I don’t normally use the confirmed word in my titles… but this is pretty solid I think. Plus, there is a question mark too…

We’ve had rumours that Apple’s VR AR mixed reality headset coming for a long while. Even back in 2020, there were rumours that Apple was ready to do their first reveal of their hardware and software for VR. But, as Mark Gurman said at the time, they really wanted to introduce it in person, and this was at the start of the Pandemic. There was talk of a special August event in person, a first for Apple specifically to introduce it, but Covid picked up again and everyone forgot about the rumours.

Apple “realityOS” Trademarks Filed

But an unknown, perhaps fake company has filed trademarks for RealityOS, a company apparently called Realityo Systems, back in December last year, with a foreign filing deadline of June 8th, 2 days after WWDC. It seems this was all dug up by Parker Ortolani on twitter. Some pretty nice work there.

The name on this trademark is Ken Kwartler, a trademark Attorney with a record of working as in house trademark counsel to Fortune 500 companies Nike inc and Silicon Graphics. Tim Cook is a board member at Nike, just for the record.

We’ve seen dozens of patents for such a device, which would apparently consist a pair of micro OLED 8k displays, one for each eye and a larger 4k display to cover peripheral vision too.

In recent weeks, we’ve also heard that the team showed Apple Reality to their board of directors ahead of a public reveal, just as in 2011 they revealed Siri to the board, just ahead of the reveal with the iPhone 4S. 

Back to Apple Park

But on top of all this, we finally have our first, even partially in person event since the beginning of the Covid 19 Pandemic. A number of developers have been invited to Cupertino to watch the Keynote presentation as well as the Platforms State of the Union presentations at WWDC 2022 at the Apple Park Campus.

Sam Kohl of AppleTrack is one of those developers travelling to Cupertino, and on the latest Genius Bar podcast indicated that he believes that press could well be there too, though when pressed by Jon Prosser, he wanted to move on as quickly as possible.

There’s a major reason that Apple wants people physically present at this event. I think we’ll see the software for realityOS introduced, and possibly some developer hardware to produce apps for the platform, with a wide release later in the year, perhaps around November just in time for the holiday season.

Apple Reality is Here.

Apple rarely introduces hardware far in advance of its actual release, but when it does its because they don’t have another product who’s sales would be compromised by the reveal. There’s nothing like Apple Reality in their line up right now, and given the trademark, this seems like the most likely name for the product line. So truly confirmed, no, not until Apple does that on stage.

But basically as close to a confirmation as you can get without holding the thing in your hands. But the question is, will you buy it? The rumoured price is $2-3000, but its hard to know whether it’s worth that before we know what it does. Roll on WWDC.