Hi All,
Merry Christmas! I’ve been a bit quiet, as I’m going through a particularly busy period at work.
Today I have just a couple of articles that talk a bit about Apple’s AR/VR ambitions. Apple has been noticeably absent from this field whilst Google, Microsoft, and Facebook have been making visible strides.
It looks like Apple is working hard on AR in their own special, secretive way. I certainly look forward to an Apple product entry here, and hope that they manage to re-define the genre in some way. Apple has the sheer scale, financial horsepower, and historical innovation credentials to do something special.
Moving onto the articles, the first is one about Apple acquiring ‘Vrvana’, whose ‘Totem’ headset wowed people at CES 2017.
Secondly, here is a Bloomberg article that gives us a run-down of some presumed Apple progress and targets. The suggestion is a headset around 2019/2020, and the headset will likely be focused on augmented reality (i.e. mixing virtual and real worlds). The most interesting content (in my view) is that Apple is developing their own dedicated system-on-a-chip hardware and also a bespoke AR operating system. This gives me added hope that this is going to be something far beyond a ‘me-too’ entry into this space.
I love Tim’s quote: “Put simply, we believe AR is going to change the way we use technology forever.”
I couldn’t agree more, Tim.