> Why is that step necessary? How does it help on the path to glasses? Almost every modern device has such a history. It’s necessary for the same reason room s

> Why is that step necessary? How does it help on the path to glasses? Almost every modern device has such a history. It’s necessary for the same reason room sized punch card computers were necessary, or 3-inch thick laptops were necessary, etc. Most modern tech is built on a long history of small (sometimes large) iterations. Aside from that, building a helmet now allows them to build, iterate and perfect the software, and to introduce people to their vision of what a spatial OS could be like. Will they ever manage to make these into glasses? Hard to say. But given the obvious hurdles to get there, not starting from somewhere is a guarantee they’ll never get there. > Why not develop glasses that can block out peripheral light, have all the sensors, need little power etc. before selling a helmet? There are accounts from insiders who say this is exactly what they wanted to do, and releasing the helmet was internally controversial. The flip side of this is that they’d invested 10s of billions into R&D, and needed something to show for it. > Those seem like intractable problems to solve in a glasses or contact lens form factor so my prediction is it stays at the helmet design They may very well end up being intractable problems. If that turns out to be the case, that leaves Apple in the position of having arguably the most advanced AR/VR helmet on the market instead of with nothing. Such a device is also useful when determining whether or not to even continue trying. > But all of this begs the question if use case still, which even at $500 or $1000 doesn’t seem compelling I strongly disagree. If Apple could ship something like the current AVP for $500 or even $1,000, I think it would sell very well. I’d personally buy one instead of replacing my aging 65” OLED TV that needs to be replaced due to burn-in. Watching movies in the AVP is a spectacular experience.