Apple CEO Tim Cook hints at the rumored “RealityPro” AR/VR headset in a new interview with GQ. The article says he was willing to explain why Apple might—hypothetically—be interested in something in the world of AR/VR.
From the article: “If you think about the technology itself with augmented reality, just to take one side of the AR/VR piece, the idea that you could overlay the physical world with things from the digital world could greatly enhance people’s communication, people’s connection,” Cook says. “It could empower people to achieve things they couldn’t achieve before. We might be able to collaborate on something much easier if we were sitting here brainstorming about it and all of a sudden we could pull up something digitally and both see it and begin to collaborate on it and create with it. And so it’s the idea that there is this environment that may be even better than just the real world—to overlay the virtual world on top of it might be an even better world. And so this is exciting. If it could accelerate creativity, if it could just help you do things that you do all day long and you didn’t really think about doing them in a different way.”
Cook gestures at a glass pane nearby. We could measure it, he says, if we wanted to. We could put some art up on the wall, take a look at it right now. These were some of the very first AR uses people dreamed up, Cook says—imagine, in other words, what else might be possible, what else might already be invented and underway.
About the ‘RealityPro’
When it comes to the RealityPro, the rumors are abundant. Such a device will arrive this year. Or 2025, Or 2026. It will be a head-mounted display. Or may have a design like “normal” glasses. Or it may be eventually be available in both. The Reality Pro may or may not have to be tethered to an iPhone to work. Other rumors say that it could have a custom-build Apple chip and a dedicated operating system dubbed “rOS” for “reality operating system.” Or perhaps “xrOS” for extended reality operating system.
