The game is to create a wearable, augmented-reality device that takes everything thatâs great about a smartphone and overlays it on your vision, making the entire world a smartphone canvas. Itâs part of a larger strategy, which is to own the next must-have technology device that supplants or augments the smartphone.
This game has no rules. Thereâs no single accepted way to play it.
Earlier this year, Apple made a move: It launched the Vision Pro, a headset that emulates augmented reality in a limited way. It is a finished product shipping to anyone who wants one, but itâs very expensive and has a very limited selection of software and content. Itâs also a stake in the ground, suggesting that Apple thinks thereâs something to âspatial computingâ and that this is the first tentative step on the path to creating something more broadly appealing.
This week, Meta made another move.
Meta has been a leader in VR headsets for a while nowâitâs a small market that attracts outsized interest because itâs surrounded by a cyberpunk-tinged cloud of possibilities that it might augur something about future of computing.
Originally pitched as a game console you put on your face, the Meta Quest series has increasingly also been pitched as being productivity-related. I donât think thatâs a coincidenceâproductivity is a use case that Apple has emphasized, so Meta is countering. And the new $300 Meta Quest 3S sure sounds like a compelling new device. Iâve got a Quest 2 and Quest 3, and theyâre both pretty impressive in their own ways, especially given the price. The Quest 3S seems like it might be a great holiday purchase.
But, of course, the Quest 3S is not what people are talking about. Theyâre talking about Orion, a pair of chunky augmented-reality glasses that show that Meta really gets where this is all going. Itâs a real punch to Appleâs jaw, one that makes the Vision Pro look dowdy and pointless. Media coverage of Orion has been really strong. People who tried it were impressed. Itâs a win for Meta.
But look closer, and you can see exactly what game Meta is playing. Meta says that Orion would cost about $10,000 today, and that the company couldnât see itself shipping the product. Orion, as used this week by various media influencers, is a tech demoânot a product that will ever ship. Meta says that it has backed off any plans to ship it and instead expects that it will ship a product sort of like it between 2027 and 2029.
This is all part of the game, of course. For decades now, competitors have made hay over Appleâs refusal to make public demonstrations of what itâs working on behind the scenes. Appleâs silence is assumed by many to indicate the company is behind on some innovation or another. And sometimes itâs actually behindâbut other times, itâs not. Itâs just keeping quiet.
I have no idea what the current state of the art is inside Apple. And while visionOS has seen some nice updates including the introduction of Spatial Persona, the excruciatingly slow rollout of immersive content and the dearth of new apps in the visionOS App Store leave the question of Appleâs commitment to this platform a bit murky.
Still, according to Bloombergâs Mark Gurman, Apple has been working on AR glasses alongside Vision Pro:
At one point, Apple aimed to release the glasses in 2023, before delaying the launch until around 2025. Now, Apple has postponed the rollout indefinitely and pared back its work on the AR device.
Thatâs a report from early 2023 that suggests that Apple was trying to build AR glasses presumably very much like Orion, but realized that the tech wasnât yet at the point where they could release anything. So instead, they shifted work to Vision Pro.
In other words, Meta and Appleâboth committed to the idea that AR glasses we wear in our daily lives might be a huge part of future computing techâtried to make the product happen, and realized that the time just wasnât right. Apple didnât say anything. Meta showed off a product that will never ship (but might lead to something that will ship at the end of the decade) and gained some nice press coverage this week.
These are companies playing the same game, but in different ways. Whoâs ahead? I would argue that itâs impossible to tell, because if Apple had a product like Orion we would never see it. We can argue about whether Appleâs compulsion to never, ever comment on unannounced products is beneficial or not, but itâs a Steve Jobs-created bit of Apple personality that is very unlikely to be countermanded any time soon.
I was impressed by what Meta showed with Orion. It absolutely gives me the sense that there is a product here, and it might actually be closer than I thought it would be. I sort of assumed wearable, powerful AR glasses in the style of Vision Pro would be more like a full decade away, but the end of this decade now seems plausible.
Of course, thatâs for a first versionâwhich will be expensive and compromised. It will take more years for the price to come down and for the utility of such a device to overcome resistance from people who donât want to wear glasses and donât want to be seen as a cyborg navigating the human world. If that resistance can ever be overcome enough to make that product category a hit, itâll take years. Like, mid-2030s at the earliest.
This is a long game. We already knew Apple had the pieces to play (Metaâs system features a wristband thatâs like a simplified Apple Watch and a compute puck thatâs basically an iPhone), and now Meta has shown that itâs planning its own strategy, including working on custom hardware and silicon.
The game is afoot. Meta has shown theyâre working on it. Apple remains characteristically silent. But thereâs no one right way to play the game⦠and the clock doesnât even start ticking until someone ships a product that people can buy.
If you appreciate articles like this one, support us by becoming a Six Colors subscriber. Subscribers get access to an exclusive podcast, members-only stories, and a special community.
