VR for desktop, AR for mobile, says Apple CEO Cook
Tech giant premieres 1st original series, ‘Planet of the Apps’
LOS ANGELES, June 7: Apple didn’t just announce the HomePod as a major new product at this week’s WWDC conference; the company also used the event to for the first time share its plans for virtual and augmented reality. The way the company treats both technologies couldn’t be more different, and also tells us a lot about Apple’s future focus.
Apple CEO Tim Cook had frequently talked about VR and AR in the past, giving a thumbs-up to both without revealing if, when and how Apple would enter either market. Back in early 2016, Cook told analysts that VR is not a niche: “It’s really cool and has some interesting applications.” And earlier this year, Cook said during an interview that AR could one day be as big as the iPhone.
All the while, Apple has been quietly hiring and acquiring AR and VR talent, with reports indicating that the company now has several hundred employees working on these technologies.
The first fruits of that labor were on full display at WWDC, where both VR and AR got dedicated on-stage demos during the opening keynote.
Apple invited Industrial Light & Magic’s John Knoll on stage to show off a “Star Wars” VR experience running on an Mac -a first for an industry that has thus far almost exclusively relied on PCs to create high-end VR games and experiences.
VR support is being added to Mac hardware with High Sierra, the latest version of Apple’s desktop operating system that’s available to developers now and coming to consumers later this year. The company’s newest iMacs, which were also announced at WWDC, will be able to run VR natively, and developers will be able to buy dedicated hardware for Macbooks to add some external processing power necessary to run high-end VR.
Notable about Apple’s first foray into VR is that it is very limited: Apple isn’t building its own headset, and has instead struck a partnership with HTC to power the company’s Vive hardware. It also partnered with existing software development platform vendors like Unity and Epic to bring their tools to macOS. Apple isn’t even making the external hardware needed to turn Macbooks into VR power horses itself, and is instead reselling a third-party product.
Contrast that with Apple’s foray into AR, which also got a dedicated demo during the WWDC keynote. Peter Jackson’s Wingnut AR studio got to demonstrate an AR game that used an existing table top as the surface for an AR video game, complete with characters jumping off the sides of the table.
Also: LOS ANGELES:
Apple’s first original series — reality competition show “Planet of the Apps” — premieres Tuesday, but how far the tech giant delves into Hollywood content remains an open question.
The show’s first episode is launching at around 9 pm PT Tuesday, exclusively on the Apple Music streaming-music subscription service.
The 10-episode show — designed to highlight Apple’s multibilliondollar App Store business — features aspiring app developers vying for a chance to win venture-capital funding from Lightspeed Venture Partners. A new episode will be available exclusively on Apple Music each week on Tuesday evenings.
Apple Music is set to bow original series “Carpool Karaoke: The Series” on Aug 8, featuring a lineup of celebrity guests. The 16-episode show is based on the popular sketches from CBS’s “The Late Late Show with James Corden,” and Corden will appear in at least two of the segments. That show also is being released on a weekly cycle, with a new episode to be released each Tuesday.
SAN FRANCISCO:
Apple’s new HomePod speaker may be music to the ears of its loyal fans, but how much it can crank up volume in the smart speaker market remains to be heard.
Apple unveiled its long-awaited HomePod at its annual developers conference taking place this week in the heart of Silicon Valley, enticing lovers of its products with a high-end offering in a market dominated by lower-priced devices from Amazon and Google .