The Inside Story of Why Apple Bet Big on a Mixed-Reality Headset

But the feature that ultimately sold the industrial designers on the project was a concept for an outward-facing screen on the headset. The screen could display video images of the eyes and facial expressions of the person wearing the headset to other people in the room.

These features addressed the industrial design group’s worries about VR-induced alienation—they allowed other people in a room to interact and collaborate with a person wearing a headset in a way not possible with other VR gear. For years, the existence of such a display, internally code-named T429, was known only to a small circle of people even w... See more

Norris’ team discussed communications, collaboration and wellness applications of the device, including a FaceTime-like app for AR/VR with virtual avatars. They talked about ways to let users of the headset attach virtual notes to objects in the physical world that they could view later in AR and immersing people wearing the device in events such a... See more