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Comment by Shank | Hacker News Reader

There are a lot of skeptical comments in this thread, but remember: Apple has revolutionized past industries like phones and tablets where other competitors failed miserably. A compelling AR product can and will exist eventually, and all this article is saying is that Apple will be competing in the AR field.

An aside, but I can imagine AR done right being extremely useful. I love the idea of being able to instantly have access to information on my phone, but it always requires typing or voice input. I could totally see just looking at something and tapping a button triggering a card that says "that thing you're looking at is this."

While that's just my dream, I'd much rather see people experimenting with new technologies rather than forgoing it with "Apple can't do X right, how can they do Y?" If anything, it could be because Apple is working on Y that X is taking a backseat for a while.

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Before, Apple used to be led by a product visionary. Now it's led by a supply chain expert.

I seriously doubt Apple will develop another revolutionary product with the new leadership. My prediction is that paradigm shifting AR products will come from a product-driven organization, though Apple may buy them out and scale it...

I also have some very serious doubts about Tim Cook's abilities as a CEO.

However, it's quite obvious that AR is the next UX frontier:

Historic UX frontiers:

#1: text/console/terminal

#2: Graphical UI with a mouse (Apple sorta owned this at first)

#3: Mobile graphical UI with a capacitive touch screen (Apple owned this, at first)

#3.5 VR (but putting on a helmet is quite a bit too hardcore for mass adoption)

#4: AR

This progression is because of the 3.5 VR step quite obvious even to Tim Cook. So, I don't really doubt the claims that he's been doubling down on AR @ Apple. It all makes sense.

And once he has given the command, I have no doubt that the Apple company has enough talented people in each of the required competency areas to pull it off.

Perhaps the most important thing here is that a) Apple has lots of money, b) Apple/Cook has lots and lots of pressure to come up with the new thing.

I think we currently are in that particular place that doesn't require lots and lots of executive vision and taste.

Right - identifying AR as a hot area is easy, but formulating what that looks like requires vision. Money and talent will deliver the Palm Pilot (1997), vision will deliver an iPhone (2007).

My take on UX frontiers:

#1 text console #2 mouse & keyboard #3 touchscreen #4 camera & microphone

I think we're at the beginning of #4, and starting to see this in categories like messaging, social networks, dating, and e-commerce. I consider overlaying AR elements to a live camera feed to be a subset of this shift, but by no means the defining aspect of this new method to interact with machines.

> Right - identifying AR as a hot area is easy, but formulating what that looks like requires vision.

Good point. And an relevant parallel between Sculley's Newton and Cook's potential "AR innovation project".

However - I get the feeling that it's a bit different from the mobile/touch UI revolution. That required lots of vision in terms of software and design. In AR I think there's really a lot of low-hanging fruit in terms of UX/design - once the trick part; the AR hardware has been solved.

Thanks!

What low-hanging fruit do you see for AR?

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