A report details the challenges that delayed Apple's mixed reality headset launch by years and the initial pushback from Jony Ive's team on a VR headset concept
Apple's headset effort had already been linked to overheating, camera, and software problems that threatened its planned unveiling. This report adds a longer product-development history, including resistance from Jony Ive's team to an initial VR-oriented direction.
Follow-on coverage describes Ive as an external consultant and says the device is not focused on gaming, while an earlier examination framed mass-market AR hardware as difficult to build. Together, the coverage makes the delays a product-definition issue as well as an engineering one.
First-order effects
Apple's mixed-reality team must absorb a launch timetable extended by technical problems while aligning the product with a direction that moved beyond the initial VR concept.
Jony Ive's design organization retains relevance to the headset's development debate, even as later coverage places Ive outside Apple as a consultant.
Second-order effects
A non-gaming focus raises the importance of Apple delivering a broader mixed-reality use case, rather than relying on a conventional VR positioning to justify the delayed launch.
Repeated hardware and software setbacks make readiness the gating factor for Apple's public debut plans, as later reports also described a postponed 2023 introduction after testing issues.
Third-order effects
If this development pattern persists, mixed-reality product cycles will be set less by launch-event schedules than by the difficulty of integrating thermals, cameras, software, and a coherent consumer use case.
The broader challenge identified for mass-market AR hardware suggests that product differentiation and engineering maturity will remain intertwined for headset makers.
The trend: Consumer mixed-reality hardware is evolving through prolonged integration work, with design intent and technical reliability jointly determining when products can reach market.
This is sort of amazing and funny. Jony Ive objects to VR headsets at Apple because they would “alienate users from other people by cutting them off from the outside world, make users look unfashionable and lack practical uses.” In response... https://twitter.com/...
The story of Apple's mixed-reality headset is so lengthy that it's been split into two parts. The first part, published today, reveals it took a key feature, an outward-facing screen, to get the project greenlit. My latest for @theinformation. https://www.theinformation.com/ ...
@Tsukinune I definitely would cut it first over anything else Supply chain has been expecting them to order 2 uOLED + 1 OLED per device for a while though. So 🤷♂️
Further confirmation from @theinformation's report on @Apple's AR headset lines up with our thinking that it won't be released until 2023 or 2024. Here's what we wrote about last week: https://loupfunds.live/...
Mentioned here before that I think an outward facing screen on headsets is more important than it sounds, and I hope that's something Apple includes. https://twitter.com/...
This article was incredible already. I guess we know that rumored third screen is going to be used for an outer view display For inside displays: “People who worked on the device said Rockwell's group insisted on a screen resolution inside the headset of at least 4K per eye” http…
Reading this article you see the technology challenges here. But worse, you see the challenges of building a new product category inside a big company. I saw this inside Microsoft when the Tablet initiatives (which were years ahead of iPad) were ignored and starved of resources h…
One prototype was so heavy it required a “small crane” to hold it “so the Apple board members could wear it without straining their necks” https://9to5mac.com/...
I don't think $FB gets the credit they deserve for their hardware products & this flows through to unwillingness of the investor base to underwrite +ve returns on R&D spend for FB while it's the opposite case for AAPL (but also w less moonshot projects). https://www.theinformatio…