Image source @ Visual China
Wen 丨 Fengjian (ID: feng_keji), author 丨 half a moon
Among apple's products that have not yet been released, the most anticipated is Apple cars and AR/VR devices, which to some extent represent Apple's future development direction. Unlike many of the negative news that apple cross-border cars have issued, the market trend for Apple's AR/VR devices is significantly more stable, after all, AR/VR devices can apply some iPhone and Mac technology.
A few days ago, sharp-eyed developers found that there were many references to the word "realityOS" in the App Store's upload logs and GitHub's open source code. From the perspective of system naming, reality is reality, the meaning of reality, which is in line with the system naming method of VR (virtual reality), MR (mixed reality) and AR (augmented reality) and other devices.
The emergence of the word realityOS can be speculated that it may be the operating system of Apple's AR/VR devices. According to the news exposed by a number of foreign media, Apple AR glasses will be officially launched this year at the earliest, and realityOS will most likely be released with new hardware.
01、 RealityOS is coming?
As early as three or four years ago, Bloomberg reported on a new Apple system called "rOS", when many netizens did not understand the specific use of the system, and the inner meaning of the English letter "r", now look at r refers to the abbreviation of reality. This also shows from the side that Apple has long been planning to develop a system for AR/VR devices.
Apple's intentions are not difficult to understand. In Apple's product system, smart devices with certain significance will develop a separate operating system for it. Taking iOS and iPadOS as an example, the original iPad also uses iOS, but because of the different hardware design and use scenarios of the device, Apple needs to optimize the iPad separately, and finally it is independent of the special iPadOS, although the two systems are still "the same origin" relationship.
However, it is worth noting that for Apple, AR/VR devices belong to a new field of development, and realityOS will most likely not be modified based on iOS like iPadOS, but a newly developed operating system.
First at the system level. AR/VR devices are different from mobile phones and tablets, and the use of the system does not have to use touch interaction methods, which can be eye tracking, dangling gestures or more accurate operations with the help of hand control sensors. The difference in the interaction system makes realityOS use the new UI design, and the system interface may tend to be 3D rather than the traditional two-dimensional planar system.
Secondly, at the software level, developers mainly adjust the UI layout when adapting software for iPad to improve the interface utilization of software on large-screen devices. Under the AR/VR system, it is different, the software developer needs to adjust the display ratio of the software according to the new system display interface to enhance the user's sense of immersion, and needs to be optimized according to the different interaction methods that may exist, such as the adaptation of the software UI and the surrounding environment on the AR glasses, and pay more attention to the "blank space" of the interface, so as to avoid the user from overly blocking the line of sight when the interface is used while walking.
Another worth mentioning is the "inheritance" of Apple's software and hardware ecosystem. At the 2017 WWDC Developers Conference, Apple launched its own AR tool, ARKit, which is primarily available for iPhones and iPads. However, Apple has always preferred to lay out new technologies in advance, driven by the iPhone and iPad, the number of ARKit application downloads has exceeded 10 million, and the future ARKit ecosystem can be fully applied to Apple AR glasses.
In terms of hardware, the ranging and modeling functions of LiDAR can also be applied to AR glasses, making it have depth information perception capabilities that many similar products do not have.
Previously, Cook had said that AR would be the "node" of Apple's future development, and perhaps the next replacement of the iPhone would not be the next generation of iPhones, but the use of more convenient and insensitive Apple AR glasses. The so-called hardware configuration is the foundation, the system is the soul of the product, Apple's advance layout of realityOS, not only to give Apple AR glasses a unique market competitiveness, but also to seize the AR/VR device software market in advance, to attract more third-party developers.
02, early occupation of the pit "rent collection"
Whether past, present, or future, many of the "big businesses" that make money are essentially different types of rent collection businesses. In ancient times, landlords collected rent from tenant farmers who rented land, and today's commercial real estate developers collect rent from merchants who do business.
As for the Internet age, the concept of land has been transformed into a network "paving" on various large Internet platforms. In order to increase product and software exposure, merchants can buy traffic or exposure locations from online shopping platforms, and software manufacturers can buy top ads for home page recommendations or searches from platforms such as the App Store.
It can be said that in the Internet era, whose platform is large and whose promotion channels are more valuable, it is possible to rely on the "rent collection" economy to earn more profits. Taking Apple's App Store as an example, according to Sensor Tower's data, app store revenue reached $72.3 billion in 2020, far more than Google Play Store's $38.6 billion, mainly because the channel value of the App Store is higher, the Android ecosystem in addition to Google also has Apptoide and other app stores, more promotion channels disperse advertisers and software developers to spread money.
Apple laid out realityOS in advance, and the App Store for AR devices may also be in development, and the famous journalist Mark Gurman also said that Apple hopes to develop an exclusive app store for AR/VR devices. Apple intends to occupy the pit in advance and wants to continue to seize the key points of the development of smart devices in the "next decade" by virtue of the software ecological advantage.
On the one hand, Apple has an old tradition of developing app stores ahead of schedule. On the iPhone 3G released in 2008, Apple's App Store greatly stimulated the developer's enthusiasm for development, and Jobs, who foresaw the development trend of the APP, believed that the future was the world of applications. A more interesting counterexample is that Apple itself has suffered a "latecomer" loss, and the Mac version of the App Store released a few years later than the iPhone's App Store is far inferior to the richness of the application ecology, and many software still have to be retrieved and downloaded through search engines.
On the other hand, many manufacturers have accelerated the research and development of AR/VR devices, and Meta, which wants to rely on the development of the meta-universe, has been developing a new VR operating system, after all, Meta has always played the role of "tenant". In the field of software ecology, Apple, which knows the importance of the first-mover advantage, naturally does not want other mainstream manufacturers to take the lead.
The failure of the VR startup boom a few years ago was related to the fact that manufacturers at that time did not pay attention to the software ecology, and the product experience was relatively bad. The lower limit of the system software ecology, but also the lower limit of the AR /VR device user experience, the current ar /VR device system and software development direction is still relatively vague, if Apple establishes corresponding standards in the industry, it is conducive to other manufacturers to learn and learn, and then drive the benign development of the industry.
Secondly, Apple continues to exert efforts in the software ecology, which can remind industry practitioners of the importance of ar/VR device software ecology, lay out the system and software ecological development framework of the device in advance, such as guiding platform developers to call the corresponding API interface to develop virtual reality APP in advance, and exploring new software profitability and platform sharing models to avoid the industry from embarking on the dead end of heavy hardware and light software again.
In general, the Internet is also a rent collection business, the author speculates that realityOS and its supporting App Store will come with AR glasses, and related software development standards may be planned. From the mac in the process of X86 to ARM, it can be seen that Apple's appeal in the field of software ecology can not be shaken, and perhaps the strong industry appeal is the trump card in Apple's hand. In order for other mainstream brands to challenge Apple in the AR/VR field in the future, they still need to accelerate the construction of the software ecosystem in addition to hardware, and strive to become "landlords" in the industry rather than "tenants".
03. Conclusion
In addition to AR glasses, Tianfeng International analyst Guo Mingji said that Apple's AR/MR headset will use a dual CPU design, two to three years ahead of its peers in computing power. Obviously, Apple is still following its own familiar development model, trying to open up a large enough gap with the same type of products in software and hardware to allow consumers and developers to willingly choose products in their own ecosystem.
It can be said that no matter what field Apple is involved in, it tends to open up an independent development track, such as the iPhone's Face ID and the AirPods Pro's head tracking. For AR/VR products, in the author's opinion, Apple wants to use the system and software ecology to promote the development of hardware, so that consumers can continue to form a consumer mind with advantages in Apple's software ecology.
For the metaverse, although Apple does not seem to be cold to the concept of metaverse, and even the news that Apple prohibits the discussion of metaverse within Apple, from the perspective of Apple's industrial layout, AR glasses and AR/MR headsets are related to the metacosm. Perhaps for Apple, instead of bragging about some concepts that are difficult to achieve in the short term, it is better to start from reality and solve the computing power and system problems of AR devices first, so that users can finally buy ar products that are not chicken ribs.
It should also be noted that realityOS or AR glasses may also be a product that only exists in the news, and whether it lands on the ground for mass production depends on Apple's planning. After all, there are not a few such products in Apple's history, such as AirPower, Apple Paladin and PenLite. But what is basically certain is that the products launched by Apple will inevitably be "relatively mature", rather than tossing some products released for release.