From Nymag’s Jake Swearingen: For the past few years, Apple has been filing patents and staffing up on engineers who specialize in augmented reality (AR), virtual reality’s more sophisticated cousin. (AR technology, like that seen in Pokémon Go, places computer-generated imagery onto the real world, unlike VR, which replaces your field of vision entirely.) Now, tech blogger Robert Scoble says he’s got confirmation Apple and high-end optics company Zeiss AG will be releasing AR glasses — this year.
To put some caveats up front: This is based off one Facebook post by Scoble. And Robert Scoble has a history of being, um, unreasonably passionate about new tech, and specifically tech-enabled eyewear.
But unnamed Zeiss staffers at CES aside, there is evidence to support Apple is serious about AR.
First off, CEO Tim Cook has given several enthusiastic, public quotes about the technology, saying he sees it as much more viable than virtual reality. At a tech conference in Utah this October, Cook said he thinks AR will become part of the fabric of everyday life. “I do think that a significant portion of the population of developed countries, and eventually all countries, will have AR experiences every day, almost like eating three meals a day, it will become that much a part of you,” said Cook. “AR is going to take a while, because there are some really hard technology challenges there. But it will happen, it will happen in a big way, and we will wonder when it does, how we ever lived without it. Like we wonder how we lived without our phone today.”
And during an interview with Good Morning America in September, he similarly enthused: “My own view is that augmented reality is the larger of the two, probably by far, because 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 …”