Report: Apple CEO “cares about nothing else” Than Building Breakout AR Glasses Before Meta
Report: Apple CEO “cares about nothing else” Than Building Breakout AR Glasses Before Meta
This AR obsession is utterly baffling to me. There are so few real applications and the hardware requirements are insane so it's not something that will get widely adapted anyway. Sure in a decade or so it might have matured enough to have shed all these issues, but AR/VR feels like a really out of touch thing to prusue, especially if you look at the garbage ideas they have on how to use it - virtual meetings??
I get movies and games on these, possibly even some recording and porn, but these are not their B2B wet dreams anyway.
In theory, there’s a Million awesome business applications for it.
Let’s say you’re in construction and your glasses tell you exactly what to build where and how.
You’re a waiter and the glasses tell you which table ordered what, needs attention, etc.
You’re a network engineer and the glasses show you on every port which device is connected.
And don’t even get me started on the military applications.
Of course we’re not there yet. But that’s why they’re so obsessed with it. They want to be the first.
Imagine being anyone anywhere whipped like an Amazon worker. Will the waitress have to piss in bottles? Bad for tips I think.
How does the construction app know what needs to be constructed and how?
How does the waiter app know which table ordered what, needs attention, etc?
How does the IT app know on which port every device is connected?
These things are all real hard to know. Having glasses that display the knowledge could be really nice but for all these magic future apps, having a display is only part of the need.
We were already there 10 years ago with Google Glass. Despite its failure in the consumer market, it found significant success in enterprise settings in the exact scenarios you've listed.
Except, all of these are scenarios in blue collar work. Apple seems hell bent on making this succeed in white collar areas with its emphasis on meetings, which is extremely baffling.
How Is Google Glass Doing in Enterprise and Industrial Settings? - Engineering.com - https://www.engineering.com/how-is-google-glass-doing-in-enterprise-and-industrial-settings/
Even lightweight glasses can be irritating and the extra weight from steel v plastic is noticeable. There will never be ar glasses or goggles that are comfortable to wear all the time.
Sounds like a robot would just steal your job if that was implemented well. (And that is a big IF) Meanwhile you would pay off your AR glasses by watching a constant stream of ads for months.
you're a network engineer and the glasses show you on every port which device is connected
Unifi equipment already can sorta do this! The little dot pattern on the screen is an AR code and you can use the app to see this. It's pretty cool actually. I've never actually used it for real work though, I just look at the dashboard on my laptop and find the port that way.
It would be really really cool to be able to just touch the physical port and be able to change the settings in real space with AR glasses though.
The biggest issue is the software and tools are immature, and it's been that way for a while.
This could also be the breakout app for AI. While AR glasses obviously need shape recognition and manipulation, the real world has many many more things than likely to be codified. How do you deal with that? AI. How do you do arbitrary summaries of whatever you’re looking at? AI. How do you interact with the glasses and the real world? Speech recognition and AI.
You heard it here first, folks. Two hot new technologies with no real use yet will find each other and turn into something useful
I’d really just like some glasses that simulate multiple monitors without needing special software. That’s all I want
Yep, and that seems to be the route Apple was going. Screens you can place anywhere in your visual field.
It depends on what you mean by special software, but current VR headsets already do that out of the box, it's just that their built-in multi monitor stuff is not amazing. Without any special software, you could have multiple apps open, and those apps could be any android app(including browsers or relatively bad desktop experiences like dex). The third party stuff you can download or buy is just way better. And it's also way better when the multiple monitors are your computer's monitors. Cuz then they have 50x the horsepower behind them. For current headsets, generally the best option is Virtual Desktop, if you don't need more screens than can be handled by high quality timewarp layers. You can get clear 4k or 5740x1080, or anything smaller. With other multi desktop options, you can get more total screens, but there is no point to picking anything above 1080p since even that is already not rendered clearly.
Solutions for current VR/MR/XR headsets will follow to VR/MR/XR glasses, since headsets and glasses are slowly meeting in the middle. Headsets will continue to shrink while packing in the same or more tech, and the glasses will slowly be able to handle more and more tech in their tiny frames.
There will always be full size headsets, but they will essentially be the PC equivalent to the glasses being the smart phone equivalent. We will also likely still have PCs, but it's concievable that a smartphone won't be necessary for most people anymore. And even for the people that would still want a smartphone, a "processing puck" for the glasses would be the more likely solution. Give them pocket computer level power instead of smart watch level. So you can play good games on them, like 10-15 years ago-then pc game graphics.
This AR obsession is utterly baffling to me.
Exactly, it's literally just the next step more convenient than a smartphone. You know how many people have neck and back problems now from smartphones? Not having to look at your hands or even hold anything in your hands is going to be so much better. Not having to pull your phone out of your pocket for a map or a web search or a text or to translate stuff(visual or audio). Having both hands free while doing the things your current phone does, or new things a current phone can't do.
It's going to be so much nicer, and sure, the first one is gonna be expensive and not perfect, but it only needs nerds to start with anyway. We'll make sure it gets to a point where it doesn't annoy normal people and offers real value. And while the most popular ones will inevitably be the ones made with walled gardens like apple and meta, there will be good ones too for us nerds to move to once we have finished beta testing the mass market ones for you guys.
It's the same as every tech product cycle. You know the main thing preventing wider adoption of VR/MR/XR right now? Headsets don't look cool... so, once they are a pair of glasses, or sun glasses, the main barrier is gone. Can't say people wouldn't spend 500$ to 2000$ on something as un-necessary as a smartphone every couple of years. They very much do. And if you no longer need to buy or carry a smartphone, all of a sudden you got exactly that amount of money in your pocket.
It was in the movies they liked when they were kids. Or at least in the movies they think users want to see brought to reality.
As in an answer to the question "what's cool and futuristic". Solving medieval barbarism and wars is futuristic, but turns out to not be achievable. Same with floating/underwater oceanic cities, blooming deserts, Mars colonies and 20 minutes on train from Moscow to New Delhi. At the same time the audience has been promised by advertising over years that future will be delivered to them. So - AR. For Apple this is the most important part, I think.
Also to augment something you have to analyze it, and if you have to analyze it, you are permitted to scan and analyze it. That's a general point of attraction, I think. They are just extrapolating what led them to current success.
Also in some sense popular things were toys or promises of future for businesses and individuals alike, in the last 10-15 years. The audience is getting tired of toys and promises, while these companies don't know how to make something else.
So let Tim Apple care about anything from AR in front of him to apples in his augmented rear, he surely knows what he wants. As another commenter says, a source of instructions and hints for a human walking drone is one, with visualization. I'm not sure that's good, because if you can get that information for the machine, having a human there seems unnecessary. And if that information is not reliable enough, then it may not improve human's productivity and error rate.
And the most important part is that humans learn by things being hard to do, it's like working out in an exoskeleton, what's the purpose? And if training and work are separated here, then it seems more effort is spent in total. Not sure.
A Quest 3 isn't "insane." It does AR just fine for a few hundred bucks. There ARE real world applications and more coming all the time. The education and medical fields in particular can benefit greatly from such tech.
Sure in a decade or so it might have matured enough to have shed all these issues
That's the point. They want to set themselves up so that when the issues are shed and it becomes a realistic product, they're already in a place where their product can be the one that takes over the market. If you wait until a product is viable before starting on development, you're too late.
What should they be pursuing now? They have state of the art chips, tablets, phones, laptops and even all in one desktops, the only thing they don't have are TV's, at this point why not try to conquer the next frontier. even if it takes a decade?
Maybe it’s as simple as the next big product. When smartphones were new, nobody foresaw just how huge they’d become. Nobody could have foreseen what a force they’d turn Apple into. But now improvements are simply iterative, the market is nearing saturation, there’s not much room left to expand what’s next?
Maybe AR. It’s a really cool technology just now becoming practical to implement. Think of them as where smartphones were 15 years ago. Maybe they won’t go anywhere but imagine if they did! Imagine being the company most associated with the next hit tech product!
Apple risks stagnating if they don’t find a next hit product
It's been over a decade since the oculus rift came out and there hasn't been much improvement.
Agree on all that. In addition, headsets would become so very unhealthy if they took off. Just imagine the addictiveness of phones combined with the sedentary qualities of TV, with both dialed up to 11. People's vision would get all fucked up, and they would start dying on their couches plugged in. It’s simply not a vision for the future that has any legs.
Being able to keep a screen in front of the user at all times is the goal. This is one step closer to replacing the eyes Cyberpunk style.
This is why Siri and Apple Intelligence is so important to Apple, getting away an actual keyboard will make this more addicting. They can decide what to show you before you even start thinking about it!
Corporations would love being able to not only know where you are at all times, but now they have the tech to see exactly what you see!
it’s not that complicated, the goal is to create another hit product that everyone wants like the ipod and iphone.
They already did this with Google glass and failed spectacularly. There is no market for this. Nobody is wishing they had computer glasses. It is something being forced onto consumers for the benefit of apple and it will not work.
You'd think with the massive failure of their apple vision they'd have learned this lesson already.
There's a gag in Futurama about ads being displayed in your dreams. If that were possible they'd be doing that, but right now they're settling for just the waking hours.
If only Siri could understand what I say
I have turned off any assistant app in any of my devices. It would be easier and a lot of times faster just typing out what I need.
That’s ok, I’ll just disagree with their Terms of Service!
Next courageous Apple creation:
Such a prescient episode.
What is this
It's a still frame from Star Trek The Next Generation, episode The Game
The plot is a wearable device that is an AR "glasses" game that as you play the game it "makes you feel good" gets used to take over the Enterprise so terrorists can hijack it.
At the time I imagine it was intended to be part of anti-drug campaigns with the AR and companies curating what you see to distract from reality angle/sentiment being more relevant today
Good, I wanna see Apple flop just like Meta's VR nonsense did.
How is Quest a flop? Or are you talking about something else?
Bot quest and ray band products are huge success dominating their respective markets.
I really wish people were more serious about these markets so it can be done well from the get got rather than starting to be fixed and regulated 2 decades later.
I think the fundamental problem with the AR glasses is something that can't be overcome.
I think its easy to see the utility to owning a pair of glasses that look good and provide real time information as desired for what you are looking at or hearing.
HOWEVER, I think very few people will want the product these co.panies will make. This will be a method to throw ads literally in front of your eyeballs. Enshitification is too big of a thing now and so any new product is tainted by the expectation it will rapidly turn to garbage at a high price to you.
Also, while we may think we can be trusted, we dont trust anyone else having all that info, I dont like the obvious privacy implications that these can present. Filming with them is also terrifying.
So, just to be clear, that 'something that can't be overcome' is.. checks notes capitalism?
It does ruin most things doesn't it? 😮💨
You might be giving people too much credit here because the same things could be said about a lot of products and services that have come out over the last 10 years
😆 And here I was think I wasn't giving anyone any credit. I just proclaimed none of us could be trusted!
Yeah my best guess is that at most these will at best lead to homebrew and specialist uses. For example I have to wear glasses my astigmatism is rather severe so contacts don't work, so if I could attach a small projector to my glasses and put my phones display onto it I would have so many uses.
And I care zero about ever purchasing those things.
I’d be interested to hear from the youngest generation (15-20 YO) to hear if they care about this at all.
I’m approaching 50 years old and had been an early adopter most of my adult life. Growing up from the 1980s through 2000s, there was a near-mainstream narrative that we were living in a unique era of emerging technologies. It was exciting and we were anxious for anything new.
It seems to me that nothing is really new and there is nothing exciting, if not interesting, about technology today.
I’ve actually been stripping down the technology from my life as it’s become too distracting to get things done and has prevented personal growth and the formation of memories. For one example, I recently subscribed to a print magazine because I prefer a tangible object that I can associate with in and of itself (and choose to own and collect).
Looking at analog trends like vinyl records and film photography and cassette tapes, it seems like people are at least trying to incorporate tangible objects into a modern lifestyle. Then you have the trend of the dumb phones which indicate people are becoming more aware of the detriments caused by an always connected lifestyle. Thankfully, some car manufacturers are returning buttons to their cars in response to owner feedback about everything being a touch screen.
I mean, I’m not a multi-trillion dollar organization with different departments studying the feasibility of future products but I do wonder if something like AR glasses are already more of our past than our future.
I think there’s a more than reasonable desire for a device to help you through your day - especially in foreign countries. But do you think you want that to be glasses or something else?
Lastly, this reminds me of the prediction from Michio Kaku in Physics of the Future about augmented reality contact lenses. Should we at least accept AR glasses as first step towards contact lenses? Do you think society would accept these 20-40 years in the future?
i am somewhere around it, and i think the best part about AR glasses is we don't have to buy monitors,
when i used to be 15 couple of years ago i also fantacized about the asthetics of 80's after watching many 80's animation films, there was just something about them ,although i wasn't alive during that period.
i am personally more excited about fdvr, i hope we have it in 25 years, but i don't think we will
It seems to me that nothing is really new and there is nothing exciting, if not interesting, about technology today.
There is the massive infiltration of personal privacy to surveil everyone for whatever reason that is currently deemed acceptable, so there is that - smh
Yeah welcome to the club 😅, it feels we maxxed out the usage of computers, so what now?
Real life comeback maybe?
I'm in that age range and while I enjoy VR (VRchat is one of my most played games), I think at a certain point AR is "going too far". The current AR technology in the quest 3 is nice, good enough I don't need more. Being able to watch vids on a big screen anywhere in my house is enough.
Apple and meta though I think they want an all encompassing device that you wear all the time that replaces the phone, and thats a step too far. People already spend enough time on there phones when uts a single tiny screen, I don't think it would be good for attention spans to be able to spawn in infinite floating windows at any time.
You can kinda already have 6 floating windows on the quest 3 which is too much stimulation for a single person and I don't think its good for society to have this. I think if it can get a form factor similar to glasses (which I doubt is possible), people will buy it and get addicted.
Current day vr is like the polar opposite of the future AR that they want anyways. VR games force you to only focus on the current thing, because you are in the game, can't alt tab or look at your phone while in loading screens or watch youtube while gaming. This kinda forces you to do it in moderation.
There are a lot of things at Apple that I, as the paying customer, would rather Cook care more about than AR/VR boondoggles.
...to play breakout.
Arcanooooid!!!
Guess what Tim Apple? No one wants them just like no one wanted your stupid headset that I honestly can't even remember what it was called.
Well I do want this, augmented/virtual reality is exactly the kind of shit I dreamt about as a kid during the 90's, and having a huge screen available anywhere I go is pretty fucking cool.
But yeah, I used a VR headset exactly once for like 5 minutes, and there's no way in hell I'd buy one from meta or apple. If Valve releases good XR/AR glasses I might consider it.
I love VR and have multiple devices but the platforms are still really bad. There's so much jank amplified by all of the greed by Apple and Meta. For example on Apple's VR device you can't have multiple users - they were so greedy that they thought they'd sell multiple devices per household.
Can't wait for Valves Deckard or whatever next VR project they're working on. Steamdeck is everything a handheld should be and if they can finally nail that in VR it would be awesome.
why? AR has always been superior to VR in terms of technology. i had hopes googles and later microsofts demo a few years back would take off but the tech just couldn't find a niche market to hold onto and its just taken a backseat because it isn't as gimmicky and easy to market to a ready-to-burn-money demography as VR (gaming). AR has actual real-life every-day application. as long as Apple does it well, competitors will follow, and as they do, we'll actually be able to use it one day.
But you're going to get a lot of people who don't want to be around Glassholes as all AR includes a camera.
I think they called it “iSee”.
It's the smartwatch bullshit all over again.
1 in 10 have one
9 in 10 don't care and never did
Wdym lol smartwatches are everywhere now.
1 in 10 is still a lot of people. That's like every redhead you know territory.
Luigi :)
This is just another attempt to capture even more control over our attention - advertising everywhere. Of course Apple wants it
Classic Tim Apple.
I feel like it's a CEO's job to care about all aspects of the company he is supposed to lead.
Nope. Only profit.
tim (is) cook(ed)
nobody on this planet is more qualified to navigate the oncoming global operational tsunami. doesn't mean he's an engineering visionary, or knows how to build the machines that build the machines.
I would love to have a good pair of ar glasses to play games on my Steam Deck with. Connect a controller, and not have to hold up the heavy Deck itself.
But given Apple's propensity for walled gardens and lock-in, and Meta putting manipulative spyware into everything they make, these hypothetical glasses won't be coming from either of those companies.
I've got prosaspoagnosia, I just want them to display little name tags under the faces of people that I know.
Look into Xreal glasses.
Boringgggg, do another trick apple.
Right? Where's the Apple Car already?
Anything that will create jobs, help people and the planet. Fuck everything else.
Does anyone even want AR glasses? I don't.
yes, not from apple though. That's a guarantee they would be useless for a tinkerer
id get them if they were from framework or something and ran some open sourced AR software
I mean, maybe of ots done well. I have the meta raybans and love them, mainly because I can listen to music as if I had earphones in, and talk on my phone with them, record, and take videos.
If it had a UI to select options and could display info too, that would be pretty sick imo.
I'm curious what drives you to record videos using the glass. As opposed to a phone/camera, the POV is very restricted as you cannot move vertically (unless kneel/crawl and look up/down ofc). So I'm sure it cannot be called a replacement to a traditional phone/camera.
So what is your motivation to use it ?
Came to ask the same thing. Who is demanding this?
A reality distortion field that seperates a person from the real world? What could go wrong?
It's about as dystopian as it gets.
You don't have to strap the internet to someone's face to distort their reality with it, as demonstrated by... Well, gestures broadly
It's taxing imagining everyone naked all the time. I'm at least looking forward to technology doing that for me.
Just a part of my fear.
Honestly, this is probably the next game changing tech. There are lot of uses for AR. Size, style, and battery life are probably the biggest issues to overcome.
With the exception for extremely niche stuff like surgery (and they won't use off the shelf AR anyways) what's your usecases to bring AR to the masses?
Boring everyday stuff like reading notifications without pulling out your phone, watching videos on public transit, watching a tutorial while working on a project, reading a recipe while cooking, navigation, watching whatever people watch when they get high, text magnification for folks who need it…
I think this is a case where the imagination is much, much better than the reality.
For the mobilization of technology, miniaturization has had a lot of benefits, not just in the technology, but in the accessibility. Having a desktop computer instead of a mainframe was huge. It brought the computer to the home. Laptops becoming viable was huge again. It untethered the computer from the wall. For most of the planet, we're still in the midst of the massive leap that is smart phones. It put a computer in the pocket of billions of people.
Beating that is hard. Smart phones are the most accessible, most powerful devices most end users have ever used. We take that for granted, and we take the time it took to get there for granted. It took 25 years of desktops to get real, decent laptops (personally, I'd say mid 90s). It took 25 of laptops to get real, decent smartphones (again personally, I'd say ~2010ish).
Like it or not, we have another decade to go probably before the technology is there for the next evolution in personal computing. But the problem we have really is that there's not another leap as far as accessibility is concerned. Smart phones work places where laptops can't. Laptops work places where desktops can't. Desktops work places where mainframes can't. Smart phones can work anywhere. Taking the computer from the datacenter, to the home, to your backpack, to your pocket is huge. Is the next step from the pocket to your wrist? To your face? Is it worth it? Is it really that much better?
They're not trying to solve the next 'where you can compute' problem. Smartphones can already be used anywhere. They're solving the 'when' problem and there are lots of times that a phone can't be used.
Lots of people see the 'when can I compute' optimal solution to be anytime. Think of all the places people bring cameras. That's where they'd love to have a computer. An HMD can do that if it gets small enough
This guy is so behind the curb. Doesn't he know that the latest fad is NFTs and blockchain AI?
AR goggles and AI: two hot technologies that go great together. They need each other
I don't want ads thrown into my eyeballs. So that's a big no from me.
I agree with you fully. It's a sad state that we can't even imagine wearable glasses tech without invasive ads
I'd be a little more enthused if both companies main goal from this wasn't to make us work while wearing them.
This seems like a tech that would be hard to get right? There are a lot of trade-offs involving cost, weight, resolution, processing, battery life, etc.
For my part, I would probably use AR features rather sparingly to maintain my sanity, but they could be very useful in certain narrow applications. Whether these would be sufficient to justify the price tag is uncertain. I also tend to be rough on glasses, so that would be a worry.
The most useful applications I can think of that would run permanently (while wearing them) would be stuff like name tags for people if you are forgetful, labeling roads in front of you with their names or maybe the destinations in that direction at an intersection and similar low intrusiveness applications. Certainly nothing that could be considered a killer application.
Yeah, I suppose they could also be useful for translation when travelling someplace where you can't read the language, provided it's reasonably accurate and not too laggy?
In terms of occasional use, I was thinking they could be good for loading speeches or music/lyrics when you're up on a stage. But while that seems like it ought to be a fairly trivial feature to implement, as both a software developer and performer, I could see this being more challenging than you think to get a good experience out of that sort of app.
I'd prefer a Mandalorian helmet with a removable physical display inside. OK, walking in such a helmet is a bit weird. But better than bigass glasses, since a helmet can at least be supported with something on your shoulders, have weight and pressure distributed better.
add those to a long line of things no one asked for or will buy, like tablets, ipods, and the metaverse.
Are you actually trying to say no one bought iPods or tablets?
iPod's were literally the hottest piece of tech in the world in their heyday
Yeah, ipods wasnt the best example for me to use. the world was supposed to be taken over by tablets and they came and went. And the metaverse. And google glasses. It seems like futurists get it wrong a lot. And I think apple's glasses will inevitably fit in there too.
Screens are stale and old from a product managers perspective but they do the job better than glasses probably ever will. I will furusit predict myself that glasses will ultimately fail to be adopted.
Mega fail inbound.
They would have to be so good to be what these guys want them to be and the technology is just not there yet.
so, the iPhone 17 gonna be the same again then
They would have been done by now but they're still figuring how to throttle the batteries from afar so folk'll have to buy new and improved ultra next-level glasses after their current pair "dies".
