It looks like Apple has been eyeing Meta’s launch new AR and VR glasses with interest and has begun to reconsider its “spatial computing” strategy, reports said Bloombergs Mark Gurman. And it wasn’t the cheap Quest 3S that caused doubt within the walls of Cupertino headquarters, nor so much the Ray-Ban Meta glasses, but the Orion prototype.
VR cuts you off from the world and replaces it with a completely virtual world. Some glasses, like the Quest 3 and 3S, use color passthrough cameras to create more of an AR experience: a mix of virtual and real things. Apple’s Vision Pro does this too, but also has an external display to show a virtual version of your face so people around you feel like they can look you in the eye.
Meta’s Orion AR glasses prototype
But Meta’s Orion uses holographic displays, which are transparent. This means you see the real world and the real world sees you, rather than simulating it with screens and cameras.
Orion also introduced a new control method: electromyography or EMG, which detects even the smallest muscle movements to detect gestures that the user performs with their fingers. This is a lot more advanced, tactile and versatile than current hand tracking techniques.
Meta also designed and built the “Wireless Compute Puck”. Instead of putting all the processing power into the glasses (like Apple did), they shifted it to the puck. And there are no wires involved, unlike Vision Pro’s battery pack.
Apple VisionPro
So, what will Apple do? Management is considering several possible paths.
Apple can just keep doing what it’s been doing: working on one cheaper Vision Pro. However, the Quest 3S costs less than a tenth of the Vision Pro ($300 vs. $3,500) and handles gaming and video streaming just fine, so a cheaper Vision with lower quality displays could be a tough sell. If the company chooses this route, it will have to work on an Apple Vision Pro 2 again.
Alternatively, Apple could try to get costs under control by using a iPhone as calculation module for a Vision headset. This makes the headset lighter and cheaper, while also making the iPhone a must-have (Meta’s glasses and headset are standalone).
Apple could make something similar to the Ray-Ban Meta instead. These are smart glasses without AR – they have cameras for photos and videos and also to show Meta’s AI. Apple Intelligence could turn such glasses into an AI-powered version of the AirPods. This idea could extend to real AirPods by adding tracking cameras and AI to a future version of the AirPods Pro.
Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses
The “holy grail” route is for Apple to build standalone AR glasses with everything built in (battery, processing, hand and eye tracking, etc.). This is reportedly CEO Tim Cook’s dream, but it’s a huge development challenge.
So, what shall Want to make an appeal? That has yet to be decided, it could choose one or more of these paths. However, Gurman believes Meta has an edge over Apple in AR technology, even when it comes to the things the company is still keeping secret.
To be fair, the Orion was originally planned as a consumer product, but bringing the cost down to a consumer-friendly level proved to be a challenge, so Meta decided to launch it as a prototype to help internal and external developers build new AR experiences.