Apple’s virtual reality ambitions made clear thanks to new patent

Ah Apple. The once-desktop computing company now jack-of-all-trades is sinking its leathery finger into its next big pie — virtual reality (VR). That’s right, cars isn’t quite enough for Cupertino as it has won a patent from the US Patent Office for what seems like an iPhone headset that’ll plunge its user into pools of virtual goodness.

We’ve seen this particular play from Apple before though. While companies like Oculus take the initial risk in forging new audiences for new technologies, Apple waits, absorbs the zeitgeist and develops its own popular contraption. But it should be said, this “Head-Mounted Display Apparatus for Retaining a Portable Electronic Device with Display”, as the company calls it, looks a lot like Samsung’s Gear VR and Google’s Cardboard.

Even the abstract sounds a bit like Samsung and Google‘s implementation:

Head-mounted display systems and methods of operation that allow users to couple and decouple a portable electronic device such as a handheld portable electronic device with a separate head-mounted device (e.g., temporarily integrates the separate devices into a single unit) are disclosed. The portable electronic may be physically coupled to the head-mounted device such that the portable electronic device can be worn on the user’s head.

The portable electronic device may be operatively coupled to the head-mounted device such that the portable electronic device and head mounted device can communicate and operate with one another. Each device may be allowed to extend its features and/or services to the other device for the purpose of enhancing, increasing and/or eliminating redundant functions between the head-mounted device and the portable electronic device.

Of course, one could be hyper critical in this situation, but it seems as though a smartphone-based VR system is where the future of this particular computing genre lies.

Read more: Visions of the future: virtual reality will feature big players in 2015

Apple does add a remote control though to help the user “navigate the portable electronic device and to control the display, volume, and playback options” which makes it a more practical proposition compared to its competitors.

While you may be wondering why a company like Apple moving into the virtual reality space is relatively big news, it’s probably because it has been mum up until now.

It should be noted though that Apple has never thrown any public hints of its foray into the VR space until now. The company’s latest patent does seem like a ploy to futureproof its operations, and will perhaps coincide with a future launch of an iPhone model, perhaps of similar size to the Samsung Galaxy Note 4. Whether or not Apple will in fact out a prototype any time soon to build hype, like its plethora of adversaries, is the real question.

If you’re interested in reading patents from top to toe, find the extensive fifty page dossier here.

Feature image: Mike Deerkoski via Flickr