At WWDC, Apple will lay out the blueprint for mixed-reality ‘killer apps’

Apple’s oft-rumored mixed-reality headset, which the company is expected to reveal at WWDC on June 5th, “is likely to accelerate the adoption of augmented reality — and the broader phenomenon of ‘mixed reality,’ which encompasses full-immersion virtual-reality headsets that completely occlude a person’s vision,” Christopher Mims writes for The Wall Street Journal

Designer Marcus Kane's conception of Apple’s mixed reality headset (via Behance)
Designer Marcus Kane’s conception of Apple’s mixed reality headset (via Behance)

Christopher Mims for The Wall Street Journal:

Just as personal computers and then smartphones were once exotic and now both teach and distract us daily, augmented reality is coming for how we interact with the digital and physical worlds.

Apple has a chance to succeed where others have failed… The key to Apple’s success — or failure — will be its ability to mobilize not just its fanatical, and growing, fan base, but also an army of developers, to make apps and services for its headset the way they have for its other devices.

Motivating those developers will require that Apple demonstrate what has so far been lacking for mixed reality: a blueprint for “killer apps” that will be so compelling that early adopters plunk down for this and future Apple headsets.

Organizing a file system spatially is just one idea, of course—there’s every reason to believe that, just as humans have learned to use charts, graphs, spreadsheets and countless other systems for displaying and manipulating information in two dimensions, we might someday feel just as at home accomplishing the same tasks in three.

MacDailyNews Take: Humans are born to perceive and operate in a three dimensional environment. That’s why we have two eyes, horizontally arranged, 62 millimeters apart on average. All of this 2D, flat on a display work is an adaptation due to limitations of the technology of the times. Give us a 3D way of doing things and there’s very little adaptation required, just slap on the headset — and, eventually, glasses; then contacts, then brain implants — and finally get to work naturally.

Apple’s smartgoggles will be cool, but it’s the subsequent Apple smartglasses that will change the world.MacDailyNews, July 11, 2022

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

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6 Comments

  1. Apple will do well with this but the world is rapidly adopting AI, which Apple has dropped the ball on. This device would be ideal for a responsive, accurate, voice-based assistant. Siri is not up to the challenge, maybe ChatGPT can be jailbroken into it?

    1. How do you know? Apple isn’t Microsoft or Google, who will divulge all, even if it isn’t finished, and doesn’t work, Apple even if it has something going on in the background isn’t gonna say anything until they have something that the public can actually use.

      1. Because Apple is visibly behind the competition in AI. Google’s assistant has been far ahead of Siri for years and even they’re behind Microsoft now. Apple does NOT have breakthrough AI tech, maybe they can catch up in a year by spending tons more money than they otherwise could have. We would have at least had a hint of it by now, instead Siri is becoming increasingly irrelevant. “I don’t have an answer for that” or “I can show you some web results” are THE most common answer to complex questions. Fu#king embarrassing.

      2. Apple wishful thinking and mind numbing mumbo jumbo. Look at reality for a change. They have nothing and your comment is nothing. When Siri bests Alexa and others, then we’ll talk about Apple’s rosy HIDDEN future…

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