The saga of Apple’s mixed reality headset continues as Mark Gurman, Bloomberg journalist and man of all the information on the Cupertino company, has received new information. According to its sources, the launch of this innovative new product would no longer take place in April, as the latest rumors indicated, but in June at the next Worldwide Developers Conferenceor WWDC for short.
Why such a delay? It would seem that Apple was pushed to delay its presentation somewhat due to the lack of new tests carried out on the product which underlined some defects both on the material and on the software aspect. This short delay would therefore allow him to take care of his copy before presenting in good and due form this innovative product, the technical information of which has already been leaked for a long time.
Dan Riccio to the rescue
According to Mark Gurman, Apple would have affected Dan Riccio, the former grand chief of the company’s hardware section, leading this project. The latter is said to be working hard to resolve the latest problems that have shaken up the initial plans of the firm.
Previous rumors were indeed that Apple is organizing a dedicated event during the month of April in order to present this famous helmet and the first development tools to its partners. The WWDC would therefore have been an opportunity to dig into the subject, and speak directly to entrepreneurs who already had an idea of what they wanted to develop for the new mixed reality platform. Today the plans would be to do it all at once at WWDCwhich would certainly support the announcement effect, but would leave partners much less time to develop applications.
And that is where the sinews of war lies. The virtual reality market, and a fortiori mixed reality market, is already in place with many competitors such as Samsung, Meta or PlayStation in the field. There is, however, one terrain on which the war is strongest: finally find the killer app. The functionality that will truly convince the general public, while mixed reality is still a niche business today.
Apple’s story tends to give us hope on its ability to find this famous killer app. The company has been working on this project since 2015 and has already greatly developed augmented reality thanks in particular to the Lidar camera integrated into the iPad Pro. But above all, its hallmark has always been to arrive on a market that is already a little mature, ready to pass the second, by offering it well-developed and easy-to-use experiences that appear like revolutions. A real wave for the general public, which would go beyond the efforts of the Meta Quest, is expected on the side of virtual or mixed reality. And today, Apple seems in the best position to succeed in transforming the test.