Tim Cook Thinks Retailers Will Find Augmented Reality as Key as Having a Website

[convergent]

Apple is really overselling AR. I think they’re just harping on this particular platform because they’re not really innovating in a specific space like their competitors (Google and Microsoft with AI, Amazon with retail) and need a technology to champion. Apple is good at making consistent good consumer electronics but innovative exciting new technology isn’t their specialty. They were trying to do something with cars but it seems they gave up and they were trying with television but gave that up as well when they realized how difficult media companies are to negotiate with so they just settled on AR which for the avaerage consumer just seems far fetched and impractical.

Exactly... this is yet another new thing Cook is saying will be amazing and all he's really done is do incremental moves on things that his predecessor set the vision for. You can add maps to the list of things HIS Apple has struggled with.

 

[bollman]

Thera are a lot of factors that ensure AR will never really lift off.
Firstly, Apple has decided to not use touch screens on their computers as they say, the ergonomics are bad. Yet, holding your phone at arms reach for extended periods to be able to use apps, that's perfectly fine. Um, no, it sucks just as much.

Using your phone is a private thing. That's why it has been successful, people can stay in their personal space and close that space even more. Waving your phone around to see stuff will never catch on, just as little as Siri or any assistant has, it's not practical to keep babbling to your phone. That's also why people talk less and less on the phone and text/imessage/whatsapp/whatever.

Huge malls keep popping up and more and more people visit and shop, shop, shop. There's absolutely no way people will sit at home fiddling with AR apps to try to buy stuff. Just no.
If you can't envision that cheap IKEA armchair in your living room, that AR app isn't gonna make the decision easier for you.

As someone said, this is a hammer looking for a nail.

Sure, when we get here it will be something completely different:

I really hope I'm gone before that will be what life on earth be like.

 

[dogslobber]

This AR nonsense will be as successful as 3D TVs. It’s a complete joke.

 

[iMi]

Our reality is slipping away. Pretty soon it will be impossible to know what is real and what is digital. I have some concerns about it because once that happens, it will be that much easier for the government and corporations to control what we see and how perceive our own reality.

That's propaganda and messaging control on a whole new scale and it's worrisome.

 

[JamesPDX]

AR will be the final nail in the coffin for retail. I predict clothing will be the next big use for AR.

Why do people still visit clothing stores? To try things on for proper fit. Imagine trying on clothes at home, where they are rendered on you based on your actual body dimensions?

Yeah, but you'd have to be scanned, not just photographed with those short, wide-angle lenses. (Otherwise a Large will get fit for something XXXXL. AI bots custom-weaving-3D printing no-seam clothing -a-la Electroloom. AI-measured clothing: The sh!rt that f!rts!

 

[amegicfox]

Tim is clueless about technology, he shouldn't predict anything since he never was once right about anything

 

[Glockworkorange]

Im not a fan of all the press and pre-announced visions. I miss the Jobs model of surprising us with the next big thing.

Let's all hope that AR isn't going to be Cook's Knowledge Navigator/Newton MessagePad.

It’s his Newton.