I'm impressed by the ability of the press to take any new tech idea and spin that into Apple being the latent dark horse that will win the category.<p>Off the top of my head I can think of streaming TV, a physical TV set, AI, and self-driving cars.<p>Is there any evidence Apple has any advantage over the already quite competent, well-funded players who have already demonstrated significant progress in this area?
I love reading paragraphs like this:<p><i>The global market for AR products will surge 80 percent to $165 billion by 2024, according to researcher Global Market Insights. But Apple really has no choice, says Gene Munster, a founding partner at Loup Ventures who covered the company for many years as an analyst. Over time, Munster says, AR devices will replace the iPhone.</i><p>Oh, OK. Glad we've got all that sorted.
There are a lot of skeptical comments in this thread, but remember: Apple has revolutionized past industries like phones and tablets where other competitors failed miserably. A compelling AR product can and will exist eventually, and all this article is saying is that Apple will be competing in the AR field.<p>An aside, but I can imagine AR done right being extremely useful. I love the idea of being able to instantly have access to information on my phone, but it always requires typing or voice input. I could totally see just looking at something and tapping a button triggering a card that says "that thing you're looking at is this."<p>While that's just my dream, I'd much rather see people experimenting with new technologies rather than forgoing it with "Apple can't do X right, how can they do Y?" If anything, it could be because Apple is working on Y that X is taking a backseat for a while.
I just don't see this happening, for a number of reasons related to the way Apple designs hardware - as unobtrusive, natural extensions of what we already do that you can hold but also toss aside as required.<p>And also because most of the "evidence" listed in the article has many other, simpler, uses in Apple's "incremental improvement" juggernaut. They can keep adding minor popular (and less risky) features without building in-your-face solutions that have uncertain acceptance.<p>Bloomberg might well be becoming the new Gizmodo as far as Apple coverage is concerned.
> Run by a former Dolby Laboratories executive, the group includes engineers who worked on the Oculus and HoloLens virtual reality headsets sold by Facebook and Microsoft as well as digital-effects wizards from Hollywood.<p>The entire focus of the article is AR, yet the author classifies HoloLens as a "virtual reality headset". This is sure to be embarrassing when he realizes the size of the gaffe.
I tend to be a skeptic with these types of technology but I must admit I've seen a video of supposed HoloLens footage (and even if it wasn't, it would do as a concept), that made me wonder.<p>This is the video I'm talking about: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mtS_224mKU" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mtS_224mKU</a><p>Now it's super flimsy and everything, but I guess those technologies are best imagined as they would look like if all hardware quirks were solved. I can definitely see a future where, instead of a desktop/laptop/tablet, you put on glasses and see an unlimited amount of virtual, arbitrarily-sized, floating monitors in front of you. Forget the 3D-gimmmicks, even. That alone sounds cool and useful. It's 2030 tech more than 2020 tech, probably, but I can see a future where this works.
I'd rather want a new Mac Pro VR with a $20,000+ price tag. They should make something cool, and not this crippled stuff. Completely new virtual OS with built-in virtual programming language. Etc. Go crazy. Make it so that this is the workspace of the future for every professional. It's been too long that we have had to glimpse through these tiny windows. Break us free.
And how are people supposed to develop for this new technology if they haven't released a Mac pro for nearly 4 years, and graphic card support is well behind Windows?
If you're counting on the iPhone of AR, expect to wait. The state of the art is more at the palm pilot stage.<p>There's too many bleeding edge technologies, both software and hardware related, that have to come together before a sleek and affordable consumer grade device can really be a thing.<p>I look at a company like Magic Leap, and it's disappointing to see how much money has been dumped on them. Now they have to build a consumer grade device to justify their valuation, and I don't think it's possible anytime soon. I think they should be working with a fraction of the capital they've received and be focusing on a killer enterprise app that some industry might be willing to pay $5000 per unit for a clunky and unfashionable device.
People have such a fundamental misunderstanding of Apple's business model. They do not invent—they refine. You won't see Apple release a VR/AR product because they simply haven't been in the market long enough. Their strategy has never been about being the first or even an early mover in a new technology.<p>It has always been about taking technologies which have been on the market for a substantial amount of time and iterating on a version that gets all the small details right until it reaches their very high internal standards for usability. Apple isn't interested in being the first to do something, they're interested in being the first to do something <i>right</i>.
Although I am skeptical that Apple will bring out a good, furnished AR product, I am afraid that they might actually be successful because developers have often showed a good inclination towards making apps for Apple devices, and it is one of the primary reasons why Apple has been really successful in what they do, they have apps. Microsoft's HoloLens uses apps from their Windows Store and those that they made themselves, which is a very big limitation for them, and when both devices are out in public and ready for use, Apple will probably get a much larger influx of apps for their device than other AR/VR products. Even failed Apple devices are good money-makers for Apple, and apps are one of the main reasons for it.<p>The only reason I see Apple failing in the AR and VR field is their lack of data. Apple refuses to save data from their users, and although it is something I admire about them, it is what drives Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence. Google and Microsoft is successful in this area because of the data they collect (via their Search engines and other OS services), which Apple does not. It is one of the reasons why Siri is competitively weaker than it's counterparts on Android and Windows, because it does not have a good data-driven Machine Learning backend, and unless Apple starts changing their policy on the type of data they collect and use from their devices, their AR/VR devices will go the same way, that is they will be successful in the amount of sales they make, but will be the weakest in terms of functionality and services they can provide.
I suppose this is as good a thread as any to again make the claim that I don't think AI will be anything but a toy before AR is mainstream. For whatever reason right now the fashionable thing in tech is to pretend we don't have incredibly sophisticated and powerful meat brains in our heads and the best, most economical, and most feasible way forward is to completely eliminate it from every equation and replace it with silicon. When in truth the melding of silicon (binary) computers is easier and results in something much more powerful (and much sooner) than just silicon.<p>I'm fully aware computers will eventually outpace us. But the economic and human potential of human/computer augmentation is enormous and will likely last decades or even centuries in the "near" term. At some point we'll shed our obsessive fascination with denigrating humans as "old'n'busted" and remember just how incredible people can be.
> While the smartphone will do the heavy lifting, beaming 3D content to the glasses will consume a lot of power, so prolonging battery life will be crucial.<p>The compute required for the AR or VR experience that would satisfy Apple isn't going to happen on battery power. Perhaps the headset can be battery powered and tetherless.
I think the base unit would have to be a new Mac Pro.<p>> Content is key too.<p>Stating the obvious. But less obvious is to define exactly what one means by "Content" in this new realm. Simple things like "games" and "movies" aren't going to attract new customers to the new realm. What I expect from Apple here is a paradigm shift like was the iPhone.
"Baidu goes all in on AI."<p>"Apple is betting on augmented reality."<p>What's next? "Facebook doubles down on human cybernetic enhancement"?
when Apple looks at a technology it means the tech is ripe for mass production.<p>They can see profit here, i'm sure it will be a similar price to existing products, but the price has gone down enough for Apple's type of profit margin.
As an Apple fan, this smells like the Apple car rumours. Moonshot projects to retain talent perhaps?<p>Either way, AR is more suited to Apple than VR, even if more of a technical challenge.
My BMW had a rather rudimentary HUD (they've since gotten a lot better). I think something like that for personal use would be really cool: the ability to look via some glasses or something at an object and see wikipedia snippets or the like. Or turn by turn directions as I walk without looking at a phone, pretty cool.
I think Apple could leverage it's supply chain in this market very well. The product is small, intimate, and needs to work well with a minimalist interface. With the right sort of eye tracking, it could optimize CPU/GPU time only where the user is actually looking.
<i>"The global market for AR products will surge 80 percent to $165 billion by 2024"</i><p>So, current market is $32 billion a year? Where is that market? Mostly military and for professionals, I would guess?
I think Apple's play here should be around making iPhones amazing online clothes shopping devices. I would kill for a way to see how shoes or a shirt would fit before buying them online.
lets have apple get their bread n' butter stuff right first. Like how unplugging a USBC -> Displayport cable causes my macbook to crash requiring a hard boot, several times a day.
I'd honestly be more interested in them focusing on existing products. I'm still skeptical of VR/AR really becoming mainstream. The best AR app so far is what? Pokemon Go?
Apple will likely ship an AR device this year using the tech they've acquired from metaio/primeSense. All signs are indicating an AR-enabled iPhone 8.
Could this be just a decoy strategy from Apple while they work on something more tangible? AR is not a smaller disc or faster processor, AR does not exist - yet - and may very well never exist due to physical constraints (you can not paint black etc).
<p><pre><code> One of the features Apple is exploring is the ability to take a picture and then change
the depth of the photograph or the depth of specific objects in the picture later; another
would isolate an object in the image, such as a person's head, and allow it to be tilted
180 degrees. A different feature in development would use augmented reality to place
virtual effects and objects on a person, much the way Snapchat works.
</code></pre>
Oh come on.<p>I'm completely unimpressed to hear Apple working on AR if that's the best they can do.<p>It's a fabulously hard problem that no one has come close to solving; and to be fair, if they poured R&D $$$ into it, maybe they could make something out of it...<p>...but you know, since I can't use a Vive or Occulus on a mac, because of the ancient ass version of opengl they support, and the ridiculous on going split between vulkan and metal, I'm kind of unimpressed by the weight of their technical prowess at this point.<p>I don't believe it. General consumer AR won't come from Apple.