Apple’s long-awaited Vison Pro finally became reality when the company unveiled the mixed reality headset at its Worldwide Developer’s Conference in June. It had been in the works for years, but a new patent shows it’s way longer than any of us thought.
The US Patent and Trademark Office granted Apple its original patent for the Vision Pro earlier this week, according to a report from Patently Apple. The patent dates back to 2007, the year Apple unveiled the first iPhone and forever altered mobile phone technology. Apple has always been a company that dreams big, and it’s interesting to know the company was planning a device so ahead of its time almost 20 years ago. What’s the tech giant working on now that we won’t see until at least 2040?
The device detailed by the patent, Automatically Adjusting Media Display in a Personal Display System, is pretty close to the final product. The report notes features like the ability to “adjust displayed media to overlay features of a theater, stadium or concert facility thus giving the user of the personal display device the impression of being in the facility,” and early concepts of head and eye-tracking systems.
The Vision Pro headset is due to hit the market in 2024 and will start at $3,499. Users will be able to navigate apps and programs with voice commands, glances and hand gestures through a spatial operating system. Think of a slightly toned-down version of the scene in Iron Man 2 when Tony Stark discovers a new element to power his arc reactor.
The headset’s custom micro-OLED display system has 23 million pixels — more than a 4K TV, according to Apple’s spec page — as well as adaptive spatial audio, high-performance precision eye tracking, real-time 3D mapping and dual-chip performance from the M2 and new R1 chip.