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I'll bet anyone $5 that Apple is developing a VR (and/or AR) product for release. It's not hard to figure out. Tim Cook has been in the media saying (I paraphr
by leoc 12y ago
I'll bet anyone $5 that Apple is developing a VR (and/or AR) product for release.
It's not hard to figure out. Tim Cook has been in the media saying (I paraphrase slightly) "wait 'til you see the things we're working on that no-one is talking about yet, tee hee". There are more or less exactly two possibilities here: either Apple has come up with a product of a whole new kind which no-one or almost no-one has thought of before, or it's trying to repeat its Macintosh/iPod/iPhone/iPad trick of taking a product category which people have been talking about and trying to make happen for years and actually releasing a successful, polished product which appeals to consumers. Now, the last time Apple released a genuinely novel product it was HyperCard and Ronald Reagan was president of the USA. (Or arguably it was the Newton, in 1993.)
- MrJagil 12y agoBut gaming? Though iDevices are huge for gaming, you can definitely tell it's not in the company's DNA.
- Geee 12y agoVR isn't necessarily about gaming. Generally there's huge opportunities for novel user interfaces.
- MrJagil 12y agoThe use of "not necessarily" implies that gaming is essential to VR, though.
- widdershins 12y agoIt just implies that most people think of VR in that context.
- MrJagil 12y agoHm, yeah, I agree.
- illumen 12y agoYou realise the founders of Apple worked for Atari right? Also, iTunes is one of the biggest markets for games?
- MrJagil 12y agoIndeed I do, therefore "Though iDevices are huge for gaming...". I would argue however, that Apple, in stark contrast to Microsoft for instance, is in no way a gaming company. Game Center (which seems unpopular with dedicated gamers) is one of their few forays into the market. Text, photography, industrial design, general UI seems much more of a passion. It is a muddy area though; Apple has frequently invited game designers on stage at keynotes.
- leoc 12y agoWell, firstly, as Geee said, VR isn't as dominated by gaming as you'd think. Even without getting into novel and unobvious uses of VR, it's an obvious choice for things like inflight entertainment: movies'n'music, picture viewing, even ebook reading. It also has obvious applications for some of Apple's "creative professional" users. Secondly, Apple is just launching the Apple Watch, despite the fact that the wearables market is not an easy fit for Apple's DNA and public image either. If Apple wants to keep making grand entries into personal-device categories (which evidently it does) then it just has to go where the remaining unentered categories are.
- dageshi 12y agoThe Apple ecosystem is big enough now that they're probably doing what Microsoft has been doing for the past decade or more. Build OK but average versions of what the competitors are doing because you can drive traffic/sales to them from your existing ecosystem.