Apple has been plotting its Augmented Reality plan for more than five years: it’s Tim Cook’s big project

We have been hearing rumors about Apple’s already budgeted as certain glasses for a long time now. A device that could arrive in the next few years and that, for sure, will be the first big landing of Apple at a massive level in augmented or mixed reality.

Context is vital, as always, but more so here. With Meta investing huge amounts of money in building its Metaverse, introducing the Meta Quest Pro recently, how Apple can position it self in front of a new sector with the opportunities it may bring is something that will largely define what we call metaverse in a few years or whether we stop naming it.

It does not seem that among Apple executives this term is one of their favorites, but leaving aside any meaning, in the end what seems to be brewing is a battle to see who dominates this new board. And in fact it could be the great project of Tim Cook, who has just completed a decade at the helm of Apple.

So far, Apple’s biggest foray into AR remains the 2017 release of ARKit. This software proposal uses the cameras and sensors of iPhones and iPads to superimpose images in space when the device is pointed at a certain area. It is the technology that, for example, allows simulators such as the Ikea simulator or some games like Pokémon Go to work.

Since ARKit, Apple has taken other smaller steps forward with AR apps for the iPhone. In May 2019, it introduced its Augmented Reality app for the Statue of Liberty, with Cook tweeting: The Statue of Liberty app is just the beginning of how AR will transform the way we connect with our world’s treasures.

In addition to Tim Cook’s constant cheers for the technology, here are other signs that Apple is moving toward a future of where AR could carry a lot of weight as a product. Apple’s hiring of Nat Brown, ex-Microsoft and Xbox booster; the release of dozens of mixed, augmented and virtual reality patent announcements; acquisitions, including Metaio in 2015 and SensoMotoric in 2017, both augmented reality; and the rumors about the glasses themselves, leave no room for delusion.

Augmented reality glasses: Tim Cook’s iPhone?

Information about the glasses has been incessant over the past few years. The most recent ones point to a device of about 300 grams, which should be linked to an iPhone, and which would look more wearable than other approaches we’ve seen, such as Facebook-Meta’s Quests, HoloLens or Google’s failed glasses.

The risk that they will generate rejection is still there. Seeing a person with a device at eye level is a very important leap in terms of denaturalization compared to a cell phone or a smartwatch. But it is surely also the next gadget-shaped frontier to conquer.

Mind you, it should come as no surprise that Apple is taking its time making this augmented reality hardware. Apple has always been known for patience when it comes to launching new products, and Cook surely doesn’t want Apple to repeat the failure of Google Glass. Also, because it may be the great innovative element of his tenure as CEO.

Cook has spoken on several occasions of the game-changing potential that could be harnessing augmented reality well. In September 2021, he went so far as to declare number one fan of AR always putting it above virtual reality in terms of potential.

But before, he had already done so. Specifically, in 2016, he was already setting out his vision clearly:

There is virtual reality and there is augmented reality: both are incredibly interesting. But my view is that augmented reality is the bigger of the two, probably by far.

I think a significant part of the population in developed countries, and eventually all countries, will have AR experiences every day, almost like eating three times a day, it will become such a big part of you, so many of us live on our smartphones, the iPhone, I hope, is very important to everybody, so AR will become a really big thing. I think VR is not going to be that big, compared to AR. I’m not saying it’s not important, it’s important, but it won’t make that much of a difference.

That’s one of many times Cook has named AR as an innovation vector he really trusts. And, also, a different approach to the metaverse, more linked to virtual reality, proposed by Meta; in a further clash between the visions of the technological future held by the two companies.