In the beginning of 2023 there were rumors that Apple Reality would finally be unveiled at WWDC that year, and for me, the appearance of this device was expected to be the biggest event in the world of consumer technology in years. In my mind, Apple has always been good at sensing the imperceptible inconveniences of the market, which, after being “fixed,” felt like “of course!” And for me, in the world of MR, this inconvenience were... helmet looks.
In March I became obsessed with a seemingly random image:
I believed that somewhere inside, people would be happy to use an MR device all day, just like they are happy to use a computer all day, but not in the form of a helmet. Not as something that doesn't let to see your half of your face, but rather something that could be said about “finally, a deflated one!”. For me (at least at the time), it seemed obvious that if Apple entered this market, it would do so with the disruption with which it had entered previous markets, and the main disruption points of this market for me were weight and resolution. The device simply had to at least look like glasses.
And so the “trying on” of ideas began. I found high quality versions of the leak, counted the number of pins on the connectors (I've read the debunking that it was a HomePod connector, but after looking at HomePods disassemblies, I never found this exact one), found similar connectors on existing devices, to understand the size of the loop from the size of the connector, I tried silhouettes on the loop, studied CAD editors, and tried to “try on” existing cameras on the device, comparing them with leaks about the number of cameras, FOV, and so on. In short, I felt more interested than ever.
In the end, the concept changeg to fit the new leak — the knowledge that there was only one display to be used on the outside, but main part of the original vision remained the same — it never became a helmet.
Of course, as you can imagine, having such detailed expectations (as is often the case with everything) resulted in disappointment for me during the presentation, although I still consider the announcement of Apple Vision to be an important moment for MR, and Apple Vision itself to be a product of true love, skill, and passion for technology.
I managed to finalize the final version of my concept a month before the announcement of the actual device (when there were no leaks from the board meeting about the device's appearance), and I made it into this (somewhat cringe-worthy) video