Apple's Mixed Reality Mystery Headset: What WWDC Needs To Discuss

Apple's upcoming VR headset, a whole new computing platform or an unusual experiment. We're just days away from Apple's developer conference, WWDC, where there is finally expected to be an Apple mixed reality headset. We've heard about this thing for years now, and there were already VR and AR headsets that had been on the landscape for a while. I've been covering VR and AR for at least a

decade. You hold these PlayStation-type controllers and you play games with them. What do you do beyond that? Can you do work? Can you do fitness? Can you connect with other people? Can you connect with your devices? These are the sorts of things that Apple could open doors to. First of all, let's talk about the devices. Right now with VR headsets and with AR headsets, they're really

not great for connecting to your computer or your phone or other things. While I do work on my laptop with the Metacrest Pro and cast monitors up in the air all around my laptop, it's not a perfect experience. But that's a type of thing that Apple could make a lot easier to use. Apple has laptops, they have iPads, they have phones. They have things that automatically

seamlessly, most of the time, connect to each other. Things like the Apple Watch, AirPods. Where does that all fit into the equation? Well, the Apple Watch could be the type of thing that could work with the Apple VR headset, maybe for controls or connecting to fitness. What about connecting on your laptop and throwing a screen up on a virtual monitor or getting all of your information

from your phone and not feeling like you have to take off the headset? That type of seamlessness between all the devices, that's a big part of what's missing in the landscape. What we see instead are a lot of VR headsets that are building mixed reality features into them. Last year's Metacrest Pro is an example of that. It was $1,500. Now it's 1,000. But it's a headset

that's VR that uses cameras to map the world around you, show video through the cameras onto the display and layer VR on top of it. That's what mixed reality is. And that's the type of thing that Apple is likely to do with their headset. A similar type of idea, but with a much higher resolution display, most likely powerful chips inside, looks like M2 chips similar to

what's on their Mac and, you know, in the iPad lineup. And possibly 4K micro OLED displays, which could be fantastic. Now, another area's fitness. Fitness is already a stealth killer app on VR right now. Meta has been doing that for a while. And things like Beat Saber, supernatural. These are fantastic features. They don't always work well with your existing fitness and health ecosystems. This is where

Apple could come in. Apple already has a lot of research into health and fitness initiatives. What if the Apple headset also has workouts, some way of being able to accurately train workouts like a Peloton, and also has breathable materials that are better for sweating and better for just general fitness and comfort. Apple could be one of the first to make a bigger step in that space.

The other thing that Apple could really do is figure out interfaces. Now, it sounds like the headset is not going to have controllers per se. Maybe it has hand tracking, in combination with eye tracking, to be able to look at where you're going to in space and accurately hone in on it and allow you to pinch and kind of virtually touch things. How would that work

without feedback, though? Maybe the Apple watches involved here with some sort of vibrational feedback. Apple has already done accessibility gestures and commands that work with the Apple watch where you can actually use it for some different types of points and pinches and things like that. And I'm going to set and are expected on the Quest 3. The other thing that this headset looks like it's got

is compatibility with the iPad App ecosystem. Sounds like thousands of iPad apps are going to run on this. And I'm really curious if Mac apps will run on this and how cross compatible that will feel. And what's the pathway for that to then become a mixed reality app? And what is this XROS, which is this XR operating system that Apple is supposed to have on this

headset? We're expecting that the headset will cost three hundred thousand dollars. Three thousand dollars, which is a lot. Really expensive headsets in my mind are more like fifteen hundred dollars. And that's the Quest Pro, which already dropped in price. If that's the price, then it's really sort of a developer specialty item, which may be a building block for a future more affordable headset down the road

and how will Apple pinch that? We're expecting maybe that this headset will launch in the fall and maybe this event is more of a beginning breakdown for what the headset involves and how to develop apps for it with a real formal launch in the fall. But with the Meta Quest 3 coming, which should have passed around four hundred thousand dollars, five hundred dollars we expect. And

already the PlayStation VR 2, there are a lot of headsets coming out, which one should you get? I have no idea. But we'll find out more about Apple has in store pretty soon. If you have any more questions, let us know in the comments below. Thanks for watching and make sure to like and subscribe.