In 2013, Apple CEO Tim Cook said Said The gadgets we wear on our wrists “may be a profound area of technology.”
It wasn’t. You may own a Fitbit or Apple Watch, but digital devices in that category weren’t as important as Cook and many other tech optimists wanted.
Half a decade ago, Pokemon Go persuaded people to roam the neighborhood, chasing anime characters who could look around with their smartphone cameras. Cook was one of the executives who said the game could be the beginning of a transformative fusion of digital and real life, sometimes called augmented reality or AR.
“I think AR can be huge,” Cook told Apple investors in 2016.
It wasn’t. Augmented reality, virtual reality, and similar technologies are still promising and sometimes useful, but not yet huge.
Today, Cook and countless others are betting that the combination of these two technologies will be the next major phase of the Internet. Apple, Meta, Microsoft, and Snap are heading towards a computer-headed future for interactions that blend physical and digital life. (You and Mark Zuckerberg can call this the Metaverse. I don’t.)
Given the uneven record of engineers predicting the digital revolution, it’s worth investigating why their remarks haven’t come true yet. This time it is correct.
There are two ways to look at the forecasts of wearable computers and the immersive digital world over the last decade. First, all past inventions were a necessary step on the road to something grand.
people Mockery Google Glass after the company released a test version of a computer headset in 2013, but glasses may have been a component. Since then, computer chips, software, cameras, and microphones have improved significantly, so digital headgear can quickly become less noticeable and more convenient.
Similarly, Pokémon Go, a virtual reality video game or app for checking out new lipsticks through augmented reality, isn’t suitable for everyone, but it helps technicians refine their ideas and makes them more attractive. Some were excited about the possibilities of digital experiences.
My colleague reports that next year Apple may ship computer headsets like ski goggles, aiming to provide a virtual reality and augmented reality experience. Apple gave only hints about its work to announce tweaks to the iPhone software at the event on Monday, but the company laid the groundwork for such technology to become its next big product category. I came.
The second possibility is that the technician may be wrong again about the possibility of the next iteration of Google Glass and Pokémon Go. Perhaps more sophisticated features, longer battery life, longer Dorkie eyewear, and more interesting things to do with face computers aren’t the most important factors for the next big thing in technology.
One problem is that engineers haven’t yet given us a reason they want to live in the digital plus real world they imagine for us.
I previously wrote that new technologies inevitably compete with smartphones, which are at the heart of our digital life. Everything that comes next has to answer the question: I can’t call what does this do?
The challenge does not mean that the technology is frozen at its current location. I’m excited about the training that the trainer seems to be teaching me along a virtual mountain lake. You can imagine new ways to connect with people far away who feel more intimate than zooming. In particular, Apple has a proven track record of adopting existing technology concepts such as smartphones and streaming music and appealing them to the masses.
But the richer your digital life today, the harder it is to embrace new things. This is something that past and present predictions about the future of more immersive computing are not really taken into account.
Before going …
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It’s just one of the cruel and routine hoaxes after a violent tragedy. After shootings and other fatal incidents, online posts often claim that Jordi Jordan was one of the victims. My colleague Tiffany Hsu explains what’s behind this recurring false campaign, and others like it.
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Is this an excuse to get out of a bad deal? It looks like Elon Musk is paying a lot to buy Twitter after the stock prices of many tech companies have fallen recently. This is a useful context for a complaint from Musk’s lawyer on Monday that the company refused to provide data for an automated Twitter account and threatened to cancel the transaction (again), my colleague Lauren said. Hirsch and Mike Isaac reported. (The DealBook has more information on this.)
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Our shopping habits are shifting the US workforce. Employment in transportation and warehousing (truck drivers, Amazon warehouse workers, delivery courier, etc.) has reached the largest share of the workforce since the record was held, Axios. report.. This is a decade of employment change, supercharged by our desire to spend more on things than services during a pandemic.
Related: “The jobs that are currently in the spotlight-restaurants, warehouses-these aren’t going to last forever,” Mary C. Daly, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, told her colleague Janna Smiarek.
Embrace this
David Scott creates a Rube Goldberg style piece with the help of a computer that includes this Marble concert at a bar like a xylophone.. (My colleague Maya Salam recommended Scott’s video, which is called Enbiggen on social media.)
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