With Apple's AR/VR headset seemingly on the horizon, CEO Tim Cook shares his vision for it
By now it's pretty clear that Apple has finally decided to pull the trigger on releasing an AR/VR headset this year, with several reputable leakers suggesting that June 5th will be the date something big might happen in regards to that. June 5th happens to match the expected WWDC 2023 date, so stay tuned for our coverage when that rolls around.
Over the recent years, we've heard many rumors of Apple working on both said AR/VR headset, as well as Apple AR glasses, and presumably delaying both several times due to technical limitations. Regardless, during that time, Tim Cook has shared his inspiring enthusiasm for the technology, and how much he's looking forward to it, essentially calling it the next big thing, possibly as big as the iPhone.
Recently leakers have even suggested that the CEO expects Apple's AR/VR efforts to secure his legacy, and that he's pushing the company's engineers to finally deliver the product in 2023.
And now, during an interview with GQ (via MacRumors), Cook has once again hyped up AR (augmented reality), and has basically shared his vision of what, presumably, the Apple AR/VR headset will be able to do. If not at launch - eventually.
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. 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.
And while Cook is calling this exciting now, he also shared that he had some doubts during Apple's first attempt to delve into AR/VR tech.
We always thought that glasses were not a smart move, from a point of view that people would not really want to wear them. They were intrusive, instead of pushing technology to the background, as we've always believed. We always thought it would flop, and, you know, so far it has.
However, as we can see now, Apple's CEO does seem to truly believe in this technology nowadays.
My thinking always evolves. Steve 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.
While we wait to see what Apple's AR/VR headset, and eventually AR glasses turn out to be, and whether those exciting devices do all the amazing things Tim Cook is hoping for, you may be interested in checking out our recent Nreal Air review, because AR glasses already exist.
They're just far from mainstream right now, and that, we can always count on Apple to have the power to change.
FCC OKs Cingular\'s purchase of AT&T Wireless
Things that are NOT allowed: