
Apple Eyes 2022 Release for AR Headset, 2023 for Glasses - apress
https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/11/20959066/apple-augmented-reality-ar-headset-glasses-rumors-reported-release-date
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simonh
If it's 3 to 4 years away from being real, would they really hold a
presentation in the theatre? Not exactly an ideal setting for a discussion,
and way too early for any kind of useful demonstration.

Also at this early stage in a product's development, Apple very carefully
controls and compartmentalises information. The software team wouldn't have
any idea what the hardware looks like, or who is working on it. If you know
the people in other teams, there's more likelihood of cross-leaking. There's
no way their whole road map would be shared with the entire team.

They may well have had some sort of meeting, but I suspect this is a case of
extrapolating way too far from piecemeal and confusing scraps of information,
combined with a fundamental misunderstanding about how Apple approaches
projects like this.

~~~
ArtWomb
>>> 3 to 4 years away from being real

I think it's worth extrapolating ;)

We're probably not going to see Apple AR tech in soldier HUDs on the
battlefield. Or in the F-35. I could be wrong, but it may not be a cultural
fit.

The enterprise customer here is the AutoDesk / Adobe client who wants seamless
3D design integreted into digital content creation workflows and even additive
manufacturing. And that is very exciting. Being able to animate and composite
3D models with live action video in a holographic environment will make
creating movies just as fun as watching them.

But the driver for consumer adoption I believe is entertainment. That's where
Ocuclus and Magic Leap seem to be placing company bets. Hit games like Beat
Sabre and Vader Immortal give an inkling. Someone is going to create a
phenomenon like Avatar for VR and content will never be the same.

~~~
criddell
> Someone is going to create a phenomenon like Avatar for VR and content will
> never be the same.

Avatar was a milestone for 3d movies. Would you say movies have never been the
same since then?

~~~
ArtWomb
I absolutely would! And I know what you are getting at. But you can't look at
the relatively poor performance of 3D IMAX ticket sales as evidence that
classic 2D cinema constitutes a kind of "End of History" culmination of the
art form. It's just really hard to make something like "Gravity", which hit
like 80%+ 3D sales percentages internationally.

Instead, for a peak into a possible near future I'd look to new immersive
experiences such as teamLab's borderless

[https://borderless.teamlab.art/](https://borderless.teamlab.art/)

Visitors to Yayoi Kusama's Infinite Mirrored Room at David Zwirner gallery in
Chelsea get exactly one minute each to experience the sensation. And it's
expected in excess of 100K+ will make the pilgrimage ;)

A Look Inside Yayoi Kusama's New, Eye-Popping NYC Exhibition

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3UmpPF9Bo4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3UmpPF9Bo4)

~~~
criddell
2D cinema may not be a culmination, but the last 100 years of 3D movies makes
it pretty clear that it will never be more than a sideshow with occasional
sparks of brilliance. The experience isn't good enough.

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atlasunshrugged
I'm pretty excited to see what Apple releases. Generally, it seems like
they're later to market rather than on the cutting edge of things but bring a
high design quality and make tech approachable for a broader audience but this
seems like one of those ones where the market hasn't been really made yet.
Although, I've been pretty disappointed over the last few years with the
quality of their products, especially software. I usually upgrade every ~2
years but for my last device that was 2 years old I was trying to hold out
until a new release but it would constantly freeze up and crash after
downloading the new software release they usually do when they announce a new
phone (not trying to go into conspiracy theories but it seemed a little too
convenient that just then is when my phone would start going on the fritz).

~~~
jgmjgm
Until recently I would have agreed with you. It seems to me that Apple is in a
luxurious decline. Cook is great at squeezing money out of their product lines
but he's done it at the cost of good will.

I was in the market to upgrade, I love OS X and I was willing to pay a
premium... but with crappy keyboards and systems that can't be upgraded it's
just was not worth the price tag. I recently switched from my macbook pro to a
thinkpad X1. I have to say the first week was hard -- especially the trackpad
-- but the adjustment so far has been fine. I'm struck by how much better
windows has gotten. Even more, I'm impressed by how innovative it and the eco-
system has become again. I think that's the challenge for Apple. How can they
stay big and remain innovative? Right now it seems they are coasting on good
management and design... but they are missing that element that presumably
Jobs brought to the table by directing those elements towards a new innovative
vision of a product line.

Anyway, I could be wrong but it seems to me that Apple is coasting. These
announcements seem more like a big company flailing around to get in on the
next big thing. On the other hand, Apple is great at the self-contained
devices (ipad, iphone, etc.) with no moving parts. These products seem rock-
solid and I think this is where the real revenue is. My concern is that this
money is going to allow everyone to hide from the fact that the company is not
as innovative as it used to be.

Interested to hear from others though. My work is elsewhere so I don't track
this company closely.

~~~
ogre_codes
While Apple's Mac line is stumbling a bit, the rest of Apple's hardware is
pretty spot on. The Apple Watch, AirPods, iPhone, & iPad are all rock solid.
The AR headset is a lot more like the Apple Watch and it's basically
slaughtered it's competition and is widely considered a best-in-class product.

The big question mark with Apple isn't hardware, its software. iOS 13 and
Catalina were both pretty ambitious and deeply flawed.

~~~
rootusrootus
iOS 13 can at least be partially explained by the difficulty of tying OS
releases together with hardware when both require lengthy pre-planning.

~~~
ogre_codes
Just having a hard deadline with an annual release cycle is aggressive. Seems
like they should be doing a lot of these releases in point upgrades instead of
forcing one giant upgrade per year.

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aphextron
Here's hoping it's not just another Hololens flash in the pan. I've been
holding out hope for 5 years now that Apple will come in and do it right, and
trigger another paradigm shift for computing akin to the mobile revolution. AR
is absolutely going to be a game changing technology some day, but the current
hardware is simply nowhere near what's needed for mass consumer adoption.

~~~
skellera
As long as apple keeps their image as the company keeping up with the best
tech (doesn’t matter if it’s true or not), it’ll be huge for them to release
anything. It’ll make others jump in and bring a lot more money into the
industry.

The AirPods are a good first step in showing they can make small, lightweight
devices that are easy to use. The glasses will probably need a charging case
in the same way. Also, they are keeping their high end phones a bit
overpowered for normal smartphone usage which means they can use that extra
power to do the required rendering. This allows them to offload it all from
the glasses to the phone. I believe we are some time off from standalone
glasses.

~~~
zaroth
The Apple we love is the Apple which takes decades to line up the
technologies, materials, and interfaces needed to polish a future vision down
to the gem which will totally change how we interact with technology.

The wearables unit of Apple does seem like it’s where the big innovations are
happening, even if a lot of that innovation is in materials and just
perfecting the user experience of something basic like charging.

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SirHound
I think this is turning out to be harder than any of the big companies
anticipated. IIRC Xbox had an internal roadmap that put AR in 2014, a year
before a VR headset which is an interesting look at our collective ignorance
about the type of problems we are looking at.

I do think Apple are the best placed to come to market on this though.
Everything we’re currently seeing from them, like their over-powered mobile
chipsets, seemingly premature ARKit, and Face ID sensor array are IMO all part
of the push to cranking the price/performance of their hardware and software
specifically for these upcoming headsets rather than addressing the current
market. Which is genius, using the momentum of the iPhone to propel them into
this new market.

I wonder if we’ll see them pull away in capabilities the same way the Watch
has.

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nlh
Although it feels inevitable, I think what’s interesting to consider is that
history would indicate that Apple is likely NOT to be the company that really
ushers in the shift from ~5 inch screens we hold in front of us to an AR-based
world.

In the same way that in early 2000s, yes, Dell definitely moved us forward
with a great line of laptops, but the Sony Vaio (and, later, MacBooks) are
what brought laptops to consumers in a real way, and yes of course, Motorola
and Nokia et al made the first real push at mobile, but Apple made mobile
phones a mass-market accessory item.

I wonder if Apple will end up being the Dell / Nokia of the AR world, and some
company we haven’t yet considered ends up really owning the revolution.

~~~
oflannabhra
I’m not sure what about this article specifically that makes you feel that
way.

You are correct, in general, that firms that are successful because of an
innovative technology, typically get surpassed by the next innovative
technology to come to the market. See Clayton Christensen’s The Innovators
Dilemma.

However, Apple is one company that seems to have broken the trend, several
times, in fact. Past success is not always an indicator of future success, but
I’m personally not willing to bet against Apple at this point.

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fyp
People are comparing this to the mobile revolution but I am curious to know
why history should repeat itself. As far as I can tell there's currently no
secret sauce that will make AR usable that Apple is uniquely in the position
to monopolize (needing higher FOV, rendering opaque objects, etc).

Is it just the ability to drive cultural adoption to avoid "glasshole" stigma?

~~~
batmansmk
Apple has capabilities that others don't have. Apple can design their own
batteries, cases, utility chips, CPU, GPU, screens. They have exceptional
assembly factories, where they can assemble with very low mechanical tolerance
and calibrate HW better than most of the competition. They have patented
several new methods for making glass. They have non garbage collected UI
capabilities, low level GFX API developers.

Apple is in a unique position to get an edge on the AR/VR market.

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dsalzman
Apple's software first approach and last mover mentality will give them a huge
advantage in the Augmented Reality Space.

------
foobiekr
Apple is not a parts manufacturer/inventor; they assemble parts wonderfully
with, on occasion, some customization, so the obvious question is: where are
the displays? Diffractive waveguides are a very disappointing display for most
uses; not bright enough, poor FOV, bleeding, etc. For a summary, see [1].

Without an external vendor to make the breakthrough in displays, Apple is in
the same position as everyone else - talking about an AR future that looks
great until you get there.

[1] [https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-making-good-ar-
displays-s...](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-making-good-ar-displays-so-
hard-daniel-wagner/)

~~~
coldtea
> _Apple is not a parts manufacturer /inventor_

Manufacturer maybe not, but inventor? They have all kinds of patents and
inventions of their own, their own CPUs and processing units, etc...

> _they assemble parts wonderfully with, on occasion, some customization_

They order custom parts more often than not, with very heavy customization.

Does anybody think that the displays for a 2022 Apple VR device (assuming the
rumor is true) would be seen anywhere outside of Apple labs, and be e.g.
available as off-the-shelve parts with merely "some customization" required on
top in 2019?

~~~
coldtea
Come to think of it, grandparent was probably thinking of the desktop space --
where Apple basically uses Intel, AMD, etc parts + some modifications.

But that's absolutely not the case in the iOS, Apple Watch, etc space. They
make their own everything, from best of breed mobile CPU designs, to custom
DSPs that are the 2019 1000x equivalents of the Amiga of yore (remember Paula,
Denise, Agnus?), own boards, and everything in between.

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chooseaname
I must be the odd man out. I don't want something that I have to wear. I wear
glasses and contacts and I don't want to wear those either. I see AR as being
great as, say, a HUD in a car. But I just don't want wearables.

~~~
rglover
Think in terms of iteration.

On your desk > on your lap > in your pocket > on your wrist > on your face >
on your eyes > in your body.

~~~
chooseaname
This is even worse. I want to be able to disconnect and just ... be human.

~~~
Aperocky
But you can always disconnect, there's no reason that you can't put your
cellphone or even a physical connection to brain on airplane mode.

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hyperpallium
> Apple CEO Tim Cook has previously said that he regards augmented reality as
> “a big idea, like the smartphone,”

IDK about the timeline, but inevitable that they'll _want_ to do it.

A heads-up display enables larger displays _and_ smaller devices, and seems
inevitable to me, too.

Google Glass seemed to fail because of privacy. But subtracting the camera was
too much for Google engineers to bear... in contrast, Apple has a history of
subtracting features when necessary. They can also design cool eye-wear.

The only problem with my theory is that, without a camera, it isn't "AR"...

~~~
criddell
Why do you say Google Glass failed? They are still developing and selling it.
A new version was just release six months ago.

~~~
hyperpallium
More, failed as "a big idea, like the smartphone". Google launched it like
that too.

~~~
criddell
By that standard Magic Leap, Hololens, Oculus, and the others are all failures
too.

~~~
hyperpallium
Well, yes. They failed to be the next big thing. (Maybe they are profitable in
a small market, or maybe they are living on VC?)

20-30 years ago, there was a flurry of VR devices...

Hasn't ML been caught in fraud a couple of times now?

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mark_l_watson
I hope that they keep pushing for self contained independent devices. My wife
and I love our Apple Watches and not needing an iPhone (assuming your watch
has a data plan) is a game changer,

The Oculus Quest is self contained, a great product, but a bit heavy. I expect
an AR headset would also work in VR mode and I hope Apple makes it light and
comfortable. It is amazing what functionality is packed into the Apple Watch
and AirPods and I have confidence Apple will get it right with a headset. Then
the question is, will people want them.

~~~
CrackerNews
Like AR, the future of VR mainstream adoption is in self-contained standalone
independent devices. John Carmack of Oculus mentioned that user retention for
the mobile snapon Gear VR was only one or two uses before never using again.
There's too much friction for the common masses to get into VR that way. Hence
the Note 10 dropping support for Gear VR and Carmack giving a "eulogy" for the
device and Oculus focusing on the Go and Quest (with the Rift remaining for
enthusiasts). The Quest has been far more successful than the Rift ever was
due to its standalone nature for compelling VR experiences. (game developers
could have made up to 3-4x more sales on Quest compared to the Rift)

Apple has to make AR standalone. Smartwatches faced flack for not initially
being standalone for being so expensive. While it did become more and more
standalone, it still isn't a compelling use scenario for the masses to go out
and spend that money.

AR could have more promise than what Google Glass had, but it would have to be
far more compelling than what the masses can already get from their iPhones.
As a point of comparison, VR right now is within 1% of the entire Steam
population, which is then a fraction of the world's masses. There's interest
but people at large aren't biting yet for various reasons. Apple's AR could
end up in a similar situation where it would be nice to have but remains out
of reach.

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ChicagoBoy11
People made a lot of fun of me for wearing Google Glass several years for a
solid month straight. Like, every day, to work and back. It was in fact clunky
and rough around the edges, but even at that stage I experienced moments of
the kind of glee I felt when I first used an iPhone. AI and Machine Learning
will need to do a lot more heavy lifting in an AR glasses world, but the
experience will just blow our phones out of the water. And it'll be amazing.

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tpmx
No paywall:

[https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/11/20959066/apple-
augmented...](https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/11/20959066/apple-augmented-
reality-ar-headset-glasses-rumors-reported-release-date)

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ssully
Very interested to see what a full AR product from Apple looks like. I am
always impressed whenever I toy with their ARKit stuff on iOS devices, but I
am curious how that translates beyond toy applications.

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KoftaBob
I hope they take the approach that Focals by North did with their smart
glasses. Non-obtrusive heads up display for notifications/navigation, and
glasses that actually look like normal glasses.

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akl_bh
I somehow read this as the code name for Glasses is "Apple Eyes".

~~~
dawg-
Or maybe just 'i'? The ultimate evolution of product names.

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anomaloustho
Bigger news to me is that this paywall is $40 a month to get through. Wow!

Could anyone provide more information about this publication and why the price
is so steep?

~~~
SirHound
I think this is geared towards business and rich valley people. The few with
deep pockets over a wider audience.

~~~
snowwrestler
The core of the pitch for the "The Information" is that they do reporting that
moves markets; i.e. investors should subscribe to get access to information
they can use to make decisions ahead of their competitors. A lot of their
reporting, like this article, tries to look down the road on new products and
markets.

The founder Jessica Lessin spent years at WSJ (as Jessica Vascellaro), but got
into trouble for getting too close to her sources; for example traveling to
private parties with them. The Information takes more of a utilitarian,
service model to their work, where ethical concerns about source relationships
are less important than the quality of the information you provide to
subscribers (hence the name).

~~~
anomaloustho
Thanks for that explanation, that makes more sense.

