For a professor of innovation, the moments before a product launch are extremely interesting, because you can see all kinds of speculation, analysts letting their imagination run wild based on the little information available, and all kinds of conjectures.
In Apple’s case, there’s no question that this is a process the company handles better than anyone. From the moment the rumors start to the moment the product launch is announced, there is a frenetic period in which the company manages to capitalize on the attention of all the media, while they struggle to try to get a little more information that allows them to imagine more things.
The company, which is facing one of its riskiest launches and which has generated a significant amount of doubt internallyhas registered patents around the world for several names related to the word “reality”: Reality One, Reality Pro and Reality Processor. From there, everything is speculation: that it is a surrogate screen on which to run all kinds of productivity applications, which would hypothetically allow one to free oneself from the usual position in front of the computer and carry out a large number of tasks through some type of of touchpador rather propose applications of a sports or communication type, bringing it closer to the concept of interaction or even of reinvention of the hackneyed metaverse concept With which Goal failed miserably.
Apple has apparently been working with a select group of developers to make available a number of apps accompanying the product launch. The uses could range from applications within Apple Fitness+, that is, virtual reality training, being able to see the avatar of your trainer or details of various kinds about the exercise, or issues such as sports broadcasts in first person mode, which would allow to value the rights that the company has acquired for the broadcast of Major League Soccer and Major League Baseballas well as the acquisition of NextVRa company specialized in sports broadcasting, in May 2020.
The question that torments many inside Apple is whether this type of use will be able to justify the purchase of a product like this, with a price supposedly around three thousand euros, and in a category that is yet to be defined and developedand in which it is shown that many of those who purchased products like Meta’s have had them in a drawer for a long time.
The answer is supposed at the next WWDC in June.
This article is also available in Spanish on my Medium page, «Is Apple about to get a reality check over its vision for augmented and virtual reality?»
