According to a recent patent, Apple aims to include additional continuity features in Apple’s headset, making transitioning between devices and virtual workspaces smooth.
If you’re not familiar with the idea, “continuity” is how Apple refers to all the ways that devices within its ecosystem may connect, allowing consumers to transition between them without pausing their activities.
Apple’s Headset to come with Extended Reality? What do we know?
By using handoff, for example, you can start to work on one device, move to a different one nearby, and continue working within the same app. Additional Continuity feature examples include:
- Continuity Camera,
- Sidecar, Universal Control, and
- AirPlay to Mac.
In a patent application entitled “Multi-Device Continuity for use with Extended Reality (XR) Systems” published last week by the European Patent Office, Apple provides several examples of how it anticipates Handoff-like compatibility between an XR headset as well as other Apple devices functioning.
In one scenario, Apple gives the idea of a user looking over at a mail on an iPhone screen while wearing a headset. At this point, a virtual representation of the Mail app’s UI is superimposed over the iPhone screen. The user then moves the email to a more prominent virtual display suspended in their surroundings with a hand gesture or a change of look. They can continue to draught it using the camera sensors in their headsets, being alerted to their finger motions.
Other possible scenarios include one or more of the other devices and the device itself and Apple’s headset “handling ongoing transfer of control amongst other devices in the system responding to 3D location-based user inputs.”
Apple also outlines a different solution where the headset enhances a desktop Mac by moving “accessory windows” adjacent to but outside of the Mac’s screen into an “extended reality environment,” instead of transitioning from a physical display to a virtual one.
Although it’s unclear how far Apple will take Continuity with Apple’s headset at first, some of the scenarios in the patent will probably give you a fair indication of what the firm has been aiming for.
We know that the headset can be used alone and won’t require an iPhone to function. Thanks to “xrOS,” a brand-new operating system created especially for the AR/VR experience, it will work this way. In addition to a FaceTime app designed just for the headset, xrOS will offer iOS apps, including Photos, Safari, Maps, Messages, Apple TV+, Apple Music, etc.
Apple will count on hand gestures picked up by the numerous cameras on the headset as a replacement for the wearable control device that is missing from the headgear. For example, typing would be accomplished through “in-air” eye and hand gestures.
The first iteration of the headgear, most likely to be branded “Reality Pro,” will still be unveiled by Apple at WWDC in June of this year, and it won’t likely launch until the end of the year 2023. Our in-depth AR/VR roundup compiles all the rumours we’ve heard so far if you want to learn more about the headset and what to anticipate.
