Interviews with developers of 'Mixed Reality Headsets' revealing Apple's muddy internal politics
We interviewed Apple insiders about the inside of Apple's '
The Inside Story of Why Apple Bet Big on a Mixed-Reality Headset — The Information
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/the-inside-story-of-why-apple-bet-big-on-a-mixed-reality-headset
Apple's mixed reality headset project challenges explained --9to5Mac
https://9to5mac.com/2022/05/17/apple-headset-challenges-explained/
Apple's Struggles With Long-Rumored AR / VR Headset Detailed in New Report --MacRumors
https://www.macrumors.com/2022/05/17/apple-ar-vr-headset-technical-challenges/
The Information interviewed 10 people involved, including someone who was involved in the MR headset project at Apple. According to the story, Apple's internal demonstration of an early prototype was held for the board of directors in 2016, immediately after the development started. Apple executives, including former US Vice President Al Gore and Disney CEO Robert Iger, tried out prototype headsets as they moved from room to room.
Apple wasn't working on MR headsets at the time, but on virtual reality (VR) , which looks at a completely computer-synthesized world, and augmented reality (AR) , which superimposes VR images on real-world images. , One of the demos was to make a miniature size sai appear on the desk.
Demonstrations of rhinos going from miniature size to full-scale, and bleak interiors turning into lush forests were more relevant to MR's idea of integrating real-world and VR than AR. However, it was hard to say that it was sophisticated as a compliment. For example, some prototypes were urgently equipped with Windows, while others were just a modification of HTC's VR device,
Still, Apple's board gave a go-ahead to the headset project, partly because of the impatience with the preceding Meta (Facebook at the time), but the project quickly stumbled. One of the reasons is the reluctance of CEO Tim Cook.
In contrast to Steve Jobs's active involvement in iPhone development, Cook's verbally supportive but unwillingness to get involved is a development far from Apple's main campus. He said he rarely visits the group's office. As a result, headset development teams have difficulty accessing a wealth of personnel and technical resources, unlike iPhones and Macs, people said.
The symbol of this is the event in early 2018. At the time, the headset development team wanted to speed up the camera capabilities of the headset prototype to promote it in an important demo to 100 of Apple's top employees called the 'T100.' Therefore, the development team asked Apple's camera-related engineering group to add a firmware function that improves the image processing speed of the camera, but 'Headset is a low priority, so the iPhone at the end of the year. Wait until the XS is shipped. '
Another issue is the presence of former Chief Design Officer Jonathan Ive . Team leader Mike Rockwell, who was rushing inside Apple to get cooperation in VR headset development, said Ive, 'VR is cut off from the outside world, which makes users feel alienated and clunky. It lacks practical use. I don't think consumers want to wear such a headset for a long time. '
In response to this, Rockwell et al. Steered from VR to MR, but the concept went astray. For example, the development team had a solution to attach a camera to the front of the headset so that users could see the surroundings, but in the end the designers were convinced that 'a screen was attached to the outside of the headset. To make the wearer's eyes and facial expressions visible to the people around him. ' Ive was also reluctant to think of using a base station device, forcing the development team to shift to a headset that works on its own but has poor performance.
After some trial and error, it is reported that Apple may announce the MR headset in 2023 at a price of $ 2,000 to $ 3,000.
Related Posts:
in Hardware, Posted by log1l_ks