After years of rumors and reports, Apple's big new product is finally here.

Tim Cook revealed Apple's first mixed-reality headset, the Vision Pro, during the company's annual keynote at the Worldwide Developers Conference on Monday. It'll launch early next year.

The Vision Pro represents Apple's first major product release since the Apple Watch was announced in 2014, and has been years in the making, reportedly with some setbacks and product design compromises along the way.

But Apple's Vision Pro looks sleeker than the competition and has features that no one else on the market currently offers — it's the definition of an ultra high-end product, and it has a price tag to match: an eye-watering $3,499.

The Vision Pro's most immediately differentiating feature is a screen on the front of the device that is called "EyeSight," which shows the eyes and eyebrows of the person wearing the device — something no other headset on the market offers, including Meta's Quest lineup.

When the headset detects someone else is nearby, it'll populate the outer display with EyeSight.

However, it's not a literal real-time video of your eyes — Apple is using some high-tech AI to create a "digital persona" of you, and the effect looked pretty impressive in the demos it showed off. You simply look at the headset when setting it up, and it takes care of the rest.

That digital likeness is then used when you're FaceTiming someone from inside the headset.

When you're using an app, the exterior EyeSight display obscures your eyes to reflect that your attention is elsewhere.

When someone is interacting with you, the Vision Pro can adjust to ensure you can see them. One video showed a child kicking a soccer ball to a father who was wearing the device, and the soccer ball and child came into focus.

Apple is positioning the device as a mix of an entertainment, productivity, and communication device, and the integration with existing Apple control inputs are key to that, as are the device's high-end internal displays, which boast a resolution of more than 4K per eye.

Apple says it can render "true 4K" content, allowing for non-grainy TV and movies, and "crisp" text when viewing articles or doing work within the device.

Source: businessinsider