Apple's Tim Cook says AR and VR headsets are for connection and communication | Hacker News Reader

Apple's Tim Cook says AR and VR headsets are for connection and communication

theverge.com

48 pointsthunderbong70 comments

First, the underlying article/interview makes more sense to read than the Verge summary of one section of it: https://www.gq.com/story/tim-cook-global-creativity-awards-c... Just skip to "But he was willing to explain why Apple might—hypothetically—be interested in something in the world of AR/VR."

True telepresence is as exciting to me as teleportation. But I'm skeptical of any approach with a headset.

I prefer Google Project Starline approach and wish it was focused on families and friends using it with each other, even as it's insanely expensive. My personal dream is something that makes me feel that people are in the room even when I'm not paying attention to them. I'm forced to work in the office today and I kinda wish my girlfriend could "be" here with me even as I ignore her while I'm working.

I think it's underestimated how much people would be willing to pay for real telepresence with family and friends. I'd keep a thing like that on all day.

Project Starline is actually quite cool: https://blog.google/technology/research/project-starline/

"Google will begin testing the technology with corporations such as Salesforce and T-Mobile beginning in late 2022."

haven't heard of any tests.

is the project still in progress?

The author of the article you linked is Clay Bavor, who left Google in February 2023 to work with the former co-CEO of Salesforce. — https://www.theverge.com/2023/2/8/23591447/google-clay-bavor...

Not sure if going only after enterprise (starting with Salesforce) to beta test is the right call. I think the technology needs more good stories to gain more momentum, which a PR from Salesforce alone may not do. By going after consumers, say building out a few "booths" in selected cities and partnering with a hospital to build booths there, "live saving" stories or how love ones can connect can gain more interests to get the ball rolling.

LinkedIn shows people in working on it and Google hiring for it, too. But I haven't heard from anybody at Salesforce or T-Mobile.

How important do you feel it is for their real physical bodies to be what you see instead of a 3d avatar? And how important do you feel it is to be able to see them in your actual physical room instead of a 3d virtual space? Basically, I'm asking how far from satisfactory is VRChat.

> But I'm skeptical of any approach with a headset.

Is the problem that it's less comfortable than not having it on?

As you can read here: https://storage.googleapis.com/pub-tools-public-publication-... (PDF) they "reconstruct geometric approximations of the user, using a combination of visible and near-infrared (NIR) global-shutter image sensors." So I'm not a purist on what's "real" as long as it appears real to me.

I do want to feel like they're in the room with me and while comfort is one issue, it's not the only issue. It's more of a psychological one. But yeah, I suppose if a headset was shrunk down to the size of my regular glasses I'd be fine. I'm skeptical that's in my lifetime.

Personally, while I've tried neither, I feel like there wouldn't be much difference between that and video chat, psychologically speaking. I think that's because they'd be fixed to a particular position in the room, like a TV would. You wouldn't be able to e.g. dance around the room together or watch the same TV together or explore other areas together, like you would with VRChat in a virtual space. Seems like there's tradeoffs to be had in the psychological experience.

Most of what I'm interested in is passive. I want to read my own book and listen to music next to somebody. And I'm definitely not a dancer!

Telepresence is actually a big downside for me (telepresence for work, that is, being able to see long distance family memebers would be great).

I dislike most meetings I have to attend. I want fewer meetings, not the million dollar, realistic car racing simulator equivalent of Teams.

What I do want is a Bret Victor style 3D dynamic medium. Something genuinely new and not possible with current technology.

He's wrong, of course. Perhaps I am biased because I am quite asocial, but squandering the full possibilities of AR to focus on social stuff is myopic.

Instead, AR should be about empowering the individual. I have no desire for "zoom, but heads-up".

What I want is heads-up walking directions in an unfamiliar city. I want annotations of plant and animal species as I walk around the park. I want IKEA assembly instructions that make sense in 3D. I want to look up and know where any particular plane is coming from and going to. I want to know where the last time I saw that car with that license plate was. I want to leave cute messages around the house for my wife that are triggered by environmental cues (a heart in her coffee cup when she makes her morning latte, etc). I want to cross reference my grocery list with the store layout and plan the best path to get my shopping done. I want to blur out the advertisements and idiots around me. I want interactive virtual christmas decorations that I don't have to pack away...

> I want to blur out the advertisements [..] me.

Quite the opposite will happen - ads in your wife's coffee cups, ads in your IKEA 3d instructinos, virtual ads towed behind airplanes when you look up, etc... :(

> I want to blur out [..] idiots around me.

Reminds me of some Black Mirror episodes!

Yes, people said that about the internet.

Turns out it's also for gaming, porn, consuming, procrastinating, relaxing and tons of other thing.

You won't decide what those things are about, your users will.

We are lucky apple never designed HTTP, it would have ended up like gemini and they would have call it revolutionary.

Someone please remake the classic https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRgNOyCnbqg but for VR.

ChatGPT should be able to do that in a year or two I suppose.

I think people crave real world connection, not another iDevice that's strapped to your head.

People crave convenience, and the ability to get things done.

That's why people text instead of call, and call instead of meet up.

Because it's path of least resistance, but not a path to well being.

I get that this discussion is a simplified presentation of arguments, but to add nuance and depth:

• I personally text to send quick updates that don't need an immediate response, exchange funny GIFs, share links, and forward small documents. I can also clarify my communication with emojis or reacts (done well, this is the "tone of voice"/"facial expression"/non-verbal communication of medium of texting).

• But I wouldn't spend a half-hour to hour-long session just texting someone to catch up with their life, nor would I use text for an important, complex conversation. Then again, I typically wouldn't video chat someone to receive a very quick update about something.

Similarly, in VR, perhaps the medium can provide a method communication that is more rich than both texting and video calls, which adds something instead of acting as a substitute for something else. Maybe VR will make it easier for people to share and compare multiple screens at once (to compare a document or code). VR is already great at presenting certain types of artwork in museums (e.g. an immersive 3-D sculpture with music and a beautiful background, which nicely complemented a physical display of artwork).

Perhaps in certain fields (maybe architecture, design, film production, or video game development?) VR can become the preferred way to communicate, where people can prefer to use VR instead of video calls or text updates—especially if VR becomes commonplace.

What is convenient about a $3000 pair of ski goggles whose only function is zoom calls?

I wouldn’t mind being able to meet hands free from the chair lift

Makes you even cooler for just 3k

People probably need more real-world connection, but it turns out they often crave whatever gives their brain the quickest dopamine hit.

people are pretty much not built for the modern world. Maybe some techno nerd people are, but most normal people aren't.

AR and VR are inherently antisocial technologies, though. They both isolate you from the world.

AR can also lead with more engagement in the world. Remember when, for a moment, Pokemon GO had groups of complete strangers walking outside together and sharing an experience in the real world?

The major AR part of Pokémon Go is the geolocation features of Pokémon and game locations in the real world. Most players turned off the AR camera mode after about 5 minutes or so because it makes the game more annoying to play and uses more battery power.

BC, Canada, occasionally I still see people meet up trying to catch em all. Although I don't know how much it is really meeting up and how much is having to be in the same location because that's where a particular pokemon is. Obviously I have no idea how any of that works but it's fun to imagine.

Not only that - the UX does too. Instead of looking hunched over at little glass displays you're looking at the world and interacting with it more directly.

> you're looking at the world and interacting with it more directly.

Only sorta. What you're really doing is taking the real world and reducing to an electronic simulacrum of the real world.

Not if the AR is really good, probably better than what it will be initially. I’m not talking about AR goggle pass through.

How is it possible that it's not a simulacrum of the real world? It seems to me that how good it is doesn't actually enter into it. You're still putting a physical barrier between you and the world.

We see this happen even when AR isn't involved. Just looking through a window introduces a separation between you and the real world. That separation matters a whole lot to people, and changes how people think about, perceive, and react to what they see.

When you look through your eye glasses are you seeing a simulacrum of the real world?

If it’s the same, but you can do hand gestures to interact with UI that appears and disappears does that change things?

Maybe you think so given your example of a window. Indoors is still the real world to me.

It’s adding a software UX layer on top that could be more natural than the UX via small displays.

For pokemons.

The way Cook describes AR is not something I want ("dropping the digital world into your reality").

I just want better devices that help or augment my current senses (like with current things like sunglasses/hearing aids/etc things like: I have astigmatism and a reduction of headlight "starring" would be welcome. A zoom feature for reading small print. (my eyes suck can't you tell? :) Thermal scan and enemy detection a'la predator.

I use VR primarily for social interactions. Not everyone I interact with loves in the same city as me, but we regularly play VR games to maintain a social relationship.

Thats not being antisocial at all, and I don't replace in-person social events with virtual ones anymore than someone who jumps into Fortnite with their friends on Friday nights.

Well, yes. I also have online-only friendships, too. using VR in the way you do makes sense.

What I'm responding to is the idea (mostly from the likes of Meta and various hard-core advocates) that VR will become ubiquitous. That means it replacing actual in-person communication.

Reducing everyone to a datastream is an antisocial tendency. If that's done as an alternative to not interacting with someone at all, it's the more social alternative. If that's done as an alternative to interacting with people in the real world, that's antisocial.

It's a bit like using video conferencing. Many workplaces are continuing to use video conferencing in the office even when everyone is in the office. That's an antisocial use. Using it to bring people together who cannot be physically together is a pro-social use.

AR/VR is designed to separate you from the physical world and reduce everything to a datastream. That's what I meant by "antisocial". But I did ignore a couple of tons of nuance in saying that.

I disagree. I started playing VRChat during the pandemic and it made me find a VR 'underground' EDM rave type group that I've spent thousands of hours with. Events in a AAA game studio level map are held every other weekend. Now I do side work with that same group that runs a 350+ person in real life VRChat rave in multiple cities every few months where tens of dozens of my VRChat friends show up and we spend a weekend together. VR has done the opposite of make me antisocial.

As a natural introvert, it is one of the best things to happen to me, and the most social I have ever been in my life.

So are iPhones, but they're also tremendously profitable.

Odd, given that teenagers will often go to a friend's house to play.

To be consistent, at least they should actively promote remote work... Unusually, I don't see them eating their own dog food on this one. I'm not optimist on this whole product.

Well I think everyone outside of the socially anxious would agree that face to face conversation conversation is preferable to telephone calls and video chat. That doesn’t change the fact that the iPhone is probably the most successful product of all time. I’m a remote work advocate, but just because Apple themselves don’t prefer remote work doesn’t mean they can’t put out a product that aids in it. Besides, I’m not convinced that remote work is necessarily what they’re talking about here. You could have a bunch of architects in a meeting together discussing a blueprint, you could have a bunch of medical students in a university hospital seeing a surgery through the eyes of a surgeon rather than from the viewing area, there’s a lot of decent use cases outside of coding for a good headset if it’s done right. Whether it has enough appeal to cross over into the mainstream or not is another matter. Just because Zuckerberg dropped the ball with his dystopian metaverse doesn’t necessarily mean every other company will.

> face to face conversation conversation is preferable to telephone calls and video chat.

But that's not the trade-off. The face to face conversations come with an hour or two of unconsempated commuting.

I don’t see how this is relevant. I’ve already said I’m a remote work advocate. I’m pointing out that existing apple devices that allow for non face to face communication have proven wildly successful despite apple not getting behind remote work. So we can’t rule out the headset also being successful based with the logic that if apple believed in the headset then it would also believe in remote work.

I own a valve index and spend probably 2000hr/year in it playing social 'games' like VRChat. There is no way you could get me to do remote work in it. VR to me is for escaping reality and the negatives that come with real life.

I also am not optimistic hearing the $3,000+ price tag when most consumer headsets are below $1500 and an environment with games, activities, social apps etc. has already been created for them.

Apparently they've learned nothing from Meta's mistakes.

They're for gaming and escape. Not for work, not for communication.

This could be a huge market, but Apple and Meta don't seem to understand that at the highest levels.

When I hear a huge company like Apple say that one of their products is for a specific thing, and not a much more lucrative thing that would have more users, I take it to mean that they know it's not good enough for the really lucrative thing.

They're desperately trying to spin it to be for what it can handle, rather than what people want it to be for.

Meta just screwed up. I can't imagine why they thought business would pay for access to the metaverse when they hadn't even gotten gamer buy-in yet. They had excellent gaming-capable products already, so I can't imagine what they were thinking by leaving out the cheap features that would make the new headset good for gaming, too.

While I get what you are saying, keep in mind that Meta could have just done it wrong.

Apple is really good at making products in areas where other companies haven't had much success.

Example:

- The iPad, Microsoft had its own tablet almost 10 years before the iPad.

- There were even touch phones before the iPhone.

- The Lisa/Mac picked up where IBM left off. IBM thought computers were not for the general public.

Maybe what is missing with VR/AR communication(in the workplace or elsewhere) is the secret sauce that Apple does with its software and QA. Just my 2 cents.

"Smart phones are for work and communication. Not for gaming and escape." could've been a credible statement before the iPhone.

I'm not sure if their eventual products will be 'revolutionary' or 'magical' but considering Apple is pretty damn good at displays, creating new input paradigms and they make their own chip, it's possible we'll see something that's way better than everything on the market. It could make us re-think VR devices for non-productivity use cases.

Or, it could just be a failed product. Time will tell.

I agree about work, but they are definitely for communication. VRChat is very successful. I play thousands of hours of VR social apps every year and you couldn't get me to do remote work in one. It's my escape and out from the negatives and stresses of reality.

Gaming vr is a small market for Apple and meta.

What do you mean by Meta mistakes? If you think they're neglecting their VR department I have news for you...

I'd love to use it just for work. I can take it off and walk away. They need to be good though.

Let's not so eagerly prescribe the use of nascent technology.

Here's an attempt to decode Apple's thinking behind this messaging: Even though Apple's sales expectations for the first few generations are reportedly quite modest, at $3k they're going to need to get some corporate adoption.

Providing justification for it as remote work / teleconferencing is necessary to help the corporate "Tech Aristocrats" make at least a fig leaf argument that they need this thing. "Aristocrat" is what I call the specialized 'top performer' class of proven long-term ICs in big companies. These are the guys who always seem to wrangle the latest $5k monitors and other super whiz bang gear that IT won't spec for the rank and file. It's not a big market for Apple comparatively but it's the next step larger from VPs and up who can just have their admins order whatever they want with zero justification.

Getting the company to pay for your Apple headset is definitely going to be this year's cool status symbol signifying your importance and pull. As a product category, I'm long-term bullish on AR/VR but short-term bearish because we've still got a ways to go in quality, usability and, most importantly, compelling use cases (beyond gaming & media consumption). I expect the Apple headset will probably be the best yet but it'll still fall short of 'actually necessary' for a business.

It feels like watching a car crash in slow motion seeing Apple steam forward with the XR stuff.

If AR and VR could get baked into a pair of glasses that people would want to wear anyway ie indistinguishable from regular glasses, and at a price point accessible to the general public, the space would explode. Who can say how far off that is.

I suspect this is exactly how it is going to go as higher density Li-Ion comes out around 900 Wh/L.

Definitely sounds like WWDC will launch the glasses this year. I suspected it when the WWDC announcement had what looks like lenses [0].

I'm really curious what they will ship. This video has a decent overview. [1]

[0]: https://developer.apple.com/wwdc23/

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKkdnqIHKhI&t=1s

hm to be honest was is scaring me off VR is the fact that I have to look like a cyborg to take part in it.

And if i don't it just feels like second life with extra steps.

I have also many times dreamt of taking a car and using the canbus to do a racing simulator that sits in my yard but have also been scared of by the fact that iam not really moving.

Maybe we do actually need a neural link for it?

What disappoints me is that other people can't interact with you (see where you're looking) while wearing it. Just putting a little cartoon face on the front would be enough to let you know whether the person is looking at you, surprised, distracted, or focused on something else. Based on the leaks they have cameras for facial and eye tracking for remote interaction so why not even a nod to those in RL. Certainly those in virtual will see those things.

No reason they can't do good merged reality so that your kitchen or tiny office becomes a full featured remote conference room, while still letting you see what the kids/wife are up to. Even in the SV developer sardine cans something like it could help with distraction.

Best reason I can think of for not doing it? Weight and power/temp. You can't wear any of these for more than an hour or two.

I just don't see it. AR experience requires basically perfect implementation, and software is just a nightmare of bugs and broken experiences. Maybe if we actually had good quality software, but that's just not the trajectory our industry is on.

I have a theory that a lot of the “future technologies” we all grew up dreaming about are actually too complex for humans to create. It may be that only sufficiently advanced AI has the intelligence to create perfect AR software.

I can communicate over internet without AR/VR headset now. Why should I wear it?

Presumably a lot of value is missing from face to face interactions on the Internet. AR / VR are a better approximation: body language, shared 3D space… Just stating VR / AR selling point. I’m personally not fully convinced.

Not me!

I spent most of the weekend in VR No-Mans-Sky exploring a made-up galaxy, and when someone tried to speak to me near the meetup-for-missions place I ran away.

Tim Cook finally learned why he's building the metaverse and why people love using VR so much

Cyberpunk was great to get 'hackers' on board with techno capitalism. Turns out most techies know more about tech than capitalism. The society-changing systems will never be broken wide open while most care about them. It's going to be the same with AI and VR/AR as it was with smartphones, the internet, and computers. A few dozen people control the internet. Open source phones never took off. And new computers are exponentially more powerful keeping the open stuff forever in the children's pool.

And I say this as someone who loves Neuromancer. But the "gadgets" are like playthings compared to the closed tech. It's trickle down effects. Not even guerilla warfare - it's the children's pool.

Maybe fix WebXR first? iOS Safari still doesn't support it[0], so developing AR web apps for clients is not great. You basically have to use a service like 8thwall, which is a pain to work with compared to browser API's. And it's expensive.

[0]: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/WebXR_Devic...

I suspect Apple views WebXR as an inefficient lowest common denominator API, not unlike Flash on mobile back in 2007, and they don’t want people writing apps on their platform against that.

They've been doing that for years and always end up yielding to the web standard. Happened with webapps, happened with web push notifications (finally being released).

Hopefully they are not thinking the same for WebXR, if so, we'd be years away from getting it.

But I kinda suspect they are releasing WebXR along with their AR glasses

How would that help Apple?

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