Apple delays Reality, plans WWDC unveil, report claims

Bloomberg’s back with another high level insight that conceivably comes from people hiding in the walls of Tim Cook’s office, this time claiming Apple will now introduce its first iteration of mixed reality glasses at or around WWDC.

When delays are surmised…

Apple, which has never confirmed plans to ship any such product, has now allegedly delayed the device. The gossip channels had predicted an April reveal followed by a WWDC push to persuade developers to get building for these new devices, potentially called Apple Reality.

The report tells us problems in the hardware and software have caused these delays in the product which Apple has worked on since 2015.

(I’d argue work began long before that as I believe Apple and Sony first began collaborating on lenses for such things much earlier).

Shifting the diary dates

We had also anticipated these things would appear in June 2022, but it turns out that developing brand new product families at a quality to justify the speculated upon $1,500-$3,000 price tag is hard. And even when the product is shown to the world at WWDC, Apple doesn’t expect to ship these things until later this year.

That makes sense, of course, given that it will probably require updates across all the other operating systems the company provides, and that Apple will want to give developers time to build applications for these things, to help promote interest.

I remain an outlier in predicting Apple may make some early versions of these things available to developers in the same way as it first put Apple Silicon Macs out there.

Today’s report does warn that the timing could slip again but says Apple really wants to ship the product this year. These glasses are seen as its next big thing, and it does hope to build a strong business from these headsets.

[Also read: Who are Apple’s first-generation AR goggles going to be for?]

We’ve even heard the company plans to create a fantastically easy way that anyone can build applications for use with these things.

Apple reality unreels

In previous episodes of this long running speculation, we’ve heard the glasses feature 4K VR displays, M2 processors, 8-12 cameras, a new operating system and big battery pack. We also believe Apple has plans to introduce lighter and smaller AR glasses in future.

Find out more in the new AR Glasses channel.

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