Apple is holding its last media event this year on Tuesday, November 10, and the consensus among the commentariat is that the prerecorded product presentation will largely focus on the first Apple Silicon-powered Mac computers. Apple’s augmented reality surprise hidden in the “One more thing” invite indeed suggests that Mac notebooks will make the transition first.
To see the hidden Easter egg surprise, simply visit the Apple events webpage at apple.com/apple-events/ in Safari on your iPhone and touch the black Apple logo on the invite. The Easter egg is visible on the iPad, too, but I couldn’t get it to work on my iPad Pro.
Anyway, after a few moments or so, you’ll see an AR preview of the object, allowing you to place the logo on any flat surface in your room, such as a work desk or the floor. You can walk around the virtual object, pinch to make it smaller or bigger and so forth. Just don’t expect to find an Apple Silicon-powered Mac notebook behind the logo.
Awesome! 👌 https://t.co/wYqmE3BpB4
— iDownloadBlog (@iDownloadBlog) November 2, 2020
This has become something of a tradition for Apple, at least in the past two years. Last month’s iPhone 12 event also includes an AR Easter egg embedded in the invite, for example. This is possible thanks to the QuickLook feature in iOS 12 or later which makes it a cinch to preview AR objects in either three-dimensional space or in augmented reality. For those wondering, these AR objects are stored in Pixar’s USDZ format.
Apple in January released a new Mac app, Reality Converter, for working with USDZ and 3D AR files. The Apple website provides a collection of AR objects that you can interact with on your iOS device. Just visit the page in Safari and touch one of the listed objects to enter AR.