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Inside the Tech Powering Apple’s Envelope-Pushing, Risky Mixed Reality Headset


Apple CEO Tim Cook. Photoillustration by Getty Images/Shutterstock and Shane Burke
Apple CEO Tim Cook. Photoillustration by Getty Images/Shutterstock and Shane Burke
Jan. 3, 2023 6:00 AM PST

Apple’s mixed-reality headset has become the iPhone maker’s most hotly anticipated new product of 2023. It may also be the riskiest.

The headset, which Apple has yet to formally announce, will be jam-packed with features Apple will have to get just right if the product is going to have the kind of revolutionary impact the original iPhone did on the smartphone market. Many of those features haven’t been attempted before in a mass market headset, and a clunky product could tarnish Apple’s reputation for meticulous design.

The Information has already revealed some features in its previous reporting—for example, how the headset resembles a pair of ski goggles and will use an array of cameras to allow people to experience both augmented and virtual reality. But some details about the device, based on interviews with multiple people who have worked on it, are reported here for the first time.

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