Technologies

Apple Should Build Its AR on the Meta Quest

Commentary: Its glasses may be on hold, but the immediate future is already in front of us.

Apple’s first-ever VR-AR or «mixed reality» device is expected this year, and already its follow-up product seems to be on hold. According to Bloomberg’s reliable Mark Gurman, a planned set of AR glasses isn’t coming from Apple anytime soon. That’s OK: AR glasses don’t seem like they’re imminent from anyone.

After a trip to Las Vegas to try out some of the emerging technologies around future VR and AR headsets, one thing is increasingly clear: Everyone’s trying to figure out AR glasses, but everyone’s trying to perfect VR headsets. The difference between those two scenarios is bigger than you think.

All-day AR glasses that are useful, work convincingly, have long enough battery life, work with your phone and function as actually legit prescription glasses haven’t materialized, although the pieces are coming into place. Companies like Meta have promised a decade-long path to these glasses. It turns out, maybe, that’s going to be the case for everyone else, too. I’ve seen smart glasses that look real but don’t do much, or glasses with AR that feel chunky and do some things, but don’t quite work with my vision and can’t figure out how to work with my phone yet. Chipmaker Qualcomm is working on this; Google, Apple and Samsung need to solve it someday, too.

In the meantime, VR already has a very real and reasonably popular product that most families I know in the everyday world are familiar with: the Meta (formerly Oculus) Quest 2.

That recognition is no small thing. I think of the Quest’s place in everyday life like the Amazon Echo was years ago: something odd that over time became familiar, normalized. Something reasonably priced, and good enough to do a few things actually well. The Quest 2 is basically a game console. Where Meta has struggled is figuring out how to expand that base beyond gamers.

Following Meta’s playbook is something I expected Apple would do. Heck, I expect most companies are going to do it. The Quest 2 works just like most people imagine it will, or better. It’s a bit of instant magic that’s totally wire-free.

The Quest 2 does have downsides. In fact, those problems emerge the more you use it. I find connecting with friends and social spaces gets weird and buggy, prone to lag, disconnects and way-too-basic avatars. The battery life is bad. For fitness apps, which the Quest 2 can do surprisingly well, it’s still not good at really managing sweat or keeping my glasses from fogging.

Even though Meta wants the Quest 2 and higher-end, work-focused Quest Pro to open up new ways to work by creating virtual monitors around my laptop, the connections and display quality aren’t good enough to be more than a clever experiment most of the time. I can see my laptop keyboard with the Quest Pro’s passthrough cameras, but typing feels awkward and nowhere near as good as when I’m just on my laptop… and I can’t see my phone screen to check messages, either. The Quest can show me phone notifications like a basic smartwatch from a decade ago, but I can’t interact with them.

These VR headsets can even do some basic AR, using passthrough cameras that «mix reality» to show the real world in fuzzier video, with VR layered on top. The effect is sometimes pretty amazing, and could even approach feelings I’ve had with early AR headsets like the Microsoft HoloLens 2.

So where does that put Apple? Clearly, there’s a headset coming soon. And according to Bloomberg’s Gurman, the next goal after this first expensive headset is to work on a more affordable model. It’s like Meta’s approach to the Quest and Quest Pro, in reverse. And there are plenty of things Apple could focus on to make its entry into VR (and AR) worth the effort.

Better comfort, better fitness

The Quest 2 is already an affordable fitness device, and pairs with watches to show heart rate and fitness stats. Apple clearly has an advantage on time spent developing the Apple Watch, fitness and health tracking, and its Fitness Plus subscription video workouts, which also have overlaid fitness stats.

Apple could emphasize workouts and fitness on its headset, with comfortable, breathable straps and face pieces that could feel better for exercise. Meta is starting to realize it needs to improve comfort for VR: A recent Razer partnership using head straps made by CPAP-maker ResMed shows a need for better materials. I’d expect Apple to make this aspect a key part of the headset’s advantages. There are other advantages, too. Apps like Beat Saber and Supernatural use music for fitness, and Apple already has all of Apple Music at its disposal.

Connect better with laptops, iPads, phones, watches

VR headsets right now have an extremely hard time working well with all the other things we have lying around us. I can’t get a Quest to connect nicely with my phone all the time. To work with my laptop, I need a specialized third-party app with its own thing I have to install on my laptop and turn on.

Meanwhile, Apple has been focusing on handoffs and continuity across AirPods, HomePods, iPhones, Apple Watches, MacBooks, Apple TVs… all over the place. That’s what’s needed to make a VR headset seem seamless and integrated into other stuff. I want to check my watch in VR, or use it to control apps. Or use my phone, and also see the phone. Suddenly grab my laptop, and the headset connects. Incoming calls? No problem. Send myself things back and forth from my phone or laptop and get all the files and things I want, and not feel like I’m on a vacation from them. That’s what Apple’s headset could set out to achieve.

That’s a best-case scenario. Much like the first Apple Watch and iPhone, the actual Day 1 functions of this headset might end up disappointing.

Better social

Even though the metaverse is on everyone’s minds, there aren’t many big social spaces in VR that work well. Microsoft’s Altspace is nice, but often feels empty. VRChat is wild, experimental, full of big features and ideas, and feels like a messy explosion that’s hard to jump into. Meta can’t get enough people into Horizon Worlds. Even when these platforms do work, for concerts or events, the limits on people who can attend at once, the lag and drop-off, not to mention the avatar limits, make it a trade-off versus any other way you could connect on a phone or laptop.

Apple may not be able to solve this any better for larger-scale experiences, but for more intimate and several-person FaceTime-like moments, Apple could make shared experiences in VR work a lot better. Meta hasn’t perfected social VR yet, and someone needs to.

Can Apple make a better controller? (Or none?)

The Quest 2 controllers are fine, but all of VR leans on the same game controller-like inputs for headsets. Apple’s headset could lean more on hand tracking, or wearable inputs like the Apple Watch. I’m curious if a more work-oriented controller or accessory can be created that makes the headset feel better for taking on apps beyond games. Meta’s working on a long-term, game-changing shift to neural input wristbands eventually, but it’s unclear whether this approach will end up succeeding.

The Quest platform has continually improved its hand tracking over the years. However, hand tracking’s reliance on particular gestures without any physical feedback is an imperfect solution right now. Maybe Apple tries hand tracking along with using an Apple Watch or the iPhone for tactile haptic feedback, or finds a smaller go-between accessory.

I’ve been trying out experimental haptic technology recently, trying to imagine how VR could think its way to new inputs. This headset feels like the biggest opportunity Apple’s ever faced to create a brand-new type of input device that could make a big impact on the landscape. If it’s done right, maybe it’ll be the input accessory that makes its future AR glasses, whenever they arrive, seem feasible.

Build out more interesting mixed reality

For all the Meta Quest Pro promises to blend AR and VR with its mixed-reality capabilities, not many apps tap into its extras yet. I’ve seen some mind-blowing demos of mixed reality in VR with the ultra-high-end Varjo XR-3 connected to a PC, which at least showed me ways that a VR headset could begin to feel like a portal interconnected to my own home reality. Apple could start experimenting with more engaging AR moments in a high-end VR headset, and at least get the ball rolling on things that work in advance of whenever its AR glasses are ready, years from now.

Smaller sessions in VR may make more sense right now

VR is a thing I don’t use all the time, and that’s true for most people. Maybe that’s exactly where Apple should start. It’s not a given we’ll want to wear AR glasses everywhere, or even what those glasses would be good for. In the meantime, a VR headset at home that’s meant to be worn sometimes, but not all the time, is the place most of us feel safest to start. It’s why the Quest is something people actually use.

It’s also a way to avoid dealing with questions of accommodating true prescription vision needs in everyday glasses, something no one’s succeeded in tackling, either. VR headsets sometimes need prescription inserts, but many just fit right over the glasses we already have. I prefer the easy-fit solution: I don’t need to make VR a thing I spend a whole day in. I’ll settle for a truly useful hour or two, and if Apple can make that hour or two even better than what we have now, that’s a big enough step forward for me.

Editor’s note, Jan. 20: Adds mention of Meta’s hand tracking for the Quest.

Technologies

Tariffs Explained: Latest on Trump’s Shifting Import Tax Plan, and What It Means

Technologies

Apple, I’m (Sky) Blue About Your iPhone 17 Air Color

Commentary: The rumored new hue of the iPhone 17 Air is more sky blah than sky blue.

I can’t help but feel blue about the latest rumor that Apple’s forthcoming iPhone 17 Air will take flight in a subtle, light-hued color called sky blue.

Sky blue isn’t a new color for Apple. It’s the featured shade of the current M4 MacBook Air, a shimmer of cerulean so subtle as to almost be missed. It’s silver left too close to an aquarium; silver that secretly likes to think it’s blue but doesn’t want everyone else to notice.

Do Apple employees get to go outside and see a real blue sky? It’s actually vivid, you can check for yourself. Perhaps the muted sky blue color reflects a Bay Area late winter/early spring frequent layer of clouds like we typically see here in Seattle.

«Who cares?» you might find yourself saying. «Everyone gets a case anyway.» I hear you and everyone else who’s told me that. But design-focused Apple is as obsessive about colors as they are about making their devices thinner. And I wonder if their heads are in the clouds about which hues adorn their pro products.

Making the case for a caseless color iPhone

I’m more invested in this conversation than most — I’m one of those freaks who doesn’t wrap my phone in a case. I find cases bulky and superfluous, and I like to be able to see Apple’s design work. Also, true story, I’ve broken my iPhone screen only twice: First when it was in a «bumper» that Apple sent free in response to the iPhone 4 you’re-holding-it-wrong Antennagate fiasco, and second when trying to take long exposure starry night photos using what I didn’t realize was a broken tripod mount. My one-week-old iPhone 13 Pro slipped sideways and landed screen-first on a pointy rock. A case wouldn’t have saved it.

My current model is an iPhone 16 Pro in black titanium — which I know seems like avoiding color entirely — but previously I’ve gone for colors like blue titanium and deep purple. I wanted to like deep purple the most but it came across as, in the words of Patrick Holland in his iPhone 14 Pro review, «a drab shade of gray or like Grimace purple,» depending on the light.

Pros can be bold, too

Maybe the issue is too many soft blues. Since the iPhone Pro age began with the iPhone 11 Pro, we’ve seen variations like blue titanium (iPhone 15 Pro), sierra blue (iPhone 13 Pro) and pacific blue (iPhone 12 Pro).

Pacific blue is the boldest of the bunch, if by bold you mean dark enough to discern from silver, but it’s also close enough to that year’s graphite color that seeing blue depends on the surrounding lighting. By comparison, the blue (just «blue») color of the iPhone 12 was unmistakably bright blue.

In fact, the non-Pro lines have embraced vibrant colors. It’s as if Apple is equating «pro» with «sophisticated,» as in «A real pro would never brandish something this garish.» I see this in the camera world all the time: If it’s not all-black, it’s not a «serious» camera.

And yet I know lots of pros who are not sophisticated — proudly so. People choose colors to express themselves, so forcing that idea of professionalism through color feels needlessly restrictive. A bright pink iPhone 16 might make you smile every time you pick it up but then frown because it doesn’t have a telephoto camera.

Color is also important because it can sway a purchase decision. «I would buy a sky blue iPhone yesterday,» my colleague Gael Cooper texted after the first rumor popped online. When each new generation of iPhones arrive, less technically different than the one before, a color you fall in love with can push you into trading in your perfectly-capable model for a new one.

And lest you think Apple should just stick with black and white for its professional phones: Do you mean black, jet black, space black, midnight black, black titanium, graphite or space gray? At least the lighter end of the spectrum has stuck to just white, white titanium and silver over the years.

Apple never got ahead by being beige

I’m sure Apple has reams of studies and customer feedback that support which colors make it to production each year. Like I said, Apple’s designers are obsessive (in a good way). And I must remind myself that a sky blue iPhone 17 Air is a rumored color on a rumored product so all the usual caveats apply.

But we’re talking about Apple here. The scrappy startup that spent more than any other company on business cards at the time because each one included the old six-color Apple logo. The company that not only shaped the first iMac like a tipped-over gumdrop, that not only made the case partially see-through but then made that cover brilliant Bondi blue.

Embrace the iPhone colors, Apple.

If that makes you nervous, don’t worry: Most people will put a case on it anyway.

Technologies

Astronomers Say There’s an Increased Possibility of Life on This Distant Planet

Using the James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers are working to confirm potential evidence of life on a distant exoplanet dubbed K2-18b.

Astronomers are nearing a statistically significant finding that could confirm the potential signs of life detected on the distant exoplanet K2-18b are no accident.

The team of astronomers, led by the University of Cambridge, used data from the James Webb Space Telescope (which has only been in use since the end of 2021) to detect chemical traces of dimethyl sulfide (DMS) and/or dimethyl disulfide (DMDS), which they say can only be produced by life such as phytoplankton in the sea.

According to the university, «the results are the strongest evidence yet that life may exist on a planet outside our solar system.»

The findings were published this week in the Astrophysical Journal Letters and point to the possibility of an ocean on this planet’s surface, which scientists have been hoping to discover for years. In the abstract for the paper, the team says, «The possibility of hycean worlds, with planet-wide oceans and H2-rich atmospheres, significantly expands and accelerates the search for habitable environments elsewhere.»

Not everyone agrees, however, that what the team found proves there’s life on the exoplanet.

Science writer and OpenMind Magazine founder Corey S. Powell posted about the findings on Bluesky, writing, «The potential discovery of alien life is so enticing that it drags even reputable outlets into running naive or outright misleading stories.» He added, «Here we go again with planet K2-18b.Um….there’s strong evidence of non-biological sources of the molecule DMS.»

K2-18b is 124 light-years away and much larger than Earth (more than eight times our mass), but smaller than Neptune. The search for signs of even basic life on a planet like this increases the chances that there are more planets like Earth that may be inhabitable, with temperatures and atmospheres that could sustain human-like lifeforms. The team behind the paper hopes that more study with the James Webb Space Telescope will help confirm their initial findings.

More research to do on finding life on K2-18b

The exoplanet K2-18b is not the only place where scientists are exploring the possibility of life, and this research is still an early step in the process, said Christopher Glein, a geochemist, planetary researcher and lead scientist at San Antonio’s Southwest Research Institute. Excitement over the significance of the research, he said, should be tempered.

«We need to be careful here,» Glein said. «It appears that there is something in the data that can’t be explained, and DMS/DMDS can provide an explanation. But this detection is stretching the limits of JWST’s capabilities.»

Glein added, «Further work is needed to test whether these molecules are actually present. We also need complementary research assessing the abiotic background on K2-18b and similar planets. That is, the chemistry that can occur in the absence of life in this potentially exotic environment. We might be seeing evidence of some cool chemistry rather than life.»

The TRAPPIST-1 planets, he said, are being researched as potentially habitable, as is LHS 1140b, which he said «is another astrobiologically significant exoplanet, which might be a massive ocean world.»

As for K2-18b, Glein said many more tests need to be performed before there’s consensus on life existing on it.

«Finding evidence of life is like prosecuting a case in the courtroom,» Glein said. «Multiple independent lines of evidence are needed to convince the jury, in this case the worldwide scientific community.» He added, «If this finding holds up, then that’s Step 1.»