Skip to main content

Digital Trends may earn a commission when you buy through links on our site. Why trust us?

Apple’s ‘foundational’ Vision Pro tool was secretly built 6 years ago

Long before Apple’s Vision Pro headset made its debut, there was rampant speculation that the company’s wider augmented reality (AR) efforts were part of a larger project toward building the then-mysterious device. Now, it seems that at least one of those technologies was built with Vision Pro in mind.

I recently interviewed Susan Prescott, Apple’s vice president of Worldwide Developer Relations, and Steve Sinclair, senior director of product marketing for Apple Vision Pro, to find out how the company courted developers while prepping the headset. In the course of that interview, Sinclair shed some light on how Vision Pro intertwined with the company’s ARKit developer framework.

Apple Vision Pro provides virtual screens for your Mac.
Apple

Throughout my talk with Prescott and Sinclair, both made repeated references to ARKit, Apple’s framework for building AR experiences. Prescott said it was “foundational” for allowing people to build content for Vision Pro. When discussing how Apple adapted existing tools for its headset, Sinclair stated that “ARKit on iPhone and on iPadOS allowed us the opportunity to learn from developers and from ourselves on how best to implement these things on a platform like Vision Pro.”

Recommended Videos

Was ARKit specifically built with Vision Pro in mind, I asked, or did its development come about separately and subsequently?

“We’ll just say in conjunction” was Sinclair’s response.

Sinclair’s answer seems to imply that, at a minimum, Vision Pro was a consideration in the development of ARKit, if not the main driving force behind its creation.

ARKit’s secret purpose

Two people playing an augmented reality game on Apple iPad.
Apple

When Apple revealed ARKit as part of iOS 11 in 2017, it explained that the tool would allow developers to “build detailed and compelling virtual content on top of real-world scenes for interactive gaming, immersive shopping experiences, industrial design and more.” Looking back, that seems like a description ripe for Vision Pro as much as it does the iPhone or iPad.

We already know that Vision Pro has been in development since at least 2007, the date Apple provisionally applied for a very early headset patent. In the intervening 16 years, there have been many other technologies that Apple ostensibly made for different devices that could also have been created with Vision Pro in mind.

LiDAR, for instance, has been heavily promoted as a way to enjoy AR experiences using an iPhone or an iPad Pro, but it also features prominently in Vision Pro. Numerous patents registered over the years, from extending a Mac’s display into virtual space to in-air MacBook keyboards, could all have been disguised Vision Pro technologies.

That’s unsurprising given Apple’s famous tight-lipped reticence, and it’s interesting to see the suggestion that ARKit has always had a secret secondary purpose. What other seemingly innocuous techs could find their way into future Apple devices? Only time will tell.

Alex Blake
Alex Blake has been working with Digital Trends since 2019, where he spends most of his time writing about Mac computers…
10 years ago today, Apple launched a revolutionary MacBook that failed spectacularly
An Apple 12-inch MacBook on a desk.

Ten years ago today, Apple unveiled the 12-inch MacBook to the world, claiming it had “reinvented the notebook” for the better. The laptop almost instantly divided opinion, with fans and detractors at each other’s throats from the start. And sure, it was by no means perfect, but look a little closer and I think you’ll find a device that has had a monumental impact on the world of computing -- not just on Apple, but on the industry as a whole.

The 12-inch MacBook is often seen as a flop and as a product emblematic of the excesses of Apple’s Jony Ive era, where the design guru’s penchant for thinness and lightness ruled all. The fact that this MacBook was discontinued after just four years is seen as proof of this idea.

Read more
Samsung XR headset display set to go toe-to-toe with Apple Vision Pro
The Project Moohan headset.

Samsung's answer to Apple's Vision Pro headset has been teased for months now, but there's little information about what hardware and specs it will offer. Now, though, data on the device is starting to come out, including that it will reportedly use a 4K micro-OLED display from Sony.

According to Korean site The Elec, highlighted by UploadVR, the Samsung XR headset will use a Sony 1.35-inch micro-OLED display, which is the same hardware that Sony is using in its own flip-up XR headset, the Sony SRH-S1. That is an exceedingly expensive model, costing even more than Apple's Vision Pro at $4,750 and therefore aimed more at the enterprise market than at your average consumer. But the Samsung XR offering is more of a Vision Pro competitor, presumably for a more mainstream audience.

Read more
Apple’s upcoming Studio Display could mean worrying news for pro users
A person uses an Apple Mac Pro alongside three monitors and an editing console in a darkened room.

Just a few days ago, we found out that Apple is working on a new Studio Display with a mini-LED screen. Now, that idea seems to be confirmed, with highly accurate Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman stating that this monitor should launch “by 2026.”

The Studio Display first saw the light of day in 2022, meaning there’s been a lengthy wait for updates. But that delay just highlights the problems with an even older Apple monitor: 2019’s Pro Display XDR.

Read more