Apple, AR, Cars and Value

This post analyses why Apple may be interested in AR and developing a car. It structures my thoughts about both these potential technologies and why they might be attractive to Apple to create a product. Apple has been working on both technologies for a number of years, and invested thousands of hours and people's time into efforts to bring these technologies to the Apple community. 

What does Apple say it will do? See case on Apple and Value in my book The Value of Value.

Apple says it:

- will "continue to make the best products in the world that delight our customers and make our employees incredibly proud of what they do" (Tim Cook 2011) 

- is "unwilling to cut [corners] in delivering the best customer experience to the world. [It's] this relentless commitment to innovation and excellence [that] is the reason that our customer[s] choose our products and this will always be the driving force behind Apple... we remain very confident in our strategy and will use our world-class skill and hardware, software and services to delight our customer[s]" (Tim Cook 2012 Q4 Earnings Call)

- "priced [iPad Mini] aggressively... delivering incredible value to our customers" (CFO Oppenheimer 2012 Q4 Earnings Call)

- "will not make a product that somebody may feed good about it for the moment that they're paying for and then when they get it, they really ever use, that's not what we're about" (Tim Cook 2012 Q4 Earnings Call)

- wants to build great products (Cook 2012), not the most products

- wants to show "just how much we care" (Jony Ive in Macbook Pro unibody video and Grobart 2013)

- "we will only do a few things... where we can make a significant contribution... to society at large... [with a] maniacal focus on making the best products... enriching people's lives" Cook in Tyrangiel 2012.

- "very very simple focus on trying to make something beautiful and great." (Jony Ive on  Steve Jobs in Bergen (2015)

- "instead of encouraging ..  or permitting a thousand ideas to bloom, Jobs insisted that Apple focus on just two or three priorities at a time - Ch. 35 Steve Jobs (Isaacson 2011), or "there are a thousand no's for every yes" (Jony Ive, AZQuotes)

Other things that Apple do, but not say are;

- create new user interfaces for mass markets eg mouse and WYSIWYG for Macintosh, touchscreen in ios/iPhone, digital crown in Apple Watch.

AR 

AR is glasses (or other projections) where digital objects are represented within our field of vision. That is traffic directions may appear as floating arrows directing us which way we need to go. Or our phone or computer screens are represented as floating in space rather than attached to physical output devices. Currently Apple provides AR on an iPhone as digital objects the phone can represent as the phone is directed around the user, using the sensors to tell in which direction and which angle a phone is pointed. Apple makes 3D AR versions of products, such as Macbooks, or logos of Apple Events. Thus in Pokemon Go, a pokemon may appear in front of us on the phone screen, in a certain direction and of a certain size.

What problem does AR solve? AR can provide contextual information in the context of place, direction and angle. AR can also provide a larger if not endless screen for users. Rather than a 27" monitor, or a 50" or 65" 4k television (as monitor), AR can provide a 360* immersive screen, up to the sky and down to the floor. This can enable more content, and some users have large content use cases, such as brokers who have multiple screens or control rooms which have many gauges and dials to read. Similarly on our phones we have multiple messages, emails, posts to read. Each one could be represented as hanging in space rather than in a list, where we only see the title. Extra screen size of AR could enable a home for each message, each communication we receive.

Does AR have application for a large number of users?

iPhone is used by a billion customers, whereas Mac perhaps has only a hundred million users. How many customers might use AR? Does Apple care if only a proportion of iPhones users use AR? Will you need an iPhone to power AR - initially? eventually? 

If all our messages were shown separately, then this view could be useful for anyone who has large amounts of messages, emails, tweets or texts. This could potentially benefit large numbers of users

Can Apple make a significant contribution?

AR may provide new use cases, not just of output but of input. AR could record our surroundings instead of displaying over our surroundings. For instance, AR could record our activity, including identifying objects we see, and classifying their location. So when/if we lose our keys, we can go back to the last time we saw our keys. Where did I put X? But this is a very niche action, that may perhaps only be used once a month.

Another function of AR glasses would be as corrective lenses. If AR could correct what we see, so that we would never need to buy another pair of glasses, that is perhaps hundreds of dollars value. That could also potentially enable a new user interface to sharpen our vision to bring the world into focus. A potentially high impact contribution for users.

What user interface could Apple use for AR? 

If AR works through glasses, and has an unlimited screen space, then how does a user control that space? We could wait and see, but it is interesting and fun to speculate how to control such space. Could your hands control the space, like Tom Cruise in the movie, Minority Report (youtube link)? Could our fingers type on a floating keyboard?  Would voice make sense, dictating our commands, and text? Could our eyes and blinking control actions, looking and blinking to select and choose? Could a finger control a trackball on a ring? Or a finger touching a fingertip? 

Update: Apple launched its AR Product - Vision Pro - on 2 Feb, 2024 for $3500 USD. About 200,000 units were sold in the first weekend.

Cars

Why would Apple make a car?

Some underlying technologies of an electric car are like Apple technology - lithium batteries, cameras, screens, control software, power management, hardware design, user testing, meeting consumer needs. But why does this need to be a car? Could it be an electric scooter? An electric trike? As John Gruber suggested an electric autonomous robot, for inside the house? Electric skateboard? Electric roller skates?

What problem does an Apple Car solve?

Does an Apple Car have application for a large number of users?

Can Apple make a significant contribution? See my recent thoughts. Maybe this market isn't a big enough opportunity for Apple to make a difference.

What interface could Apple use for their car?

Update: 28 Feb 2024 - Apple announced its car project, Project Titan, would be closed and many staff transferred to its AI, generative AI initiative.

More to follow....