
Apple’s secretive AR and VR Headset plans altered by internal differences - hhs
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-19/apple-team-working-on-vr-and-ar-headset-and-ar-glasses
======
mark_l_watson
I think Tim Cook and Apple made the correct decision.

I own an Oculus Quest, which is fairly light weight and totally self contained
while my Brother owns a more capable Oculus device that is tethered to his
gaming PC.

I use my Quest many times a day, often for just a few minutes at a time. It is
so easy to get up from my desk, and jump into a ping pong game, enjoy a
favorite part of Vader Immortal, randomly try a VR art piece, etc., etc.

I don’t want to spend huge amounts of time on the quest, rather to just use it
the way I would take a walk or a hike.

I love the Oculus Quest, and if Apple sells something better with good
content, then I am all in.

~~~
greggman3
I have the exact opposite opinion. The Quest is massively underpowered for the
games I want to play. I want GTA VR (which is amazing except for the fact that
it's not designed for VR). I want beautiful worlds to visit. I want more Half
Life Alyx like experiences. I won't get those on a Quest with a mobile GPU
anytime soon.

This is the major problem will all the mobile tech based VR. The content is
not and will never be compelling to the audience that actually wants this
tech.

~~~
mzkply
This is classic Apple, they try to widen the audience that wants a tech by
simplifying as much as possible, then finding a key value.

Prime example is the Apple Watch... who "wears" it now? Sports people...

~~~
poulsbohemian
> Prime example is the Apple Watch... who "wears" it now? Sports people...

Two years ago I was on vacation in Hawaii and took a whale watching / snorkel
tour. I was the only person on the boat not wearing an Apple Watch. They are
pretty much ubiquitous, like the iPhone, among an upper middle class
demographic.

~~~
bsanr2
People on a snorkel tour _are_ sports people.

~~~
poulsbohemian
You are being snarky and not adding to the conversation. From the time the
Apple Watch appeared, it's been denigrated, but I see them everywhere. I see
regular complainers here on HN about the iPhone too, but it misses the total
saturation in certain demographics. Apple is successful. Yes, we should
continue to hold them to a high standard of ethics, but the haters need to
realize that _consumers_ like their gear.

------
_bxg1
I have to side with Ive here. Apple is not a gaming company, and that's the
only consumer motive I could see for a bulky headset that's tethered to a base
station. Any other use would be pure novelty. Plus, the already-small market
is being well-served by traditional VR headsets.

But a new wearable - a lifestyle product, slim and stylish enough to go
anywhere and slide into a pocket if need be - is right up Apple's alley. On
top of that, there's the incredibly obvious solution of pairing it to the
user's iPhone for heavy-lifting, making use of those absurdly powerful mobile
chips and gaining a new source of ecosystem synergy (or lock-in, depending on
your perspective) in the process.

It's shocking to me that someone holding such high regard in Apple could be so
out of touch.

~~~
twoodfin
Indeed. I'm surprised they're even trying the "stationary" product rather than
just working directly towards a glasses version of the Watch.

Gurman's sources are good enough that I imagine he has the narrative right,
but this sounds a little bit like the iPad / iPhone evolution in retrospect:
As I understand the history, the iPad was actually under development _first_ ,
but it became obvious that the better initial market to target with the
technology was smartphones. It wouldn't shock me if they belatedly have the
same revelation again.

Maybe they have sold themselves on a kind of "meet in the middle" strategy,
where major YoY improvements in AR-enhanced smartphones build a market for
mobile-focused apps, while the HUD technology is ramped up and refined in an
environment where you don't worry so much about power and portability.

But again, if I were Apple, I'd stick to mobile and wait until they are ready
to leapfrog everyone else rather than try to build a market with awkward
enthusiast tech.

------
zmmmmm
Any company with a VR product that didn't react to the Oculus Quest would be
making a mistake in my view. It is suboptimal in nearly every way, but the
first headset in my view that is "good enough" in _every single way_ to be a
blockbuster hit. The strategy for Apple of simply starting with the Quest and
using its superior chips and overall hardware expertise to make it twice as
fast and half the weight, while tying it into the iOS ecosystem should be
extremely straight forward and basically make them the dominant VR player
overnight. I imagine that for someone like Rockwell this isn't nearly as
exciting as introducing a revolutionary tech breakthrough. But Apple has never
been good at that. They are good at significantly raising the bar on what
other people have already done badly.

One giant question I have in this space is, _where the hell is Google_? Are
they really so burned by Google Glass that they are going to give up on an
area that has a small but realistic chance of being a large part of the future
of both consumer and business computing?

~~~
vl
Google developed VR headset internally for years, but in typical Google
fashion this seems to be half-assed effort that didn’t go anywhere.

~~~
runawaybottle
Stadia seems like such a good tie in for a VR headset. Not sure what they are
thinking here.

------
baybal2
I have heard quite different info from one man working at Apple supplier.

Apple for long tried to license display tech from Beijing university, a solid
state microled chip with microlenses, but they never agreed on lump sump
payment Apple wanted, despite it being "n-times the price" of their whole IP
trading business.

So, it became a blocker, with relationship souring, and them resorting to
"patenting around," poaching their engineers, and other nasties.

They tried to recreate the chip by themselves, but Beijing uni got a tip of
it, and claimed that Apple is now "IP tainted" by what they saw under NDA, and
them hiring their engineers.

And so, Apple went on developing "ordinary" transparent VR glasses instead.

A company called Kura is said now to reuse the same chip from Beijing
university IC company in their own take on what Apple tried originally.

~~~
pwthornton
I'm not sure if I'd put a lot of stock in an Apple supplier knowing more than
people who talk to internal engineers.

The idea of a combined VR/AR device sounds silly, and I think Ive is right: AR
is where Apple should be focusing right now. There is something there for AR,
and Apple has been laying the groundwork for AR for years with iOS and iPad
OS. VR is very much stuck in a niche right now, and it seems like it will be
for awhile.

~~~
baybal2
What they say about N421 is pretty much is what they were saying a generic
"transparent VR" or "lightweight AR" display would be, and what the technology
would allow.

Think of Google Glass sans camera, and creepiness.

For anything else, there is simply no practical tech on this planet.

The lowest common denominator for "a real world usable AR" is well known: an
emissive display, and a simple reflective projection system on some
semitransparent medium/mirror dots/viewfinder-overlay-like prisms. No magic.

Pretty much everything else requires battery packs bigger than the glasses
themselves, especially if you want daylight visibility.

> I'm not sure if I'd put a lot of stock in an Apple supplier knowing more
> than people who talk to internal engineers

You will be surprised how much RnD stuff Apple outsources around in China.

Maybe they design their products in California, but they definitely engineer
them here in Shenzhen.

I had hard time understanding why they were so skittish talking about their
RnD centres in China, and even once denying their existence, when the whole
city knew of them, and where they are.

------
victor106
> He started building his team in late 2015, and what grew into a 1,000-strong
> group of engineers

There were about 30 people in the original iPhone team. Something tells me
larger teams find it hard to bring out innovations faster.

[https://www.theverge.com/2017/6/13/15782200/one-device-
secre...](https://www.theverge.com/2017/6/13/15782200/one-device-secret-
history-iphone-brian-merchant-book-excerpt)

~~~
davee5
Apple has been working on glasses at least since 2006 and perhaps earlier, far
longer than this article indicates. Perhaps there's not continuity in these
projects, but I suspect an R&D team or two has been working on this for over a
decade. Whether or not you still believe it, Apple generally releases new new
products when they're ready.

"Apple started working on an augmented reality headset at least as early as
2006, but put the idea on ice because it seemed a mere curiosity compared to
the iPhone. The possibility of some sort of iGlass device was confirmed by
Tony Fadell, the former iPod division head who is now the CEO of Nest Labs,
during an interview for the oral history."

[https://www.fastcompany.com/3018060/apples-iglasses-are-
real...](https://www.fastcompany.com/3018060/apples-iglasses-are-real-heres-
why-you-might-never-see-them)

[https://www.computerworld.com/article/2474968/innovation--
ap...](https://www.computerworld.com/article/2474968/innovation--apple-was-
developing-google-glass-like-prototypes-in-2006.html)

------
bsanr
If this is really what went down, it's highly disappointing, and potentially a
market-losing choice akin to Microsoft chopping off the internal processing
for the original Kinect (which left it far too under-powered to perform its
core competencies). VR is already computationally-intensive; adding in the
features necessary for AR UX and still trying to achieve a compelling
experience on, essentially, mobile hardware is a fool's game (ask anyone who
has been underwhelmed by Magic Leap and, again, Microsoft's offerings). From a
performance perspective, perhaps the latency of using an wireless connection
to a hub was concerning, but if it wasn't, that would have been the only way
to achieve the kind of exceptional performance expected of a market-defining
product launch of an Apple product. They really shot themselves in the foot on
this one, for a guy who was about to jump ship anyway.

>For Ive, who left last year after almost three decades at the company, a more
realistic experience was potentially problematic: He didn’t want Apple
promoting technology that would take people out of the real world.

And, on a philosophical level, that's not his decision to make. People build
artificial worlds to suit or make up for their imperfections; that's just who
we are as a species. I notice that those who are successful in the real-life
social or corporate world are often horrified at the prospect of those not
being central to the average person's experience, but the truth is that
they're just as manufactured and distracting from "reality" as anything else.
What is reality? I would say, "The base layers of Maslow's hierarchy," with
everything above being artifice. Apple's contemporaries have shown that one
doesn't need a false 3D overlay of their apartment to be swayed by the unreal;
all you need is a willing mind and a text editor/reader. The problem is
therefore orthogonal to the medium, and instead a matter of mental self-
regulation of the near-limitless bounds of our imaginations. Let's get that
figured out and stop trying to hold technology back.

------
forgingahead
The article ended abruptly for me, which was confusing. (Bloomberg has this
weird black magic used by news sites where articles blend into one another,
leading to buggy behaviour.)

Here's the full text in archive:
[https://archive.vn/Ue3Kp](https://archive.vn/Ue3Kp)

------
nick-garfield
Hmm that's a bit disappointing.. I feel like Ive and Cook could be wrong on
this one. If desktop/mobile is an appropriate parallel, then it seems like
they've decided to undercut their desktop machine to have the "ergonomics" of
a mobile device while still not being mobile. If the VR headset is a
stationary experience, then what's wrong with having a hub sitting around
nearby?

~~~
fossuser
I’d guess the AR headset is more interesting to Apple and probably not a
stationary experience.

The goal is new UI extension of iOS similar to the watch. Eventually making it
so you don’t need to pull out your iPhone to interact with software (and the
world) at all.

Probably at first will be notifications and such. No idea if there’s any truth
to this video, but it makes sense to me that Apple would focus on this as the
next platform when the hardware becomes possible:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5J_6oMMG7Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5J_6oMMG7Y)

I think there’s huge potential for a massive shift in capability if this is
done right.

------
shadowtree
The same post-Jobs Ive that caused the keyboard fiasco.

Some of the decisions made under him should be re-visited it seems, his
product instincts beyond the design were flat out wrong.

~~~
skellera
Seriously, his reasoning for not needing better graphics in VR is out of touch
with the purpose of VR. I now wish he left sooner so they would’ve focused on
the best possible VR experience.

~~~
m463
Both VR and AR require a lot of horsepower. I think VR might need less
horsepower than AR.

I wonder if either of them will be as generally useful for a wide group of
people day to day. I don't mean useful as in apps, I mean tolerated by eyes
and brain.

------
dharma1
Tethering the headset to an iPhone in your back pocket to offload the
processing still makes the most sense to me. By the time this thing comes out,
iPhone 13 or 14 will be pretty powerful, and most people already own one so
the headset can be a lot cheaper and more lightweight.

Wireless tethering would be best, but a thin wire would be fine too, I'd
probably prefer that to having a radio on my temple all the time.

I wonder what kind of display tech they are planning to use - laser projection
or something else? I've been seeing tiny 1" OLED displays from China lately
with 2560x2560 resolution on Alibaba, pretty cool. But of course they block
your vision, unlike a projector.

~~~
istorical
The main problem with this approach is you decimate your phone's battery life
anytime you use it as a remote processing unit for VR/AR, at least in the case
of Samsung Gear VR that's what John Carmack learned. Users end up having to
calculate whether they'd rather use the VR device or have more spare battery
to get them through the day / until next charge.

------
Razengan
They could have captured both ends of the scale with two different devices: a
powerful VR (for Mac/iPad) as well as a slimmer always-worn AR (maybe an
iPhone companion like the Apple Watch).

They need VR credibility, especially after Valve dropping Mac support for
SteamVR: [https://www.macrumors.com/2020/05/01/valve-drops-steamvr-
mac...](https://www.macrumors.com/2020/05/01/valve-drops-steamvr-mac-support/)

~~~
Cactus2018
>They need VR credibility

5 months until they bring in John Carmack?

[https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/13/20963899/john-carmack-
st...](https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/13/20963899/john-carmack-stepping-
down-cto-of-oculus-work-on-ai)

~~~
andybak
Are you suggesting that Carmack is sitting out his non-compete period and has
already been poached?

If not - then I'm suggesting it. ;-)

Interesting theory.

------
deltron3030
Do you remember the Avegant Glyph VR headset from a few years ago?
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEmVyMm8opE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEmVyMm8opE)

Apple should perfect this idea instead, make it look like a normal set of
highend overear headphones from the outside, and integrate a AR screen into
the headband. This form factor is a winner for bulkier AR/VR headsets because
people already wear headphones around their necks, people are used to seing
other people wearing them like that. Meaning that one of the biggest barriers
of adoption (where to store it, looks) is already solved.

A portable mobile cinema/AR viewer, and a Macbook/Ipad auxiliar screen through
USB-C would be enough for a v1.

They'd have the capability to integrate powerful technology into such a
package.

~~~
bsanr
The Glyph was simply a display with speakers. I agree that the form factor
visually pleasing, and they weren't uncomfortable to wear (save for extended
periods, where it was easier than even with VR sets to develop dry eyes), but
adding in everything necessary to make them a true AR/VR headset with inside-
out 6DoF tracking, let alone the SoaC, would have drastically changed its
shape and size.

~~~
deltron3030
It doesn't have to be a "true AR/VR headset" to become a hit if it can enhance
activities like coding or media production on a mobile device by providing a
screen alternative.

------
Geee
Bicycle for the mind. That should be the primary vision for the product.

They shouldn't be thinking about market segments or if it looks cool enough.
Just make the next step in human-computer interaction. Make history.

“When we invented the personal computer, we created a new kind of bicycle... a
new man-machine partnership... a new generation of entrepreneurs.” — Steve
Jobs, c. 1980

~~~
m463
I think Steve Jobs would have sold it internally. And gotten people to work
together by hook or by crook.

People don't realize Steve Jobs was the great integrator.

The ipod was a great achievement, but it was dwarfed by his ability getting
the music people and the computer people together.

------
modeless
If Apple had been first to market with a "wireless tether" VR headset that
could have been interesting. A straight Quest competitor seems like an
uninspired choice, especially as Apple has never been great at gaming, and the
market seems less than Apple-sized.

AR glasses on the other hand they could bust wide open, but it all depends on
the display technology. Literally nothing else matters unless the display is a
huge breakthrough. I doubt that it will be good enough by 2023, unless Apple
goes for a niche market first and expands wide a few generations later. But
that doesn't really seem their style.

~~~
sjroot
Apple doesn’t care about first to market. They will take the time necessary to
refine a huge breakthrough.

------
intopieces
It’s interesting that Ive had hesitations about building a product that takes
the user out of reality. I also have that hesitation about VR; that is, I
don’t like the fact that it takes up my entire field of vision, and I am
hesitant to adopt a new screen technology when I don’t feel like I have
properly reckoned with the screens I already have.

I hope that Apple will have Screen Time on this device.

~~~
gfodor
Ultimately we will have software modulation of all photons hitting your
retina, in hardware packages that are unobtrusive. To not be aiming there
seems to be swimming against the tide.

~~~
intopieces
It certainly makes sense for Apple to aim there. But I'm not sure that I want
to go there. Perhaps I will have to in order to keep up.

~~~
gfodor
Yup, I’m afraid so.

------
karpodiem
I agree that having this tethered to a stationary hub inhibits the scope of
this being a device which can be worn anywhere.

If anything I could see the iPhone acting as the hub (for the first few
generations at least) in the same way the iPhone is the hub for the Apple
Watch. Not sure what protocol they would use to communicate, Bluetooth doesn't
have the bandwidth and Wifi is still a power hog.

~~~
cwe
UWB that is in the iPhone 11's.

------
Razengan
By the way, here's an example of cool everyday-AR could be, if done right:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fm-4GPSnj94](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fm-4GPSnj94)

The killer applications of AR would be when glasses are as ubiquitous as
smartphones and display the same virtual world for everyone:

Imagine walking outside and seeing your neighbor's favorite fictional
character mowing their lawn, because that's the avatar they chose to display
themselves to other AR users.

Or seeing kids battling their Pokémon in the park. :)

~~~
hn_throwaway_99
That YouTube video you showed, though, just left me wondering "why?" I mean,
it looked cool, but we've all basically got our phones always in reach. If
anything, I'd like _to get rid of plastic cards_ , not get more that would
require glasses and an unintuitive interface to figure out what to do.

It just looked like a million other AR demos I've seen: gimmicky with less
utility than what I've got now. I can imagine a place for AR, but "worse
interface for something I can do right now on my phone" is not it.

~~~
Razengan
> _gimmicks_

> _worse interface for something I can do right now on my [computer]_

Were quite literally the arguments people used against the advent of
smartphones. :)

What problems do you think smartphones solved? People were not exactly
clamoring for them.

Why do you think the Apple Watch became so successful?

When you don't HAVE to hold a phone to be able to do something, you wouldn't
want to. In fact, I could see smartphones being supplanted by a combination of
smartwatch + AR glasses.

~~~
postingawayonhn
> What problems do you think smartphones solved?

Mobility

------
mrkstu
Interesting news as it pertains to the ARM Macs. Implies the graphics
capabilities may be substantially better than most of us were anticipating-
much better than the already very good iPad graphics.

------
neonate
[https://archive.vn/Ue3Kp](https://archive.vn/Ue3Kp)

------
kgin
The untethered headset makes sense from the perspective of Apple’s history.

One of Apple’s core tenets is that convenience trumps everything.

Often to the chagrin on power users. Always to the chagrin of spec lovers. But
it has worked very well for them until now.

------
mrfusion
What does this mean to me as an apple prosumer? When will this come out? What
will it be like?

~~~
ohazi
More like Google Glass and less like Microsoft Hololens / Magic Leap One

------
user982
tldr: Ive: "Thinner."

~~~
melling
“ Ive balked at the prospect of selling a headset that would require a
separate, stationary device for full functionality. He encouraged Rockwell and
his team to redevelop N301 around the less powerful technology that could be
embedded entirely in the device.”

