Over the past few years, one of the more intriguing rumors involving a new Apple product has centered on a pair of Augmented Reality glasses the company was supposedly working on. In addition to the usual speculation from the rumor mill, there was also concrete evidence that Apple was making a concerted effort to hire a large number of engineers with vast experience in various technologies related to augmented reality.
Amid rumors that a pair of AR glasses or headset was in the works, developers a few weeks back found a STARTester app in one of the latter iOS betas that includes a head-mounted mode designed to replicate the user experience of some sort of augmented reality hardware. Notably, the mode itself has two options, one called “worn” and the other called “held.”
With that said, and with iOS 13 now officially out in the wild, developer xSnow recently managed to gain access to the test mode for the STARTester app and posted a few videos of what he found. Incidentally, and perhaps not surprisingly, xSnow found that everything ran a lot smoother on an iPhone XS compared to 2017’s iPhone X.
@stroughtonsmith Managed to get into apple glasses test mode (aka StarTester mode) in 13.1 beta 3 on iPhone X, but right-eye view in glitchy. (Scene contents are from my area light test, not from StarBoard) pic.twitter.com/71chJTBJaA
— xSnow (@__int32) September 20, 2019
Confirmed, there's no artifacts on Xs/Xr, and whole experience is a lot smoother. It appears that I've launched StarTester mode on my X in spite of all hardware locks:) pic.twitter.com/cAjmmbFbxG
— xSnow (@__int32) September 20, 2019
Interestingly enough, it appears that previous rumors claiming that Apple had effectively ceased all R&D efforts into an AR headset of some sort were not true. What’s more, reputed analyst Ming-Chi Kuo this past March said that Apple might begin production on AR glasses as early as this year ahead of a 2020 launch. It’s worth noting that Kuo is easily the most accurate analyst when it comes to detailing new products in Apple’s pipeline. Specifically, Kuo writes that Apple’s AR glasses will be something of a lightweight accessory to the iPhone in the sense that the iPhone would do most of the heavy lifting while the AR glasses themselves would primarily focus on displaying pertinent information.
Apple has characteristically remained quiet on the matter, though Tim Cook nearly two years ago said that he views “AR as profound.”
