Along with announcing the tenth year anniversary edition iPhone X and the iPhone 8 / 8 Plus, Apple also spent a lot of time on stage, during the iPhone launch, talking about ARKit. That Apple CEO Tim Cook is betting big on augmented reality, is a well-known fact. With ARKit, Apple hopes to get more developers onboard to ensure that the AR tech matures fast and a lot of people have access to it.
Apple CEO Tim Cook. AFP
In an interaction with The Independent, Cook took many questions around AR. But when asked about a possible AR smart glasses which would take advantage of the ARKit, Cook was not very forthcoming. However, Cook did say that the technology to create a pair of AR-ready smart glasses in a quality way, does not exist today.
"But today I can tell you the technology itself doesn't exist to do that in a quality way. The display technology required, as well as putting enough stuff around your face — there's huge challenges with that. The field of view, the quality of the display itself, it's not there yet," said Cook.
He also reiterated that Apple was not concerned with being first to market with such a product, but would rather wait till it had the best product in the segment. He also mentioned that whatever you saw on the market now, would not be to the satisfaction of the vast majority of people because of technicallogy limitations.
Google tried it with the Glass, but we never saw a commercial rollout of the same. Having said that Google is developing Glass for industrial use cases.
According to MacRumors, there were speculations about Apple working on a pair of AR smart glasses and had experimented with many prototypes. Back in 2016 we had heard of Apple hiring people to work on its secret VR project and later in 2017 there were rumours of Apple having partnered with Carl Zeiss to make AR smart glasses. But Cook's statement to the newspaper means that Apple-branded smart AR glasses are just that — rumours.
There are quite a few ARKit supporting apps on the App Store. Some such as the IKEA app, let you stand in your living room and place furniture around you at scale to give you an idea how it would look. Another app such as Human Anatomy Atlas 2018 let you study the human anatomy in all its detail, letting you use your phone to manoeuvre around vital organs so you have a better understanding of their functioning. Then there are lot of games that can be played on a tabletop.
According to Cook, shopping will undergo a huge transformation thanks to AR and he thinks that no industry would be left untouched. Cook said that Apple wanted to create an environment and give the hardware ability to its devices for AR to thrive.
"The way that you get lots of great ideas is for us to do the heavy lifting of the complexity of locational things and software, and put those in the operating system. And then you have all the developers that are able to put their energy into their passion," said Cook.
Published Date: Oct 11, 2017 07:16 am | Updated Date: Oct 11, 2017 07:16 am
