Update: Ming-Chi Kuo has refuted these rumors, claiming Apple isn't likely to show off the headset so far ahead of launch
Could Apple be planning on finally giving us a look at its long-rumored AR/VR headset at WWDC 2022 in early June? New evidence suggests that some kind of reveal may be on the cards, even if it’s just a teaser.
Word comes from Vox Media’s Parker Ortolani, who spotted a trademark for RealityOS while digging around Trademarkia.
It cannot be a coincidence that the “realityOS” trademark owned by a company that seemingly doesn’t exist and is specifically for “wearable computer hardware” is being filed around the world on June 8, 2022 https://t.co/myoRbOvgJa + https://t.co/AH97r95EMn pic.twitter.com/uvsiZCj2rRMay 29, 2022
Expanded on in his Substack, the trademark is for “wearable computer hardware” with no proof of use, with a foreign filing deadline of Wednesday June 8. That just so happens to be two days after the keynote talk at Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC).
As Ortolani notes, the company involved “seemingly doesn’t exist” suggesting it’s a shell entity created to obfuscate the true owner of a trademark. Sure enough, he later revealed that the corporation in question happened to have the same address used to earmark macOS names:
The corporation “Realityo Systems LLC” has the exact same address as the shell corporations Apple used to hold onto the macOS California names. It is the Corporation Trust Center of which Apple is in fact a client. https://t.co/HGKKPF7yB4May 29, 2022
Notably, said trademark was originally filed in December, around two months before “realityOS” began to show up in Apple’s source code.
After sharing his find, a follower also discovered another filing in Uganda where a logo was on full display, and the font looks very familiar too.
credit to @AliAlimedina42 for this other find: looks like “RealityOS” was also filed in Uganda earlier this year by the same corporation and it’s accompanied by a word mark in none other than the San Francisco font https://t.co/IRTW8B7oqK https://t.co/HGKKPF7yB4 pic.twitter.com/pixnUBHG1mMay 29, 2022
To be clear, an imminent reveal would come as something of a surprise, given only last month reports were suggesting the Apple AR/VR headset would be delayed until 2023.
This pessimism was echoed by Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, who said that the plan was originally for WWDC, but that it would slip to the end of the year or next year, based on references in iOS 16.
But it’s important to remember that WWDC is a developer conference, and the one thing a new piece of hardware needs to gain momentum is compelling software. Perhaps we’ll get a very early look intended to inspire the developers in attendance to begin making their AR/VR dreams a (virtual) reality.
Ortolani himself is hedging his bets on whether it’ll appear, given Apple hasn’t released a new flagship product at WWDC before. “Maybe we’ll see it on June 6th and maybe we won’t,” he tweeted. “I’m not gonna make a bet either way. But there sure is a helluva lot going on.”
You can read more about his discovery on Ortolani's substack.
