The Apple Vision Pro may have turned a few heads, created a whirlwind of memes, and some have ended up being returned by buyers.
But Apple is poised to continue development for their AR headset.
Mark Gurman, a reporter from Bloomberg, who also has the newsletter Power On, talked about Apple moving forward with another Vision, this time without the “Pro.”
It makes sense, anyway. Apple introduced the Vision with a “Pro,” raising the likeliness of a standard “Vision” someday in the future. That future seems to be next year. And it is reportedly going to cost $2,000. It’s definitely a lot cheaper than the $3,500 Vision Pro. But 2,000 is still a price too steep. People could buy high-performance gaming rigs, enormous TVs, and whatnot with that price point.
Gurman believes Apple will use an older processor and cheaper materials to build this Vision. Cheaper materials seem the most obvious here. Plastic, of course, is the way to go, stripping off all the aluminium that allegedly made Vision Pro heavy. As for the processor, Apple may indeed go for an A18 Pro.
Also, this less pricey Vision will have to drop the EyeSight feature. EyeSight is the screen that displays your eyes from the outside of the headset. This glass panel will obviously be changed into plastic. It’d be interesting to see how much Apple changes (or retain) when designing this Vision headset.
Gurman also says that Apple is hoping to find other ways to profit from all their R&D put into developing the Vision Pro. Maybe a sort-of “just in case” these things don’t exactly take off as planned. These products could be smart glasses to rival Meta with their Ray-Ban glasses. We won’t be seeing any of this though, according to Gurman, not at least until 2027. Maybe not even, considering how Apple likes to take their time in developing new things.
There are also reports that seem to point out AirPods with cameras. I’ve read a lot of strange tech over the years, so the question of “But why?” is all but drained out of my system by now. Cameras in earbuds may actually help with recognizing gestures more accurately, get visual cues for active noise cancellations, and probably even translations. Now that could be interesting but I suspect it would become some kind of door towards a privacy-issue hellscape.
What we could be seeing more from Apple though, besides the usual iPads and Macs with the latest M-chips that are X percent faster than the first-gen products, might be home-related tech. Maybe a new HomePods with better connectivity across different devices. Apple, after all, is one of the co-developers of Matter, a smart home standard that makes it easier for smart devices to work together. Apple is still playing catchup with its competitors, like Amazon, for the smart home. And this may seem the cost-effective route for continued growth. But, here in the Philippines, by the end of the day, I suppose no one would care about this.