This mini book is your guidebook for the post-smartphone future focused on the acceleration of augmented reality and what AR means to businesses today and how to prepare for a future when and where the smartphone is replaced by new wearable devices. And we intend to do this in the simplest way possible.
We are using the term augmented reality, because we see AR as a bigger part of the future rather than VR. Other entrants to the market might use terms like XR, mixed reality, and spatial computing. What do you think Apple will use?
We need to start thinking about what our post-smartphone future will look like– beyond the Metaverse hype and the current AI hype and controversy. As the availability of this technology gets closer, we will need to prepare for an AI-driven future with AR/XR glasses or other types of wearables.
Apple’s Tim Cook has said that he believes that AR will change everything and has remained bullish on AR throughout the years. AR has always been an important topic for him, more so than VR.
He also spoke with GQ about the future of Apple. [4] While he didn’t confirm or deny any new products, he did speak about the potential of a “new” device. He mentioned that “the idea that you could overlay the physical world with things from the digital world could greatly enhance people’s communication, people’s connection. It could empower people to achieve things they couldn’t achieve before.”
More revealing are some of the things that Tim Cook has said about AR and, in particular, about its role in creative applications and corporate environments. Cook doesn’t want to remove people from the real world. He, and Apple, would rather enhance the way we learn, interact, and create through augmented reality. That means making a tool that lets you do even more in the real world, rather than on just another screen.
In Kathryn’s story, she uses AR glasses with a mobile hologram projection and artificial intelligence. Others eagerly wait for Apple AR Glasses or some other sort of mixed-reality device. Maybe we’ll eventually have a mobile AI OS like in the movie HER. But one thing is for sure, AR/AI glasses are coming and they’ll become a part of us in a way that smartphones never could.
Smartphones are computers. AR glasses give us back the use of our hands and a way to interact with the world in a more natural state. We anticipate Apple is close to making an announcement that will be a watershed moment for society and business. That's the main reason this guidebook is so exciting. AR enhances our reality in the best possible way. And that is what we will tell you–in a nutshell.