Tim Cook – Augmented & Virtual Reality Confabulation

January 23, 2024

TechScape: Why Apple’s Vision Pro headset won’t have Netflix, Spotify or YouTube

This new ‘spatial computing’ device is supposedly the most immersive way to watch TV – but major streamers aren’t building apps for it. Plus, Facebook’s AI god complex

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It’s good to have friends. They come to your birthday party, offer a shoulder to cry on when things are hard and spend precious corporate resources developing apps for your nascent virtual reality platform despite little direct return. It can be tempting to believe that a pile of cash worth $30bn, and a single product line that brings in more than $200bn a year, is an acceptable substitute. But Apple is learning that money can’t buy you everything.

Last week, pre-orders opened for the company’s Vision Pro headset, the $3,500 “spatial computing” platform CEO Tim Cook has positioned as the successor to the Mac and iPhone and the launch of the third major era in Apple’s history. But in the press, the launch has been overshadowed by the quiet hostility towards the device from those whose support will ultimately be needed to ensure its success.

Rather than designing a Vision Pro app – or even just supporting its existing iPad app on the platform – Netflix is essentially taking a pass. The company, which competes with Apple in streaming, said in a statement that users interested in watching its content on the device can do so from the web.

YouTube … isn’t planning to launch a new app for the Apple Vision Pro, nor will it allow its longstanding iPad application to work on the device – at least, for now […] Spotify also isn’t currently planning a new app for visionOS – the Vision Pro’s operating system – and doesn’t expect to enable its iPad app to run on the device when it launches, according to a person familiar with matter.

All App Store developers – including those who place buttons or links with calls to action in their apps – benefit from Apple’s proprietary technology and tools protected by intellectual property, and access to its user base. […] Apple’s commission will be 27% on proceeds you earn from sales.

The Meta chief executive has said the company will attempt to build an artificial general intelligence (AGI) system and make it open source, meaning it will be accessible to developers outside the company. The system should be made “as widely available as we responsibly can”, he added.

AGI is not a strictly defined term, but it commonly refers to a theoretical AI system that can carry out an array of tasks at a level of intelligence that matches or exceeds humans. The potential emergence of AGI has alarmed experts and politicians around the world who fear such a system, or a combination of multiple AGI systems, could evade human control and threaten humanity.

May 30, 2023

TechScape: Will Apple’s new VR headset be the one to finally catch on?

In this week’s newsletter: The $3,000 product could be the next Apple gamechanger – or just another cool toy for those who can afford it

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Next Monday will see Apple’s worldwide developers conference kick off, and with it one of the company’s two most important annual press events.

Typically, the keynote at WWDC (or “dub dub”) is a software-focused affair, previewing the next versions of iOS, macOS and so on for an audience of developers who need to get to grips with the updates before their launch in the autumn. It’s balanced out by the hardware-focused events oriented around each year’s iPhone launch, since Apple still likes to play the game of announcing and shipping its top-tier products in short order.

A tethered battery pack, designed to sit in the user’s back pocket, to ease the tradeoff between power and performance on the one hand and weight and comfort on the other.

A screen on the front of the headset, designed solely to show the user’s expressions to the outside world, with the goal of making it more comfortable to interact with people wearing the device.

A focus on “passthrough” use, where a camera on the front of the screen shows the outside world to the wearer, with apps and features superimposed on top.

And, most importantly of all, a price tag of about $3,000.

April 4, 2023

Apple CEO Tim Cook is Hyping XR Ahead of WWDC

In an interview ahead of Apple’s upcoming Worldwide Developers Conference event, CEO Tim Cook talks about the potential of XR and why elements of it may be “even better than the real world.”

In an interview by GQ’s Zach Baron, Apple CEO Tim Cook explained that he first joined Apple—which at the time was nearly bankrupt—because Steve Jobs convinced him the company could really change the world.

And change the world it has, with products like the iPhone that have fundamentally altered the way much of the world goes about its daily business.

The next shot the company is rumored to take has a chance to do more than change the world—it could change everyday reality itself.

While Apple remains secretive about its plans for an XR device—which is rumored to be revealed at WWDC in June—Cook said in the interview that in some ways the technology could be “even better than the real world.”

“If you think about the technology itself with augmented reality, just to take one side of the AR/VR piece, the idea that you could overlay the physical world with things from the digital world could greatly enhance people’s communication, people’s connection,” Cook told GQ. “It could empower people to achieve things they couldn’t achieve before.”

“We might be able to collaborate on something much easier if we were sitting here brainstorming about it and all of a sudden we could pull up something digitally and both see it and begin to collaborate on it and create with it. And so it’s the idea that there is this environment that may be even better than just the real world—to overlay the virtual world on top of it might be an even better world,” said Cook. “And so this is exciting. If it could accelerate creativity, if it could just help you do things that you do all day long and you didn’t really think about doing them in a different way.”

When prompted about the company’s criticism of Google Glass around the time the device was introduced back in 2013—saying that head-worn devices would feel to invasive—Cook suggests he may have changed his mind on that point.

“My thinking always evolves. Steve [Jobs] taught me well: never to get married to your convictions of yesterday. To always, if presented with something new that says you were wrong, admit it and go forward instead of continuing to hunker down and say why you’re right.”

Just as Apple was skeptical of Google Glass, Cook knows Apple will always be in a similar boat when launching new products.

“Pretty much everything we’ve ever done, there were loads of skeptics with it,” Cook said. “If you do something that’s on the edge, it will always have skeptics.” When entering new markets, Cook said he considers a handful of questions: “Can we make a significant contribution, in some kind of way, something that other people are not doing? Can we own the primary technology? I’m not interested in putting together pieces of somebody else’s stuff. Because we want to control the primary technology. Because we know that’s how you innovate.”

Apple’s WWDC isn’t until June, but the rumor mill is already ramping up. One day Apple is said to be launching its rumored XR product at the event. The next day it’s delayed. And the day after it’s still coming at WWDC. Only one thing is certain at this point: we’ll have to wait until June to find out for sure.

For more about Tim Cook, check out the full interview from GQ.

June 22, 2022

Tim Cook On AR Headsets: “Stay Tuned And You’ll See What We Have To Offer”

Apple CEO Tim Cook was interviewed by China Daily, and he made an interesting comment when asked about AR headsets.

Reporter: “Chinese consumers are highly enthusiastic about VR and AR technologies, but some of them are not very satisfied with products currently available on the market. What do you think are the key factors for AR products such as AR headsets to succeed in the consumer market?”

Cook: “That’s a great question. I am incredibly excited about AR as you might know. And the critical thing to any technology including AR is putting humanity at the center of it. And that is what we focus on every day. Right now as an example we have over 14,000 ARKit apps in the App Store which provide AR experiences for millions of people around the world. But I think despite that we’re still in the very early innings of how this technology will evolve. I couldn’t be more excited about the opportunities we see in this space and sort of stay tuned and you’ll see what we have to offer.”

Last year Bloomberg, supply chain analyst Ming-Chi Kuo Kuo and The Information released reports claiming Apple is working on a premium headset for VR and AR with high resolution color passthrough. Kuo claimed this headset will weigh less than Meta’s Quest 2, feature dual 4K OLED microdisplays, and use a new chip with “similar computing power as the M1 for Mac”.

Earlier this month Bloomberg reported Apple is working on realityOS (rOS) versions of its core apps as well as the ability to view a Mac’s display and AR/VR developer tools. References to realityOS were found in App Store upload logs and Apple code earlier this year, and an Apple-linked shell company trademarked RealityOS in May. At Apple’s WWDC conference a number of features tangentially related to AR were announced, but the company may be waiting for the headset reveal to show its full AR/VR strategy.

Earlier this year Bloomberg reported Apple’s headset was delayed to 2023 due to “challenges related to overheating, cameras and software”. The New York Times also reports the headset is delayed to 2023, with its sources saying this is due to “continuing challenges with its battery power”. Both Bloomerg and The Information report the product is set to be priced north of $2000.

September 28, 2021

Apple CEO Tim Cook: AR Is One Of ‘Very Few Profound Technologies”

In a recent interview with YouTuber iJustine, Tim Cook called himself “AR fan #1” and said he thinks it’s one of “very few profound technologies” that have the potential to permanently embed themselves in day-to-day life.

The comments on AR, prompted by a question from Justine, start around the 9:15 mark. Here’s a transcription of what he had to say (emphasis is our own):

You know, I am so excited about AR. I think AR is one of these very few profound technologies that we will look back on one day and, ‘How did we lives out without it?’ And so right now you can experience it in thousands of ways, using your iPad or your iPhone, but of course those will get better and better over time. Already, it’s a great way to shop, it’s a great way to learn, it enhances the learning process. I can’t wait for it to be even more important in collaboration and so forth. So I’m AR fan #1. I think it’s that big.

Simple things today that you can use it for, like if you’re shopping for a sofa or a chair or a lamp, in terms of experiencing it in your place… We’ve never been able to do that before until the last couple of years or so. And that’s at the early innings of AR, it will only get better

This is far from the first time Cook has been publicly bullish about AR. In April, he said it was “critically important” to Apple’s future, following on from comments two months earlier about how he thinks AR could one day attract as big of an audience as the iPhone. As far back as 2016, Tim Cook was telling Apple investors that AR will be huge but also take some time to get right.

Five years on, AR has come a long way but still has a ways to go. Facebook’s recent Ray-Ban smart glasses pave the way for that company’s public AR efforts, but Apple has yet to dip its toes into AR hardware beyond iPhone and iOS integration. It’s reported that this could change next year, with Apple rumored to launch an AR-VR headset in the second half of 2022 for anywhere between $1000-$2000 or more.

April 7, 2021

AR Is ‘Critically Important’ To Apple’s Future, Confirms Tim Cook

Apple CEO Tim Cook has confirmed that augmented reality is a “critically important part” of the company’s future.

Cook acknowledged as much in a recent interview with Kara Swisher on the Sway podcast. While he declined to talk about Apple’s specific plans for the technology, he did talk a little bit about its promise.

“But in terms of AR, the promise of AR is that you and I are having a great conversation right now,” Cook began. “Arguably, it could even be better if we were able to augment our discussion with charts or other things to appear. And your audience would also benefit from this, too, I think. And so when I think about that in different fields, whether it’s health, whether it’s education, whether it’s gaming, whether it’s retail, I’m already seeing AR take off in some of these areas with use of the phone. And I think the promise is even greater in the future.”

Asked if AR was a “critically important part of Apple’s future”, Cook simply replied: “It is.”

Speculation about Apple’s work with both VR and AR has persisted for years now. A few months ago, we reported on rumors that the company is aiming to release a headset that is “mostly VR” in 2022, but could be very expensive. Later reports have estimated the device to cost anywhere from $1,000 to $3,000, while the company’s full AR glasses may not arriving until around 2025.

When do you think we’ll finally see Apple’s work in AR revealed? Let us know in the comments below!

January 21, 2020

Apple CEO Tim Cook Expects AR: ‘Will Pervade our Entire Lives’

When it comes to preference over virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) technologies Apple CEO, Tim Cook has made his stance continually clear, AR is most certainly the future. Cook was in Dublin, Ireland this week to receive a Special Recognition Award for the company’s contributions to the country – 6,000 people work at its Cork office – and discussed the future of tech and AR’s role.

During a session chaired by IDA Ireland CEO Martin Shanahan, he asked Cook about his expectations for the next five to ten years: “I’m excited about AR. My view is it’s the next big thing, and it will pervade our entire lives,” reports Silicon Republic.

While Apple has yet to enter the AR headset market to compete against Microsoft HoloLens 2 or Magic Leap 1, the company has made great software inroads thanks to the launch of ARKit back in 2017 – which is now in its third iteration. This has helped developers create a wide range of apps and videogames for iOS devices. Besides entertainment, Cooks sees plenty of useful applications of AR for home users: “You may be under the car changing the oil, and you’re not sure exactly how to do it. You can use AR,” he mentions.

He also seems to make a subtle nod to his dislike of VR and why AR is his tech of choice: “I think it’s something that doesn’t isolate people. We can use it to enhance our discussion, not substitute it for human connection, which I’ve always deeply worried about in some of the other technologies.”

Bait! Under the Surface

During his visit to Ireland Cook managed to pop into Dublin-based developer War Ducks, the team behind VR titles like Sneaky Bears and RollerCoaster Legends II: Thor’s Hammer. Last year the company announced a $3.8 million USD investment which was going towards a location-based AR experience.

“Yesterday, I visited a development company called War Ducks … in Dublin – 15 people and they’re staffing up and using AR for games,” Cook mentioned. “You can imagine, for games it’s incredible but even for our discussion here. You and I might be talking about an article and using AR we can pull it up, and can both be looking at the same thing at the same time.”

As Apple continues to expand its AR development, VRFocus will keep you updated.

November 11, 2017

AR’s Initial Growth On App Store Hits Landmark, Is Similar Rate To That Of The Store Itself – Cook

It has only been a mere six months since Apple’s Craig Federighi came out onto the stage at The Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) 2017 and show cased Apple’s ARKit, it’s surprise announcement of an augmented reality (AR) development platform. It had announcements relating to virtual reality (VR) yes. Such as Steam VR for Mac, that Metal would be supporting VR in High Sierra and that Unity and Unreal Engine support would be joining it. Whilst a VR demonstration featuring Star Wars wowed those in attendance.

At the time many understood that it was a game changer for AR, Apple had beaten Google, who had been very publicly working on Project Tango, to the punch and AR was now going to be a part of the millions of iOS powered tablets and phones that make up the Apple’s ecosystem. Even so, it is doubtful many would’ve seen what happened next, for all parts of the developer spectrum – from fully fledged studios to bedroom coders videogames, apps, experiences and experiments began appearing. Each capturing the imagination of what AR could do to some sort of degree. By the end of the month Apple themselves described developer support as ‘unbelievable’, and soon it seemed like every day there was a new exciting way ARKit was being implemented that the immersive tech community was raving about. From technical applications to bringing old pop music videos to life.

Google, of course, did not stand idly by and entered the mobile AR arena at the end of August with ARCore and bringing with it support from Unreal Engine and Unity. And between the pair fully formed apps have continued to appear. A number that was directly addressed by Apple’s Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook as part of the company’s Q4 earning call.

“There are 1,000-plus AR apps in the App Store already,” Cook revealed. “I think it’s very similar to when we fired the gun on the App Store overall in 2008.”

That’s certainly indicating some very promising levels of growth, and if it continues to match support from the store’s debut almost a decade ago that would, according to Forbes, see the store be housing 35,000 by the time of its first anniversary. This equated to a 4275% increase for apps on the App Store at the time.

Cook was also positive about AR’s role in general. In what could also be possibly seen as a slight dig at VR. “In my view AR amplifies human performance, instead of isolating us,” He said, adding that “It should be a help for humanity, not an isolation kind of thing for humanity.”

ARKit (2) This harks back to comments Cook made in 2016 where he was notably more positive about AR over VR: “This gives the capability for both of us to sit and be very present, talking to each other, but also have other things — visually — for both of us to see. Maybe it’s something we’re talking about, maybe it’s someone else here who’s not here present but who can be made to appear to be present. And so, there’s a lot of really cool things there.”

It’s a stance often repeated in subsequent interviews, which some have taken to be perhaps more due to Apple’s immediate future focusing on AR over VR, even though they have been investigating and investing throughout the last three years. It’s a two-pronged journey that continues for Apple, with VR on the slower path but VRFocus will be bringing you news throughout the months to come on how each continues to develop.

November 9, 2017

Report: Apple Could Release an AR Headset as Early as 2020

With the release of iOS 11, hundreds of millions of Apple devices gained the ability to perform basic augmented reality functions, albeit viewed through the screens of iPhones and iPads. While capable of providing some pretty useful and interesting apps, the next logical step for this early development of an AR app ecosystem invariably points to the future ahead: an Apple AR headset. According to a report by Bloomberg, that future might not be so distant.

Citing sources familiar with the matter, the report maintains Apple has definite plans to produce a dedicated AR headset, and could ship a product as early as 2020.

With Apple’s AR efforts led by ex-Dolby Executive VP Mike Rockwell, the group has now reportedly grown to several hundred engineers scattered across office parks in both Cupertino and Sunnyvale, CA, where the team is working on “several hardware and software projects” under the code name ‘T288’.

T288 encompasses a few important efforts, the report holds, including the creation of a purpose-built chip capable of powering the AR headset that’s similar in concept to the ‘system-on-a-package’ used in the Apple Watch.

A new AR-focused operating system based on iOS called ‘rOS’ (‘r’ for reality) is also supposedly in the works, a project led by former Apple software manager for games and graphics Geoff Stahl.

That said, Apple reportedly hasn’t settled on a design yet and currently necessitates the use of an HTC Vive by its engineers for software design tasks. For the purposes of internal testing, Apple is also producing a head-mounted AR headset similar in design to Samsung’s Gear VR headset, but using an iPhone to drive AR interactions. Apple doesn’t plan to sell the headset though, and will likely only use it for testing purposes.

Because basically nothing is finalized at this point, it’s uncertain how users will control the headset and launch apps, however the company is investigating touch panels, voice-activation via Siri and head gestures, the report maintains. As for applications, engineers are prototyping a range of apps encompassing everything from mapping and texting to virtual meeting rooms and 360-degree video playback.

In the interim, Apple wants to make it easier for developers to create for its fledgling AR app ecosystem by releasing a new version of ARKit software tools as soon as 2018.

Apple declined to comment on any of the above information.

Publicly, Apple CEO Tim Cook says there are still plenty of challenges to consider before the company would release an AR headset though, speaking with The Independent.

“The display technology required, as well as putting enough stuff around your face – there’s huge challenges with that. The field of view, the quality of the display itself, it’s not there yet,” he says. “We don’t give a rat’s about being first, we want to be the best, and give people a great experience. But now anything you would see on the market any time soon would not be something any of us would be satisfied with. Nor do I think the vast majority of people would be satisfied.”

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October 13, 2017

Apple CEO on AR Headsets: ‘We don’t want to be first, we want to be the best’

Apple CEO Tim Cook [Image courtesy Mashable]

Apple CEO Tim Cook thinks augmented reality is going to be something big, a fairly simple claim to make thanks to the company’s recent inclusion of its AR tech into every Apple device capable of updating to iOS 11. But when we talk about AR, the natural terminus isn’t the smartphone’s screen, but rather a perfectly immersive pair of AR glasses that have yet to come. Speaking to The Independent, Cook says the technology to create an AR headset in a “quality way” just isn’t possible yet, but when it is, Apple will be the best.

“The products themselves have to have a lot of processing power, and a fair amount of different sensor technology in order to do this locational stuff,” Cook tells The Independent. “So having it on iPhone changes the game for developers, because instantly they had hundreds of millions of potential customers. If it were on a different device then you would never have a commercial opportunity, and without the commercial opportunity you’d never have 15 million people that say, ‘I want to design my passion with AR’.”

As a ready-made launchpad for AR interactions with a built-in audience, the iPhone and iPad are great, but what about AR headsets? Cook is doubtful in the short-term, saying the technology itself “doesn’t exist to do that in a quality way.”

Despite some telling patents made by the company, Cook says consumers shouldn’t really expect an Apple AR headset in the short-term in spite of the growing number of AR headsets already coming to market.

“Most technology challenges can be solved, but it’s a matter of how long,” he says.

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