Apple unveils $3,500 ‘Vision Pro’ goggles

At its annual software developer conference on Monday, Apple Inc. revealed the Apple Vision Pro, the company’s first significant entry into a new product category since the launch of the Apple Watch nine years ago.

With a starting price of $3,499, Vision Pro is more than three times more expensive than the most expensive headgear in Meta’s lineup of mixed reality and virtual reality gadgets, which presently rule the AR/VR industry.

Apple did not make any significant announcements on generative AI products akin as ChatGPT or Google’s Bard search engine, but it covertly infused AI into a number of minor services, such as live transcriptions of voicemails.

In addition to using a three-dimensional camera and microphone system to record films and photographs that can be viewed in three dimensions afterwards, it was said that Vision Pro users will be able to pick content inside the goggles with their eyes, tap their fingers together to click, and gently flick to browse.

The device also has an outside display that presents the user’s eyes to individuals in the outside world, which is perhaps its most visually apparent distinction from Meta’s headsets.

When a user is completely submerged in a virtual environment, the outer screen turns off. The headgear will display both the user and the approaching outsider when a user is fully immersed in virtual reality, which is an improvement over Meta’s products that only display a more rudimentary video feed of the outside world.

Apple made no mention of the virtual social worlds that Zuckerberg has spoken about in its announcement, instead focusing on the novelty of the product’s augmented reality features and the partnerships it would provide in the sports and entertainment industries.

Both the library of films and TV shows from Apple TV+ and Walt Disney’s Disney+ streaming service will be accessible. The business also demonstrated how the headset may function like a conventional PC with several displays when used with a touchpad and keyboard.

Carolina Milanesi, an analyst at Creative Strategies said, “The core difference to me is Zuckerberg is trying to create a virtual world that he wants us to be in, and it seems to me that Apple wants to keep us still anchored in our world and just augment it.”

Investors and tech enthusiasts are both interested in how much Apple and Meta’s perspectives on the virtual reality market diverge. Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, has described his idea for using headsets to enter and exit a “metaverse” where people may virtually gather to work, play, and spend.