“Earlier this year, video emerged of a new iPhone feature, long before it was released,” Andrew Griffin reports for The Independent. “It showed the phone creating a magical portal in the middle of a city street. And now that’s arrived.”
“The feature is the kind of world-changing technology that’s on a par with the introduction of the iPhone 10 years ago, Tim Cook tells The Independent,” Griffin reports. “And Apple is standing at the front of it, he says – as another, perhaps more literal, aspect of its long-standing mission to make the world better and a bit more magic.”
“And Apple believes it will be huge. Cook says that it will end up not simply being used by some kinds of people but for ‘everyone;’ like the App Store when it launched, it might not be huge right now, but AR will go on to have the same ‘dramatic’ climb to take over the world that did,” Griffin reports. “Every developer that creates apps for the iPhone can now use those features, and with an ease that has allowed them to pull together stunning virtual worlds in just a few weeks. That means that Apple can ‘plant a lot of seeds,’ says Cook, and since there’s 15 million or so developers in the world then at least some of those seeds will grow into the stunning, flowering app ecosystem of the future.”
Think back to 2008, when the App Store went live. There was the initial round of apps and people looked at them and said, ‘this is not anything, mobile apps are not going to take off.’ And then step by step things start to move. And it is sort of a curve, it was just exponential – and now you couldn’t imagine your life without apps. Your health is on one app, your financials, your shopping, your news, your entertainment – it’s everything. AR is like that. It will be that dramatic. — Apple CEO Tim COok
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Yes, it will.
Augmented Reality is going to change everything. — MacDailyNews, July 21, 2017
The impact of augmented reality cannot be overstated. It will be a paradigm shift larger than the iPhone and the half-assed clones it begat. — MacDailyNews, August 4, 2017
SEE ALSO:
iOS 11 ARKit augmented reality apps now appearing at Apple’s App Store – September 18, 2017
Apple ARKit to usher in an intriguing, amazing new world – August 31, 2017
Major developers reveal Apple ARKit apps ahead of iOS 11 release – August 29, 2017
Apple working on several prototypes of AR glasses – August 4, 2017
Apple’s next big move: Augmented reality – August 3, 2017
Apple’s rumored new glasses will be an even bigger deal than the iPhone – July 28, 2017
Apple smart glasses are inevitable – July 28, 2017
New app using Apple’s ARKit lets iPhone recreate 16 weeks of painstaking rotoscoping on the fly – July 27, 2017
Gene Munster: Apple Glasses will soon outshine the iPhone – June 28, 2017
Gene Munster: Expect Apple smart glasses in mid-2020 – June 27, 2017
Augmented Reality: Apple’s revolutionary offering leaves Google’s Android woefully behind – June 26, 2017
Apple’s AR is much closer to reality than Google’s – June 26, 2017
UBS: Apple may eventually launch ‘iGlass’ smart glasses – June 20, 2017
IKEA’s forthcoming Augmented Reality furniture app powered by Apple’s ARKit – June 19, 2017
Apple’s single most important WWDC 2017 announcement: ARKit – June 11, 2017
Apple CEO Cook discusses philosophy behind HomePod, ARKit’s potential market impact – June 6, 2017
Overnight, Apple will own the world’s largest augmented reality platform – June 7, 2017
Analysts: Apple’s Corning investment hints at AR glasses and wireless charging tech – May 14, 2017
Apple awards Corning $200 million in first Advanced Manufacturing Fund investment – May 12, 2017
Leaked document details Apple employee eye injuries, hints at Apple AR glasses – April 20, 2017
Apple began working on augmented reality glasses more than a year ago, sources say – March 27, 2017
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “Fred Mertz,” “Dan K.,” and “Peter K.” for the heads up.]
Meh!
Somebody explain to me why AR will be so earth shattering. I’m not seein it.
Why is holding your phone out in front of you with pictures under glass that overlay stuff onto the world so revolutionary?
I can see pratical applications like Ikea shopping and projecting furniture into your room, but even tjat has its limits.
I imagine walking down the street and seeing potentially infinite amounts of information about everything you see, names of streets, building, x-ray floor plans, the closest bathroom 🙂 air quality, location-specific news, history, maybe ways to see historical photographs overlayed over the new space, and of course deeper down the rabbit hole, facial recognition that tells you people’s names, social profiles… Given the advances in cameras I think the potential is unlimited, it’ll come down to data available, bandwidth, processing power and willingness of developers to make it work.
And seeing all of this through special glasses will probably be more compelling than holding your phone up all the time. Apple will probably release a wearable product like this in a few years.
I understand this. But the problem is this: the user will have to hold their phone out in front of them. You think it’s bad now how pedestrians are distracted texting and walking streets, etc.
This problem is like the problem with VR: VR has struggled because it requires people to put on big goggles. A similar issue here, but this AR/smartphone thing is in ways more inelegant and crude: holding a phone out in front of your face.
I don’t see it. I don’t see this being a revolution like it’s being made out to be. I see it as another feature of the smartphone that has some use cases.
At the very least AR still shows people what’s around them (though certain apps insert things that block the field of view). I wonder if anyone has studied the Pokemon Go craze in terms of how many people were injured or died while playing. That’ll probably give us an idea of what effect AR will have on societies.
As no one else has explained anything other than a nerdy sci-fi fantasy to you: for the average person, AR simply isn’t. It’s been around awhile, just like VR, and for most people, the actual, useful practical applications are very limited. It makes simple tasks more complex and provides exactly nothing (other than ‘cool effects!) that isn’t already available on your device. If you are over the age of 14 or not a tech geek/engineer, the appeal is probably pretty small, the novelty wears off quickly. I don’t have the foggiest idea why the people at Apple have decided it’s THE FUTURE, but so it goes. I’d really like to think they are more creative than this, but Apple is a very different beast these days.
this is a better tim. not that the other one who uses apple’s good karma like currency to fight those little holy wars was so bad ..i mean, they’re good and worthy causes to be sure, i just like the tim who’s more interested in visionary stuff like opening portals into other worlds.
As a time traveller, aren’t you sometimes tempted to slip some advice to Tim? Nothing major.. just advise him to read my emails to Apple. There is still time for him to dodge a bullet or two, if he listens to me. Spoiler: kick Eddy Cue’s ass.
well, no, that would violate the natural order of things. i did see the september presentation at the steve jobs theatre and was struck by a contrast in elegance when apple’s lavishly and meticulously crafted tech creations were described by mr eddy who had managed to create for himself a kind of visually impoverished cinematic catwalk, like a calvin klein runway and vagrancy motif. don’t get me wrong, i like a strong theme. i just thought it was contrasty.
I haven’t yet seen any AR apps that can change the world but I might just be short-sighted. AR doesn’t even seem to yet be used as an iPhone selling point so the Apple’s AR advantage may not be all that obvious to consumers. I can only hope Tim Cook and Apple have some sort of a plan to leverage AR but I can’t imagine what it is. I honestly don’t see AR selling more iPhones but I could certainly be wrong about that. I’ll give it six months and hope developers can really do something with AR on iOS.
You’ll have to give it a lot longer than six months. It took years for apps to take over our devices. And for a long time lots of people made comments similar to yours.
I think that, yes, you are being short-sighted.
The app example above is an excellent illustration where people just didn’t see the potential.
Another example is the complete failure of numerous huge and powerful companies to realize what Steve had done… most notably and with great amusement at the memory – Monkey Boy.
Some more science fiction in your youth might have been good. 🙂
The example of buying a sofa by AR can be done with a color correct photograph and a tape measure.
However, what about this? AR helping firemen rescue people in a burning, smoke filled house. (But what about privacy- do you want to give very detailed information about your house to the government? )
AR could be used by Firemen, carpenters, plumbers, etc. that may require immediate knowledge of where powerlines, pipes and weight bearing walls are in a structure. AR could be used in medical from a guide for nurses in inserting needles to surgeons using MRI scans overlayed over the patient to better locate the area being worked on. In factories AR could be used to guide workers’ in the steps required or updates on current status of parts. Warehouses could use AR to quickly identify items on palettes w/o a handheld scanner. Outside of consumer use, AR can be used effectively for many tasks.
As for giving detailed info about your house to government, unless you are in a single standing house (and even then) I think structural plans are part of City records. They won’t know the contents of your home but most definitely have a floor plan assuming proper channels were used during construction/modification/remodeling.
Wow, do I not care what Tim Cook thinks about my world. Nor do I intend to follow him blindly into the forest. :/