Apple’s Upcoming Headset Could Usher in Its First Search Engine

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Rumors of Apple building its own search engine have persisted for years. While they’ve generally been taken with a grain of salt, a new report from an industry veteran is lending some weight to the notion, suggesting that it will launch alongside Apple’s new headset.

Author and blogger Robert Scoble, who is plugged right into the goings-on in Silicon Valley, recently shared his thoughts on Twitter about next week’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) and Apple’s plans to introduce the world to “a new form” of augmented reality.

Scoble suggests that Apple has three events planned to ease us into its new vision for AR and VR, the first of which will be WWDC next week. This will be followed by the reveal of the actual headset in early 2023 — likely January — and then a “get ready for buying” event that he expects to happen around June, possibly with WWDC 2023.

If you were hoping to see Apple show off the headset next week, Scoble says that won’t happen. Instead, he thinks we’ll get a peek at “a new development environment for a new kind of photorealistic 3D scenes, avatars, and much more,” along with some “surprises that few are expecting.”

This could take the form of Apple unveiling its new “realityOS” that we’ve already been hearing quite a bit about. However, it’s also possible that Apple could skip the announcement of the complete operating system and instead focus on ARKit-style developer APIs as it’s done in the past.

A New Search Engine

In laying out his predictions for Apple’s headset, Scoble dropped another bombshell: a new search engine that could finally make Siri “smart.”

Oh, and a new search engine is coming too. Will Siri finally get “smart?” Hmmm.— Robert Scoble (@Scobleizer) May 28, 2022

When pushed for a bit more info, Scoble responded that this wasn’t merely a guess but rather something that he’s heard “from many places,” including a dinner meeting six years ago with the head of Siri.

Although the head of Apple’s Siri team has long since departed, that doesn’t necessarily mean that Apple’s ambitions left with him. The issue, Scoble says, is that a new AI was needed that didn’t exist at the time. It sounds like this is a case of Apple’s ambitions getting ahead of the technology.

Does This Mean Apple Plans to Take On Google?

To be clear, a search engine can mean a lot of things. The fact that Scoble points to Siri as the core component suggests that this won’t be a direct competitor to Google — at least not in the traditional sense.

Firstly, Google is paying Apple a stupid amount of money for top placement on the iPhone. Apple isn’t about to give that up unless it’s sure that it can make a lot more by striking out on its own — and that’s highly unlikely. Google makes a ton of money from search because it’s in the advertising and data collection business; Apple makes user privacy a selling point, which leaves little to no room to profit from people’s online behavior.

Apple does already index a great deal of the web; that’s what’s led to rumors that it’s building a search engine. However, it does that to power features like Siri and Spotlight. This part is likely the key to what Scoble is saying.

I’m also quite sure that it’s no coincidence that Scoble brought this up alongside his discussion of Apple’s AR/VR headset plans. If you think about it, a more powerful Siri-based search will be instrumental in making a mixed-reality headset useful for more than just narrow vertical applications like gaming.

For example, although you can call up a lot of searches from Siri, the data you often get back is limited at best. For iPhone and iPad users, that’s not the end of the world since you can always fall back on Google — and Siri will often take you there automatically when it can’t give you results on your own.

If you’ve ever tried to use Siri to search for something on a HomePod, an Apple Watch, or via CarPlay while driving, you know how frustrating an experience it can be. Wander outside of the few things that Siri knows about, and you’ll basically be told to go pick up your iPhone.

However, if Apple expects its new headset to truly usher in a whole new world of mobile computing, that’s something that can’t happen. Siri has to get a lot smarter if it’s going to power life experiences through augmented reality.

[The information provided in this article has NOT been confirmed by Apple and may be speculation. Provided details may not be factual. Take all rumors, tech or otherwise, with a grain of salt.]