Apple has just announced the official release date for its Mixed Reality (MR) headset, the Apple Vision Pro. The headset made headlines when it was first unveiled at the company’s Worldwide Developers Conference held in June last year.
Per the tech giant, the Vision Pro will be available for pre-order starting on January 19 and will go on sale beginning February 2, 2024, in the U.S. Once available for purchase, the highly anticipated headset will go for a hefty $3,499 (around KES 551,093).
The Apple Vision Pro is powered by VisonOS and features a 3D user interface. It doesn’t have physical controllers and is controlled entirely by the user’s eyes, hands, and voice. Apple says that you can tap your fingers to select apps, flick your wrist to scroll, use a virtual keyboard or use Siri with your voice to “quickly open or close apps, play media, and more.”
The headset has an “all-new” App Store where users can find over a million familiar iOS and iPadOS apps available for the Vision Pro. The apps available on the Vision Pro range from games such as NBA 2K24 Arcade Edition to key productivity apps such as Slack, Microsoft 365 apps and JigSpace. Users can scale their screens to be as large as they want.
During the initial announcement last year, Apple described the Vision Pro as its first “3D camera.” The headset will enable users to capture spatial photos and videos (and spatial audio also if you are capturing a video). Additionally, users can use the headset to view photos and videos “at a life-size scale.”
Vision Pro design and under the hood
When it comes to the display, the mixed-reality headset uses micro-OLED technology with 23 million pixels packed across the two panels.
The Apple Vision Pro leverages Apple’s proprietary M2 chip for performance and comes with 12 cameras, 5 sensors, and six microphones. The new R1 chip processes input from the sensors, microphones and cameras.
The headset has an eye-tracking system that uses cameras and a ring of LEDs for responsive and intuitive input. “EyeSight” is another interesting feature that displays the user’s eyes when someone approaches by making the device appear transparent. This feature will also give hints to others as to what the user is focusing on when using the headset – either when immersed in an environment or while using an app.
The Vision Pro comes with 256GB of storage.
