The Apple Vision Pro has been named Popular Science’s Innovation of the Year for 2024. Apple’s AR/VR headset beat out several other new products, including AI-formulated vegan cheese and a transparent television from LG.
While the Apple Vision Pro’s hefty price tag has resulted in slow sales and app development is a bit lacking, PopSci has named the headset as the “Innovation of the Year,” beating out 50 innovations released in 2024.
“While AR headsets have existed before, this one gets our award because of how much potential it shows. It’s part of Apple’s overall hardware plan,” said the PopSci website. “The new iPhone cameras have a specific arrangement to shoot spatial video for consumption in AR. Familiar apps can offer augmented experiences specifically meant for headsets. We expect the next version of the hardware will skip the creepy image of your eyes that shows up on the exterior screen. Still, we’re curious to see what Apple does next, because a consumer-friendly price on an experience like this could be a true game changer.”
Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X series of chips also received an award, beating out chips from Apple Silicon, AMD, and Intel. The Qualcomm chips are used in Microsoft’s first generation of Copilot+ PCs.
“[We’re] we’re hopeful this new chip will be the key to all the weird form factor Windows PCs we’ve been wishing for,” writes the publication.
LG Signature OLED TV boasts a layer of contrast film sitting behind the OLED panel, providing a black background for a “typical” TV experience. With the press of a button, the film moves out of the way, leaving the lit OLED pixels suspended on a (mostly) clear panel. PopSci reports that the experience is “amazing” in person, offering a clear view of anything behind the screen, while still providing a watchable on-screen image.
The AI-formulated vegan cheese is plant-based blue, brie, and feta cheeses sold as vegan cheese by Climax Foods.
“California-based Climax Foods built a training set of metrics for cheese characteristics such as scent and stretchability,” reports PopSci. “Then, they used AI and educated guesswork by cheesemakers to develop plant-based formulations that hit the same benchmarks as dairy cheese.”
