Do you think that the founder of Pepsi ever had kind words to say about Coca-Cola? Would the guy who started Avis ever discuss a great experience he had renting a car from Hertz? Could you imagine the person who built General Motors rattling off all of the positives he found while driving a Ford? That is why it is impressive that the founder of the company behind the Oculus VR headset, Palmer Luckey, posted a tweet today that said, "The Apple headset is so good."
Oculus founder Palmer Luckey praises the Apple headset
Unfortunately, the tweet doesn't give us any context about the statement Luckey made. We have no idea whether he got to try the headset or not. Last month, an anonymous tester said that he was "blown away" after testing Apple's headset, dubbed the "Reality Pro." The same unknown individual had been underwhelmed by the device when he previously tested it. Could that have been the appropriately named Luckey? The latter sold Oculus to Facebook in March 2014 for $2 billion (his net worth is estimated at $700 million).
Will the Reality Pro do for headsets what the iPhone did for smartphones?
introduce its mixed-reality headset at WWDC 2023 which kicks off on June 5th and release the device later this year. Rumored to carry a price tag in the neighborhood of $3,000, the AR/VR headset is the most complex product that Apple has ever made. Powered by Apple's M2 chip and running the tech giant's extended reality Operating System (xrOS), the Reality Pro could sport as many as a dozen cameras, and sensors that track the user's head and body.
Each eye will have a 4K micro-LED display and a digital crown will quickly close and open the display to take the user from the immersive made-up environment used for Virtual Reality to Augmented Reality which places computer-created data on top of a real-world feed.
In VR, a user could be anywhere in the world. He could find himself in a room full of avatars representing the people he is conferencing on a FaceTime group chat. He could be in the cockpit of a commercial jet that he is virtually flying from Paris to New York. With a special bat in his hand, he might be in the batter's box at Yankee Stadium trying to catch up to a 100 mph fastball coming his way.
The Reality Pro will reportedly run several iPad apps
With AR, the user could be walking down the street while wearing the headset and see arrows on top of a live feed that are navigating him toward his destination. At the same time, the user might see data on the screen such as the time, temperature, and weather conditions. Recently, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman said that the headset will run iPad apps such as "Books, Camera, Contacts, FaceTime, Files, Freeform, Home, Mail, Maps, Messages, Music, Notes, Photos, Reminders, Safari, Stocks, TV, and Weather." Other iPad apps will run on the device with some modifications.
The founder of the Oculus VR headset praises Apple's mixed reality headset
The headset will reportedly be powered by a battery belt worn by the user. Each battery will run for about two hours before needing to be changed. And the Reality Pro will supposedly support "in-air typing" as one method to input data.
As we have been getting closer and closer to the actual introduction of the device, the buzz has gone from the headset becoming another Newton-like backfire (Apple's Newton personal digital assistants with handwriting recognition failed to catch on when launched in 1993) and is now at the other extreme. And that is why Luckey's tweet is so interesting since it fits the current narrative of the headset as another big winner for Apple, similar to the iPhone.
Just as the iPhone took a product already available and turned it into something completely new and innovative, the current buzz is that this is what will happen with the Reality Pro. We should get our first look at Apple's mixed-reality headset in approximately three weeks.
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Alan, an ardent smartphone enthusiast and a veteran writer at PhoneArena since 2009, has witnessed and chronicled the transformative years of mobile technology. Owning iconic phones from the original iPhone to the iPhone 15 Pro Max, he has seen smartphones evolve into a global phenomenon. Beyond smartphones, Alan has covered the emergence of tablets, smartwatches, and smart speakers.
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