I think Apple needs to be in this space. Even if it doesn’t take off among the general population for 10 years, it could allow another company to come in and disrupt Apple’s most important markets. Besides, there are really interesting problems to solve in this space and Apple obviously thinks they can handle it.
Productivity engineers would be certainly be involved. Apple doesn’t want a Meta Horizon’s level flop in the productivity space when it launches. I think it will run most iOS apps. Pointer control and stage manager can work in AR. Apple has made it easy for apps to target all of Apple’s platforms in recent years. This might be the first headset that can really do anything. It will be interesting to see which apps adopt holographic views in addition to flat screens.
I’m very curious if Apple Arcade and Apple TV+ will release exclusive content for the headset considering the limited market. Apple already acquired a VR media company and has been rumored to be speaking with VR game companies. I’m curious if Apple will add Google Cardboard like support for viewing media to make the initial market larger. Support for this is already in private APIs on the iPhone, but it isn’t clear if that was just for prototyping.
