Hello everyone.

Google held its Pixel hardware event today. We will talk about the event next week. Let’s jump right in.

Tim Cook Gives Another AR Tease

Last week, Cook and a number of Apple executives toured some of Apple’s European operations. Cook also did some interviews.

Here’s Bright (via translate):

“Cook has called augmented reality (AR) the biggest technological promise for the future for years. With AR, virtual objects are shown over the real world, for example via the camera of a smartphone or through smart glasses. Cook told students [at the University of Naples Federico II] that soon we will look back on a life without AR as we are now looking back on a life without a smartphone, or without the internet. ‘It won't be that long,’ Cook said.

In conversation with Bright, he went into more detail about this. ‘AR apps are already in the App Store, but the possibilities will go much, much further,’ Cook told Bright. ‘I think AR is a profound technology that will affect everything. Imagine suddenly being able to teach with AR and demonstrate things that way. Or medically, and so on. Like I said, we are really going to look back and think about how we once lived without AR.’"

Looking over the past six years of Cook’s comments about AR (The Verge complied every public comment Cook has made about AR up to 2021 here), there has been a clear shift in Cook’s tone.

Back in 2016 and 2017, Cook talked about how it will take a while to see AR technology hit mainstream.
Beginning in late 2018, Cook started to say things like we will “wonder how we ever lived without [AR].”
In 2020 and 2021, Cook went further to say AR was the next big thing.

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