October 9, 2017 • 6 mins
Now that Apple is getting into the Augmented Reality game, is it finally ready for prime time? We look at Apple's effect on technology and whether AR is ready to make a big break into the consumer market.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
When Apple announced the iPhone eight and iPhone ten, the
company emphasized the new handsets augmented reality features. Could Apple
be the shot in the arm for mixed reality? This
is Tech Stuff Daily and I'm Jonathan Strickland. Back in
the ninety nineties, virtual reality was becoming a big buzzword.
(00:28):
Personal computers had emerged from hobbyist markets and entered the
mainstream consciousness. People were just finding their way onto the Internet,
and it seemed like technology would have no limits. In
no time, we'd be zapping ourselves or some virtual representation
of ourselves into a virtual environment and explore the Internet
as if it were the real world. You probably know
(00:49):
how that turned out. VR technology lacked the sophistication and
required too many concessions to make that scenario realistic. Instead,
we got simple games filled with crude polygons and other
relatively lackluster experiences. People quickly lost interest and confidence in
this supposedly transformative technology. Funding for VR projects seemed to
(01:11):
follow the flagging interest, and the computer scientists, designers, and
engineers who might have been able to urge VR closer
to what people wanted found themselves in search of other projects.
The whole discipline was put on the back burner for
many years. Flash forward a few decades and now things
are different. Not only do we have dedicated devices like
(01:31):
the Oculus Rift or HTC Vibe to handle VR, but
also an increasing number of smartphones can run various virtual
reality applications as well. A secondary industry of smartphone case
manufacturers sprung up around this trend, allowing you to strap
a smartphone right in front of your eyeballs. A new
host of games and experiences have popped up in the
(01:52):
VR space as well. Some of them allow you to
explore an exotic landscape, while others pit you in ferocious
combat against foes is like zombies or dinosaurs or zombie dinosaurs.
Then there's augmented reality or a R. This technology has
also been around for a few decades. Instead of substituting
(02:12):
a computer generated world in place of our real one,
augmented reality overlays digital information on top of our physical environments.
Imagine looking at a wall and using an a R
app to see where all the wiring goes. It would
almost seem like you had X ray vision, but really
you're just looking at a digital representation of that wiring.
(02:33):
VR and a are are big parts of what people
are now calling mixed reality. Think of mixed reality as
a spectrum. On one end, you have an almost completely
real physical environment with just some digital information incorporated into
it in some intrinsic way. On the other end, you
have a holy virtual environment filled with computer generated images
(02:56):
and experiences. Mixed reality can incorporate all sorts of user
interfaces as well, from dedicated controls to voice commands, to
eye tracking technology, to mapping physical objects in the area
to virtual ones in the experience. But despite this evolution
of the art, mixed reality hasn't made great strides into
(03:16):
the consumer market. It's mostly the plaything of early adopters
and people with a lot of disposable income. That's partly
because the requirements for good mixed reality experiences tend to
be pretty high. If you want a dedicated system, you're
typically talking about a headset and controls that will run
several hundred dollars, plus a sophisticated PC capable of providing
(03:38):
the processing needed to handle the graphics and physics engines.
Such a computer will run you another thousand dollars easy.
For that reason, much of the development and mixed reality
has been dedicated to specific systems and integrations that aren't
really suitable for the consumer market. Think of things like
R and D labs and manufacturing facilities, or larger entertainment
(03:59):
complex is like arcades or amusement parks. Smartphones are changing that,
and Apple's moved to embrace the technology could be the
push the industry needs to hit the big time. It's
not that other smartphones can't handle VR and A R.
Android phones like Google's Pixel fall into that category as well,
but Apple's devoted fan base, which is known for their
(04:21):
app store purchases, makes all the difference. To put it
another way, there are way more Android devices on the
market than iOS devices. According to the analytics company stat Counter,
Android devices account for more than seventy percent of all
the mobile devices in the world. Apple's iOS devices hover
around twenty percent of the market. However, until Apple's app
(04:47):
store generated more revenue than the Google Play app store,
so even though there are fewer Apple devices out in
the wild, Apple device owners spend more money on apps
than Android owners. Google had more than three times as
many gadgets and consumer hands but Apple was generating more
app revenue anyway. That's a powerful story with Apple's move
(05:10):
to supporting augmented reality. This could mean we'll see a
burst of development in the space. There's money to be
made there, which will fund lots more research and development. This,
in turn, could have a ripple effect across the industry
and gently push it into the mainstream market. It's too
early to declare mixed reality out of the woods. The
(05:30):
technology has entered the public consciousness before, only to suffer
tremendous setbacks when the general public realized the technology wasn't
nearly as far along as they had anticipated. But with
more standalone devices able to support mixed reality implementations, even
limited ones, we may finally see this move out of
the realm of research facilities and industrial use cases and
(05:53):
into day to day life. To learn more about mixed reality,
be sure to subscribe to the tech Stuff podcast, where
we exp more topics like this in detail. You never
wondered how the large Hadron collider works, or you want
to know the story behind the nineteen eight three video
game Crash, you should check out tech Stuff episodes publish
every Wednesday and Friday. That's all for me for now,
(06:13):
See you next time.
When Apple announced the iPhone eight and iPhone ten, the
company emphasized the new handsets augmented reality features. Could Apple
be the shot in the arm for mixed reality? This
is Tech Stuff Daily and I'm Jonathan Strickland. Back in
the ninety nineties, virtual reality was becoming a big buzzword.
(00:28):
Personal computers had emerged from hobbyist markets and entered the
mainstream consciousness. People were just finding their way onto the Internet,
and it seemed like technology would have no limits. In
no time, we'd be zapping ourselves or some virtual representation
of ourselves into a virtual environment and explore the Internet
as if it were the real world. You probably know
(00:49):
how that turned out. VR technology lacked the sophistication and
required too many concessions to make that scenario realistic. Instead,
we got simple games filled with crude polygons and other
relatively lackluster experiences. People quickly lost interest and confidence in
this supposedly transformative technology. Funding for VR projects seemed to
(01:11):
follow the flagging interest, and the computer scientists, designers, and
engineers who might have been able to urge VR closer
to what people wanted found themselves in search of other projects.
The whole discipline was put on the back burner for
many years. Flash forward a few decades and now things
are different. Not only do we have dedicated devices like
(01:31):
the Oculus Rift or HTC Vibe to handle VR, but
also an increasing number of smartphones can run various virtual
reality applications as well. A secondary industry of smartphone case
manufacturers sprung up around this trend, allowing you to strap
a smartphone right in front of your eyeballs. A new
host of games and experiences have popped up in the
(01:52):
VR space as well. Some of them allow you to
explore an exotic landscape, while others pit you in ferocious
combat against foes is like zombies or dinosaurs or zombie dinosaurs.
Then there's augmented reality or a R. This technology has
also been around for a few decades. Instead of substituting
(02:12):
a computer generated world in place of our real one,
augmented reality overlays digital information on top of our physical environments.
Imagine looking at a wall and using an a R
app to see where all the wiring goes. It would
almost seem like you had X ray vision, but really
you're just looking at a digital representation of that wiring.
(02:33):
VR and a are are big parts of what people
are now calling mixed reality. Think of mixed reality as
a spectrum. On one end, you have an almost completely
real physical environment with just some digital information incorporated into
it in some intrinsic way. On the other end, you
have a holy virtual environment filled with computer generated images
(02:56):
and experiences. Mixed reality can incorporate all sorts of user
interfaces as well, from dedicated controls to voice commands, to
eye tracking technology, to mapping physical objects in the area
to virtual ones in the experience. But despite this evolution
of the art, mixed reality hasn't made great strides into
(03:16):
the consumer market. It's mostly the plaything of early adopters
and people with a lot of disposable income. That's partly
because the requirements for good mixed reality experiences tend to
be pretty high. If you want a dedicated system, you're
typically talking about a headset and controls that will run
several hundred dollars, plus a sophisticated PC capable of providing
(03:38):
the processing needed to handle the graphics and physics engines.
Such a computer will run you another thousand dollars easy.
For that reason, much of the development and mixed reality
has been dedicated to specific systems and integrations that aren't
really suitable for the consumer market. Think of things like
R and D labs and manufacturing facilities, or larger entertainment
(03:59):
complex is like arcades or amusement parks. Smartphones are changing that,
and Apple's moved to embrace the technology could be the
push the industry needs to hit the big time. It's
not that other smartphones can't handle VR and A R.
Android phones like Google's Pixel fall into that category as well,
but Apple's devoted fan base, which is known for their
(04:21):
app store purchases, makes all the difference. To put it
another way, there are way more Android devices on the
market than iOS devices. According to the analytics company stat Counter,
Android devices account for more than seventy percent of all
the mobile devices in the world. Apple's iOS devices hover
around twenty percent of the market. However, until Apple's app
(04:47):
store generated more revenue than the Google Play app store,
so even though there are fewer Apple devices out in
the wild, Apple device owners spend more money on apps
than Android owners. Google had more than three times as
many gadgets and consumer hands but Apple was generating more
app revenue anyway. That's a powerful story with Apple's move
(05:10):
to supporting augmented reality. This could mean we'll see a
burst of development in the space. There's money to be
made there, which will fund lots more research and development. This,
in turn, could have a ripple effect across the industry
and gently push it into the mainstream market. It's too
early to declare mixed reality out of the woods. The
(05:30):
technology has entered the public consciousness before, only to suffer
tremendous setbacks when the general public realized the technology wasn't
nearly as far along as they had anticipated. But with
more standalone devices able to support mixed reality implementations, even
limited ones, we may finally see this move out of
the realm of research facilities and industrial use cases and
(05:53):
into day to day life. To learn more about mixed reality,
be sure to subscribe to the tech Stuff podcast, where
we exp more topics like this in detail. You never
wondered how the large Hadron collider works, or you want
to know the story behind the nineteen eight three video
game Crash, you should check out tech Stuff episodes publish
every Wednesday and Friday. That's all for me for now,
(06:13):
See you next time.
TechStuff Daily News
Host
Jonathan Strickland
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