VR headset faced years of exec skepticism, report says
For much of the 21st century, Apple has quieted its doubters, conquering product markets one by one to become the world’s most valuable technology company.
But for the Bay Area giant’s mixed-reality headset, set to launch this year, the skeptics have reportedly been inside the firm. Over the years, Apple executives — including CEO Tim Cook — have worried about the headset’s appearance and popularity, all while internal debates about the design of the device have delayed its release, according to a Bloomberg report published Thursday.
Barring further delays, Bloomberg reported, Cook will unveil the new product at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference on June 5 in Cupertino — a ski goggles-esque headset with an attached battery pack that will employ both virtual and augmented reality features and run on a new Apple operating system. It is expected to cost around $3,000.
Though Cook reportedly hasn’t been very involved in the headset’s design, he advocated for a lightweight option from early in the product’s development. “Nobody in here — few people in here — think it’s acceptable to be tethered to a computer walking in here and sitting down. Few people are going to view that it’s acceptable to be enclosed in something, because we’re all social people at heart,” Cook said at a 2016 technology conference. But the headset, rumored to be named “Reality,” will indeed enclose the face while outwardly showing eye movements and facial expressions on a screen, Bloomberg reports.
Other executives have expressed apprehension as well, Bloomberg reported, including Craig Federighi and Johny Srouji, senior vice presidents for software engineering and hardware technologies, respectively. Srouji reportedly warned that the focus on headset processing would slow iPhone chip development.
With billions of dollars poured into the project and more than 1,000 engineers reportedly involved in its development, the stakes of Silicon Valley’s biggest hardware launch of the year are high — especially since Apple has delayed the headset’s launch for about three years.
Michael Gartenberg, Apple’s senior director of worldwide product marketing from 2016 to 2019, told Bloomberg that in the unproven headset market, the release could end up being “one of the great tech flops of all time.”
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Source: SFGATE
