Tim Cook doesn’t hate VR, but AR stands a better chance on the iPad, iPhone and beyond
What’s up with Apple and virtual reality? That is one question occasionally making its way into the top ten list of questions for which we may never get a single straight answer.
With regard to hardware specs, Apple Macs are traditionally not something gamers go for, except for those with the cash to buy a Mac Pro, and even so, the only Mac capable of triple-A rated gaming and VR applications is being challenged by faster, more advanced graphic hardware and processors like the latest GTX 10 series and Titan X, boasting near-unbelievable performance.
With that said, Apple is well aware of the gaming market, but has so far chosen to maintain its stance in favor of productivity and consumer-grade design, rather than high-powered graphic performance, typically the realm of Windows 10 and Linux PCs.
While it may seem an odd position to keep, one comment by Tim Cook during an interview with BuzzFeed Japan, while in Tokyo, seems to shed some light on the direction Apple may take in the future, in regard to VR and AR.
“There’s no substitute for human contact”, Tim Cook told BuzzFeed.
This is consistent with another comment by Cook during an earning call early this summer: “We are high on AR for the long run”. Considering the success of AR mobile games like Ingress and Pokemon Go, as momentary as they have been, AR is definitely a market for which Apple seems to hold a considerable interest.
Early this month, when Apple announced the iPhone 7, many of the features within the handset seems to point to a future of AR-friendly applications making use of the iPhone 7 dual camera, and advanced processor, capable of building a 3D map of what the camera hardware sees, and translate it into telemetry data for a wealth of different uses, including real-time mapping, and digitization of real objects for 3D printing purposes.
By this token, it wouldn’t be too farfetched to wonder whether Apple may be building a headset like Microsoft HoloLens, since it would be very much designed with Augmented Reality in mind, in a way that is very similar to the illustrative concepts suggested by Microsoft, of a future in which we can use real surfaces to project AR overlays like virtual television sets, newspapers, books, and even 3D games like Minecraft, provided the appropriate graphic hardware.
On a more realistic note, however, Apple is certainly committed to building faster and better iPad Pro tablets, and more powerful Macs, which suggests that the company will move forward with its AR agenda, at least with regard to iOS, and perhaps even a future ar/vrOS, if such thing will ever be allowed to exist within the Apple ecosystem.
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