Who Will Own The Virtual Reality Interface?
[Philip Lelyveld comment: Linc Gasking is the founder of 8i, a volumetric VR company who's tech is ideal for AR application as well.]
Despite their comparatively later start to the race, Apple could be in a strong position to bring a VR/AR OS mainstream. This is because closed systems generally provide the easiest path for users as they explore a complex and confusing new medium. History shows that consumers gravitate towards simplicity when adopting new technologies, and that they tend to favor high-quality gear when it comes to consumer electronics.
As legal scholar Tim Wu notes in his book The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires, all of the greatest technological innovations of the past century—the telephone, the radio, broadcast and cable television, the Internet— have followed the same basic path: progressing from an open, widely-accessible resource to a closed, corporatized commodity.
Consumers are also unlikely to start carrying a second device in addition to their smartphones. So if Apple is behind the one “computer” in your pocket, it’ll be an uphill battle trying to convince casual users to buy and carry an additional device.
See the full story here: http://techcrunch.com/2016/02/11/who-will-own-the-virtual-reality-interface/