Virtual reality, no doubt, represents the future. There are products on the market that work well. At the low end, stick a phone inside a cardboard rig and you are immersed, slightly, in a low-res, virtual world.

At the higher end, you don headgear that is midway between goggles and a motorcycle helmet, connected by a braid of cables to a box connected to a high-end gaming rig, usually running some version of Windows. Typically, there are special gloves, with built in trigger buttons, as well as sensors deployed on stands to detect movement of your head and hands. You’ll need to clear out some space to move around, especially if you’ll be swinging a sword or punching a monster. And you’ll probably want some friends around, both for camaraderie and to help keep you from knocking over the sensor stands and other items, and to keep you from falling and hurting yourself.

This high end VR is really what VR is all about. Well done VR is truly a breathtaking, magical experience. But by its nature, well done VR is just not portable, and not particularly affordable.

Will these problems be sorted out? Will high end VR come down in price? Of course. But it’s nowhere near that yet.

Two headlines speak to this problem.

First, Facebook is closing 200 Oculus VR Best Buy popups. From the article:

“There’d be some days where I wouldn’t give a demo at all because people didn’t want to,” said one worker at a Best Buy in Texas who asked to remain anonymous. Another worker from California said that Oculus software bugs would often render his demo headsets unusable.

Virtual Reality has not yet found its killer app, and the marketing has not given people a reason to try it out in person. VR is still in an early adopter phase.

Then there’s this story about Magic Leap engineers scrambling to cadge together some kind of demo in time for a major Board meeting. From the story:

The prototype will be presented to board members, and sources say the meeting is being viewed as a milestone in the product’s development — a chance to prove that Magic Leap can shrink its technology to fit inside the smaller form factor that will be released to the public. They say the demo is currently in “decent” shape.

But as recently as January, the glasses prototype that is supposed to represent Magic Leap’s all-in-one product prototype is nonfunctioning and empty, according to people who have seen presentations from Magic Leap.

And:

The Information reported in December that a prototype of the “PEQ” device that Magic Leap’s CEO showed a reporter was hollow, and that the company gave its demos through a headset hooked up to a desktop computer, raising questions about whether Magic Leap’s technology could be sufficiently miniaturized and productized to fulfill the company’s promises.

I love the Magic Leap concept, and I think they will get there. Eventually.

Which brings me to my final point. Apple is not late to this game. Apple does well when the core components for a technology are mature, on the verge of becoming commodities. With the components ready for mass production, Apple builds around that technology, masterfully designing an experience superior to anything already in the marketplace.

My 2 cents? VR will succeed. No doubt. But VR will be ready for the masses when the components are miniaturized to the point where they become portable and can be mass produced. And that’s when Apple’s time will come.

UPDATE: Occurs to me I focused on VR here, when Apple might go straight to AR. But my thinking remains the same. Though augmented reality can be lighter than VR, both are rooted in similar technology, both require significant horsepower. I don’t think the hardware for either is mature enough to judge yet.