Apple, AR, and The Potential for an Apple AR Headset

One of the things Apple does well is to use a platform approach to anything they bring to market. The Mac OS is a platform for hardware, software, and services. IOS is a platform for hardware, software and services and TVOS and Watch OS are also platforms in their own right.

By doing this, Apple can riff on these platforms and innovate at the hardware, OS and services level.

We are about to witness one of their most impressive riffs soon in the form of AR and how IOS 11 brings a whole new and exciting way to merge our physical world with our digital world. What is important about this initial foray into AR is that Apple is mainly using dedicated hardware in the form of the iPhone and iPad to deliver their first generation of AR solutions.

At the moment, a smartphone or tablet is the best way to deliver AR and the apps being developed will have a real augmented reality focus. In yesterday’s Think.tank column, Ben states very well that the path to AR for the masses will go through the smartphone and underlines the point I make above.

But if you follow this market you know that a there is another way being proposed to deliver AR as well, this one being pushed by Microsoft in the form of HoloLens and in a category they call mixed reality. This form of mixed reality uses a set of goggles that allows a person to see the real world around them and then superimposes virtual objects or information on top of these goggles.

This is an important distinction since Microsoft is not pushing VR in the similar way that Oculus or Vibe does in that these are closed systems, and you are actually in virtual worlds and cannot see the real world around you when in their VR applications.

While I like what Microsoft is doing with Hololens and Intel’s version of this called Project Alloy, they still use very clunky looking goggles that are heavy on the head and a lot of processing power. They get this from either a tethered solution or in Intel’s Project Alloy’s case, serious CPU’s and GPU’s embedded in their headset that is power hungry with relatively low battery life.

However, for goggles to be accepted by the mainstream public, they must be more like the glasses we have today and not int heir current form of heads up displays that make a person look like a science fiction character.

I have had the chance to see many goggles or glasses in the works, and I still don’t see either the breakthrough technology or designs that would be acceptable for consumers coming anytime soon. My sense is that they need to be more like our current sunglasses or reading glasses before the main consumer audience will every adopt them broadly. At the moment I just don’t see the technology ready to deliver on this type of glasses, which is why I believe that the smartphone and tablet will be the dominant AR delivery platform for at least another 3-4 years or even longer.

However, I do believe that Apple has designs in the works around some AR or mixed reality glasses and that these represent their natural evolution of their mobile IOS UI. While this may be quite a few years in the future, they have filed patents on a couple of glasses design, and the most recent one has an AR twist to it. http://www.techradar.com/news/apple-patent-paints-a-future-of-ar-glasses-and-gestural-controls#

Another hint that Apple is serious about some AR glasses comes with news that they recently acquired SensoMotoric Instruments. This is a company that has eye tracking technology that can be used for things like gesture controls and other AR like functions.

Here are some YouTube videos that show what this eye tracking solution from SensoMotoric can do

Here’s how SMI has presented itself at technology conferences over the past five years:
2013 – https://youtu.be/kiFpMbfj_08
2014 – https://youtu.be/sNomkPAovUE
2015 – https://youtu.be/PONJIXPJMek
2016 – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HS2p2BmVsk
2017 – https://youtu.be/HtU-Y9g6Trw

David Goldman, VP of Marketing at Lumus states:

“Apple’s recent acquisition of eye tracking company SensoMotoric Instruments (SMI) is another indication that companies with plans to build head mounted AR systems would consider eyesight as the universal interface. We can expect to see tier-1 companies in the race for AR technology to either create similar homegrown solutions or to make similar acquisitions like this – in eye tracking, gesture recognition, voice recognition, and display technology companies so that another tech giant doesn’t corner the market.”

If and When Apple delivers some glasses it would be a significant extension of their platform and in this case, would most likely be the next major step in their evolution of their mobile UI that will be embedded into future versions of iOS. The big question is not if Apple will do this but when. While it is difficult to predict, I think that this is a 2020 product. Given what I know about the tech available today to deliver the kind of glasses that would deliver this new UI and be an important extension of the mobile experience in glasses that would be acceptable for the masses, I just don’t see it anytime soon. You can expect Apple and others to continue to acquire the proper technology to eventually deliver AR glasses that everyone will want to use. If I read the tea leaves right, this would allow Apple to reinvent the user interface again just as they did with the Mac and iPhone’ UI’s in the past.