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Tim Cook is famously bullish on AR, which can be seen more in his public statements than in Apple’s latest hardware. But to be fair, the company is doing more than its share on the software end, given ARkit’s democratization and amplification of mobile AR.
In honor of today’s iPhone X pre-order sales, our video of the week spotlight’s Tim Cook’s latest ruminations on AR. Though we’re not crazy about what the iPhone X specifically brings to AR (selfie masks and animoji), the device will be an important accelerant to AR adoption overall.
Cook also points out AR’s similarities to early iOS apps as a leading indicator of its potential growth (a point we’ve made before). If you look at the first iOS app SDK in 2008, it resembles where we are now with ARkit including people’s skepticism, which he subtly invokes.
“If you think back to 2008 when we launched the app store, a lot of people were probably saying ‘Oh this mobile app thing, I’m probably not going to use any of these,” he told Buzzfeed News (full video below). “Now you can’t imagine your life without them.”
Cook goes on to specify the areas where AR will be transformative, just as apps were ten years ago. And the areas he’s excited about most include very Apple-centric activities, where some of its business lines and product focus lies: shopping, entertainment and education.
“I think it will change the way people shop, it will chance the way that entertainment and gaming is done. It will change the way that people learn,” he said. “It will literally change everything, it will change the way business is conducted.”
Speaking of Apple values, Cook made a point to invoke the “human,” element of Apple’s design principles. Whether or not you think that’s BS (as some people fairly do), it feels genuine from Cook, and is at least consistent in some Apple’s products. We’ll see if ARkit follows suit.
“The beauty of AR in my view is the virtual world then becomes an amplifier of the physical world, it doesn’t replace it.” he said. “We have always infused humanity into our products and we think that’s really important, and I think AR is exactly that.”
See the full interview below. And to upgrade this week’s video to a triple feature, we’ve also included a few iPhone X hands-on videos from Wired and The Verge (further below). Check them out if you’re considering an iPhone X. But act fast: there will be supply chain shortages.
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Disclosure: ARtillry has no financial stake in the companies mentioned in this post, nor received payment for its production. Disclosure and ethics policy can be seen here.