Other than the My AI chatbot launch, the most interesting thing at Snap’s Partner Summit today was definitely the AR mirrors. The company thinks you might use it in a store to try stuff on, or just goof around while you wait for your friend to check out. It all seems very early, but pretty fun.
Also... AR vending machines are apparently a thing now.
Obviously James Bond gets a bit of help from movie magic, but real-life smart glasses can do more than you might expect.
Well-connected supply chain analyst Ming-Chi Kuo says mass production for Apple’s rumored headset has been pushed back and forecasts shipping numbers this year of 200k to 300k units instead of 500,000 or so.
Kuo suggests the change is tied to a lack of optimism about the launch and “uncertainty” about a WWDC reveal — echoing a recent New York Times report — and while I don’t know if that’s the case, I’m sure there will be more rumors before the show starts on June 5th.
Poor Magic Leap — it really does have a decent augmented reality headset these days, but it was way, way too early to the consumer AR party, and now Apple is the guest of honor. No wonder it’s venting a little schadenfreude at Apple’s apparent internal woes.
XDA has an exclusive hands-on with a prototype pair of AR glasses by Xiaomi. They’re wireless, support gesture controls, and can switch between transparent and shaded modes.
But they’re also bulky as hell and a long way off commercial readiness. As we learned yesterday, Meta, too, is still betting on an AR future. But we’ve yet to see breakthrough hardware that can actually take us there.
A teaser video shows giant Gorillaz characters walking around a city and the band says on its website that you’ll need to download the “Gorillaz Presents...” app for the show, so it seems like this will be some kind of wild augmented reality concert. It takes place in New York City on December 17th and in London on December 18th.
According to Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman, a mixed reality headset from Apple could debut in 2023, complete with its own OS and app store.
While that all lines up with what we’ve heard, he also revealed that internally, the platform has changed names, going from “realityOS” to “xrOS,” for “extended reality.”
Whatever they call it, hopefully, it’s more fun to use than Meta’s Quest Pro — see our video review of that device below.
If you haven’t listened to this week’s episode of The Vergecast yet or read Adi Robertson’s review of the Meta Quest Pro headset, that line about sums it up.
On the other hand, can you afford to miss Meta’s Notorious B.I.G. “VR concert experience” on December 16th?
It’s unclear exactly what that will be like, but this blog post makes the point that maybe Meta could have focused on living artists. It points out several who already perform VRChat, and other platforms that succeed in ways the Horizon environments haven’t yet.
Meta’s Quest Pro won’t be officially unveiled for another month — unless they leave a few units laying around in a hotel hallway, again. Now Protocol reports Pico (which, like TikTok, is now owned by Chinese tech giant ByteDance) will launch its next VR headset on September 22nd.
Pico’s new headset may share some features with the Quest Pro, like full-color passthrough video for AR, and a better display.
