In January this year, a report by Financial Times suggested that Apple has a team secretly working on virtual and augmented reality gear in a budding challenge to Facebook’s Oculus Rift and Microsoft’s HoloLens.
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ABC News reported that Apple CEO Tim Cook expressed his belief that he sees a more promising future for Augmented Reality than Virtual Reality.
Cook said augmented reality allows users to sit and be very present, taking to others and socially interacting, while a new visual world is available for all to see. “Less people will be interested in that, but there are some really cool areas there for education and gaming that we have a lot of interest in”. Tim Cook said both technologies are incredibly exciting but in his view, augmented reality is the larger of the two. Well, in a sense, Augmented reality actually does hold more water as you can develop applications and games that superimpose digital imagery over real life videos.
Google and Apple are investing heavily in both AR and VR, but there haven’t been any major successes yet despite a lot of chatter due to the current level of “hardware and display technology and the lack of content”. VR, on the other hand, is more closed off, Cook said.
Sensors know when you’re listening to music and play automatically, while a “double-tap” lets you adjust volume and soundtracks.
Virtual reality does not depend on the real world and has been used for innovating in the media. Tim Cook’s plans for Apple are not just limited to smartphones, smartwatches or even smart TVs.
Cook defended the new iPhone is the best one Apple has ever created and added its performance was “killer”.
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When Apple unveiled its AirPod wireless headphones, the big concern was that they’d fall out and get lost. “I think there’s a tendency in this industry to call everything new ‘the next computer platform.’ However, that said, I do think AR can be huge”, Cook said.
