Apple’s Tim Cook says AR and VR are for “connection” and “communication”.

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By Webdesk


At some point in the near future, Apple will launch a mixed reality headset. That seems anything but certain. When exactly and what and how much? All very high in the air. But one thing hasn’t changed: Tim Cook’s take on AR and VR. For nearly a decade, Apple’s CEO has been beating the drum that AR is more important than VR and that AR is fundamentally about bringing people together. And he’s still working on it.

“If you think about the technology itself with augmented reality, just to take one side of the AR/VR piece, the idea that you could overlay the physical world with things from the digital world would improve communication between people and the connection between people can improve tremendously,” Cook said. told GQs Zach Baron in a long and very interesting profile just published by the magazine. Cook told Baron he’s interested in collaborating; he said something about measuring glass walls; he said his thinking about glasses-as-gadget has changed over the years.

Of course, none of this is a product announcement, just the latest in a long line of hints at what Apple sees in this space. Cook has been on this particular line since 2016, when he went on to say Good morning America that AR “gives both of us the ability to sit and be very present, talk to each other, but also have other things – visual – for both of us to see.”

It all lines up with what we know about Apple’s forthcoming headset, which will reportedly cost around $3,000 and will be very “copresence” focused. It’s actually not that different from Meta’s vision of the metaverse, except that Meta seems to envision us all hanging out in purely digital spaces, while Apple hopes to drop digital stuff into our real world. Cook has said on several occasions over the years that AR is a powerful technology for education, that he thinks it will be as common as “eating three meals a day”, and that he thinks AR is as great an idea as the smartphone. But he keeps coming back to the idea that AR should be about bringing people together in the real world, not separating them or transporting them to another universe altogether.

Cook also offered what sounds like an explanation for why the headset, which has been heavily rumored in recent years, has taken so long to come out. “I’m not interested in putting together pieces of other people’s stuff,” he said GK. “Because we want to master the primary technology. Because we know that’s how you innovate.”

“I’m not interested in putting together pieces of other people’s stuff.”

The entire piece is worth reading, covering everything from Cook’s background and salary to his stance on user privacy. (On the last point, Cook again repeats Apple’s party line, basically saying that people trust Apple and that the world is a scary place and everything will be a disaster if you don’t use the App Store. Nothing new there .) Cook doesn’t either. Apparently they don’t do golf carts, which is a nice touch.

Perhaps most revealing in the story is the way Cook explains Apple — or at least explains how he hopes you’ll see Apple. He often talks about Apple’s environmental commitments, its loud fight against “the data industrial complex,” and how Apple tries to help people better relate to technology. (Easily ignoring that Apple may be more responsible for our phone addictions than any other company.) “Because my philosophy is, if you’re looking at the phone more than someone’s eyes, you’re doing the wrong thing.”

Apple, as Cook sees it, doesn’t want to make screens that you can look at instead of being in the real world – it wants to make tools that let you do even more in the real world. In the smartphone era, you could say it often fell on the wrong side of that equation. In the coming mixed reality era, the stakes will be even higher, and Apple will have to get it right.



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