A revolution is coming. And even the general public understands that it has something to do with helmets, glasses or goggles.
But what exactly is the reality of the coming revolution? Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), Extended Reality (ER), Mixed Reality (XR)?
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg changed his company name from "Facebook" to "Meta" and then miraculously convinced the media to refer to all of these realities as "the Metaverse." This marketing miracle has also led many to see Zuckerberg as the leader, or at least the thought leader, of this new trend.
That's why people were shocked (and mocked by Zuckerberg) when Zuck shared a selfie of Horizon Worlds, Meta's VR game, as part of its European debut; Instead of looking like the future, it looked like the 1990s. He later explained on Instagram that the graphics were "pretty basic"...captured very quickly to celebrate a release."
While Zuckerberg says that virtual reality is the future, Apple says that augmented reality is the future.
To further complicate matters, Apple, the mainstream of major hardware platforms, is expected to ship a virtual reality product next year to use in augmented reality.
What is revolutionary (and what is not)
There is so much FUD, fuzzy thinking and hype surrounding the so called 'metaverse' that it is important to stop and understand what is happening now and what is likely to happen in the future. .
Here's what we know about Apple's plans based on reports, patents, leaks, and published code review.
Apple has hundreds of employees actively building two separate hardware platforms that will run an Apple operating system called realityOS. The first is a helmet; the second is glasses.
The headset is expected to ship next year and is essentially virtual reality hardware that will be used primarily for AR, though it will also support VR. This means for AR that a camera will capture the view of the user's physical environment that will appear to the user in real time and be supplemented with visual and audio information.
I previously predicted that Apple's flagship app for this platform would be avatar-based meetings.
The hardware will be as powerful as a PC (and as expensive: €2,000, at least) and it will have two 8K screens, one for each eyeball. The glasses will be equipped with sensors to map 3D space and monitor the wearer's identity, gaze and other factors. Spatial audio will help create the illusion that virtual objects exist in physical space.
The glasses, which will look like regular glasses and accept prescription lenses, could ship in 2025. We don't know much about the final configuration of the glasses product, and it's likely Apple hasn't finalized specs yet.
Of these two, headsets and glasses, it is glasses that are likely to be the revolution that will topple smartphones as the central platform for cultural change.
Two platforms?
Based on comments from Apple CEO Tim Cook (most recently in June), the company believes that augmented reality is the future of Apple.
So why two platforms? Why VR glasses? Why doesn't Apple wait for the glasses to be ready? In the words of former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer: "Developers, developers, developers, developers."
Apple's first headphone offering is likely to function primarily as a kind of proof-of-concept or reference design for the innovative glasses to come. They are likely to compete in a crowded market for short-term indoor use only: hardware-heavy devices that will actually deliver amazing experiences, but will be too big, geeky, and limited for professional or consumer use.
But they will give developers a reason to stick with ARkit or adopt ARkit for the first time. They will allow enterprise developers to create custom applications. They will encourage niche markets to use realityOS for event marketing and experiential marketing. They will show the world what Apple is planning and make the world safe for the next Apple Glasses, which could go mainstream and become the platform that replaces smartphones.
Going further into one branch, I predict Apple will call this headset "Apple Reality."
At least that could be Apple's plan. The best case scenario for Apple would be to ship its AR glasses in three years and, on the day of shipment, have thousands of compelling apps to run.
Truly compelling apps take a long time to develop. And companies need several years for testing, development, training and integration. Apple's "Reality" headsets will give them the time they need.
It will work? Who knows. Apple has an excellent track record. But that will depend on what Apple actually develops and what the competition does. And there will be competition.
Apple has a chance to dominate the third massive cultural change revolution (the other two are PCs and smartphones). But whether Apple succeeds or fails, AR glasses are almost certainly the third big revolution.
Why smart glasses will change the world
Smart glasses that you can wear everywhere all day like normal glasses will enable what some call "augmented society." For example, when you're on a web page, reading an ebook, or viewing a document on your laptop, every item you see is a gateway to relevant information. It can be copied, pasted, shared, captured, indexed, duplicated, sampled, saved, and searched.
Printed content? Not that much. He just sits there, unplugged.
Researchers at the University of Surrey have unveiled a new version of their Next Generation Paper (NGP) project. Using low-cost conductive paper, physical paper books can deliver augmented content with a simple gesture, such as swiping. Contextual information is displayed on a nearby device.
This idea will be swept away by advanced AR glasses, which will be able to recognize text and offer any type of contextual information with hand gestures, without the need for special paper, smartphone or tablet. Contextual information will scroll over the book.
Cameras and other sensors, along with AI, will allow our glasses to recognize books, as well as signs, landmarks, objects, people, and more. The QR codes will tell the glasses where to place the virtual images and information.
The massive change made by AR is that all things, not just digital things, can take on digital attributes.
Knowledge of things will seem to reside more and more in things themselves, not in human minds or an Internet that you "go" to. The world will become the Internet and the Internet will become the world.
While it's tempting to wonder how smart glasses will enable the kinds of things we do on smartphones, it's important to remember that smartphones enable behaviors we're not used to doing, like posting images to social media. Smart glasses will turn the entire world into our own AI-augmented personal computers, and will also usher in behaviors and abilities that we cannot yet imagine.
Apple can't afford to come second in the next culture-changing technology. So I think it's about building two platforms: one for developers, one for revolution.
Copyright © 2022 IDG Communications, Inc.