apple’s vision to look beyond the iPhone, the iPad and the Apple Watch. This despite the limited success of other intrusive (to quote Tim Cook) headsets like Google Glass and Microsoft’s HoloLens. MagicLeap is another company that has moved away from consumer-centric gaming devices to a niche B2B solution. Apple’s vision has usually been to control the primary technology when they enter a new product category.

Does the new headset represent a similar tectonic shift for consumer experiences? In 2021, long-time industry insider Ming-Chi Kuo, who has made multiple accurate predictions (including the iPhone X), stated that Apple will move from the iPhone to AR by the early 2030s. Apple’s pitch to developers who will congregate at WWDC will centre around the headset’s App Store and operating system, tipped to be called xrOS. The developer community is also likely to be first big wave of buyers for the headset, along with Apple fanboys/girls and other users (like the ones who bought the AirPods Pro Max) who live on the cutting edge. Will this headset spawn a whole new product category of other wearables that will allow us to merge the real with the unreal in a new mixed reality world? Stay tuned.