Enlarge / Product photography of the Google Glass wearable. (credit: Google)

Google's head of operating system and software platforms for augmented and mixed reality devices, Mark Lucovsky, has left the company after months of turmoil for the company's mixed reality projects and staff. He publicly announced his departure in a tweet on Monday:

I have decided to step away from my role at Google, where I was Senior Director of Engineering, responsible for OS and Software Platform for AR and XR devices. The recent changes in AR leadership and Google’s unstable commitment and vision have weighed heavily on my decision.

It's unclear exactly which leadership changes he's referring to, but it seems possible or even likely that he's talking about the recent departure of Clay Bavor, who had led Google's XR work since 2015. Bavor left the company in March of this year.

Google was one of the pioneers of mass-market AR when it piloted Google Glass with developers in 2013, but things have been rocky of late. The company killed Glass, brought it back as an enterprise-only product, then killed it again . Rumors swirled that the tech giant was working on a new AR product called Project Iris , but it was reportedly canceled this year amidst a wave of company layoffs.

Enlarge / Inside the Steve Jobs Theater building at Apple's headquarters. (credit: Samuel Axon)

Apple's 2023 Worldwide Developer Conference is just a few days away—it kicks off with a keynote on Monday, June 5. That keynote will be livestreamed (we'll liveblog it, too), and it's expected to be a doozy.

The WWDC keynote isn't always the most exciting for non-developers, as it usually focuses on iOS updates rather than exciting new hardware. There have been exceptions, though, and next week's event will surely be one of them. Apple is expected to finally unveil its rumored mixed reality headset, which has taken a long and winding path to market.

That will be the main focus, but there will be interesting new developments on the iPhone, Mac, and Watch. Here's what to expect from the WWDC keynote next week.

Enlarge / Apple's first promotional image for WWDC 2023. (credit: Apple)

Apple will host its 34th annual Worldwide Developers Conference at its Cupertino, California, headquarters from Monday, June 5 through Friday, June 9, the company announced on Wednesday.

The conference will kick off with "a special all-day event," inclusive of the customary keynote presentation and the platform State of the Union talks. The language on Apple's website suggests that like last year, some or all of those will be presented in prerecorded video form rather than as a live on-stage presentation.

After that first day, Apple will likely host various panels on how developers can work with the company's developer toolkits and APIs to support new and old features across the various Apple platforms.

Enlarge / Apple CEO Tim Cook. (credit: Patrick T. Fallon/Bloomberg via Getty Images )

A new report in the Financial Times claims that Apple CEO Tim Cook and COO Jeff Williams overrode design team objections to move forward with a new mixed-reality headset before designers believed the technology was ready. That said, the report isn't detailed enough to provide a nuanced picture of what's going on inside the company.

Here's the picture it does paint: A once-influential industrial design team is losing agency as executive departures and other factors have led to the team reporting to the company's operations chief instead of a top-level design executive.

We've written quite a bit about the gradual departure of famed design chief Jony Ive, who was a close collaborator with former CEO Steve Jobs. In addition to Ive, though, Apple also lost Ive's successor, Evans Hankey .

Enlarge / The "Sword of Damocles" head-mounted display, the original augmented reality headset, circa 1968. Augmented reality has gotten a lot more mobile in the past decade. (credit: Ivan Sutherland)

A new report in The Information corroborates and expands upon an earlier Bloomberg report claiming that Apple is preparing to launch a high-end VR headset as early as next year, citing unnamed people with knowledge of the product.

Among the new revelations is that the new headset will feature two 8K screens (one for each eye) and that Apple has considered a steep $3,000 price point.

The headset (which the report says is codenamed N301) will be able to display rich 3D graphics at that resolution, thanks both to an ultrafast M1 chip successor and because Apple will liberally use an already-known VR technique that involves using eye-tracking to render objects in the user's periphery at a lower fidelity than what the user is focusing on.

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Le dimanche 15 septembre 2019, sous un soleil de plomb nous avons bloqué avec succès le pont Wilson en plein centre de #Lyon.

Cet évènement coup de poing, non-violent et festif nous a permis de dénoncer la gravité de la situation face aux chamboulements écologiques et climatiques que nous vivons présentement et à venir très prochainement.

• Entre 1970 et 2014, la population mondiale de vertébrés sauvages a chuté de 60% https://www.wwf.fr/vous-informer/actualites/rapport-planete-vivante-2018
• L’ONU s’attend à 200 millions de réfugiés climatiques d’ici à 2050 http://publications.iom.int/books/mrs-ndeg31-migrations-et-changements-climatiques
• Une grande partie de la population mondiale vivra une partie de l’année dans des zones où la température et l’humidité seront au dessus du seuil de mortalité https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate3322
• Dans 30 ans, le climat de Lyon sera similaire à celui de Canberra (estimation optimiste) https://www.lyoncapitale.fr/actualite/en-2050-lyon-subira-le-meme-climat-que-le-sud-de-l-australie-aujourd-hui/

Cet évènement a été relayé dans la presse par Rue89 et a fait l'ouverture du journal du soir France3 Rhône-Alpes.

De nombreuses actions de désobéissance civiles non-violentes sont à prévoir prochainement. Plus d'informations sur le site officiel de XR France et sur le site international.

#ecology #climate #france #extinctionrebellion #xr #action #movement #bridge #pont