Apple’s next big thing is widely expected to be an AR / VR headset to compete with the likes of Meta and Google. Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman’s latest report on Thursday indicates that Apple has made significant progress on the project and that it could be released to the public “in the next few months.”
According to Bloomberg, Apple has presented a preview of its headset to the company’s board of directors, a big step that indicates that the hardware is nearing completion. Additionally, the operating system used by the headset, RealityOS, has been “ramped up”. While it is unlikely that it will appear at WWDC in June, it is possible that we are seeing signs of project development towards software.
Apple’s Mixed Reality headset has long been rumored, with a recent report revealing key features, including a dual 8K display, an M1 processor and more than a dozen cameras. In February, Digitimes reported that Apple had completed the original production test, and more recently, references to the reality OS hidden in the App Store logs were discovered.
While Apple must have a production schedule in mind, the pressure to release the headset has intensified with recent news from the Google I / O Developers Conference. During the I / O Keynote, Google previewed what it did with its AR specs that perform real-time language translation. Apple’s headset is expected to be much more ambitious, with a focus on gaming, messaging and media.