Apple 'Vision Pro' goggles to place user between virtual and real worlds

Associated Press

Cupertino (US): Apple on Monday unveiled a long-rumoured headset that will place its users between the virtual and real worlds, while also testing the technology trendsetter's ability to popularise new-fangled devices after others failed to capture the public's imagination.

After years of speculation, Apple CEO Tim Cook hailed the arrival of the sleek goggles dubbed "Vision Pro" at the company's annual developers conference held on a park-like campus in Cupertino, California, that Apple's late co-founder Steve Jobs helped design. “This marks the beginning of a journey that will bring a new dimension to powerful personal technology," Cook told the crowd.

Apple didn't immediately reveal the goggles' price, although they are expected to cost in the USD 3,000 range, likely limiting their appeal to a fairly narrow band of videogame enthusiasts and affluent technophiles. The headset could become another milestone in Apple's lore of releasing gamechanging technology, even though the company hasn't always been the first to try its hand at making a particular device.

Apple's lineage of breakthroughs date back to a bowtied Jobs peddling the first Mac in 1984 a tradition that continued with the iPod in 2001, the iPhone in 2007, the iPad in 2010, the Apple Watch in 2014 and its AirPods in 2016.

If the new device turns out to be a niche product, it would leave Apple in the same bind as other major tech companies and startups that have tried selling headsets or glasses equipped with technology that either thrusts people into artificial worlds or projects digital images with scenery and things that are actually in front of them a format known as “augmented reality.”

Mark Zuckerberg dubs them the "metaverse" - threedimensional realities. In a bid to bring the concept to the masses, he renamed his company Meta Platforms in 2021 and invested billions in advancing virtual technology.