Who wants to augment their reality anyway?
After all, most of the projected uses are surprisingly mundane.
AR You Serious?
James Yarema / Unsplash
If this is a VR headset, then you’re free to forget about it.
VR is pretty much useful only for gaming and for specialist uses like pilot training or maybe medicine.
The potential for AR… to disrupt the market is substantial.
Minh Pham / Unsplash
AR makes more sense.
This would be a headset that lets you see the world directly while overlaying graphics on that world.
The end game for AR is to fit it onto glasses like we already wear.
And some people are betting that AR will take off.
“The potential for AR, specifically Apple’s headset, to disrupt the market is substantial.
That’s a lot of kinks.
In fact, that sounds like the kind of product that is nowhere near ready.
And again, one wonders what the point is.
I asked several sources for examples of good uses for AR and VR that weren’t gaming.
Minh Pham / Unsplash
The thing is, our phones can already do all of this.
None of these use cases requires the kind of immersion brought by AR and VR.
Imagine you’re taking a trip to a foreign country or just an unknown city.
(Five times because there’s no way Siri will understand you the first four times.)
I’m painting a negative picture here, but this is the kind of thing Apple is up against.
If it pulls it off, it will be spectacular, like the firstAvatarmovie.
But more likely, it’ll just be a virtualWaterworld.
