Apple almost confirms Apple Reality AR glasses are coming

An interesting look. Thanks to Charline Tetiyevsky and Flickr

WWDC will be exciting this year and the most recent trademark filings stories seemingly confirm that what everyone things is coming is actually on the way.

xrOS, xrProOS, WWDC

We’ve all anticipated Apple will introduce us to the operating system with which it intends to power its first-generation AR glasses, even if it doesn’t actually ship those things until later this year.

In the last couple of days, we’ve seen a few filings to hint it plans to call the operating system behind the devices xrOS and xrProOS. A flock of filings to this effect have appeared in Jamaica, New Zealand, Argentina, UK and Singapore, with a dummy company called Deep  Dive LLC fronting these claims.

Apple also seems to have filed a few trademarks for the products, Reality OS, Reality One, Reality Pro and Reality Processor have all been named.

What’s the framing here?

A lot is expected from these new products, and it is interesting how some of the pre-event coverage is being framed.

On the one side you see disheartening little reports positioning the introduction as a kind of test of Tim Cook’s leadership, possibly reflecting the nature and motivations of the sources feeding those writers.

Elsewhere you see analysts such as Goldman Sachs predicting Apple will absolutely succeed in this new venture. They reckon the mixed reality goggles will pump up to $20 billion in annual revenue into Apple’s coffers.

We know what we expect:

• Mixed reality goggles equipped with a Digital Crown to enable you to mix between external and projected reality.
• Equipped with cameras, a six-hour external battery pack, and a powerful M-series processor.
• Voice, gesture, and retina activated the devices will be supported by both a powerful developer focused development environment and a far more approachable consumer-simple development environment for the rest of us. (xrProOS and xrOS makes sense, right?).
• Apple will also have been quietly building its first flotilla of supporting applications, with FaceTime, Music, and Fitness+ obvious consumer facing shoe ins.
• You may even be able to run a virtual iPad desktop in those spaces, which will be positioned as offering a combination of being lean back entertainment devices as well as being serious gadgets for serious work.

They won’t be cheap, and Apple is expected to partially subsidize these things at the beginning of things but be in no doubt whatsoever that costs will fall over time.

As the ecosystem builds out and more and more people visit Apple Stores worldwide to try these things out in the coming months, word will spread, and sales will grow.

We’re going to know so much more in a few weeks, but while you wait why not cherry-pick through previous expectations in the Apple Reality flow.

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