AppleInsider is supported by its audience and may earn commission as an Amazon Associate and affiliate partner on qualifying purchases. These affiliate partnerships do not influence our editorial content.Apple 2022 product may include the company’s next big thing, with a new Mac Pro, Apple’s AR and VR headset, and an iPad Pro with wireless charging all expected to debut.
As 2021 draws to a close, the rumor mill turns towards 2022, offering expectations of what Apple will reveal and show to the public in the year ahead. According to one report, 2022 is the year that Apple will finally introduce its AR headset.
In Sunday’s “Power On” newsletter for Bloomberg, Mark Gurman proposes what he believes Apple will be bringing out in 2022, following what he describes as a “modest year for Apple product releases.”
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Among the new products brought up by Gurman is Apple’s AR headset, an often-rumored piece of hardware. While Gurman doesn’t really break new ground with the report, he does seemingly give credence to other claims about the device.
“Gaming should be a strong focus of the machine,” he says, before mentioning its use of multiple processors, a cooling system, high-resolution displays, and its own App Store. “Look for Apple to position the device as a dream for game developers.”
Apple is also anticipated to work with media partners to create VR media, and to include a “VR FaceTime-like experience” using the headset.
Gurman’s other expected product launches seems to be quite pedestrian and guessable, such as updates to the iPad line including a renewed iPad Pro with wireless charging. In June, reports pointed to a “glass sandwich” design for the iPad Pro that would enable wireless charging to occur.
There are also suggestions about an iPhone SE with 5G connectivity, the usual iPhone 14 refresh, three Apple Watch models including a new SE and a ruggedized version, and revised AirPods Pro. On the Mac side, a major MacBook Air revamp with M2 is expected, along with updates to the Mac mini, a larger iMac, and a Mac Pro with Apple Silicon.
Forum User OutdoorAppDeveloper OutdoorAppDeveloper said about 11 hours ago
Hopefully the main focus of Apple’s AR glasses will not not be games. The real value of AR glasses is that they can give the user augmented intelligence. Using AI and computational vision, AR glasses could give you a better understanding of the world around you. A simple example would be the ability to zoom in to see distant objects. Computer vision has exceeded the ability of human eyesight for quite a while now. Glasses that let you see in the dark, find objects you are looking for, look around corners or behind solid objects would quickly become essential items. Tagging of objects and locations becomes possible as well. You could select Yelp reviews and see what people are saying about a restaurant you are looking at. You could select a nature channel and see information about each plant or animal you can see. Like all new technology, AR will have its down sides as well. It is not clear how you build AR glasses without some kind of camera built in and walking around with an always on camera is still not socially acceptable.
Forum User mcdave mcdave said about 10 hours ago
AR shows promise but I think there are some nerdy leaps involved. The idea of FaceTiming an avatar rather than the actual person isn’t progress will likely be rejected by the masses.
Either way, Apple needs to get its 3D graphics incredibly power efficient or its going nowhere.
Forum User Marvin Marvin said about 10 hours ago
Mark Gurman proposes what he believes Apple will be bringing out in 2022, following what he describes as a “modest year for Apple product releases.”
Completely upending one of Apple’s biggest product categories and effectively forcing one of the world’s leading chip manufacturers into using one of their competitors to try and catch up isn’t exactly modest. Everything can be disappointing in fantasy world though.
AppleInsider said:
“Gaming should be a strong focus of the machine,” he says, before mentioning its use of multiple processors, a cooling system, high-resolution displays, and its own App Store. “Look for Apple to position the device as a dream for game developers.”
Apple is also anticipated to work with media partners to create VR media, and to include a “VR FaceTime-like experience” using the headset.
For mainstream use, movies offer a big opportunity here. VR gaming is still quite a small market due to the hardware price but there is potential to expand it.
Offering people the ability to have a virtual cinema screen in their own home has a huge appeal and it’s 3D. Disney movies are almost all CGI so they can have kids watching the movies and the characters can hop out of the screen and walk around them. With LIDAR tracking on the front, they can track the wearer’s hands so they could make a movie like Peter Pan and the Tinkerbell character flies out of the screen and lands on the hands of one of the kids.
Horror movies can have hands grabbing at the viewer from over their shoulder. Alien movies can fill the floor with fog or have the alien crawling over the ceiling.
Combined with spatial audio, it can offer a very immersive experience and with Apple TV+, Apple has the means to distribute movies that use its capabilities best.
For better clarity in bright light and a VR mode, they can use dynamic tinting with electrochromic glass, shown on the following page:
Holographic Facetime is a possibility, this would need the glasses to scan the wearer’s face or articulate a face from voice. This has some interesting possibilities as shown in the following video:
You would effectively see a person in the same room. This could be used for remote education and would be a lot more effective trying to do a remote classroom. Remote fitness classes would be better with a full body accessory scanner, possibly an iPhone.
For some people it could replace using an iPad or iPhone like students taking notes in classes. They can have a hardware keyboard and be typing but using the view in the glasses instead of an iPad screen.
Source: appleinsider