Roger Fingas
The head of program management for Apple's software team, Kim Vorrath, has reportedly moved to an augmented reality team within the company, perhaps signalling accelerating work in the field.
Vorrath is reporting to Mike Rockwell, Apple's VP for AR and VR including both hardware and software, The Information said on Wednesday. Rockwell in turn is responsible to the company's senior VP of Hardware Engineering, Dan Riccio.
Vorrath previously reported to Craig Federighi, the senior VP of Software Engineering, and was tasked with both keeping teams on time and ensuring bug testing. The Information previously described her as an "occasionally short-tempered field marshal," having once slammed her office door so hard that it broke the knob and locked her in. Her superior, Scott Forstall, tried to help open the door for her with a baseball bat.
Her current temperament is unknown. Regardless, her reassignment may reflect Apple's intensifying efforts in AR. The company revealed ARKit 3 at WWDC 2019, and the cameras on 2018 iPhones were designed with AR in mind. 2020 iPhones could include time-of-flight sensors, and the company is widely believed to be working on an AR headset that could launch as soon as 2020.
Recently the company hired Nat Brown, a veteran in the VR industry. Those skills could easily translate to AR.
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7 Comments
Cook is lighting a fire under AR. He’s promised big things for years. High end iPhones kind of need a killer app like AR to drive sales... they’ve been designed around it. A $1000 iPhone for just great pictures seems a bit...much.
The question is the timeline, and which iPhones will be able to ‘drive’ an AR headset.
FYI (Engadget)
“Even though the new iPhones -- that's the iPhone 8/Plus and the iPhone X -- are designed specially for AR, ARKit is still available for the iPhone 6s and the iPhone 7 with the upcoming iOS11 update.Sep 12, 2017”
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The Information previously described her as an "occasionally short-tempered field marshal," having once slammed her office door so hard that it broke the knob and locked her in. Her superior, Scott Forstall, tried to help open the door for her with a baseball bat."
Don't you know that Jony Ive must have had a total conniption fit with someone being so disrespectful to the "Park"...
What I LOVE is that Apple is keeping AR so secret and vague that the knockoffs have no idea what to do!
Apple is gonna pounce with a fierce, prepared attack!
#1: Who would want to employ or work with someone who gets that angry at a work setting. Insane. #2: while I have an iPhone X I've used AR only a handful of times to see what it's about and haven't touched it since. I just don't see the usefulness of it (yet) especially through a 6" screen. The measure app is cool but I found it can be surprisingly accurate and woefully inaccurate, meaning I could never trust it for anything.