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Apple CEO Tim Cook apparently hinted at the company's upcoming mixed reality headset in an extensive interview with GQ.
Cook is featured on the cover of GQ's 2023 Global Creativity Awards issue. The interview with GQ's Zach Baron is titled "Tim Cook Thinks Different" and explores various aspects of Cook's career and personal life. Cook explains why Apple might hypothetically be interested in AR/VR hardware:
The idea of overlaying things from the digital world onto the physical world could greatly improve communication and connection between people. If you think about augmented reality technology, to look at just one side of the AR/VR spectrum, it could greatly improve communication and connection between people. It could enable people to do things they haven't been able to do before. We could collaborate on something much more easily if we're sitting here brainstorming and suddenly we can pull up something digital and see it and work with it and create something. So it's about the idea that there's an environment that's maybe even better than the real world - if you put the virtual world on top of it, it could be an even better world. That's exciting. If it could accelerate creativity, if it could help you do things that you do all day that you haven't really thought about doing differently.
Cook went on to say that measuring physical objects and putting digital art on walls are just the beginning of AR's potential applications, and suggested that there are many more possibilities. Baron then addressed the fact that Cook had told The New Yorker in 2015 that he was very skeptical that Apple would make smart glasses, similar to Google Glass, as an early AR product. At the time, Cook said:
Mixed Reality Headset: Tim Cook admits rethinking
We always thought glasses were not a smart move as people don't really want to wear them. They were too intrusive rather than pushing the technology into the background like we always believed. We always thought it would be a flop and so far it has been.
Now Cook admits he is ready to say he was wrong:
My thinking is evolving. Steve taught me well that you should never hold on to your beliefs from yesterday. When you learn something new that tells you you are wrong, you should admit it and move forward instead of hiding and saying why you are right.
Baron then asked Cook if the fact that neither Google Glass nor the Metas Quest headsets have been well received by consumers made him skeptical that Apple would offer a product in the AR/VR space. Cook replied that Apple has been successful in the past in areas where people have doubted the company:
There have been a lot of skeptics about pretty much everything we've ever done. When you do something that's on the edge, there are always going to be skeptics. Can we make a meaningful contribution in some way, something that others aren't doing? Can we own the key technology? I'm not interested in piecing together pieces from others. Because we want to have control of the primary technology. Because we know that's the only way to innovate.
If you want to read the whole interview, you can find it in English hereIt covers Cook's ideas about leadership, his public image, his comparison with Steve Jobs, working at Apple Park, his salary and much more. (Photo by DFree / Bigstockphoto)
