Apple CEO Tim Cook has reiterated his greater enthusiasm for augmented reality than virtual reality, calling the former “profound” and the latter not “a broad-based technology like AR”.
Cook made his comments to BuzzFeed News, insisting that “there’s no substitute for human contact, and so you want the technology to encourage that.” He had earlier expressed this kind of opinion to ABC News in September, saying that AR allows users to be more “present” than is the case with VR.
To BuzzFeed, he explained: “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.”
Cook’s words suggest that Apple’s stance on augmented and virtual reality is closer to that of Microsoft, purveyor of the HoloLens mixed reality headset, than that of Google, Facebook and Sony, which have all made VR gear. Sony’s PlayStation VR comes under particular scrutiny in our just-released issue.
