The MacRumors Show: Product Designer Marcus Kane Envisions What Apple's AR/VR Headset Could Look Like

On this week's episode of The MacRumors Show, we discuss the design of Apple's upcoming mixed-reality headset with professional product designer Marcus Kane.


Marcus is an industrial designer and UX consultant who uses virtual and augmented reality headsets on a daily basis to support his workflow. He recently created detailed concept renders of what he expects Apple's mixed-reality headset will look like with YouTuber David Lewis based on rumors, Apple patent filings, and his own expertise.


We talk through Marcus's approach to the design and what existing Apple products inspired him, looking at some of the key aspects that Apple will have had to consider with the device. We also discuss the broader user experience with the headset, including its rumored waist-mounted battery pack – which Marcus has envisioned as enclosed in a pouch on a shoulder-strap that also contains a cable to power the device, potential restriction to indoors use only, and real-world passthrough with a "reality dial."


Since Marcus uses existing headset products to support his design work, we learn about some of practical use-cases for this category of device, where Apple could compete, and what key software features the company could deliver. See more of Marcus's work over in David Lewis's latest video, and follow him on Instagram and Twitter.

We also discuss some of this week's latest Apple news, including the rumor that watchOS 10 will include significant UI changes, iOS 17's purported Control Center redesign, display changes for 2025's iPhone lineup, and more.

Listen to The MacRumors Show in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Pocket Casts, Castro, Google Podcasts, or your preferred podcasts app. You can also copy our RSS feed directly into your podcast player. Watch a video version of the show on the MacRumors YouTube channel.


If you haven't already listened to the previous episode of The MacRumors Show, catch up for our discussion about WWDC 2023 and whether Apple's headset will finally emerge at the event.

Subscribe to ‌The MacRumors Show‌ for more episodes, where we discuss some of the topical news breaking here on MacRumors, often joined by exciting guests like Christopher Lawley, Frank McShan, David Lewis, Andru Edwards, Tyler Stalman, Jon Prosser, Sam Kohl, Quinn Nelson, John Gruber, Federico Viticci, Sara Dietschy, Luke Miani, Thomas Frank, Jonathan Morrison, iJustine, Ross Young, Ian Zelbo, Jon Rettinger, Rene Ritchie, and Mark Gurman. You can also head over to The MacRumors Show forum thread to engage with us directly. Remember to rate and review the show, and let us know what subjects you would like the podcast to cover in the future.
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Report: Apple CEO Tim Cook Ordered Headset Launch Despite Designers Warning It Wasn't Ready

Apple CEO Tim Cook sided with operations chief Jeff Williams in pushing to launch a first-generation mixed-reality headset device this year, against the wishes of the company's design team, the Financial Times reports.


The timing of the mixed-reality headset's launch has apparently been a cause of considerable contention at Apple. The company's industrial design team cautioned that devices in the category were not yet ready for launch and wanted to delay until a lightweight AR glasses product had matured several years later. On the other hand, Apple's operations team wanted to ship an early version of the product in the form of a VR-focused ski goggle-like headset that allows users to watch 3D videos, perform interactive workouts, or make FaceTime calls with virtual avatars.

‌Tim Cook‌, who served as Apple's operations chief prior to becoming CEO, reportedly sided with Jeff Williams, overruling objections from Apple's designers and pressing for an early launch with a more limited product. Speaking to the Financial Times, former Apple engineers who worked on the device described the "huge pressure to ship."

Upon the departure of design chief Jony Ive in 2019, Apple's design team now reports directly to Williams. While design led the direction of Apple's products under Steve Jobs, employees have noticed that operations is increasingly taking control over product development under Cook's leadership. One former engineer said that the best part of working at Apple was devising engineering solutions to meet the "insane requirements" of the design team, but that has apparently changed in recent years.

Apple's headset has reportedly been in active development for seven years, twice as long as the original iPhone prior to its launch. The device is seen as being tied directly to ‌Tim Cook‌'s legacy, as Apple's first new computing platform developed entirely under his leadership.

The company is still expecting to sell only around a million units of the headset during its first year on sale at a ~$3,000 price point. Nevertheless, Apple is purportedly preparing a "marketing blitz" for the product later this year.
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Apple's Headset to Bring Continuity Features into 'Extended Reality'

Apple intends to bring new Continuity features to its upcoming mixed reality headset that will make switching between devices and virtual workspaces a seamless experience, if a new patent is anything to go by.


For anyone unfamiliar with the term, Continuity is how Apple describes all the ways that the devices in its ecosystem communicate interchangeably, allowing users to switch between them without interrupting what they are doing.

Handoff for instance enables you to start working on one device, then switch to another nearby device and pick up where you left off in the same app. Other examples of Continuity features are AirPlay to Mac, Sidecar, Universal Control, and Continuity Camera.

Last week, the European Patent Office published a patent application from Apple titled "Multi-Device Continuity for use with Extended Reality (XR) Systems," in which Apple offers some examples of how it envisions how Handoff-like interoperability will work between an XR headset and other Apple devices.


In one example, Apple describes a scenario in which a headset wearer looks over at an email on an iPhone screen, whereupon a virtual replica of the Mail app's interface gets overlaid on the iPhone display. With a hand gesture or switch of gaze, the user then transfers the email to a larger virtual display suspended in their environment and continues to draft it via detection of their finger movements by the headset cameras.

In another example, while a song is playing in a media app on their iPhone, the headset user gestures or looks at a HomePod in the same room, and by doing so, transfers music playback to the smart speaker in a continuous, uninterrupted fashion, without physically approaching the speaker. "This handoff logic can be via a direct peer-to-peer connection and/or facilitated by a cloud server," note the patent authors.


Various other scenarios are envisaged that show Apple's XR headset similarly "managing continuous transfer of control between other devices in the system responsive to three-dimensional location-based user inputs, and/or... one or more of the other devices and the device itself."

Apple also describes another implementation where, rather than switching from a physical display to a virtual one, the headset augments a desktop Mac by positioning "accessory windows" close to yet outside of the boundaries of the Mac's monitor screen into an "extended reality environment."

How far Apple will initially push Continuity with its rumored headset is unknown, but some of the examples in the patent are likely to provide a good general idea of what the company has been working towards achieving.

In terms of what we do know about the headset, it will not need an iPhone to function and will be able to be used on its own. To that end, it will run "xrOS," a new operating system designed specifically for the AR/VR experience. xrOS will include iOS apps like Safari, Photos, Messages, Maps, Apple TV+, Apple Music, Podcasts, and Calendar, as well as a FaceTime app customized for the headset.


There will be no wearable control device for the headset, with Apple instead relying on hand gestures that are detected by the myriad cameras on the device. Typing, for example, will be done using an "in-air" method through eye movements and hand gestures.

Apple is still planning to unveil the first version of the headset, likely called "Reality Pro," at WWDC in June this year, with the device shipping toward the end of 2023 at the earliest. For more on what to expect from the headset, we have a dedicated AR/VR roundup that aggregates all of the rumors that we've heard so far.

(Via Patently Apple.)
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Gurman: Apple Headset Could Feature 'In-Air' Typing for Text Input, No iPhone Pairing Required

Apple's first mixed-reality headset may feature "in-air" typing capabilities and can be used independently without an accompanying iPhone, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman.



In the latest edition of his "Power On" newsletter, Gurman explained that Apple's headset is unlikely to require a paired ‌iPhone‌, in contrast to the original Apple Watch. The device can purportedly be set up without an accompanying ‌iPhone‌ and download a user's content independently, including iCloud data. A data transfer from a user's ‌iPhone‌ upon setup will be an option rather than a requirement.

"In-air typing," Apple's method for text input using eye movements and hand gestures with the device, is apparently enabled on the latest internal prototypes. The feature is "finicky," Gurman warned, explaining that "you still may want to pair an ‌iPhone‌ to use its touch-screen keyboard... The hope within Apple is to make rapid improvements after the device is released."

Apple is still planning to unveil the first version of the headset, likely called "Reality Pro," at WWDC in June this year, with the device shipping toward the end of 2023 at the earliest. The company is also developing multiple other headset models for further in the future. There is a cheaper model with a lower-end display and processor components planned for launch at the end of 2024 or in 2025, likely under the "Reality One" name, as well as a second-generation Reality Pro headset.

The second-generation Reality Pro headset is apparently focused on performance improvements. While the first-generation model will contain the M2 chip alongside a secondary chip for AR and VR processing, it is apparently not powerful enough to output graphics at the level Apple wants. For example, FaceTime will only support realistic VR representations of just two people at a time, rather than everyone in a conference call, with the first-generation headset. The second-generation Reality Pro could have a variant of the M3 or M4 chip to bolster its graphics capabilities, Gurman said.
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Kuo: Apple to Launch High-End and Low-End Versions of Second-Generation Headset in 2025

Apple's cheaper second-generation AR/VR headset will come in two high-end and low-end models, according to Apple industry analyst Ming-Chi Kuo.


Writing in a new Medium post summarizing his latest survey findings and predictions, Kuo says both models will likely arrive in 2025.

Apple's second-generation AR/MR headset has two high-end and low-end models. The high-end and low-end will be developed and produced by Luxcaseict and Foxconn, respectively. The current launch schedule for both models will likely be in 2025.

Apple's long-rumored AR/VR headset has yet to be announced, but a report earlier this week claimed that the company's manufacturing partner Foxconn is already developing a cheaper second-generation version of the headset.

That report said Apple's first headset will be "extremely expensive," with industry estimates ranging from $3,000 to $5,000, while Apple's second-generation headset will have a more affordable price within the territory of "a high-end Mac computer." Now it seems Apple is planning a two-tiered series of the second-generation device to appeal to a wider customer base, similar to the way it offers both standard and more premium Pro-branded iPhones each year.

In his latest report, Kuo says that Pegatron is gradually withdrawing from Apple's headset business, and will likely transfer its AR/MR development team and production resources to Luxcaseict (a joint venture between Luxshare ICT and Pegatron), led by Luxshare ICT, in the first half of 2023.

This will see Luxshare ICT taking over the subsequent design and production of the high-end version of the second-generation headset. Such changes will lead to "the subsequent acceleration of reducing the cost of the headset, which is what Apple expects," adds Kuo.

Apple's plans to release a cheaper version of its AR/VR headset were first reported last month by The Information's Wayne Ma and Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. The headset would supposedly use more affordable components, such as lower-resolution lenses.

According to The Information, "significant" work on the second-generation device started last year, and at the time, the goal was to launch the cheap headset in 2024. Bloomberg previously reported that Apple's budget mixed reality headset could arrive in either 2024 or 2025.

Apple's first headset is expected to be announced at WWDC in June and will reportedly have over a dozen cameras, dual 4K lenses, advanced eye and hand tracking, and many other advanced features. As for software, the device is said to have an iOS-like interface with a grid of apps.

In a follow-up tweet to his latest Medium blog, Kuo said his prediction for the mass shipment schedule of the first-generation headset is unchanged, but the likelihood of it being released at a spring event this year is decreasing. However, Kuo also said that the probability of the headset's launch alongside the iPhone 15 in the third quarter of this year "is rising."
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Apple's Headset Will Reportedly Let Customers Create AR Apps via Siri

Apple is working on new software tools that will allow both developers and customers to create augmented reality apps for its widely-rumored AR/VR headset, according to a paywalled report today from The Information's Wayne Ma.


Interestingly, the report claims that customers will be able to create and release AR apps for the headset via Siri, even if they do not have the ability to code:

With the software tools, Apple hopes that even people who don't know computer code could tell the headset, via the Siri voice assistant, to build an AR app that could then be made available via Apple's App Store for others to download. The tool, for example, could allow users to build an app with virtual animals moving around a room and over or around real-life objects without the need to design the animal from scratch, program its animations and calculate its movement in a 3D space with obstacles.

The report likens Apple's tool to Minecraft and Roblox, which allow anyone to easily create 3D tools and worlds. Apple is said to be utilizing technology that it acquired from Montreal-based startup Fabric Software in 2017, and customers would be able to distribute the AR apps they create on the App Store alongside developers.

Apple already offers some AR creation tools like Reality Composer on the iPhone and iPad that could be expanded to the headset.

It's worth noting that the report cites sources who last saw demonstrations of the tool in 2021, so the report is based on older information and it's possible that Apple's plans have changed at least slightly in the time that has passed since.

Apple is also working on AR content for the headset, according to the report:

People familiar with Apple's content strategy for the headset say Apple executives are emphasizing health and wellness including proposals for AR apps that assist with meditation and exercise. One early AR demo allowed users to sit inside a Zen garden, the four people said.

Apple's headset is expected to be released later this year and will reportedly have an iOS-like interface with a grid of apps, advanced eye and hand tracking, and the ability to function as an external display for a Mac. The software tools for the headset could be revealed at Apple's annual developers conference WWDC in June, giving developers time to create AR and VR apps for the headset before it launches to customers later in the year.
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