- A waist-mounted battery, connected via a magnetic, MagSafe-like power cable to the headset’s headband. One battery charge lasts no longer than two hours, but users can swap the battery out for longer sessions.
- A design that uses aluminum, glass, and carbon fiber to reduce its size and weight. Cameras are largely concealed for aesthetic reasons.
- A small, Digital Crown-like dial on its right side that enables users to quickly transition between the virtual and physical world. Unlike the Apple Watch, it will not offer haptic feedback.
- Apple has developed different headbands, including one for consumers made of a similar material to Apple Watch sport bands with built-in speakers, and one targeted at developers.
- Magnetically attachable custom prescription lenses for glasses-wearers.
- Small motors to automatically adjust its internal lenses to match the wearer’s interpupillary distance, providing the largest field of view possible for each individual.
- A 120-degree field of view, like the Valve Index – more than the Meta Quest Pro’s 106-degree field of view.
- The H2 chip for ultra-low latency connection with the second-generation AirPods Pro and future AirPods models.
- Two chips, including a main SoC, including a CPU, GPU, and memory, and a dedicated image signal processor. Both are fabricated with a 5nm process, meaning that the headset misses out on advancements expected to come to other Apple chips later this year. The chips communicate via a custom streaming codec that Apple was forced to develop due to unacceptable latency.
- The dedicated ISP translates the distorted images captured by the external cameras into a faithful video representation of the user’s surroundings with low latency. The chip contains custom high-bandwidth memory made by SK Hynix.
- The ability to run existing iOS apps in 2D.
