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Apple is completely sitting out this year's biggest tech trend

Apple is, by far, the most successful phone seller in the world. The iPhone is a colossus, making up the vast majority of Apple's massive annual profits.

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Right below the iPhone is Apple's tablet, the iPad, in terms of profits. And below that is the "Mac" category, which comprises everything from the port-less MacBook to jet engine lookalike the Mac Pro. 

Apple Q3 2015 earnings
Apple

These are all very successful products. And yet, across the board, from iPhone to Mac Pro, none of Apple's hardware is capable of powering virtual reality headsets. How is the most important technology company in the world sitting out the biggest year yet for virtual reality?

Apple
Apple

Technically speaking — if you want to be a pedant about it — Apple's iPhone is capable of powering Google's "Cardboard" headset. Apple even used to sell a version of Cardboard on its online store (as of last month it was listed, but mysteriously no longer shows up on Apple's online store).

That's where Apple's attention to VR begins and ends.

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None of Apple's computers — even the highest end, most expensive/powerful desktops — are capable of running Facebook's Oculus Rift or HTC's Vive. Here's what Oculus Rift creator Palmer Luckey had to say when he was recently asked by gaming site Shacknews about the Oculus Rift working with Apple computers:

That is up to Apple. If they ever release a good computer, we will do it. It just boils down to the fact that Apple doesn’t prioritize high-end GPUs. You can buy a $6,000 Mac Pro with the top of the line AMD FirePro D700, and it still doesn’t match our recommended specs. So if they prioritize higher-end GPUs like they used to for a while back in the day, we’d love to support Mac. But right now, there’s just not a single machine out there that supports it.

Inflammatory or not, Luckey's spot on. Apple's computers are designed around lots of things: multimedia production, battery life, ease of use, etc. They're fantastic computers. I'm writing this article on a MacBook that I love with all my heart.

That said, Apple's computers are literally never built with gaming in mind. Even Apple's most powerful computer, while powerful, cannot run most games. It's not a question of power, but of how that power is directed.

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Bugatti Chiron
Bugatti

Think about it like cars and trucks: you can put 400 horsepower in a small, light car, or you can put it in a massive truck. In each application, that horsepower does dramatically different things. In the case of Apple's most powerful computer, it can do some tremendously heavy lifting. But if that heavy lifting isn't intended for use with gaming, it's meaningless.

And, right now, virtual reality is for gaming.

There's virtual tourism and streaming video and even therapeutic uses, sure, but the hardware powering that stuff is gaming hardware. The same graphics cards powering stuff like dogfighting game "EVE Valkyrie" are helping power educational tools. 

eve valkyrie
Pictured: "EVE Valkyrie," a space dogfighting game coming to the Oculus Rift and PlayStation VR.
CCP Games

Sadly, these graphics cards (GPUs) aren't used in any Apple computers.

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You can't even add them yourself — they're meant for PC only. And even if you could get an Apple computer with a serious gaming GPU, Apple's operating system (OS X) isn't supported by a single VR headset.

On the flipside, Apple's main phone competitor — Samsung — is on the second or third iteration of its phone-powered VR headset, Gear VR. Samsung has a digital storefront, an inexpensive and excellent headset, and a partnership with Facebook-owned Oculus VR, which helps power Gear VR.

To say Samsung is miles ahead of Apple in terms of VR is a dramatic understatement.

Galaxy S7 with Gear VR
William H. Macy stars in a commercial for Samsung's Gear VR headset.
Samsung

There are signs that Apple is aware of the situation.

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Various reports say Apple has hundreds of people working on VR. The company has also hired Doug Bowman, a prominent VR expert, and is buying up companies related to both VR and AR (augmented reality, a technology seen as the next step after VR). 

But in a year that's packed with major VR headset releases from Oculus VR, HTC, and Sony's PlayStation, it's hard to imagine Apple sitting on the sidelines and watching. For now, however, that appears to be the case.

Apple Virtual reality Samsung
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