Apple Vision Pro
Apple · 2017–2022
Apple Vision Pro is a computer you wear on your head. I worked on the parts you touch, like the knob you turn and press, and on the frames that hold those parts in place.
- 20 granted US patents
- 15 separate inventions some inventions carry more than one patent
- 55 months on the founding product design team October 2017 to May 2022
Twenty US patents were granted under the name Muhammad F. Hossain, all assigned to Apple.
Six of them come from this project: a crown, sensors that check where the headset is sitting on a face, a frame that holds a display in front of an eye, and a way to track where a wrist is.
Getting a knob or a button from an idea to a factory takes three stages.
First, concept. How has this been made before, and by whom. How it should feel in a hand. You build fast and rough here. Foam, tape, a printed knob on a bench rig. You hand it to a person and you watch their hand. Most ideas fail at this stage.
Second, iterate. The design gets sharper and you learn who it is for. Now the knob needs a step you can feel through a glove, a seal against dust, and years of turning without going loose. It has to work when every part around it arrives a little big or a little small.
Third, production. You hand it to a factory and they build thousands of it.
A sliding latch kept jamming. The ramp that guides the bolt was flat. On the bench, pushed straight on, it slid in fine. In a real hand it never went in straight, and at an angle it stuck. I found the fix on my own front door. That bolt is curved, so it meets the metal plate on the door frame the same way at any angle. I curved the bolt on the latch and the jamming stopped. I look at what is already around me before I draw something new.
Most of the work is still confidential.