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Comment by dwhitney | Hacker News Reader

I hope you're wrong. I understand that the technology for the dream that "Google Glasses" was selling isn't quite there, but I hope Apple has a research team moving closer and closer to it.

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Non-gaming AR tech will have to be extremely good out of the gate to dodge the issues that sank Google Glasses. I suspect it will remain an active research project for as long as it takes, and in the meantime Apple will chart their product roadmap along a sequence of technologies that they can be confident of having ready on 1-5 year timescales.

They may still make that, but I suspect developers will not have full access to the full power of the platform.

A thought I should have fleshed out in the above post: the kind of sensor data that enables AR can also be used to deduce a great deal of personal information[0]. With Apple taking a strong position on privacy I suspect they will make only a limited subset of data available to developers.

[0]: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/332386880_Privacy_I...

> I suspect they will err on the side of hiding this data from developers.

More likely, they will allow developers some mechanisms for leveraging the data on device, without being able to exfiltrate it.

"Not quite there" is an understatement. The advancements necessary in optics, battery technology and GPU performance for a practical AR wearable are considerable, this is without considering the need for a fashionable form factor and practical heat dissipation. IMO we're at least a decade out from a serious MVP.

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