Wagner James Au / New World Notes

Citing The Information, Mac Rumors has a report that gives me some serious red flags:

The first AR/VR headset that Apple has in development will need to be wirelessly tethered to an iPhone or another Apple device to unlock full functionality… It will be similar to the WiFi-only version of the Apple Watch, which requires an ‌iPhone‌ connection to work. The headset is meant to wirelessly communicate with another Apple device, which will handle most of the powerful computing…

TSMC is manufacturing the chips that will be used in the headset, and mass production is said to be at least a year away. The first AR/VR headset could be released as soon as 2022, but the launch could also be pushed back if work on the device is not completed in time.'

Emphasis mine, because I'd be vastly surprised if Apple put out its headset next year. Or even the next next year. Here's why:

Still unproven market: Facebook's Quest 2 has not even sold 10 million units yet — it's likely more like 5 million — so why would Apple push so soon into such a small, non-established market?

Lack of content, little signs of upcoming content: Games remain the main use case for XR, but Apple has a famously fraught relationship with game developers (that tends to happen when you take 30% of their revenue simply for the honor of being on their App Store), and hasn't provably succeeded as a game publisher on its own.

And here's the rub: An HMD without massive reams of content is an HMD borne to fail. But Apple Arcade (a likely means of offering VR games down the road) has met with a tepid reception, causing Apple to cancel deals with developers; more concerning, the company has not yet reported how many subscribers the service has, which is a sure sign that the subscription numbers are too small to report.

What's more, if Apple really was aiming for a successful 2022 launch, they'd have third party studios furiously at work making VR games now… but there's no word of that happening. And something like that is very difficult to keep secret.

So there's all that. Happy to be proven wrong, but I wouldn't count on an Apple iGoggle (or whatever they end up being called) anytime soon. Or at all: The company is so profitable, they could write off the whole project as a secret R&D project and salvage its IP on other products.