As Apple prepares its long-rumored jump into augmented reality on Monday, doubts have shadowed every step of the way<\/a>. There are reports of frequent changes in direction and skepticism inside Apple\u2019s ranks<\/a>. The device has allegedly been hard to manufacture and required numerous compromises. The process has taken years longer<\/a> than Apple expected. And at a rumored $3,000, even Apple reportedly expects slow short-term sales.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n But among AR professionals, the mood is jubilant. \u201cThis is the single greatest thing that could happen to this industry,\u201d says Jay Wright, CEO of VR \/ AR collaboration platform Campfire 3D. \u201cWhether you make hardware or software. We\u2019re excited about it.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n No industry needs Apple\u2019s \u201cit just works\u201d ethos like AR<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Building on positive reviews<\/a> from industry trailblazers like Palmer Luckey, AR hardware and software makers say Apple can finally validate a decade of attempts to take the technology mainstream. Some of this optimism is driven by Apple\u2019s rumored specs<\/a>, including a lightweight design and a supposedly extraordinarily high-spec screen.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Proponents point to Apple\u2019s history of entering a market once other companies have laid the groundwork, as it did with phones. But much of it can be summed up in two statements: Apple can sell hardware, and Apple is cool.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n No tech category needs Apple\u2019s \u201cit just works<\/a>\u201d promise more than AR. (This format is sometimes called \u201cmixed reality\u201d or \u201cXR,\u201d just to underscore how muddled the consumer pitch is.) Pure consumer VR \u2014\u00a0while a small market \u2014 has coalesced around relatively popular genres like fitness apps, a few common storefronts like SteamVR and the Quest store, and a widely used controller scheme. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n AR has no such guarantees. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n Its hardware is wildly varied, ranging from bulky headsets with sophisticated tracking to smart glasses that do little more than show alerts. Its software is often geared toward hyper-specialized business uses. There\u2019s no settled consensus on control schemes.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Based on numerous leaks, Apple\u2019s headset uses what\u2019s called \u201cpassthrough\u201d AR. It features high-resolution screens and is capable of running full VR applications, but it\u2019s also studded by cameras that can pass through a high-resolution image of the real world \u2014\u00a0according to rumors, you\u2019ll hit a \u201creality dial\u201d to switch between AR and VR. That means it can offer the illusion of a real world with virtual objects overlaid on it.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Passthrough avoids some of the problems that AR glasses like Magic Leap and Microsoft HoloLens face, like translucent virtual objects and a limited field of view. Meta, the biggest player in consumer headsets, chose the style for its Quest Pro design last year. But the Quest Pro had a grainy, washed-out video feed and offered limited practical applications for its AR mode. A virtual office, for instance, required a convoluted syncing process with your Mac or PC. And Meta has generally focused on the lower end of the VR and AR market \u2014 it\u2019s also including passthrough as a selling point on the upcoming $499 Quest 3<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n By contrast, multiple people speculated that Apple\u2019s headset could be like the Tesla Roadster: a flashy, expensive sports car that sold people on the concept of electric vehicles. \u201cApple makes devices in a way that are actually useful and comfortable to people and make people care about it,\u201d says Jacob Loewenstein, SVP of 3D social platform Spatial, which has appeared on numerous AR and VR devices.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cThere\u2019s going to be so much garbage out there, and there\u2019s going to be some cool stuff, too.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The exact uses of Apple\u2019s rumored tech aren\u2019t known yet. CEO Tim Cook has said AR<\/a> is for \u201ccommunication\u201d and \u201cconnection,\u201d and it will reportedly feature FaceTime capability<\/a> that can render a person\u2019s face and body. It\u2019s said to also offer<\/a> access to iPad apps, games, entertainment via Apple\u2019s TV app, and a version of Apple Fitness Plus<\/a>. \u201cOne of the reasons why I think Apple is immensely successful in many of their ventures is they\u2019re not just launching a device, they\u2019re launching an ecosystem,\u201d says Gartner analyst Tuong Nguyen, who covers the VR \/ AR market. \u201cIt\u2019s that combination of different applications applied to different use cases for different users \u2014\u00a0that is the \u2018killer app.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Apple reportedly isn\u2019t expecting a large early market for the device \u2014 it\u2019s revised its expectations downward to under a million units a year, compared to 200 million or more iPhones. Still, despite the device\u2019s rumored cost, some predict a gold rush of app designers trying to replicate the success of early iPhone developers. \u201cI\u2019ve been like,\u00a0wait, why am I not making some goofy version of some application that everyone likes \u2014 like, being one of the first to-do apps on the Apple headset?\u201d says Gabe Baker, VP of browser-based VR collaboration platform Frame. \u201cThere\u2019s going to be so much garbage out there, and there\u2019s going to be some cool stuff, too \u2014 it\u2019s going to be a fun time.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Apple has an ambivalent relationship with web developers<\/a>, who form a niche but notable subset of the AR \/ VR industry. Safari has badly lagged<\/a> at supporting WebXR, a common standard for browser-based immersive experiences, on iOS. But the browser is reportedly launching on its headset, which will put web-based AR in the spotlight. \u201cWe\u2019re cautiously optimistic that Apple will actually make Safari a viable application on their upcoming hardware,\u201d says Baker. \u201cMeta has shown that the web browser can actually be a vehicle for high quality immersive content, hands-down, and I think Apple will want that on their headset.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The iPhone\u2019s decade-plus dominance has demonstrated plenty of downsides to \u201cit just works.\u201d Apple has mastered the walled garden, and many app developers who work inside it aren\u2019t happy with the results. It\u2019s spent years fighting some prominent developers like Epic and Match Group in court, and others have testified in Congress<\/a> about having their apps locked down and undercut by Apple\u2019s own copycats.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Apple is still pushing into a field that\u2019s bested some of the biggest companies in tech<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n But for AR and VR developers, the alternative to an Apple walled garden may be a desert. Many apps \u2014 particularly non-gaming ones \u2014 have pivoted onto more conventional computing devices as one headset after another has failed to capture a consumer market. A key exception has been Meta, which has defied expectations with its Quest 2 for VR. That\u2019s raised the opposite problem: a system where some developers<\/a> and regulators<\/a> worry Meta could monopolize the nascent industry, and some competing hardware companies have expressed irritation<\/a> at the Quest\u2019s rock-bottom, ad-subsidized prices.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cI think the other thing that\u2019s compelling is the arms race that it starts between Meta and Apple. We\u2019ve never really had these two titans go head to head before on a new platform,\u201d says Loewenstein. And even for hardware makers, Apple\u2019s entry isn\u2019t necessarily a bad thing \u2014 the AR glasses market is small enough that any new attention to the space is welcome.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Despite the excitement inside the industry, Apple is still pushing into a field that has bested some of the biggest companies in tech. Google and Microsoft have both debuted AR headsets with flashy consumer-friendly applications (in Microsoft\u2019s case, an AR edition of Minecraft<\/em><\/a>) only to end up with a far less ambitious enterprise-focused product. So has the lavishly funded startup Magic Leap.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Moreover, few people seem to think passthrough AR is an endpoint for the medium. As Nguyen points out, a passthrough headset poses basic safety risks compared to a more glasses-like system: if its video feed stutters or goes dark, it temporarily blinds the user. That makes it risky to use outside a controlled home or office environment. \u201cI see the Apple device as being a replacement of my iMac,\u201d says Nima Shams, VP at DigiLens, a longtime maker of optics for glasses-style headsets. \u201cI don\u2019t see the device being a replacement of my iPhone.\u201d Apple has reportedly been working on a transparent, non-passthrough headset, too \u2014 but it\u2019s not what anyone expects to see on Monday.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n There are pragmatic reasons to believe Apple\u2019s better positioned than these companies. For one thing, the tech has <\/em>matured significantly since Google started testing Glass in 2012<\/a>, Microsoft announced HoloLens in 2015, and Magic Leap revealed its first product<\/a> in 2018. For another, Apple has a consumer hardware track record that virtually no other company can match. That includes not only carefully produced industrial design and interfaces like trackpads but, in recent years, its own fairly powerful chips. \u201cIf we were facing rumors of a similar headset made by someone not Apple, I don\u2019t think it would be all that successful,\u201d says IDC research manager Jitesh Ubrani. \u201cApple has huge scale, huge developer support, huge consumer support \u2014 and no one else comes even close to that.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n But the most emotionally compelling argument is simply that Apple can make even weird-looking products \u2014 like AirPods, compared to everything from Q-tips to sperm<\/a> \u2014 socially acceptable. As Loewenstein puts it, \u201cthe key has always been very, very simple: is this thing useful? Is this thing comfortable? And is this thing cool?\u201d Meta has demonstrated VR\u2019s value for games, but the company\u2019s uncoolness is a running joke, from the famous picture of an MWC audience strapped into headsets<\/a> to CEO Mark Zuckerberg\u2019s much-maligned legless avatar<\/a>. \u201cI think Apple has the cool factor.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n