Apple and AR, there must be more.
OK. I don't really know Apple's long term play here. While it feels cliché and wrong to treat every quirk or failure as a divergence from Steve Jobs' approach, there is on occasion some truth. Firstly, I'd like to dispel the myth that everything Jobs did worked or was great. It wasn't. Apple nearly went bankrupt numerous times with Jobs in charge in fact. And anyone who followed tech before the iPhone should certainly know better.
But, that being said, there was a common essence which bound the products Jobs touched. And while I don't feel most people are evoking that when they use his name, some times people get it right.
With AR and a phone or a tablet. It is wrong. It has already failed. True, having a platform specific API will help. But, if phone based AR were truly going somewhere, we'd have more than Pokémon Go to show for it by this stage.
Yes, AR, even on a phone, can be really cool. The problem is making it something more than a gimmick. Playing an AR game in your living room means either holding the phone or tablet in one spot for prolonged periods of time, or having action going on in the whole room and only having a phone or tablet sized view into the action. It isn't any better than HoloLens. In fact, it is worse... at best. HoloLens is at least head mounted, so it is easy to stay focused on the action.
And this is why I have to hope that there is more to Apple's plan than just an SDK. Even a 1st party head mounting device would improve things a little. I still don't think it would rival HoloLens. No current Apple device has the spatial mapping and anchoring capabilities that HoloLens has. It is truly hard to imagine Apple being able to do that with existing hardware. And, EVEN IF THEY COULD... it still wouldn't be as a good or as natural as AR on top of the real world, since in this case the AR exists on top of a live feed.
HoloLens may be letter boxed with regards to the AR elements. But, at least the world is not letter boxes and therefore has 0s delay rendering reality. Because it doesn't need to render it.
In other words, the problem is; AR on a phone, or even a VR head set is a technological generation behind HoloLens. There are no two ways about it. It will always be inferior. Something tangibly better already exists. Already paved the way. Jobs, I really believe, would never have taken Apple down the path of phone based AR while HoloLens was out there. He might take a thing like HoloLens and "show them how to do it right". Or he might take a different, yet new spin on AR. But he wouldn't have pursued a path which was already outdated. Unless there was something more.
The question then is whether or not that is still part of the Apple DNA. I honestly don't know. AR on phones isn't new. Adding native platform support won't improve its immersive capabilities. In fact, I fear such a move may actually hamstring them in the future.
Consider this outcome. ARKit builds up a cult following. It never really makes it into the main stream. But reaches a stage where there are 1 or 2 stand out apps or games and maybe a dozen or so large cult followings. Enough that it isn't revolutionary but is large enough that it can't be discarded too quickly.
Then, they want to do a headset. Oops. They are bound to the past and either have to treat the head mounted stuff similarly to phone based AR and limit themselves there. Or break into 2 distinct form factors hurting those that brought them up in the AR space.
I don't think a lot of people realize just how beholden modern companies are to their legacies. It is the reason I won't touch Apple products with a 10 foot pole these days. They are so beholden to the past that they can no longer do what made them big. Planned obsolescence. I'm sorry, but the UI, UX and experience of a modern iPhone is not tangibly different than the 1st gen. And the reason they can't change is the same reason Windows 8 flopped. People whine when things actually change.
That is the danger jumping into AR with a 1st party solution with an inferior plan.
But, that being said, there was a common essence which bound the products Jobs touched. And while I don't feel most people are evoking that when they use his name, some times people get it right.
With AR and a phone or a tablet. It is wrong. It has already failed. True, having a platform specific API will help. But, if phone based AR were truly going somewhere, we'd have more than Pokémon Go to show for it by this stage.
Yes, AR, even on a phone, can be really cool. The problem is making it something more than a gimmick. Playing an AR game in your living room means either holding the phone or tablet in one spot for prolonged periods of time, or having action going on in the whole room and only having a phone or tablet sized view into the action. It isn't any better than HoloLens. In fact, it is worse... at best. HoloLens is at least head mounted, so it is easy to stay focused on the action.
And this is why I have to hope that there is more to Apple's plan than just an SDK. Even a 1st party head mounting device would improve things a little. I still don't think it would rival HoloLens. No current Apple device has the spatial mapping and anchoring capabilities that HoloLens has. It is truly hard to imagine Apple being able to do that with existing hardware. And, EVEN IF THEY COULD... it still wouldn't be as a good or as natural as AR on top of the real world, since in this case the AR exists on top of a live feed.
HoloLens may be letter boxed with regards to the AR elements. But, at least the world is not letter boxes and therefore has 0s delay rendering reality. Because it doesn't need to render it.
In other words, the problem is; AR on a phone, or even a VR head set is a technological generation behind HoloLens. There are no two ways about it. It will always be inferior. Something tangibly better already exists. Already paved the way. Jobs, I really believe, would never have taken Apple down the path of phone based AR while HoloLens was out there. He might take a thing like HoloLens and "show them how to do it right". Or he might take a different, yet new spin on AR. But he wouldn't have pursued a path which was already outdated. Unless there was something more.
The question then is whether or not that is still part of the Apple DNA. I honestly don't know. AR on phones isn't new. Adding native platform support won't improve its immersive capabilities. In fact, I fear such a move may actually hamstring them in the future.
Consider this outcome. ARKit builds up a cult following. It never really makes it into the main stream. But reaches a stage where there are 1 or 2 stand out apps or games and maybe a dozen or so large cult followings. Enough that it isn't revolutionary but is large enough that it can't be discarded too quickly.
Then, they want to do a headset. Oops. They are bound to the past and either have to treat the head mounted stuff similarly to phone based AR and limit themselves there. Or break into 2 distinct form factors hurting those that brought them up in the AR space.
I don't think a lot of people realize just how beholden modern companies are to their legacies. It is the reason I won't touch Apple products with a 10 foot pole these days. They are so beholden to the past that they can no longer do what made them big. Planned obsolescence. I'm sorry, but the UI, UX and experience of a modern iPhone is not tangibly different than the 1st gen. And the reason they can't change is the same reason Windows 8 flopped. People whine when things actually change.
That is the danger jumping into AR with a 1st party solution with an inferior plan.
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