In Apple’s need to stick out from the well-defined mold, it occasionally lands on a design like the iPhone. Other times, the Cupertino, California tech giant debuts the far more perfunctory $3,500 Vision Pro. Then, on other occasions, Apple’s ingenuity hits on some truly wild redesigns for well-established tech, like some of its first designed for stick-like VR controllers. A newly revealed patent details a controller with a stick-like design. Before you land on any childish or lewd descriptions based on the attached images, let’s be charitable and call it a Shake Weight-like design.
Apple’s patent application for a “Handheld Input Device” was first filed in 2023, though the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office made it public Thursday (search for “20250044880” on the USPTO website). As first spotted by AppleInsider, a full system would have included a “head-mounted device and a handheld input device for controlling the electronic device.” Such a controller would include infrared LEDs to help the headset track the controllers. The lanyard would also potentially include motion sensors or haptics.
© Screenshot: USPTOIt’s the kind of kitchen-sink device you’d like to find in patents, especially those made by Apple. Still, it’s not the typical design you get for VR controllers. For one, there are no obvious buttons on any of the diagrams. Most VR controllers, from the Meta Quest to the HTC Vive, include two symmetrical devices with joysticks, triggers, and face buttons for each hand. In Apple’s case, this device would include an accelerometer and other sensors for detecting movement, including rotations, waving, writing, drawing, or “shaking.”
It doesn’t just have to be for VR, which Apple described as “glasses, goggles, or a helmet.” Apple’s patent describes how such a device may work with a smart monitor, a laptop, or a tablet. When stylus designs like the Apple Pencil with depth sensors are as popular as they are, we can’t imagine many actual artists may find it useful. Still, we can’t imagine such a controller would have many applications beyond pointing and shaking when most VR games still require some amount of button inputs for most actions.
This controller seems more aligned with an Apple Pencil than something made for gaming. Some images also show a pencil-like tip attached to one of the controller’s needs. However, the patent does offer some lip service for video games, saying, “the location, orientation, and/or movement of lanyard may be used to interact with virtual objects displayed by head-mounted device, may be used to adjust a setting of head-mounted device, may be used as a video game controller for video game displayed by head-mounted device.”
Considering the hand-tracking capabilities of the Vision Pro, the device doesn’t exactly need a stick-like controller. The issue remains that most software recognizes a limited set of gestures, even the few games that support the platform. Complex gestures aren’t necessary to watch the Vision Pro’s slate of immersive video, but for interactive titles like Marvel’s What If…? An Immersive Story, you’re stuck merely grabbing and pointing.
Late last year reports from Bloomberg hinted that Apple might be working with Sony’s PlayStation to let Vision Pro support the PSVR2 controllers. It would be the first step to allowing some VR titles to play nice with Apple’s visionOS. The next step would be getting games worth playing onto Vision Pro. That’s a taller order than working with any first or third-party controller. Then again, we don’t know how far Apple’s VR ambitions still go. The company reportedly dropped its upcoming AR glasses project at the start of this year.
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English (US) ·