Alex McRoberts – Blog

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This is third post in a series of Apple and Augmented Reality:

Apple Vision Pro Launch

This is the third post in the series digging in to Apple's future with AR. A follow up since the announcement of Apple's Vision Pro headset

This post is intended to be a recap to see how close I got to guessing what Apple were going to ship as part of the Vision Pro device.


Wifi display powered by iPhone

I got this one wrong. Oh did I ever! Vision Pro is going to ship with 2 screens that provide higher than 4K resolution per eye!


Face ID sensors for eye tracking

I got this spot on. The eye tracking is 1 IR camera per eye, plus several LED transmitters located around each eye.


LiDAR & Camera for inside-out tracking

Called it! Vision Pro is going to ship with 1 LiDAR sensor, 2 True Depth Cameras, 6 cameras up front, located just around the bridge of the nose, and 2 cameras located underneath the front of screen.


Spatial Audio

I definitely got this one right. Spatial Audio is going to be included on Vision Pro – with an Audio Pod provided on each side of the head. It will also pair with AirPods for Active Noise Cancellation.


Homepod Mic Arrays

Yep, this was mentioned. I didn't quite catch how many microphones they said would be included, but a Mic array is built in.


Homepod Room Sense Technology

Apple mentioned this would be in the form of "Audio Raycasting" to determine the environment that a user is in, to help tune the audio to where the user is located in a room.


AirTags and Ultra-wideband

I didn't quite get this right, Apple showed that hand gestures would be picked up by the underside cameras on the headset instead, which is a much more valid Apple-esque approach.


AppleTV as a Hub

I didn't get this right at all. The power in the headset is going to be unbelievable!


Summary

5 right, and 3 wrong. Not a bad attempt at it. I underestimated the power envelope that was going to be available to the device. The on device compute available is substantial. The price point at $3499 is going to be hard to stomach at the beginning, but with the bill of materials here, it's going to take a while before the cost comes down.

I'm looking forward to seeing what this device ends up being used for!

Let me know if you think this post was interesting. I'm @alexmcroberts@mastodon.social