Apple Inc. officially showed off its mixed-reality headset Monday, with the new Vision Pro device supporting 3-D content and featuring a price tag of $3,499.
The Vision Pro, Apple’s
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first major new product category in eight years, will be available early next year and feature the ability for users to control the device with their hands, eyes and voice, a distinguishing feature of the headset in the current market. Chief Executive Tim Cook previewed the widely anticipated device during the keynote address of Apple’s WWDC developer event Monday.
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Apple had been rumored for years to be developing a mixed-reality headset, which merges immersive augmented reality with real-life surroundings. Cook has long been excited about AR technology, and Monday’s event gave a sense for how he sees the theme playing into the business going forward as he announced WWDC’s “one more thing.”
“It’s the first Apple product you look through and not at,” he said, adding that Vision Pro represents “spatial computing” and brings “a new dimension to powerful personal technology.”
Users will be “no longer limited by a display,” Cook claimed.
See also: Apple CEO Tim Cook explains why consumers would want a mixed-reality headset
One key feature of the Vision Pro is the ability to see apps overlaid across real-world surroundings. Users will be able to determine how immersed they want to be by tweaking settings on a digital crown.
The device will also allow users to rely only on their eyes, hands and voice to control content. Users can flick to scroll through options and tap their fingers together to select something with gestures that Apple says are subtle. Apple showed off how users will be able to arrange apps like FaceTime and Safari and then turn to the side to switch from one app to another. Their eyes will still be visible to people engaging with them in the real world.
The company highlighted panoramic photos and noted that users will be able to capture “spatial” 3-D videos and photos using the headset. Apple teased that people would be able to make the surroundings of a plane disappear if they opted to watch 3-D video while flying.
Robert Iger, Walt Disney Co.’s
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CEO, appeared onstage to call the launch a “momentous event” that could help make Disney’s vision “a reality” through the advent of deeply immersive and personal stories. The Disney+ app will be available “on day one” through Vision Pro.
Apple explained that users can either plug the Vision Pro in or use an external battery that will provide roughly two hours of use. The display has “more panels than a 4K TV for each eye.” The Vision Pro relies on Apple’s custom processing, including a new R1 chip that the company says helps reduce latency issues, which have plagued other devices.
Users will be able to set up digital personas as part of the new visionOS operating system for the device.
With the Vision Pro, Apple is wading into a market for augmented- and virtual-reality devices that has been underwhelming thus far as products from Meta Platforms Inc.
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and others have failed to pick up meaningful traction with consumers. VR devices dominate the market, according to third-party data from IDC, but overall shipments plunged more than 50% in the latest quarter amid economic pressures and a general cooling of interest.
Read: Apple debuts new 15-inch MacBook Air for $1,299, adds new Mac Pro and Studio PCs
While Apple is sitting on a number of multibillion-dollar businesses now, the company’s current big moneymakers weren’t seen as slam dunks when they launched. Evercore ISI analyst Amit Daryanani noted that critics dinged the early iPhone for a lack of third-party apps and keyboard and pointed to fading interest in watch-wearing more generally at the time the Apple Watch debuted.
Whether Apple can succeed again in making a once-questioned product category mainstream remains to be seen with the Vision Pro. The company could sell over 10 million units in the first five years, according to Daryanani, but that would make the device Apple’s slowest to ramp in the 21st century.
See more: Apple could be cooking up 3 more $10 billion-plus businesses, one analyst says