Officially, Apple hasn’t told us what it will announce at WWDC 2023 on June 5, but there are clues if you know where to look. The latest and most egregious of these is the fact that a number of XR (or “extended reality”) publications have been invited to the keynote for the first time.
On Tuesday, industry news site Road To VR revealed it had been invited to attend Apple’s summer event in person, and so had fellow XR site UploadVR. Neither site has gone to WWDC before, and the former notes that “Apple has not invited any XR media to its events in the past, let alone commented on its XR R&D in any way.”
XR encompasses three technology categories: virtual reality, augmented reality, and mixed reality, which includes hybrid devices that offer both of the previous types. Apple’s rumored Reality Pro headset is expected to fall into the third category, with a Digital Crown-style dial to switch seamlessly between VR and AR.
Reality Pro has reportedly been in development hell for years, and several times it was expected to launch soon, but got delayed at the last minute. Most recently, the headset was widely expected to be the central attraction at Apple’s Spring 2023 event; the fact that it wasn’t ready in time may explain why the company decided not to hold a spring event at all.
(Incidentally, if Apple’s design team had their way, the headset wouldn’t launch until 2024 at the earliest. They allegedly told Tim Cook the technology wasn’t ready, but he ignored them.)
But now it’s definitely here. The trademarks are registered, the XR reporters book their flights and the project’s protagonists rehearse their lines. This is not an exercise. It’s really happening, folks.
