The technological world holds its breath before the inaugural presentation of the Apple World Developers Conference (WWDC), this Monday the 5th from 7:00 p.m. in Spain, which the company itself describes in its invitation to the press as a "special event" . This call, which every year serves to present the new operating systems that will be launched in autumn, arrives on this occasion densely charged. Although it is not officially a date to announce new products, everything indicates that it will be one of those events that will be remembered for years because, once again, you can see the birth of a device that drives a new category: extended reality glasses from the that a name has even leaked, Reality Pro, something that will only be confirmed or denied on the Apple Park stage in Cupertino (California).
Possibly there are not many people capable of understanding this new product at this time, nor how they could integrate it into their lives, but if Apple has historically known how to do something, it is precisely to give the public what they wanted (even if they did not even know that it was among their wishes or needs). On the company's list of successes are many devices that have served as a reference for the rest of the industry and have marked the way forward. The Macintosh, the iMac, the iPod, the iPhone, the iPad, the Apple Watch are some of them.
Apple's headset isn't the first to offer extended reality, a mix of augmented reality and virtual reality. Other manufacturers, such as Oppo, TCL and Lenovo, already have devices on the market, but this technology has not caught on yet. Will Apple manage to lead this category and propagate it? The challenge is not easy. The technical complexity of the new gadget and its foreseeable high cost may make it an item only within the reach of minorities or a professional public, but the company led by Tim Cook performs easily in the league of products that everyone aspires to. to have.
Some of the features that have been leaked from the viewfinder is that it is a device similar to ski goggles, with two screens, one for each eye, which will offer the best image reproduction technology, Micro LED, and with a resolution very high (4K, the same as large screen televisions) for its small size, which will mean that the pixels cannot be distinguished. Its brightness will reach very high peaks, of 5,000 nits. It would be a complex product to manufacture, with several exterior and interior cameras, and with an unusual curved base plate. All this augurs a price that could exceed $3,000 and a higher amount in other currencies, including the euro.
Faced with challenges such as technology, which Apple can have solved well, and price, which is difficult to solve, the Cupertino company has an important asset to play with: an ecosystem that integrates all its products and in which software and hardware work perfectly meshed. The expectation is that the new operating system for glasses, called xrOS, encompasses everything that its sister products already have: apps, video calls, productivity, video games, movies, music, education... an endless list.
15 years ago Apple registered its first patent on augmented reality glasses. Since then, he has recorded many more. It's a technology that Cook passionately believes in. "One day we will look back and we will not understand how we have lived without it. Like many things today. Can you imagine living your life without scrolling through the photos and without pinching to enlarge them? Or not having internet or maps?" observed the manager in an interview with La Vanguardia last September.
Price may be one of the factors that slows down a broad penetration of Apple glasses in the market, but this company is an expert in the gradual introduction of products. In his first year, the Apple Watch, the first new product presented by Cook eight years ago, only 10 million units were sold worldwide. It only took four years for him to outsell the entire Swiss watch industry.
The biggest load of news from a WWDC are the news of the operating systems of each product strip, with a marathon of explanations that are usually carried out by its vice president Craig Federighi. This time, at the risk of it being a very long presentation - Bloomberg forecasts more than two hours - they will not spare this part. Some indications also suggest that there will be new Macs. The glasses could arrive like the Apple Watch, at the end of an event, with a phrase that the company's co-founder, Steve Jobs, used to introduce an important surprise: "One more thing " (one more thing).
Tim Cook had the opportunity to pronounce it when he introduced the Apple Watch eight years ago. Then, Apple played with the weight of its history, in the same De Anza auditorium in Cupertino where Steve Jobs had presented the Macintosh in 1984. The famous advertisement for that computer that had everything the rest would have in the future ended “ On January 24, Apple Computer will introduce the Macintosh. Then you will see why 1984 will not be like 1984”, in an allusion to George Orwell's novel, which drew a future world with an all-encompassing power called Big Brother that symbolized IBM. Do not be fooled, if the current CEO of Apple presents extended reality glasses under the chapter one more thing (one more thing), have no doubt that it will not be, just, one more thing.
