Apple CEO Tim Cook was recently interviewed by Kara Swisher on the Sway Podcast. It was a good 30 min interview covering a wide range of topics and Swisher did a good job asking also some tough questions, e.g. regarding App Store rules and commissions.
Considering that Cook has repeatedly touted the importance of Augmented Reality (AR), it was clear that it was going to come up at some point. Thus, when asked to talk about where he thinks innovation is going for Apple itself, Cook said that he’s very excited about AI and AR.
When Swisher probed deeper and asked what his biggest interest in AR is, this is what Cook said:
In terms of AR, the promise of AR is that you and I are having a great conversation right now. Arguably, it could even be better if we were able to augment our discussion with charts or other things to appear. And your audience would also benefit from this, too, I think.
Charts! That’s right, the first thing that comes to Cook’s mind when he envisions AR use-cases is that our conversations could be made better if we could show each other charts in AR.
I find this humorous and a testament to Cook’s nerdiness, which arguably has served him well during his 10-year tenure as CEO of Apple. He genuinely thinks that charts would be among the coolest things you could do when wearing your brand new Apple AR glasses.
Yes, please show me that chart you’re talking about. Image by Christian Perello at Unsplash.
All jokes aside, I’d recommend that Apple’s marketing division prepares some more exciting examples for the next Apple executive who talks publicly about AR. Explaining to the world all the really cool things you could do with AR glasses will be such an important thing for driving engagement and adoption. Apple needs to get the story right from the beginning.
Don’t get me wrong, charts are great, but if you want to get the early adopters excited, you might instead want to emphasize with examples what AR can do for your workouts, your in-store shopping experiences, or your business conferences.
And don’t forget about gaming and entertainment! I, for one, am hoping that using the AR glasses will be as much fun as useful.