Enlarge / Apple CEO Tim Cook. (credit: Patrick T. Fallon/Bloomberg via Getty Images )

A new report in the Financial Times claims that Apple CEO Tim Cook and COO Jeff Williams overrode design team objections to move forward with a new mixed-reality headset before designers believed the technology was ready. That said, the report isn't detailed enough to provide a nuanced picture of what's going on inside the company.

Here's the picture it does paint: A once-influential industrial design team is losing agency as executive departures and other factors have led to the team reporting to the company's operations chief instead of a top-level design executive.

We've written quite a bit about the gradual departure of famed design chief Jony Ive, who was a close collaborator with former CEO Steve Jobs. In addition to Ive, though, Apple also lost Ive's successor, Evans Hankey .

Enlarge / The Meta Quest Pro at a Best Buy demo station in October 2022.

The next Meta Quest headset, planned for launch this year, will be thinner, twice as powerful, and slightly more expensive than the Quest 2. That's according to a leaked internal hardware roadmap presentation obtained by The Verge that also includes plans for high-end, smartband-controlled, ad-supported AR glasses by 2027.

The "Quest 3" will also include a new "Smart Guardian" system that lets users walk around safely in "mixed reality," according to the presentation. That will come ahead of a more "accessible" headset, codenamed Ventura, which is planned for a release in 2024 at "the most attractive price point in the VR consumer market."

That Ventura description brings to mind John Carmack's October Meta Connect keynote , in which he highlighted his push for a "super cheap, super lightweight headset" targeting "$250 and 250 grams." Carmack complained that Meta is "not building that headset today, but I keep trying." Months later, Carmack announced he was leaving the company , complaining that he was "evidently not persuasive enough" to change the company for the better.

Enlarge / On the left, BMW's 2021 i Vision Circular concept; on the right, this year's i Vision Dee. (credit: BMW)

I'm almost sad to not be in Las Vegas for the annual Consumer Electronics Show, and for the second year running, that fear of missing out is due to a new augmented reality display for cars. Last year, it was a new in-plane holographic optical element display from Texas Instruments that projects an image onto the surface of the windshield, unlike a traditional head-up display, which throws a smaller image out into space ahead of the driver.

This year, it's a new BMW concept car that previews some of the tech we'll see in the company's Neue Klasse EVs, which will feature full-windshield augmented reality when they go into production in 2025.

The concept is called the BMW i Vision Dee, with the "Dee" standing for "digital emotional experience" rather than suggesting that BMW designers are fans of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.

Enlarge / The report discusses how Apple's upcoming headset will be different from the Meta Quest Pro pictured here. (credit: Kyle Orland )

A new report in The Information revealed some new tidbits about Apple's upcoming augmented and virtual reality headset.

Among other things, the report details features that differentiate Apple's headset from Meta's just-announced Quest Pro , which is likely to be the biggest competitor to Apple's device.

Matching prior reports, The Information's article says that the headset will look like a pair of ski goggles. It will be made of "mesh fabrics, aluminum, and glass" and it will be thinner and weigh less than the Quest Pro. The Information's sources didn't specify a weight, but the Quest Pro weighs 722 grams.

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  Open up live view and you can search for things (at the bottom) like Restaurants, ATMs, and shopping locations. (Next in the gallery is Google's animated gif of this in action.) [credit: Google ]

Google Maps loves augmented reality. After launching augmented reality walking navigation in 2019 and indoor AR navigation in 2021, it's now showing off augmented reality search results.

Augmented reality search results will put markers in your video feed, positioned in 3D space. It's a dream interface for augmented reality goggles, but for now, it will only work on a phone.

As usual for Maps AR features, this will be powered by Google Maps VPS or " Visual Positioning System ." This is a camera-powered location system: You fire up the camera, point it at the world, and your camera feed is compared against Google's huge collection of street view data to determine your location. This is an extremely data-intensive way of determining location, but it's a lot more accurate at orientation and street-level location than a phone compass and GPS, which are both prone to interference.

Enlarge / Nreal depicts someone using the Air glasses to extend their MacBook desktop. (credit: Nreal)

As augmented reality (AR) glasses continue to try carving a place among tech enthusiasts, we're seeing another option hit mass availability in the US. In addition to selling the sunglass-like Nreal Air specs in America, Beijing-based company Nreal also announced today a version of its Nebula AR operating system that will work with Apple M1 and M2-powered MacBooks.

The Mac version of Nebula works with MacBook Pro and MacBook Air laptops with Apple silicon and is launching as a beta. Attaching the Air glasses to a MacBook won't give you the same Nebula "AR Space" experience available to supported Android phones . AR Space includes a mixed-reality interface and games and other AR apps made for the glasses. Instead, Mac users will see a virtual UI that Nreal's calling AR Desktop and projects up to three virtual displays at a time, an Nreal rep told Ars Technica. An Nreal rep wouldn't specify when AR Space would come to MacBooks or iOS.

In a statement, Nreal co-founder Peng Jin said the company expects AR glasses to initially gain traction among consumers by serving as a display technology, so "the thinking behind Nreal Air is very focused on the aesthetics, display quality, and its connectivity with other hardware devices."

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  Lenovo Glasses T1. [credit: Scharon Harding ]

After pushing augmented reality (AR) glasses to businesses for years, Lenovo will finally sell AR glasses for consumers, the company announced today—and I briefly got to demo the lightweight Lenovo Glasses T1. With their Micro OLED displays and required tether to Windows, macOS, Android, or iOS devices, they bring some notable features to a space that has piqued industry-wide interest but is still likely far from becoming ubiquitous.

The early version of the T1 I tried had limited features; I was mostly only able to view a homepage with basic menu options and a desktop with icons for apps, like web browsing. Although the glasses weren't ready for me to watch a movie or hop around apps, I was impressed at how clear text and menu items were. This was in a sunny room with exceedingly tall windows. Even when facing sunlight, the few colors on display seemed vibrant and the text legible.

Lenovo specs the displays with 10,000:1 contrast and 1920×1080 pixels per eye. The glasses are also TÜV-certified for low blue light and flicker reduction, according to Lenovo. Much more time is needed to explore and challenge the Micro OLED displays before I pass final judgment. But the combination of smaller pixels and, from what I saw thus far, strong colors, should accommodate screens so close to the eyes . More broadly speaking, brightness can be a concern with OLED technologies, but the small demo I saw fared well in a sun-flushed room.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. (credit: Facebook )

Meta and Apple are entering a period of "very deep, philosophical competition" that will define the future of the Internet, according to comments by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg obtained by The Verge .

Both Apple and Meta are planning to invest heavily in mixed reality over the next decade, but they have diametrically opposed visions for what the AR/VR/XR landscape should ideally look like.

The Verge obtained an audio recording of an all-hands employee meeting at Meta, in which Zuckerberg answered an employee question about the company's future competition with Apple in great detail. His comments shed some light on how Meta, at least, sees the rivalry.

Enlarge / Smart contact lenses don't work quite this easily yet. (credit: Getty )

Since 2015, a California-based company called Mojo Vision has been developing smart contact lenses. Like smart glasses, the idea is to put helpful AR graphics in front of your eyes to help accomplish daily tasks. Now, a functioning prototype brings us closer to seeing a final product.

In a blog post this week, Drew Perkins, the CEO of Mojo Vision, said he was the first to have an "on-eye demonstration of a feature-complete augmented reality smart contact lens." In an interview with CNET , he said he's been wearing only one contact at a time for hour-long durations. Eventually, Mojo Vision would like users to be able to wear two Mojo Lens simultaneously and create 3D visual overlays, the publication said.

According to his blog, the CEO could see a compass through the contact and an on-screen teleprompter with a quote written on it. He also recalled viewing a green, monochromatic image of Albert Einstein to CNET.