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Apple CEO Tim Cook On Virtual Reality: There's No Substitute For Human Contact (cnbc.com)
As major tech companies ramp up their efforts to develop new technologies to make sense of virtual and augmented reality spaces, one company is noticeably off the game. We're talking about Apple. And it may have something to do with how it perceives these nascent technology spaces. From an article on CNBC:"There's no substitute for human contact," Apple CEO Tim Cook told BuzzFeed News. "And so you want the technology to encourage that." It's not the first time Cook has indicated that Apple might favor AR. "We are high on AR for the long run," Cook said during an earnings call this past summer. "I think AR can be huge." Huge, indeed -- one could look to the sudden and explosive success of Pokemon Go to see an immediate real-world example.
...that there is a dichotomy between VR and AR. They are not mutually exclusive, any more than fruit and footwear are mutually exclusive. VR and AR don't compete, either; they have different applications. The intent of VR is not to emulate human interaction, but to artificially immerse people in environments to which most don't have ready access: flight simulation, museum tours, product design, etc. The purpose of AR is to overlay information on everyone's existing experience: navigation, shopping, and the like.
Move along.