Bloomberg: Apple's Dan Riccio is now in charge of its AR, VR headsets

Apple Dan Riccio
Apple Dan Riccio (Image credit: Apple)

What you need to know

  • Apple's Dan Riccio is now reportedly running the company's AR and VR projects.

Apple's former hardware engineering chief, Dan Riccio, is reportedly now the person in charge of the company's AR and VR headset projects. That's according to a new report by Bloomberg.

Riccio left his role as the head of hardware engineering recently, with Apple saying that the executive was moving on to head a new project of some sort. Speculation at the time had that project being related to Apple's rumored AR and VR headset. Now, Bloomberg suggests that's very much the case.

That new project is overseeing the team developing future Apple AR and VR headsets, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing internal matters. An Apple spokesman declined to comment.

Apple has been working on getting a headset to market in recent years and rumors have been circulating more and more of late. Apple is so focused on getting the project into the hands of customers that more than 1,000 engineers are now involved.

Apple's work on its first headset, a high-end VR-focused device with some AR capabilities, has faced development challenges, and people within Apple believe Riccio's extra focus could help. While he has ultimate oversight of the project, it is led day-to-day by Mike Rockwell, an Apple vice president who has well over a thousand engineers working on the two devices.

In other news, Apple has also put a group working on displays and cameras under the stewardship of Johny Srouji.

Apple has also told staff it is moving the group working on in-house displays and camera technology to Johny Srouji, the executive in charge of processors and cellular modems. The move suggests the company is getting closer to shipping its first devices with fully custom displays, replacing those from outside suppliers. Apple has a facility near its Silicon Valley headquarters developing MicroLED screens.

Oliver Haslam
Contributor

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too. Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.