According to a report, Apple’s industrial design team recommended that the company wait until they could release AR glasses instead of launching the expected VR headset in 2023. However, it seems that Apple CEO Tim Cook may be pushing for an earlier launch date due to pressure to ship the product. Some people within the company reportedly would have preferred to wait even longer before releasing the headset.
The operations team at Apple is keen to release the VR headset, which is rumoured to have a ski goggle design, and enable typical VR functionality. Meanwhile, the design team wanted to wait until a lightweight pair of AR glasses could be technically feasible to produce, but that could still be years away. Despite the tension between the two teams, Cook reportedly sided with operations head Jeff Williams and overruled the designers, who had previously had considerable influence over future products.
The move to an operations-centric approach is seen as a “logical progression” for the company under Cook’s leadership. However, some former engineers feel that the company has lost the creativity and excitement that came with meeting the design team’s “insane requirements.”
It is expected that the initial release of the headset will sell fairly low, with only around a million units planned to be sold within 12 months at a cost of $3,000 each. However, analysts predict that loyal users and developers within the Apple ecosystem will purchase the product and create apps for the platform, which could lead to growth in future generations of the product.