WWDC 2023: Apple announces visionOS- the Vision Pro headsets OS

Apple has announced visionOS, the operating system that will power its new Vision Pro headset. Apple says it's designed from the ground up for spatial computing.

The company revealed the operating system as part of its many announcements at the Worldwide Developers Conference 2023 event. The operating system focuses on displaying digital elements on top of the real world. Apple's video showed new things like icons and windows floating over real-world spaces.

You use your headset primarily with your eyes, hands, and voice. The company outlined how to look at a search field and start speaking to enter text, for example. Or you can pinch your fingers to select something or slide your fingers up to scroll through a window. Vision Pro can also show your eyes on the outside of the headphones, a feature Apple calls "EyeSight."

Apple partly envisions this as a productivity device; in one demo, it showed a person looking at things like a Safari window, Messages, and the Apple Music window, all on a table in the real world. Apple also showed a keyboard floating in the air. And Vision Pro can also connect to your Mac so you can blow up your Mac screen inside your headset.

It will also be a powerful entertainment device. You can make the screen big by pinching a corner of a window (Apple demonstrated this with a Foundation clip). In addition, you can display the screen on other backgrounds, including a theatre-like space or in front of Mount Hood (Apple tip!), thanks to a feature Apple calls Environments. You can also watch 3D movies on the device.

The Vision Pro also has a 3D camera to capture "space" photos and videos and view them on the headset. And panoramic photos can stretch around your vision as you use the device. FaceTime is also getting some "spatial" improvements; As described in Apple's press release, "Users who use Vision Pro during a FaceTime call are reflected as a Persona, a digital representation of themselves created using Apple's most advanced machine learning techniques, which reflects movements of the face and hand in real time".

Apple said it would have a new app store where people can download Vision Pro apps and compatible apps for iPhones and iPad.

The release of a new operating system marks a big moment for Apple and its developers. With Apple releasing this new headset, we'll almost certainly see a flood of developers creating apps trying to take advantage of the new platform in hopes of becoming the next stratospheric hit. Of course, Apple has already been particularly interested in AR, but as my colleague Adi Robertson wrote, AR needs an iPhone moment, and Monday could have been one.