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Apple CEO Tim Cook: There Are Now More Than 1000 AR Apps In The App Store

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There are now more than a thousand augmented reality apps in the App Store, Apple CEO Tim Cook revealed last week in Apple's Q4 earning call.

Perhaps more interesting?

Cook has a very definite viewpoint on how AR should develop.

"There are 1,000-plus AR apps in the App Store already," Cook said. "I think it's very similar to when we fired the gun on the App Store overall in 2008."

John Koetsier

That would suggest skyrocketing future growth. The App Store zoomed from 800 apps in its launch year, 2008, to 35,000 just one year later. Now, of course, it has millions, and Apple has paid out over $70 billion to app store publishers over the years.

While apps have connected us, there is a perception that smartphones in general have isolated us, Cook seems to think augmented reality can help reverse that.

"In my view AR amplifies human performance, instead of isolating us," Cook said. "It should be a help for humanity, not an isolation kind of thing for humanity."

While virtual reality covers the entire visual field, augmented reality layers additional data, insights, and features over the "real" world. Perhaps that connection to default reality is the thing that Cook feels can be a connector and an aide, rather than an isolating factor.

Both IKEA and Amazon have released AR apps that allow you to test how furniture or other objects would look in context in your home or other spaces, and multiple developers have released AR games that layer virtual robots, landscapes, or weapons over your home.

Apple released ARKit, a set of software building blocks that enable the creation of augmented reality experiences, this summer in iOS 11. Google released ARCore a few months later. Other companies have different names for augmented reality -- Microsoft refers to it as "mixed reality," or MR.

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