Apple's AR Strategy

Back in 2015 I wrote a post titled Apple's Next Big Thing.  In it, I mused about Apple's strategy with wearables and, while doing so, predicted the introduction of AirPods.  While they not yet have all the features I forecast - foremost among them the current lack of an 'always on' capability - I think the general ideas expressed in the article are still valid: that Apple is adding and integrating ever more wearables to its product line in order to seamlessly blend the virtual world with the real one.  In some not-too-distant future, the iPhone will rarely leave your pocket - yet manage all your computing needs.

Once one realizes this, Apple's "next big thing" becomes quite obvious: AR glasses.  Apple already laid the groundwork by its introduction of ARKit.  This software - which already has thousands of developers creating new experiences for hundreds of millions of iPhones running iOS 11 - is paving the way for the day the glasses arrive.  Thousands of AR apps will be ready to project their content onto the glasses rather than your iPhone's screen.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to predict AR glasses.  After all, Google already developed a pair a couple years ago, Snapchat tried its (limited) hand at it.   But as with all other portable electronic gadgets, it will be Apple to do it right.  So what is "right"?  To answer that, we again look back at Google Glass - what were its shortcomings?  Well, there was the now infamous recording feature that caused its wearers to eventually receive the label of 'glassholes'.  So Apple's version will avoid recording video - at least until AR glasses have become ubiquitous.  Google Glass also had notoriously short battery life.  Why?  Because Google tried to do too much "on-board".  Instead of being a companion device, Google tried to stuff a complete computer - i.e. CPU, memory, video controller, storage, networking, etc. - into the temples of the glass frame.  Since glasses have to remain light in order to be worn comfortably, the amount of battery capacity they could stuff into the glasses was too limited.  Therefore, I predict that Apple's AR glasses will have just enough electronics to let it receive instructions on what pixels to project onto the glasses and to send onboard sensor/camera data back to an iPhone.  It might even use its existing AirPlay tech for the display aspects.

Where Is The Cool Video Eyewear?

The cell phone is increasingly becoming the center of our digital universe: we use it not only to communicate with one another, but also to surf the web and consume audio and, increasingly, video media.  We appear to be accepting and working around its inherent physical limitations: screen size and poor audio.  But do we have to?

Even a few decades ago, researchers played with the notion of head-mounted displays (HMD) - displays that were mounted on the head (initially via ugly helmets, later with less bulky visors/glasses) and which could project images directly in front of its user's eyes.  Despite gigantic leaps in miniaturization elsewhere in the electronic industry, HMDs seemed to have never come into vogue.  I have always wondered why - because the idea, to me, is the path to the cell phone's future!

Imagine wearing a cool set of shades which wirelessly communicate (wireless HDMI, anyone?) with the cellphone in your pocket to provide either an augmented- or totally virtual-reality to your eyes - at an eye-popping resolution that could never be attained within the tiny physical dimensions of a cell phone screen.

One company, Vuzix, has been selling pretty good looking eyewear for a few years.  But it doesn't seem like it's terribly successful at it - the glasses haven't progressed much from when I last looked at them 5 years ago: the resolution has become reasonably acceptable (their high-end model provides 1024x768), but it still relies on unsightly wires to communicate with its video/audio source.  Has the industry progressed so little because of lack of demand?  Do people think such eyewear would just look too geeky or do they simply not see the potential?

Have you guys ever seen Layar?  It's an augmented reality application that I first encountered a couple years ago - it's pretty amazing: it uses your cell phone's built-in GPS and camera to show you, through the cell phone's screen a reality that has been "enhanced" with the information you'd like to see.  For example, one day I was standing in the middle of a street in Philadelphia when my daughter whined about being hungry.  I took out my iPhone and brought up the Layar application and asked it point out restaurants around me.  I simply held up the phone and looked at the screen.  As I swept in a 360-circle, the street scene in the phone showed little bubbles indicating where the restaurants were.  Very cool.  Layar can be configured with all sorts of location-based information.

Now imagine how cool it would be if you didn't have to pull out your cell phone?  If you were wearing glasses that always superimposed interesting information (where you configure what's interesting) in your field of view?  Initially, this could be Layar-style location-based information.  But in the not-to-distant future, this information could include facial recognition (no more embarrassing silence because you forgot the name of the person in front of you).  This is not science fiction stuff we're talking about - the technology is all there (the iPhoto application on the Mac can already go through my photo collection and connect it to previously identified faces).

I just wonder when someone will come up with the eyewear to enable all of this.