Apple launches Vision Pro - an AR/VR headset and 3D camera

6 June 2023

Apple has announced the Vision Pro, a mixed-reality headset that combines virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR).

After years of speculation the Cupertino-based company would launch its own headset, Apple CEO Tim Cook hailed the arrival of the sleek goggles at its annual WWDC event overnight.

“This marks the beginning of a journey that will bring a new dimension to powerful personal technology,” Cook told the crowd.

Unsurprisingly, the product immediately drew comparisons with Google's ultimately doomed Glass project that debuted nearly a decade ago and was widely derided at the time.

The backlash towards Glass became so intense that people who wore them became known as “Glassholes,” before Google eventually withdrew the product a few years after its debut.

Apple will be hoping its Vision Pro headset will take advantage of more widespread acceptance of augmented reality, and remarkably is the company's first major new product in almost 10 years.

The company even went as far as claiming the Vision Pro is the "most advanced personal electronic device ever."

The $3,500 USD device will run its own operating system, called VisionOS, that allows for both eye and gesture control across a three-dimensional user interface. VisionOS resembles the iPadOS interface.

Looking like a pair of ski goggles, the Vision Pro's external screen allows the wearer's eyes to be seen by others through a feature called Eyesight. It uses an external battery pack about the size of an iPhone that connects to the headset via a cable.

The goggles are equipped with 12 cameras, six microphones and a variety of sensors that allow users to control it and various apps with just their eyes and hands. Apple said the development of Vision Pro involved more than 5,000 different patents.

“Vision Pro creates an infinite canvas for apps that scales beyond the boundaries of a traditional display and introduces a fully three-dimensional user interface controlled by the most natural and intuitive inputs possible — a user’s eyes, hands, and voice,” Apple says.

“Featuring visionOS, the world’s first spatial operating system, Vision Pro lets users interact with digital content in a way that feels like it is physically present in their space.”

The device is powered by Apple's M2 chip, and will also feature Apple's voice assistant, Siri.

The Vision Pro has a 3D camera onboard, allowing the wearer to capture 3D photos and 3D videos. The wearer can view the media back later in an immersive way that puts the viewer 'back inside' the captured memory.

In addition, Vision Pro also offers a “spatial cinema” experience, dimming the real world and presents the viewer with a huge screen that boasts 23 million pixels across two postage stamp-sized displays, one for each eye. According to Apple, this provides the equivalent of a 4K TV on each side of the headset.

The headset is capable of running popular Apple applications including Books, Camera, Contacts, Facetime, Mail, Maps, Messages, Music, Notes, Photos, Safari, and more in mixed reality -- a blend of both AR and VR.

The Vision Pro marks Apple's first attempt to move into augmented reality, a now relatively crowded space that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has described as the “metaverse.”

Whether Apple has a hit on its hands like its now iconic iPhone, of which it ships more than 200 million a year, we won't know until the product is released in stores early next year.