Enlarge / Product photography of the Google Glass wearable. (credit: Google)

Google's head of operating system and software platforms for augmented and mixed reality devices, Mark Lucovsky, has left the company after months of turmoil for the company's mixed reality projects and staff. He publicly announced his departure in a tweet on Monday:

I have decided to step away from my role at Google, where I was Senior Director of Engineering, responsible for OS and Software Platform for AR and XR devices. The recent changes in AR leadership and Google’s unstable commitment and vision have weighed heavily on my decision.

It's unclear exactly which leadership changes he's referring to, but it seems possible or even likely that he's talking about the recent departure of Clay Bavor, who had led Google's XR work since 2015. Bavor left the company in March of this year.

Google was one of the pioneers of mass-market AR when it piloted Google Glass with developers in 2013, but things have been rocky of late. The company killed Glass, brought it back as an enterprise-only product, then killed it again . Rumors swirled that the tech giant was working on a new AR product called Project Iris , but it was reportedly canceled this year amidst a wave of company layoffs.

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  This is Apple’s Vision Pro headset. It looks a bit like a particularly bulky pair of ski goggles, with the materials and design language of Apple’s AirPods Max headphones. [credit: Samuel Axon ]

Today, Apple announced the imminent availability of the visionOS software development kit, which will allow app developers to begin working on apps for the company's upcoming Vision Pro mixed reality headset.

Developers will use frameworks like SwiftUI, RealityKit, and ARKit to make augmented or mixed reality apps while working with tools previously used in Mac and iOS development, like Apple's Xcode IDE, Simulator, and TestFlight.

Tools like these can be used either to develop new spatial apps for Vision Pro or to adapt iPhone or iPad apps to be used as windows within the Vision Pro's interface.

Enlarge / Apple's Vision Pro headset

CUPERTINO, Calif.—After years of speculation, leaks, rumors, setbacks, and rumblings of amazing behind-the-scenes demos, Apple has made its plans for a mixed reality platform and headset public. Vision Pro is "the first Apple Product you look through, not at," Apple's Tim Cook said, a "new AR platform with a new product" that "augments reality by seamlessly blending the real world with the digital world."

"I believe augmented reality is a profound technology. Blending digital content with the real world can unlock new experiences," Cook said.

The headset, which looks like a pair of shiny ski goggles, can be controlled without a handheld controller. It solely uses your eyes, hands, and voice as an interface, and the EyeSight system lets you "control the system simply by looking." Icons and other UI elements react to your gaze, and you use natural gestures with your hands to select them—no need to hold your hands awkwardly in front of you constantly.

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  The Quest 3 will be backward compatible with all Quest 2 games. [credit: Meta ]

Meta has lifted the lid on its Quest 3 headset. Starting at $499 for 128GB, the device aims to push users beyond virtual reality, carrying a heightened focus on mixed reality. We're not getting full details until the Meta Connect event on September 27. But Mark Zuckerberg and friends were happy to preview the headset today, four days before Apple kicks off its Worldwide Developers Conference ( WWDC ), where it's expected to reveal its own mixed-reality headset.

Quest 3 specs: What we know so far

Whether you heard it on Meta's blog , Facebook , or Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg's own Instagram , we now have the broad strokes of the next Quest, which Meta says it'll release sometime this fall.

Meta is promising a 40 percent slimmer optic profile compared to the Quest 2, discounting any facial inserts.

Enlarge / Apple's first promotional image for WWDC 2023. (credit: Apple)

Apple will host its 34th annual Worldwide Developers Conference at its Cupertino, California, headquarters from Monday, June 5 through Friday, June 9, the company announced on Wednesday.

The conference will kick off with "a special all-day event," inclusive of the customary keynote presentation and the platform State of the Union talks. The language on Apple's website suggests that like last year, some or all of those will be presented in prerecorded video form rather than as a live on-stage presentation.

After that first day, Apple will likely host various panels on how developers can work with the company's developer toolkits and APIs to support new and old features across the various Apple platforms.

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 / An early augmented reality demo by Apple, using a smartphone instead of a headset. (credit: Apple )

Apple's mixed-reality headset is still on track for an unveiling sometime next year, and its future operating system has a new name, according to a report published Thursday.

Bloomberg claims the name of the operating system has changed from the previously leaked "realityOS" to "xrOS." XR stands for extended reality—sometimes also called mixed reality—a commonly used catch-all term for both virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR), as well as experiences that combine aspects of both.

In reports and leaks to date, Apple's next upcoming headset has been said to be an XR one, not strictly a VR or AR one—though there are also rumors of an AR-focused device that would launch later. The headset is set for a launch sometime next year, though it has been delayed many times before and may be yet again.

Enlarge / The "Sword of Damocles" head-mounted display, the original augmented reality headset, circa 1968. (credit: Ivan Sutherland)

Apple is wrapping up development of its long-rumored, long-delayed mixed reality headset, and is gearing up for a launch as soon as early next year, according to Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman's weekly newsletter.

Recent job listings posted by Apple suggest that the company is looking to fill content creation roles for the device, suggesting that the core technology is set enough that developers, producers, artists, and the like work confidently with it. That's in contrast to the product's state not that long ago , when differing opinions about the product's feature set, specs, and design led to shifting goalposts that would have been a headache for content creators.

Among those content creation roles is at least one that would focus on "the development of a 3D mixed-reality world," not dissimilar in some respects to Meta's Horizon Worlds. But while Horizon Worlds' spaces exist entirely in VR, an Apple job listing describes "connected experiences in a 3D mixed-reality world," suggesting that augmented reality may also play a part.

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.