by Dan Moren
Tim Cook talks AR, social issues
Andrew Griffin at The Independent has an interview with Tim Cook, in which the Apple CEO makes some interesting comments about future AR hardware:
“There are rumours and stuff about companies working on those — we obviously don’t talk about what we’re working on,” Cook says. (Patents have shown that Apple is at least looking into such wearables, and reports have suggested that the ARKit introduction on the iPhone is partly a way to help build that interest and ecosystem.)
“But today I can tell you the technology itself doesn’t exist to do that in a quality way. 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. And as with all of its products, Apple will only ship something if it feels it can do it “in a quality way”.
This is essentially exactly what I’d expect Cook to say were Apple working on such a device. It doesn’t mean that device will ever show up–and it certainly means that it wouldn’t show up anytime soon–but I believe pretty strongly that with all this investment into augmented reality, Apple knows that the smartphone isn’t ultimately the most friendly platform for it.