Apple’s AR glasses are hiding in plain sight

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A slew of features and language discovered recently inside iOS 13 and 13.1 seem to explicitly confirm the very thing Apple executives have steadfastly refused to acknowledge — an honest-to-Jobs AR headset. In fact, taken in conjunction with acquisitions and patent filings the company has made over the past several years, those hidden features have painted the clearest view yet of Apple’s augmented dreams…

First came StarBoard. At the very beginning of September, a leaked internal build of iOS 13 was found to contain a “readme” file referring to StarBoard, a system that allows developers to view stereo-enabled AR apps on an iPhone. The build also included an app called StarTester to accomplish exactly that… [A] developer got StarTester up and running on a beta of iOS 13.1.

Confirmed, there's no artifacts on Xs/Xr, and whole experience is a lot smoother. It appears that I've launched StarTester mode on my X in spite of all hardware locks:) pic.twitter.com/cAjmmbFbxG

— Slava Gilevich (@__int32) September 20, 2019

How Apple gets from phone-tethered smart-glasses to something a fully realized spatial-computing platform — or how long it takes to do so — remains unclear, but elements of the road map are hidden in plain sight…

MacDailyNews Take: As we wrote earlier this month:

When looking at Apple Tagged objects while wearing Apple Glasses, the U1 chip will be invaluable!

Grocery and every other retail store that wishes to remain in business will be full of Apple Tags. Imagine golfing while wearing Apple Glasses with an Apple Tagged golf holes. Or shooting pool. Or driving past Apple Tagged road signs. Or holding a baseball card. Or touring a city or museum or hiking a wilderness trail. Or running a 5K. Or looking at vehicles on a car lot or rideshares as they arrive to pick you up. Or, through crowd-sharing, precisely locate where that last remaining Cabbage Patch doll is within 25 miles of you on Christmas Eve. “Hey, Siri, find me a Cabbage Patch Doll for sale with 25 miles of me! Buy it and hold it for me, on on my way!” Extrapolate from there.

The Apple Glasses will be the key as holding up slabs of glass as “windows” is suboptimal. When we’re running in a race, for example, we don’t want to have to hold an iPhone or even glance at an Apple Watch, but with a pair of Apple Glasses constantly overlaying time, pace, splits, etc. it’ll be ideal! – MacDailyNews, September 6, 2019

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

Someday, hopefully sooner than later, we’ll look back at holding up slabs of metal and glass to access AR as unbelievably quaint. — MacDailyNews, July 28, 2017

Augmented Reality is going to change everything. — MacDailyNews, July 21, 2017

[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Ladd” for the heads up.]