Tim Cook on Augmented Reality: 'What It Will Be, What It Can Be, I Think It's Profound'

[ConfusedChris]

I’ve thought of the killer app!
It’s by iFixit and it shows you the parts of the disassembled iPhone X on your desk.
Things are about to get recursive.

 

[ke-iron]

AR just feels like a gimmick right now, hopefully that changes. Maybe as we start to see more practical uses of it rather than just underwhelming mobile games.

You guys lack serious imagination if all you can think of the use of AR is video games.

 

[citysnaps]

God, the people here would undoubtably have dismissed that new fangled invention, the motor car in 1900... Slow, breaks down, etc. Or even the net in the early 1970s, very slow, unreliable, why not just use the phone to communicate...

Apple by simplifying the programming and making a huge potential market available is providing the seed for that future genius invention of AR. That invention can't happen before Apple provided that opportunity. Like the Iphone then App store led to everything that followed.

Allow devs to experiment, test the market, test their skills and potentially make money will drive innovation.


There will be 99% idiotic apps in the next year, but 1% of them will be great and a few will be fantastic and the source of riches and inspiration for future use. That's how it has always been. This will lead to eventual explosion of the industry... I'd guess 2-3 years max as Android phones with the same capability also come on line in great numbers.

The fun thing is right now, nobody knows what will be the killer AR/VR app or function. If we knew, we'd build it and be rich. It will emerge organically in an unusual way as most of those techs do.

Yes... Spot-on. Nice seeing someone else who gets the immense potential of AR (outside of Apple, of course) in a mobile phone.

I'm seeing the same lack of imagination and curiosity similar to when the first iPod and first iPhone were introduced 10+ years ago. It really is astonishing...

It's almost as if some are desperately fighting to keep their minds firmly closed, keeping their imagination at bay, making sure fresh aren't able to sneak in.

 

[hawkeye_a]

AR..... I haven't seen (or imagined) any "must have" feature which would incorporate this kind of tech.

I'm mildly curious about what plans Apple might have, but I suspect Tim is barking up the wrong tree. (ie it's not as big a deal as he's making it out to be IMHO)

 

[HiRez]

Tim really is a master of talking but saying nothing.

 

[Sill]

Those quarterly reports say the opposite. Cook is doing an amazing job and most definitely is not clueless. I believe Cook has a very good eye for the future.

He is an amazing operations guy, I'll give him that. But he's not a product guy, and he lacks a direction for the company. Right now he's executing a road map that was laid out for him a bit less than ten years ago. Apple has exactly one more new hardware category coming out after Homepod, plus a software framework that will unify everything, and then that map is done. He's not going to know what to do then, other than iterative products.

I will say it again - he has no sense of the future, none at all. He may enjoy seeing the company's products in peoples' hands as much as anyone could, but he has zero idea of what people want. Better, faster, stronger works for Steve Austin, but after the first couple of iterations, nothing distinguishes it from the Windows business of the late 90s.

The reason Apple is here today isn't just because of execution, its because of ideas. Well-honed, well-tempered, well-anticipated product ideas. The reason Steve Jobs succeeded as CEO was that he was able to look at the big picture, the entire computing world, cross-reference with peoples' needs, and figure out a single direction to take to come up with something that was so usable and solved so many problems with the simplest approach, that it would almost become necessary to own it.

I am getting increasingly accused of hagiography when I bring this stuff up now, especially by certain people on this forum, but that accusation doesn't blunt the truth. You have to execute, but you have to be able to see as well. Tim can do the former, but not the latter. I'm not one of the people who say "only Steve knew what was good for Apple". There are other people out in the world who have his vision, I'm sure. If Tim would get back to COO and bring in someone that can see down the road 5-10 years, accurately, someone who knows what people want before they can even conceive it, Apple will be solid for the next 20 years.

Right now, they're running on momentum and the end of an existing plan. Finishing that plan is going to blow the public mind, but it'll also give a road map for the competition as well once its made plain. Success can endanger a directionless company almost as much as failure endangers a company with direction.

 

[TheFluffyDuck]

I just want wearable hardware to catch up. Hololens is a joke. We need a powerful device with a large field of view. I hope Apple engineers are hard at work on that.

Dont hold your breath. Given the years of delay in wireless charging and all the talk of a "wireless future", many expected Apple to be working on something amazing. Over half a decade since some android phones first implemented it, we get boring old Chi charging. So yeah, my dreams of an inovative Apple have kind of died a little. They are years behind the competion in almost every product line. For example:

Music - Overtaken by spotify
Pro Computers - Running out of date processors and graphics for premium prices.
Watch - Came out years after the first fitness wearables, and there is still no custom watch faces.
Phones - Water proof, OLED, All day battery life, wireless charging, big screens, edge to edge screens etc. Apple have been late to every one of these parties by years, but hey at least we have 70 more emoji.
OSX - Just took hardware accelerated graphics seriously; DirectX welcomes you to 1994. Not to mention killing off Xserves, Xgrid, and all tech that made OSX great and unique for professionals.
iPads - They are ok, but hardly anything revolutionary in that department, someone will overtake Apple sooner with these.

Yesterday I brought a google home mini. I am blown away by how much it blows siri out of the water. For such a good prices point. Apples inovation died along time ago. I am seriously thinking of making a switch. Why should I pay an extra $500 on a phobe for gimmicky animated emoji and an edge to edge screen. Its a joke.

 

[terrywfoster]

What app is that with the dinosaur on the basketball court?