Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: And how the tech are you? Well, I thought we'd
Speaker 1: do a little tech stuff tidbits episode. Today, Bloomberg reports
Speaker 1: that one of Apple's worst kept secret projects is now
Speaker 1: on indefinite hold, meaning it may never come out. That
Speaker 1: project is a pair of augmented reality glasses or a
Speaker 1: R glasses. So I thought that chat a bit about
Speaker 1: a R. Uh. It's too bad it's not talk like
Speaker 1: a pirate day because then I could talk about our glasses.
Speaker 1: But no, it's it's a R. And I want to
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about the history of augmented reality
Speaker 1: and why even a company like Apple has to back
Speaker 1: off from the quest of the augmented reality glasses. Also,
Speaker 1: I'm going to chat about what Apple is gonna do
Speaker 1: instead of producing those a R glasses. We'll get to
Speaker 1: that towards the end of the episode. So, first off,
Speaker 1: what the heck is augmented reality. Well, it's a slice
Speaker 1: of a larger spectrum that we call mixed reality or
Speaker 1: x are. Mixed reality describes systems in which the user
Speaker 1: interacts with some mixture of real and computer generated elements.
Speaker 1: So let's take virtual reality or VR for example. With
Speaker 1: virtual reality, a computer creates the visual and audio cues
Speaker 1: that the user encounters, so everything you see and here
Speaker 1: is computer generated. Depending on the extent of the experience,
Speaker 1: you might also get some other elements to boost immersion,
Speaker 1: like maybe some smells thrown in. Like maybe you are
Speaker 1: supposed to be hanged fighting over a forest and you
Speaker 1: start to smell the scent of pine, and some fans
Speaker 1: begin to blow air on you to simulate the wind.
Speaker 1: But this means that you're you've got some real world
Speaker 1: stuff impacting your experience on top of the virtual elements
Speaker 1: that you're seeing and hearing there before. It's a mixed reality.
Speaker 1: Augmented reality is kind of on the other end of
Speaker 1: the spectrum of of mixed reality from VR. So with
Speaker 1: augmented reality, your experience of the world around you remains
Speaker 1: available to you, so you can still see and hear
Speaker 1: the world around you, but in addition to that, you
Speaker 1: get some computer generated material that adds into that experience.
Speaker 1: So it could be audio cues that are delivered through
Speaker 1: like an earpiece or a bone conducting you know, uh, speaker,
Speaker 1: or it could be digital information that's visually overlaid on
Speaker 1: top of your view of the world, which could be
Speaker 1: through a screen or transparent lenses. The information adds to
Speaker 1: or augments your understanding of your surroundings. And this is
Speaker 1: not a new idea. Back in nine a professor at
Speaker 1: Harvard named Ivan Sutherland created a contraption that he nicknamed
Speaker 1: the Sword of Damocles. Now, in case you do not
Speaker 1: understand that reference, and trust me, the sort of Damocles
Speaker 1: is a phrase I heard a lot before I ever
Speaker 1: thought to even look into what the story was behind it.
Speaker 1: I'm going to give you the quick version of it.
Speaker 1: And I know this is tex stuff. It's not stuff
Speaker 1: you missed in history class or uh, you know, any
Speaker 1: kind of mythology course. But give me some slack. So
Speaker 1: Damocles was a member of the court of Dionysius the
Speaker 1: Second of Syracuse, dion as I will call him. So
Speaker 1: this was in fourth century b c e. And Syracuse
Speaker 1: was a power, a full city in Sicily, and dion
Speaker 1: the second wasn't the best ruler. He was kind of
Speaker 1: a party boy. He initially inherited his position when his
Speaker 1: pops kicked off when Dion Jr. Was just thirty years old. Anyway,
Speaker 1: back to Damocles, So the story goes that Damocles is
Speaker 1: attending the court of Dion the second, and Damocles is
Speaker 1: just falling all over himself, kissing Dion two's posterior, and
Speaker 1: then he essentially implies that Dion the second had it
Speaker 1: made in the shade, that being king must be the
Speaker 1: best to have absolute power and all of this luxury
Speaker 1: at your disposal. So Dion goes all like, oh you
Speaker 1: think so, well, let's switch places and you can find out.
Speaker 1: Keep in mind, actual history tells us that Dion really
Speaker 1: was all about the lavish lifestyle. So this doesn't really
Speaker 1: sound like the historical account, but this is the myth,
Speaker 1: so we're gonna go with it. So the story goes
Speaker 1: the Damocles hops up on the throne and he's like, hey,
Speaker 1: I could get used to this. Except Dion then hangs
Speaker 1: a sword point down directly above the throne and therefore
Speaker 1: directly above Damocles, and he uses a single horse's hair
Speaker 1: to do it. So he's communicating that, yeah, you've got
Speaker 1: all this nice stuff, but being a ruler is a
Speaker 1: constant danger. You never know when it's going to strike,
Speaker 1: when that thread's gonna break, and you're going to be
Speaker 1: in mortal peril. Now, in Dion's case, he had made
Speaker 1: a lot of enemies, mostly by being a not great
Speaker 1: ruler of Syracuse. So to simulate that he had this
Speaker 1: sword suspended on a weak horse's hair above Damocles's head,
Speaker 1: you know, any moment death could come for you. And
Speaker 1: then afterwards they switched back and Dion was saying, see,
Speaker 1: it's not all wine and roses, until he presumably went
Speaker 1: back to smelling roses and drinking wine. Now, forgive me
Speaker 1: the tangent. It's just kind of fun to dive into
Speaker 1: history and literature and mythology on occasion. Anyway, Sutherland, back
Speaker 1: in Night, he creates this display, calls it the Sword
Speaker 1: of Damocles. By the way, he didn't do this alone.
Speaker 1: He actually worked with several of his students over at Harvard,
Speaker 1: and this was a head mounted display that actually dangled
Speaker 1: from a mechanical arm. Thus the Sword of Damocles because
Speaker 1: it was suspended. Now, it was done for a couple
Speaker 1: of reasons. One was that it was just way too heavy,
Speaker 1: so you couldn't wear it on its own. It had
Speaker 1: to be suspended so that some of the weight could
Speaker 1: be taken off the user. But also that connection was
Speaker 1: part of the way that the whole system was able
Speaker 1: to track the movement of the display, so that when
Speaker 1: someone wore the display and they moved their head, their
Speaker 1: their view would move along with their physical movement. See
Speaker 1: Sutherland had previously created head melted displays, but they didn't
Speaker 1: have head tracking, which means you could strap one to
Speaker 1: your face and turn your head, but you would just
Speaker 1: see the same view as you did a moment before.
Speaker 1: It be kind of the same thing that if you,
Speaker 1: you know, had a a smartphone playing a YouTube video,
Speaker 1: just a regular YouTube video and advisor, you turn your
Speaker 1: head to the left or to the right, you're still
Speaker 1: looking at the same video right your your perspective hasn't
Speaker 1: changed at all. So head tracking was a really important
Speaker 1: part of the technology that would advance both augmented reality
Speaker 1: and virtual reality, and the sort of Damocles could do it,
Speaker 1: so um a phenomenal achievement in nineteen sixty eight of
Speaker 1: all things. Like you gotta remember this is before even
Speaker 1: personal computers were a thing, so really groundbreaking stuff. Now,
Speaker 1: the sort of Damocles was really more in the realm
Speaker 1: of virtual reality than augmented reality. It was meant to
Speaker 1: show computer generated images, not overlay them on top of
Speaker 1: your view of the world around you. But it was
Speaker 1: one of the major pieces that had to fall into
Speaker 1: place for augmented reality to work, because obviously augmented reality
Speaker 1: own works if the overlay can adjust with respect to
Speaker 1: your point of view whatever you're looking at. Right, if
Speaker 1: you put on a pair of augmented reality glasses and
Speaker 1: you take a look at a building and the a
Speaker 1: R is telling you, oh, here are the offices that
Speaker 1: are in that building, and then you turn your head
Speaker 1: to look at a different building, well, it has to
Speaker 1: be able to track that motion and understand all right, well,
Speaker 1: now we're looking at something else. So we have to
Speaker 1: put in different information because the first set of information
Speaker 1: is no longer relevant. Head tracking is absolutely critical to
Speaker 1: make that happen. Now a R wouldn't even get a
Speaker 1: name until nineteen nine, nineteen sixty eight, we get this
Speaker 1: this uh uh sort of Damocles contraption, and for the
Speaker 1: next two decades, a R and VR development continue to happen,
Speaker 1: but was mostly in research labs and also some military applications.
Speaker 1: It was being used in things like cockpits of fighter
Speaker 1: jets and stuff like that, but other than that, it
Speaker 1: was pretty much invisible to the average person. And around
Speaker 1: that's when Tom caught Ll and his coworker David Mizzle
Speaker 1: got an assignment from their employer, Boeing Computer Services Research. So.
Speaker 1: Boeing is an aerospace company, and it was looking to
Speaker 1: update the way that it would train people construction workers
Speaker 1: mainly who were building Boeing's aircraft. So one of the
Speaker 1: things they had been doing is they were using these
Speaker 1: little plywood boards to write instructions about how to lay
Speaker 1: out cables along the body of the aircraft. And they
Speaker 1: would put these boards up within the aircraft to kind
Speaker 1: of act as guides. But you had to have specific
Speaker 1: boards for every different kind of aircraft because no two
Speaker 1: aircraft were using the exact same layout for wiring. And
Speaker 1: so the Boeing was saying, hey, can you come up
Speaker 1: with a their way of doing this, because this is
Speaker 1: kind of this is like stone age approach to uh,
Speaker 1: to the space age stuff we're doing. So Caudel and
Speaker 1: miss L came up with a system that used a
Speaker 1: head mounted display that would let construction workers still see
Speaker 1: the aircraft like they're still getting a view of their surroundings,
Speaker 1: but they would get a digital drawing that would superimpose
Speaker 1: where the cables were supposed to go. And they could
Speaker 1: even use blank boards as kind of like a movie screen.
Speaker 1: So you would look at the blank boards and the
Speaker 1: blank boards would act as the same sort of guide
Speaker 1: that the construction workers have been used to, but now
Speaker 1: the instructions are being provided by a computer program and
Speaker 1: displayed within this head mounted display as opposed to being
Speaker 1: physically written on the plywood boards. This meant you didn't
Speaker 1: have to have plywood boards for every single aircraft. You
Speaker 1: didn't have to have them all written out for specific ones.
Speaker 1: You just use blank ones, and then you would use
Speaker 1: whatever the software was was for that specific type of aircraft,
Speaker 1: and then the construction workers could get to work and
Speaker 1: they could follow those instructions. So Caddel was the one
Speaker 1: who came up with the term augmented reality. The head
Speaker 1: meld display adds to or augments the person's experience of reality,
Speaker 1: and we would get a lot of focus no pun
Speaker 1: intended on the industrial world with regard to augmented reality.
Speaker 1: And you can quickly imagine lots of potential applications. Being
Speaker 1: able to see where you need to arrange, say wires
Speaker 1: or pipes within the frame of a building could be helpful.
Speaker 1: Like imagine going through the process of constructing a home. Well,
Speaker 1: if you have a united approach, like you have this
Speaker 1: dream of how everything needs to be laid out, using
Speaker 1: something like a head meld display with augmented reality could
Speaker 1: allow various contractors to see that layout virtually and follow
Speaker 1: that plan and thus avoid potential complications where like someone says, oh,
Speaker 1: I can't I can't do what I had planned to
Speaker 1: do because now there's a pipe in this wall right here.
Speaker 1: Also for future people who are working on a structure,
Speaker 1: having a digital plan of everything that's built within the
Speaker 1: walls that can be displayed through augmented reality would be
Speaker 1: really helpful. Let's say that you are a construction worker
Speaker 1: and you're supposed to do a whole new layout for
Speaker 1: an office space. Maybe the previous tenant has moved out,
Speaker 1: a new one's going to move in. Augmented reality might
Speaker 1: show you where all the existing wiring is and let
Speaker 1: you plan around that so that you can be as
Speaker 1: efficient as possible when you're creating the new office layout.
Speaker 1: So you can definitely see a lot of practical applications
Speaker 1: for augmented reality, especially in the worlds of industry. Right,
Speaker 1: maybe fewer obvious applications for the average consumer, but we
Speaker 1: would eventually get to there. Okay, we're gonna take a
Speaker 1: quick break. When we come back, I'll talk a little
Speaker 1: bit more about the history of augmented reality and what's
Speaker 1: going on with Apple. Before the break, I was talking
Speaker 1: about how augmented reality is used a lot in industry,
Speaker 1: but another fairly early use of augmented reality was in entertainment.
Speaker 1: Sports fans would get a kind of taste of what
Speaker 1: augmented reality is all about when the NFL started to
Speaker 1: use sports vision here in the United States and for
Speaker 1: American football. So, sports vision is a system that lets
Speaker 1: producers overlay graphics onto a live television feed, such as
Speaker 1: a yellow line to mark a down on the field,
Speaker 1: even if the cameras in motion, the system can put
Speaker 1: that line down so that it remains in the right
Speaker 1: position with respect to your view of the field. And
Speaker 1: now people who were tuning into the game could see
Speaker 1: in real time how say an offensive team advanced or
Speaker 1: failed to advance. More clearly in place could become more exciting.
Speaker 1: You could see how much distance would need to be
Speaker 1: covered in order to secure the next down or maybe
Speaker 1: even a touchdown, which is I understand it as a
Speaker 1: thing in American football. I'm not. I'm not really well
Speaker 1: schooled in sports. I know that's a shock to many
Speaker 1: of you. Now, development in augmented reality continued in various projects,
Speaker 1: and a lot of these were independent projects. Then this
Speaker 1: probably means that we actually saw the evolution of a
Speaker 1: R occur more slowly than it would have if it
Speaker 1: were a more unified kind of effort. But instead we
Speaker 1: saw different teams creating different are hardware and applications, sometimes
Speaker 1: in very very specific applications that just weren't portable to
Speaker 1: other uses. But by two thousand there was some serious
Speaker 1: work going on. A developer named hiro Katsu Kato developed
Speaker 1: an open source software library and he called it a
Speaker 1: R toolkit. That really helped developers because it meant they
Speaker 1: didn't have to reinvent the wheel for every application. They
Speaker 1: had this common source of of a software library that
Speaker 1: they could be they could build upon, and they could
Speaker 1: tweak and evolve and improve over time. And meanwhile other
Speaker 1: people could take advantage of that same toolkit, and that
Speaker 1: really sped things up considerably. In two thousand nine, Esquire
Speaker 1: magazine released a special edition of its magazine, a physical
Speaker 1: paper magazine, and it included a QR code on the
Speaker 1: cover along with Robert Downey Jr. And if you happen
Speaker 1: to have a laptop and it happened to have a
Speaker 1: webcam attached to it, and you could download some specific
Speaker 1: software that Esquire linked to, then you could use your
Speaker 1: webcamp to scan the QR code on the magazine cover
Speaker 1: and looking through the monitor like which would be kind
Speaker 1: of mirroring the the cover of the magazine, Robert Downey Jr.
Speaker 1: Would suddenly spring to life and jump to it and
Speaker 1: introduce you to the concept of augmented reality. He did
Speaker 1: it in a pretty snarky way, which is, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of his thing, and then he went on to
Speaker 1: sheepishly promote his upcoming Sherlock Holmes film, which honestly was
Speaker 1: pretty adorable and entertaining. Now, the mobile revolution, which was
Speaker 1: largely led by Apple's iPhone, would transform how we access
Speaker 1: online content, and it also created a new way for
Speaker 1: us to experience augmented reality using special apps and real
Speaker 1: world components, such as movie posters. We could use our
Speaker 1: phones to be the view through which we experienced augment
Speaker 1: in reality. Right the camera on the back of the
Speaker 1: phone could feed a video view right to your screen,
Speaker 1: and then the phone would overlay digital information or replace
Speaker 1: whatever it is you're viewing with whatever they are application
Speaker 1: wants it too. So for the example, there were movie
Speaker 1: posters where you would hold your phone up and I
Speaker 1: assume there still are, I just don't hear about them
Speaker 1: very much, but you would hold your phone up and
Speaker 1: it would scan that this was an a R related
Speaker 1: the thing. You might even have to have a very
Speaker 1: specific app downloaded in order for this to work. But
Speaker 1: then the movie poster would seemingly come to life, or
Speaker 1: you might get an animated sequence, or even like a
Speaker 1: trailer would play for the movie. All these sorts of
Speaker 1: things could happen where it's built on top of your
Speaker 1: view of the world in this case, this particular movie poster.
Speaker 1: But you know, people were already starting to wonder what
Speaker 1: if you could build this technology into say a pair
Speaker 1: of glasses, and so instead of holding up a display
Speaker 1: and then looking at the world through that, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of like those folks who go to concerts and
Speaker 1: they turn on their their cameras on their phones and
Speaker 1: they watch the whole concert through their phone as their
Speaker 1: videoing the concert instead of being in the moment, Like
Speaker 1: what what if? Instead of doing that, I'm just wearing
Speaker 1: some glasses and the display is built into the glasses
Speaker 1: and I can see these effects without having to have
Speaker 1: this this handheld device between me and the world around me.
Speaker 1: But that is a very tall order when you start
Speaker 1: to consider the elements that are required to fit into
Speaker 1: those glasses in order to give it a r functionality.
Speaker 1: Let's break down some of the components that you would
Speaker 1: expect in an augmented reality headset. First of all, you
Speaker 1: have to have some sort of processor or controller to
Speaker 1: act as the brains of the device, So there's one
Speaker 1: chip right there. You need at least one camera, preferably too,
Speaker 1: so you can get some stereoscopic vision so you can,
Speaker 1: you know, have depth be part of the calculation here.
Speaker 1: But you need at least one camera so that the
Speaker 1: device can align information with whatever it is that you're
Speaker 1: actually looking at. So that camera needs to be able
Speaker 1: to say, all right, well, I can tell they're looking
Speaker 1: at this McDonald's, so I'm going to show them the
Speaker 1: big Donald's menu. You need a display, or at least
Speaker 1: some form of projection so that you can actually see
Speaker 1: the digital information that's being provided to you. You might
Speaker 1: need a microphone and a speaker if you want to
Speaker 1: incorporate voice commands and audio feedback. You might want some
Speaker 1: sort of GPS sensor. Now you could get away with
Speaker 1: pairing this device with something else, like a smartphone, and
Speaker 1: then your smartphone ends up taking over some of these
Speaker 1: duties because you can you can offload that to the
Speaker 1: phone instead of onto the device itself. But you might
Speaker 1: want something like an accelerometer in your A R glasses.
Speaker 1: You would also need some form of wireless communication chip,
Speaker 1: whether that's Bluetooth or WiFi or cellular or something else,
Speaker 1: so that it can send and receive information. Probably Bluetooth
Speaker 1: would be one of the requirements, because it's hard to
Speaker 1: imagine not pairing this with a smartphone, at least for
Speaker 1: the data connection. You could get away with having it
Speaker 1: be cellular, though then you would have to, you know,
Speaker 1: pay a bill each month to keep your glasses connected. Um,
Speaker 1: I'll see, you need a battery to power the whole thing. Now,
Speaker 1: this is just scratching the surface really, which is why
Speaker 1: you start to see it's tough to pack all of
Speaker 1: these components that you need for a useful working device
Speaker 1: and still keep it in a sleek eyeglass frame style
Speaker 1: form factor. So back in Google would show off Google
Speaker 1: Glass and this device would pair with a smartphone. So
Speaker 1: the smartphone acted kind of like a modem for the glasses.
Speaker 1: It would you know, filter information to the glasses and
Speaker 1: take information from the glasses, kind of acted as a liaison.
Speaker 1: It could also store photos or videos that you would
Speaker 1: take with the glasses, so you could take pictures, you
Speaker 1: could take video, and then the glasses would send that
Speaker 1: to a smartphone and then free up the limited space
Speaker 1: that the glasses themselves had. Uh, so you did offload
Speaker 1: some of the requirements onto your companion device, the smartphone
Speaker 1: you paired the Google Glass with. That ended up stripping
Speaker 1: down the Google Glass a little bit, so they didn't
Speaker 1: have to have everything I just mentioned earlier. Now, the
Speaker 1: Google glass, the glass part referred to a prism that
Speaker 1: was positioned so that it was out of the way
Speaker 1: of the wearer's view if they were looking straightforward, but
Speaker 1: by just glancing up and a little bit to the right.
Speaker 1: They could look into this prism and see some overlaid information.
Speaker 1: This was Google's way to both keep the view clear
Speaker 1: for the wearer and also make a display that was
Speaker 1: still accessible and useful. The glass had forward facing cameras
Speaker 1: and also a bone conducting speaker built into the frame
Speaker 1: so that you could hear audio from it, and you
Speaker 1: could use vocal commands. You could use a few head
Speaker 1: movements to do things like activated. Also had a physical
Speaker 1: button if you wanted to use that to take pictures
Speaker 1: and stuff. Uh. And that was about it, and it
Speaker 1: was neat, but it was really limited. And while geeks
Speaker 1: like me slobbered over the thought of getting a pair
Speaker 1: of Google Glass, it didn't really have the aesthetic or
Speaker 1: the utility to appeal to the general public. You just
Speaker 1: you couldn't do enough with them to make them really desirable. Also,
Speaker 1: people were freaked out about the idea of folks wearing
Speaker 1: a camera on their face where they could be taking
Speaker 1: video or pictures and no one would know about it. Now,
Speaker 1: I would counter that to say, we're already there, because
Speaker 1: everybody already has a camera in their pocket. Smartphones are everywhere,
Speaker 1: and people always have their smartphones out and they're always
Speaker 1: looking at stuff and you can't tell if they're taking
Speaker 1: photos or if they're just scrolling on Twitter or whatever.
Speaker 1: So that already exists. It just for some reason, once
Speaker 1: you moved it to the glasses format, people got more
Speaker 1: wary of it, which is interesting. I guess if you
Speaker 1: just have a little bit of abstraction, then that makes
Speaker 1: people comfortable enough to accept it or at least not
Speaker 1: think about it much. But then when it becomes a
Speaker 1: little more m prevalent, people get worried. I even had
Speaker 1: people asked me to take I had a pair of
Speaker 1: Google glass and had I had friends of mine asked
Speaker 1: me if I could take them off when we were
Speaker 1: doing stuff like eating lunch together because they were freaked
Speaker 1: out by it. And meanwhile, I'm thinking, like, every single
Speaker 1: person in this restaurant has a camera on the table,
Speaker 1: if not actively in their hands, because no one can
Speaker 1: us leave them out of the way at any given moment.
Speaker 1: So yeah, Google glass did not take off, and it
Speaker 1: ended up languishing a bit. It is still used, but
Speaker 1: in limited scope, like it's typically used in workplace and
Speaker 1: industrial settings, but not it's not a consumer product. It
Speaker 1: never really made that transition Okay, we're gonna take another
Speaker 1: quick break. When we come back, we'll finish up on
Speaker 1: the recent history of a R and talk about Apple.
Speaker 1: So Google Glass, as we mentioned, came out in two
Speaker 1: thousand and fourteen, and two years later Microsoft introduced the
Speaker 1: Hollow lens. The hollow lens is a lot beefier than
Speaker 1: Google Glass. It's also larger and bulkier. It's not not
Speaker 1: heavy from what I understand, but it takes up a
Speaker 1: lot more realist date on your head. Like there's no
Speaker 1: mistaking that you're wearing a headset when you've got a
Speaker 1: hollow lens on, Whereas if you've got a pair of
Speaker 1: Google Glass on and someone's not actually looking at your
Speaker 1: YouTube closely, they may just think you're having you know,
Speaker 1: some classes on uh if they're really an observant. But
Speaker 1: there there are two lenses in the hollow lens. They
Speaker 1: can overlay digital information over your view of the world.
Speaker 1: You do look through the lenses and see the world
Speaker 1: around you. So this is not like a mixed reality
Speaker 1: headset where you're looking at a solid display. You are
Speaker 1: looking through transparent lenses and you can use gestures to
Speaker 1: interact with these virtual elements that you can see in
Speaker 1: your field of view and appear to be in the
Speaker 1: environment around you, but it's all virtual. So, for example,
Speaker 1: you could put up a panel of a video screen
Speaker 1: and you could place it wherever you liked within your
Speaker 1: physical environment, and it would stay put in that spot
Speaker 1: while you look around as if it were an actual
Speaker 1: physical television screen, but in fact it's all virtual. That's
Speaker 1: one example. And like, the effects I've heard are really
Speaker 1: really compelling. I've heard the hollow lens is super neat.
Speaker 1: I have never had the opportunity to use one myself,
Speaker 1: but every video I've seen, every review I've seen suggested
Speaker 1: that it was a pretty cool effect that showed the
Speaker 1: potential for hollow lens. However, Microsoft wasn't able to make
Speaker 1: a version of hollow lens that could be priced for
Speaker 1: the consumer market because the technology was just far too
Speaker 1: expensive and sophisticated. So the hollow lens costs like three
Speaker 1: thousand dollars. It was just was not something that the
Speaker 1: average person was going to be able to buy, and
Speaker 1: Microsoft knew that, so they were saying, no, that we're
Speaker 1: really gearing this towards the professional use, like industrial use,
Speaker 1: that kind of thing, not for the home user. Now,
Speaker 1: it does some really cool stuff, but the applications for
Speaker 1: the general public would be really limited, which is understandable.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you're a developer, you are not going
Speaker 1: to dedicate the time, money, and resources to create apps
Speaker 1: for an a R headset if the general public can't
Speaker 1: afford to buy one, because you would never make your
Speaker 1: investment back. Right, you would be wasting all that time
Speaker 1: and money to build something that hardly anyone would be
Speaker 1: able to use. Unless you're doing stuff for industrial purposes,
Speaker 1: that's different. But if if you're trying to develop for
Speaker 1: the average person, you're not going to do it for
Speaker 1: a R because very few people can even afford an
Speaker 1: ARE headset. So it makes sense that there are very
Speaker 1: limited ARE applications out there for stuff like the hollow lens,
Speaker 1: and that the consumer applications we do tend to see
Speaker 1: within augmented reality are restricted for things like smartphones and
Speaker 1: handheld game systems. This is stuff that consumers already own
Speaker 1: that are also able to perform certain ARE functions instead
Speaker 1: of like a dedicated mixed reality or a UR headset.
Speaker 1: Now that brings us up to Apple. Now, it's been
Speaker 1: rumored for years that Apple has been working on an
Speaker 1: a R product, and it was rumored to look like
Speaker 1: a pair of standard eyeglasses, like the black plastic classic
Speaker 1: eyeglass frames, maybe a little bit larger than your typical
Speaker 1: eyeglass frames in order to accommodate all those components I
Speaker 1: was talking about earlier. Now, back when Steve Jobs was
Speaker 1: alive and leading Apple, Apple had a reputation that was
Speaker 1: really tied up with its hardware. You had things like
Speaker 1: the iMac and the iPod, which helped Apple navigate some
Speaker 1: choppy waters when the company was on the verge of insolvency.
Speaker 1: Then there was the absolute explosion of the iPhone and
Speaker 1: then the success of the iPad. Apple became known as
Speaker 1: this innovative hardware company that will not actually inventing new
Speaker 1: form factors. It kept finding ways to refine these form
Speaker 1: factors that had limited or no success in the consumer
Speaker 1: market and then create appealing aesthetics and user interfaces and
Speaker 1: make them a successful consumer product. Now, to be clear,
Speaker 1: it's not that I think we would never have seen
Speaker 1: the consumer smartphone without Apple. I think we would have,
Speaker 1: but it would have taken longer for it to really succeed.
Speaker 1: And that would also mean that the impact of smartphones
Speaker 1: on the online world would have taken longer as well.
Speaker 1: So the ripples that the iPhone created were wide, and
Speaker 1: they had dramatic consequences for a lot of the tech sector. Now,
Speaker 1: Steve Jobs passed away in two thousand eleven. He had
Speaker 1: overseen the launch of the iMac, the iPod, the iPhone,
Speaker 1: and the iPad AD. After his death in two thousand eleven,
Speaker 1: the world watched Apple's new CEO, Tim Cook to see
Speaker 1: how he was going to guide Apple forward and what
Speaker 1: products would follow. And for a few years, we really
Speaker 1: didn't get anything dramatically new. We got updates to existing
Speaker 1: lines of products. But unless you count the MacBook Air
Speaker 1: in two thousand and fourteen, and I don't because the
Speaker 1: Air is remarkably thin, but it's still a laptop. Well,
Speaker 1: it took years to go by without any sort of
Speaker 1: dramatic new product reveal. Now that's not to say that
Speaker 1: the products Apple produced were bad, that the updates they
Speaker 1: made were bad. It's just that you know, earlier years
Speaker 1: had enough dramatic unveilings that the expectations among Apple fans
Speaker 1: had grown really high, perhaps unreasonably high. Apple did introduce
Speaker 1: an all new category for Apple anyway in two thousand
Speaker 1: fifteen with the first generation Apple Watch, so arguably this
Speaker 1: is the first totally new kind of Apple product since
Speaker 1: Steve Jobs had passed away in two thousand eleven. Unfortunately
Speaker 1: for Apple, the Apple Watch didn't captivate crowds the same
Speaker 1: way that earlier Apple products had. Now that doesn't mean
Speaker 1: it didn't sell well. It sold really well, but it
Speaker 1: wasn't the revolutionary product that the Apple faithful had been
Speaker 1: hoping for. And we've seen a few other products emerged
Speaker 1: from Apple, things like air pods, but none of these
Speaker 1: have really garnered the same reception as the iPhone. And
Speaker 1: Apple has kind of transitioned into more of a services
Speaker 1: oriented company, so instead of being hardware focused, their services
Speaker 1: focused and Tim Cook really lad that charge because it's
Speaker 1: a way for Apple to generate revenue through its existing
Speaker 1: platforms and it doesn't rely on hardware releases. But there
Speaker 1: were rumors that Apple was working one very big categories
Speaker 1: of tech that would introduce an all new kind of
Speaker 1: product for the company. One was a television. Now Apple
Speaker 1: does have Apple TV, but this is a service that
Speaker 1: can be built into hardware like a set top box
Speaker 1: and then fed to a television where you can access
Speaker 1: the content that Apple allows and to use Apple services
Speaker 1: to get various types of movies and shows to your television.
Speaker 1: But for years, rumors were circulating the Apple was working
Speaker 1: on an actual television set, one that would have the
Speaker 1: Apple aesthetic built into the physical hardware, not just delivered
Speaker 1: through software that has yet to emerge. Another rumored technology
Speaker 1: was that Apple was working on a car, and we
Speaker 1: know that Apple is in fact developing an electric vehicle.
Speaker 1: It even has a code name Project Tightened. Now. At
Speaker 1: one point, Apple's plan was to create a fully autonomous vehicle.
Speaker 1: Word is that those plans got adjusted because, as we've
Speaker 1: learned over the years, making a reliable and safe autonomous
Speaker 1: vehicle is super hard to do. So instead, Apple is
Speaker 1: reportedly scaling way back to the more achievable goal of
Speaker 1: producing an electric vehicle. The third category of product was
Speaker 1: the augmented reality glasses, But like Project Titan, Apple has
Speaker 1: found the challenges associated with cramming all that hardware into
Speaker 1: an attractive form factor and still have it work and
Speaker 1: have enough battery life to be useful and not cost
Speaker 1: tens of thousands of dollars is a really tall order.
Speaker 1: It actually reminds me of those posters you'll occasionally see
Speaker 1: in workplaces that say something like you want it done right, fast, cheap,
Speaker 1: you may pick two out of the three. So in
Speaker 1: other words, you can get it done right and you
Speaker 1: can get it done fast, but that means it's going
Speaker 1: to be really expensive, or you can get it done
Speaker 1: cheap and you can get done fast, but it ain't
Speaker 1: gonna be right. That kind of thing. That poster really
Speaker 1: does paint an accurate picture that you can't always get
Speaker 1: what you want, but if you try, sometimes you might
Speaker 1: find you get what you need to quote Rolling Stone.
Speaker 1: So now Apple instead plans to release a mixed reality headset. Now,
Speaker 1: to be clear, this was already part of the plan
Speaker 1: back when the A R glasses were still on the
Speaker 1: developmental table. The plan was to release a mixed reality
Speaker 1: headset first, probably this year, and then follow that up
Speaker 1: with a dedicated augmented reality product. But now the are
Speaker 1: product is on indefinite hold, So now the new plan
Speaker 1: is to release this mixed reality headset and then follow
Speaker 1: that up with a less expensive mixed reality headset later.
Speaker 1: Bloomberg reports that the first mixed reality headset, the expensive
Speaker 1: one that most folks in the industry expect will be
Speaker 1: released sometime this year, is going to set you back
Speaker 1: a hefty three thousand dollars, just like the hollow lens
Speaker 1: would have three grand for a mixed reality headset. Is
Speaker 1: a very steep price, indeed, and I think it's safe
Speaker 1: to say that it's well out of the range of
Speaker 1: the average consumer. They're still going to be early adopters
Speaker 1: out there and folks who have significant spending money who
Speaker 1: will rush out and pick one of these up, but
Speaker 1: most of us will be waiting around to see if
Speaker 1: the less expensive version is more within our grasp, and
Speaker 1: that might mean waiting at least a year or two,
Speaker 1: because it might be or twenty five before we get
Speaker 1: the more modest mixed reality headset from Apple. And as
Speaker 1: I mentioned earlier, a high price tag also means there's
Speaker 1: not a whole lot of incentive for developers to make
Speaker 1: stuff for the platform, since very few people will even
Speaker 1: be able to access it. So it's even possible that
Speaker 1: by the time the lower price mixed reality headset comes out,
Speaker 1: there still won't be very much you can do on
Speaker 1: the headset, because again, what developer is going to dedicate
Speaker 1: the effort to make stuff for something that hardly anyone
Speaker 1: will be able to use. So, yeah, it's it's a
Speaker 1: it's a steep curve doesn't mean that it's impossible to
Speaker 1: get through, like it is possible. It's just gonna take
Speaker 1: a lot of dedication on Apple's part, and the company
Speaker 1: can't just abandon it. If it turns out the first
Speaker 1: generation mixed reality headset, the really expensive one, bombs like
Speaker 1: a very few people buy it, then Apple has to
Speaker 1: stick with it if we're going to get to a
Speaker 1: point where a mixed reality headset from Apple is going
Speaker 1: to be worth purchasing. Now, as for augmented reality, I
Speaker 1: don't think we're at the I don't think that the
Speaker 1: chapter is completely closed on it for Apple. I think
Speaker 1: there's always going to be a hope that maybe the
Speaker 1: company can work through some of the engineering challenges if
Speaker 1: those are in fact possible to yate a more streamlined
Speaker 1: augmented reality product that is worthy of Apple's brand name.
Speaker 1: And I think that that does have a lot of
Speaker 1: cool potential applications if you can get at priced to
Speaker 1: a point where someone can actually afford to buy one.
Speaker 1: Otherwise this ends up being very niche hardware for a
Speaker 1: very niche audience and it's never gonna develop beyond that,
Speaker 1: but I hope it does because I actually really like
Speaker 1: augmented reality. I think it's super cool. I think that
Speaker 1: there are lots of different, really interesting applications for it.
Speaker 1: There's also some really entertaining ones, like it's not all,
Speaker 1: you know, educational, although those are most of the ones
Speaker 1: I think about, but you could have really entertaining applications
Speaker 1: as well. But in order to get there, we have
Speaker 1: to solve these tough engineering challenges that are not easy
Speaker 1: to walk around. And so yeah, that's kind of where
Speaker 1: we're at. I'm bummed that the augmented reality has been shelved.
Speaker 1: I'm cure yes about the mixed reality meta kind of
Speaker 1: dominates that space right now with the Quest two and
Speaker 1: the to a much lesser extent, the Quest Pro. This
Speaker 1: this I think would need to really be an incredible
Speaker 1: product from Apple, because it's more than twice the cost
Speaker 1: of the Quest Pro, and everybody kind of dismissed the
Speaker 1: Quest Pro as being uh an unnecessary product that underperforms
Speaker 1: based on your expectations. So the Apple mixed reality headset
Speaker 1: needs to truly blow people's socks off. If it's going
Speaker 1: to be a successful product. Uh, the brand name can
Speaker 1: only take you so far. I guess there will be
Speaker 1: some rich Apple enthusiasts who will buy pretty much anything
Speaker 1: Apple puts out, but for the rest of us, that's
Speaker 1: just not the case. Well that's it. Hope you enjoyed
Speaker 1: this quick I guess not that quick, but but fairly
Speaker 1: quick update to what's going on with Apple's a our project.
Speaker 1: I hope you're all well. If you have anything you
Speaker 1: would like to suggest for the show, you can do
Speaker 1: so by letting me know on Twitter. The handle for
Speaker 1: the show is tech Stuff h s W or you
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Speaker 1: that's it for me, so I'll talk to you again
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