Cook has been singing the praises of AR for five years

• By Kim Lyons

Tim Cook has just marked 10 years as Apple’s CEO, and while he’s grown Apple into the most valuable company in the world, it’s reasonable to argue he hasn’t yet introduced a signature, industry shaking product like Apple co-founder Steve Jobs did with the iPhone, iPad, Mac and more.

But if you’ve been following Apple for a minute, you’ve probably heard Cook talk about the game-changing potential of augmented reality. While he once said it was hard to see the appeal of Google Glass, the AR wearable that proved unpopular with consumers, he’s held a consistently positive opinion on AR since at least 2016. While most of the industry was putting all its eggs in the VR basket, Cook repeatedly expressed support for what he views as the far superior AR. This would become a running theme: AR good, VR not so good.

It seems likely that AR may become the hallmark of Cook’s tenure, as long as Apple executes on a winning idea. While that’s not exactly guaranteed — Apple has yet to unveil an AR headset or glasses — Cook’s frequent comments about the tech keep the topic in the news and reassure investors and customers that Apple is working on it.

AR features are already available on the iPhone and iPad. And while hope is starting to fade that Apple will release a mixed reality device in 2022, the latest rumors suggest the company is still forging ahead with some kind of AR/VR headset to be released in the not-distant future. 

Here’s a brief history of all the times Tim Cook said he was convinced AR was the future.

July 2016: Cook says in a quarterly earnings call that “AR can be really great.”

“We have been and continue to invest a lot in this. We are high on AR for the long run, we think there’s great things for customers and a great commercial opportunity. The number one thing is to make sure our products work well with other developers’ kind of products like Pokémon, that’s why you see so many iPhones in the wild chasing pokemons.” (Cook pronounces it “pokey-mans.”)

September 2016: Cook tells Good Morning America in an interview that he believes AR is a bigger deal than VR.

“There’s virtual reality and there’s augmented reality — both of these are incredibly interesting. But my own view is that augmented reality is the larger of the two, probably by far.” 

AR “gives the capability for both of us to sit and be very present, talking to each other, but also have other things — visually — for both of us to see. Maybe it’s something we’re talking about, maybe it’s someone else here who’s not here present but who can be made to appear to be present.” 

“There’s a lot of really cool things there.” 

August 2016: Cook makes a brief mention of AR in a Washington Post profile: “I think AR [augmented reality] is extremely interesting and sort of a core technology. So, yes, it’s something we’re doing a lot of things on behind that curtain that we talked about.” 

October 2016: In an appearance at Utah Tech Tour, Cook goes into detail about how crucial AR may become and why he views it as superior to VR — while stressing that AR presents significant technology challenges before it can be adopted for mass consumerism.  

In terms of it becoming a mass adoption [phenomenon], so that, say, everyone in here would have an AR experience, the reality to do that, it has to be something that everyone in here views to be an “acceptable thing.”

And nobody in here, few people in here, think it’s acceptable to be tethered to a computer walking in here and sitting down, few people are going to view that it’s acceptable to be enclosed in something, because we’re all social people at heart. Even introverts are social people, we like people and we want to interact. It has to be that it’s likely that AR, of the two, is the one the largest number of people will engage with.

I do think that a significant portion of the population of developed countries, and eventually all countries, will have AR experiences every day, almost like eating three meals a day, it will become that much a part of you, a lot of us live on our smartphones, the iPhone, I hope, is very important for everyone, so AR will become really big. VR I think is not going to be that big, compared to AR. I’m not saying it’s not important, it is important.

I’m excited about VR from an education point of view, I think it can be really big for education, I think it can be very big for games. But I can’t imagine everyone in here getting in an enclosed VR experience while you’re sitting in here with me. But I could imagine everyone in here in an AR experience right now, if the technology was there, which it’s not today. How long will it take?

AR is going to take a while, because there are some really hard technology challenges there. But it will happen, it will happen in a big way, and we will wonder when it does, how we ever lived without it. Like we wonder how we lived without our phone today.

October 2016: Cook tells BuzzFeed News that while “VR has some interesting applications,” AR is superior to VR because “there’s no substitute for human contact. And so you want the technology to encourage that.”

Augmented reality will take some time to get right, but I do think that it’s profound. We might ... have a more productive conversation, if both of us have an AR experience standing here, right? And so I think that things like these are better when they’re incorporated without becoming a barrier to our talking. ... You want the technology to amplify it, not to be a barrier.

February 2017: Cook expands his thoughts on AR’s potential, adding a new comparison: AR is a big idea, like the smartphone.

I’m excited about augmented reality because unlike virtual reality which closes the world out, AR allows individuals to be present in the world but hopefully allows an improvement on what’s happening presently. Most people don’t want to lock themselves out from the world for a long period of time and today you can’t do that because you get sick from it. With AR you can, not be engrossed in something, but have it be a part of your world, of your conversation. That has resonance.

I regard it as a big idea like the smartphone. The smartphone is for everyone, we don’t have to think the iPhone is about a certain demographic, or country or vertical market: it’s for everyone. I think AR is that big, it’s huge. I get excited because of the things that could be done that could improve a lot of lives. And be entertaining. I view AR like I view the silicon here in my iPhone, it’s not a product per se, it’s a core technology. But there are things to discover before that technology is good enough for the mainstream. I do think there can be a lot of things that really help people out in daily life, real-life things, that’s why I get so excited about it.

June 2017: In a wide-ranging interview with Bloomberg News, Cook details his vision for AR at Apple:

I think it is profound. I am so excited about it, I just want to yell out and scream. The first step in making it a mainstream kind of experience is to put it in the operating system. We’re building it into iOS 11, opening it to ­developers—and unleashing the creativity of millions of people. Even we can’t predict what’s going to come out.

There’s some things that you can already get a vision of. We’ve talked to IKEA, and they have 3D images of their furniture line. You’re talking about changing the whole experience of how you shop for, in this case, furniture and other objects that you can place around the home. You can take that idea and begin to think this is something that stretches from enterprise to consumer. There’s not a lot of things that do that.

You’ll see things happening in enterprises where AR is ­fundamental to what they’re doing. You’re going to see some consumer things that are unbelievably cool. Can we do everything we want to do now? No. The technology’s not complete yet. But that’s the beauty to a certain degree. This has a runway. And it’s an incredible runway. It’s time to put the seat belt on and go. When people begin to see what’s possible, it’s going to get them very excited—like we are, like we’ve been.

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