Apple reveals Vision Pro AR headset, arrives early next year for $3,500

[Daniel Sims]

Through the looking glass: After years of leaks and speculation, Apple has finally unveiled its entry into the virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) market. It's a costly venture; the Vision Pro seeks to incorporate Apple's robust and popular software ecosystem into an AR headset with the processing power of a MacBook.

Apple capped off its WWDC23 presentation by revealing its long-anticipated augmented reality headset – the Vision Pro. For $3,499, the M2-powered standalone device introduces a new operating system and App interface within a mixed-reality space. Remarkably, it operates without physical controllers and is set to launch early next year.

The Cupertino-based tech giant views the Vision Pro as a unique product tier, aptly named Spatial Computing. The innovative visionOS offers alternate versions of apps people frequently use on their iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, and Apple TV.

Multiple virtual screens, expandable up to 100 feet wide, enable users to multitask with entertainment and productivity apps. These include Apple TV+, Disney+, the Microsoft Office suite, Safari, FaceTime, Apple Arcade games, and many more. Notably, developers can port apps to visionOS, but the Vision Pro also includes a compatibility mode for iPhone and iPad apps.

User interaction is mainly through eye tracking, hand gestures, and voice commands. Like most headsets, the device features a virtual keyboard, but can also connect to Bluetooth keyboards or controllers for work and gaming. Moreover, Vision Pro users can seamlessly connect to a Mac by merely looking at it, which then provides an enlarged view of Mac apps within the mixed reality space.

The device's micro-OLED lenses collectively contain 23 million pixels, effectively achieving 4K per eye, which is about double the resolution of VR headsets like the Meta Quest 2 and PlayStation VR2. This grants the Vision Pro's virtual screens full 4K image quality.

Additionally, the headset includes Apple's first-ever 3D camera, enabling 3D photo and video capture. It also allows users to view iPhone panorama photos in a wrap-around mode.

Despite its high price, the Vision Pro's launch event suggested that Apple envisions the device serving both work and play purposes at home and in the office. Several features appear designed to streamline the VR and AR experiences, making them more user-friendly for the average consumer.

Beyond the controller-free interface, Apple aims to ensure that Vision Pro users don't feel overly isolated from the surrounding environment. A physical dial can adjust the visibility of the virtual background, the headset automatically renders nearby people visible, and the user's eyes remain perceptible to external observers.

The headset's new R1 processor also reduces passthrough video lag by managing the input from 12 cameras, five sensors, and six microphones. An external battery offers two hours of continuous use.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/98954-apple-reveals-vision-pro-ar-headset-arrives-early.html

 

[m4a4]

No controllers for precise control? Which also conveniently means it can't properly support existing virtual games?

Man, I swear, Apple hates gaming. And that's the big focus of VR right now, so it just feels like an even bigger fumble for mainstream adoption...

 

[YouShallNotPass]

 

[Dimitriid]

I liked how before revealing the price they tried to soften it 'This is a high end computer, multiple super high resolution monitors and TVs as well as...' whatever else they mentioned.

Bottom line is that while I could give the AR instead of fully VR a slight benefit of the doubt where it comes to better adoption both for devs and people, they fully lost me at 'precise hand controls' It's going to be just a tiny few notches above the spastic nonsense even the improved wii or kinect where at those times, just you doing some Naruto moves with your hands for like a solid 3 minutes before you give up and go 'Siri just open the !(#! Safari app' or go grab a keyboard.

Well I am assuming that's going to be the case of course. Lucky for me I am willing to bet most people will have to assume as well because again, nobody is going to pay Apple 3500 bucks to dangle around with a cable or just being unable to watch a full, average Marvel movie Disney showed off on it with just 2 hours of battery life: this is the mother of all 'Never get the first generation' warnings.

 

[Inthenstus]

3.5K for a 2 hour battery life? Yikes…. I don’t want to judge the lack of controllers until I can try it myself (which I won’t because of the price). Love the idea, hope it takes off and a more affordable version as well.

 

[psycros]

A solution in search of a problem.

 

[DSirius]

Apple did not mention about their Vision Pro AR headset having any AI.
If it does not have any AI, even a tiny one, it is not good. AI is in trend now and Apple missed again the trends.

P.S. Joking

 

[DSirius]

This dog gave us the best opinion about VR and AR headsets.

 

[brucek]

From the introductory video I watched online, it came off basically as just a portable large monitor. Which I guess is pretty cool if you're stuck on a plane but I think is just a niche luxury feature at this price.

For the pricetag and hype, what I expected to see is practical features that combine what you currently see in the real world with value add additions from your own data or the cloud. They must be working on that but I haven't seen any details. I could imagine where it'd be fairly controversial if for example it tried to identify every person on the street, slap a star-score summary review on every storefront, or record, summarize and store everything you saw and heard, etc.

Then there's altering your world. I might enjoy it if everyone I met had supermodel looks and everything they said was highly complementary to me. But I could see how that could cause trouble in the long run, especially if they were trying to say "get out of my way creep" but all I kept hearing was "you're so handsome."

 

[YouShallNotPass]

I liked how before revealing the price they tried to soften it 'This is a high end computer, multiple super high resolution monitors and TVs as well as...' whatever else they mentioned.

Bottom line is that while I could give the AR instead of fully VR a slight benefit of the doubt where it comes to better adoption both for devs and people, they fully lost me at 'precise hand controls' It's going to be just a tiny few notches above the spastic nonsense even the improved wii or kinect where at those times, just you doing some Naruto moves with your hands for like a solid 3 minutes before you give up and go 'Siri just open the !(#! Safari app' or go grab a keyboard.

Well I am assuming that's going to be the case of course. Lucky for me I am willing to bet most people will have to assume as well because again, nobody is going to pay Apple 3500 bucks to dangle around with a cable or just being unable to watch a full, average Marvel movie Disney showed off on it with just 2 hours of battery life: this is the mother of all 'Never get the first generation' warnings.

If my calculation is correct, their spec is indeed top notch. Consider the current high end head sets are about 2880 x 2880 per eye. That's about
2880 x 2880 x 2
= 16,588,800
= 16 million pixels.

Apple's VR offer 23 million pixels, that is an amazing 3390 x 3390 per eye resolution. It just that the market is probably not ready for a $3500 headset. I wonder how much of that 3500 goes to the part that make the front of the device to display the user's eyes.

Since this is a product from the Apple we know, it is definitely not cheap. However, let's not forget other device like Varjo XR-3 is asking for €6495 with a 1-year Varjo XR Subscription at €1495 which in my opinion even more ridiculous.

 

[sorten]

The article keeps mentioning AR & VR, but I don't see any pictures (or a description) of the VR experience. I'll watch Apple's video when I have more time tonight. Just curious if it does support a full VR mode as well.

Apple has two things going for it: the most powerful and power efficient ARM chip on the planet, and rich customers. But I still don't expect this to sell. I get the feeling that VR/AR have once again failed to reach critical mass as a mainstream product, and I can guarantee you that most employees won't want to wear this thing at work.

 

[ddferrari]

Wait a year and some Asian MFR will come out with a similar product (with better battery life) for a third of the price.

 

[Kashim]

Man, I swear, Apple hates gaming. And that's the big focus of VR right now, so it just feels like an even bigger fumble for mainstream adoption...

Come on, did you really expect them to focus on gaming with this ultra expensive device? When have you known Apple to release a me-too product that goes along and plays along with other similar offerings from another company? This device never had any chance of playing nice with anything offered by the competition, be it games, apps, peripherals, etc. Apple's only focus is to lock you into their own ecosystem of ultra expensive devices.

 

[Kashim]

Vision Pro? More like Vision Poo.

 

[Dimitriid]

If my calculation is correct, their spec is indeed top notch. Consider the current high end head sets are about 2880 x 2880 per eye. That's about
2880 x 2880 x 2
= 16,588,800
= 16 million pixels.

Apple's VR offer 23 million pixels, that is an amazing 3390 x 3390 per eye resolution. It just that the market is probably not ready for a $3500 headset. I wonder how much of that 3500 goes to the part that make the front of the device to display the user's eyes.

Since this is a product from the Apple we know, it is definitely not cheap. However, let's not forget other device like Varjo XR-3 is asking for €6495 with a 1-year Varjo XR Subscription at €1495 which in my opinion even more ridiculous.

Well...Kinda. See while just the specs make it still overpriced but high end indeed, let's think for a second at how much resolution would you need: over 4k per eye does seems like a lot indeed but according to apple this is enough to "seamlessly" fill out you entire field of vision. Remember: this is not like VR where you can get kinda used to lower resolution by being fully immersed since it is superimposing those giant monitors on your actual field of vision so it actually needs to reproduce a lot of resolution. Maybe imho too much resolution to the point that it might end up looking quite blurry and useless if you really want to press your face against a monitor the size of your entire wall simply because well, you can't really do that in real life: Even if you buy an 8k monitor and keep it 'small' at like 50 inch if you put your face right against it you'll probably lose most of the detail on that picture anyway now think bigger sizes.


I can give them credit as to this maybe being higher detail than any single screen available to us today or damn near close to it, but they really seem to be over-hyping the capabilities and experience of what it will actually look like in the room which I suspect will be quite softer than what was shown or with hard limits where you can't really bring your screen closer than really 4 or 5 feet from you or bigger than maybe 40 or 50 inches meaning that fancy all around vision stuff, yeah I'm not buying it's gonna be anywhere near as impressive as their demo.

Wait a year and some Asian MFR will come out with a similar product (with better battery life) for a third of the price.

A third of the price is still like a bit under 1200 USD: you can probably get one of the competing VR set from 'reputable' brands for that much so this is a case in which funny enough, Facebook and Valve might want to market their sets as the chinese knock offs since they're actually cheaper by comparison.

I do get what you mean btw but I just wanted to put it into perspective on how the reliable 'third of the price' phrase is not even accurate to how much money Apple wants for this thing.

 

[Sherwoodnt]

As much as I’d like to strap a PowerGlove to my face…

Designed to maximize sales of aftermarket straps… only $499.99 for a pink one!

 

[sreams]

"This grants the Vision Pro's virtual screens full 4K image quality."

This would only be true if the virtual screen occupied 100% of the pixels. It typically won't, as it will occupy only a percentage of the space.

 

[adamada72]

From the introductory video I watched online, it came off basically as just a portable large monitor. Which I guess is pretty cool if you're stuck on a plane but I think is just a niche luxury feature at this price.

For the pricetag and hype, what I expected to see is practical features that combine what you currently see in the real world with value add additions from your own data or the cloud. They must be working on that but I haven't seen any details. I could imagine where it'd be fairly controversial if for example it tried to identify every person on the street, slap a star-score summary review on every storefront, or record, summarize and store everything you saw and heard, etc.

Then there's altering your world. I might enjoy it if everyone I met had supermodel looks and everything they said was highly complementary to me. But I could see how that could cause trouble in the long run, especially if they were trying to say "get out of my way creep" but all I kept hearing was "you're so handsome."

Not sure you can use this on a plane. Doesn't have a headphone jack, only those speakers everyone can hear?

 

[Kashim]

Not sure you can use this on a plane. Doesn't have a headphone jack, only those speakers everyone can hear?

Headphone jacks are a thing of the past, remember?

 

[dipankar]

3500$, a hell lot expensive. Apple is just a luxury brand, it is unaffordable to a major number of people on this planet.

 

[Kashim]

Am I the only one who thinks anyone wearing this looks like a giant bug?

 

[Lounds]

I bet after watching that Meta can have a sigh of relief. Yes it's impressive but at $3500 no one in their right might is going to buy one unless they have more money than sense.

 

[yRaz]

While I was never interested in VR, AR is something I always thought was cool. I'm gonna have to find a way to give one of these a try someday just for the experience. I still hate Apple but I believe they actually have the funding to make good on the promises of what they're showing in those videos.

 

[JamesBlond]

Apple love to squeeze every sent out of its ***** buyers
Cost - $75 resale - $3500 - Profits - $4500
You thinking how do you get that as profits...well you gonna have to buy another 3 gadgets to go with it.. so good luck on paying your mortgage..or buying a car... or something that actually adds value to your life...

 

[toooooot]

I was thinking for words to describe my feelings while reading reviews and watching the video about this headset.
I don't need it.
I hope it works well for people who eagerly waited for its release.