Valued at over US$900 billion, Apple is one of the world’s most prominent companies in the technology industry and beyond. In under half a century, Apple has risen to become an unforgettable household name. Now its ever-increasing globally ubiquitous nature is transforming people’s lives at an accelerating rate. Apple pioneered the smartphone that transformed how we live our lives, do they have the potential to grow and transform lives even further?

It certainly seems so: Apple are developing “augmented reality glasses” – technology similar to virtual reality but designed for greater practical use beyond gaming, as well as increased comfort and quality. Shockingly, despite Apple aiming for technological advances that are astronomical and incomprehensible, they aim to have these AR glasses ready for sale by 2020, where they could transform our idea of normality.

Apple argue that the uses of AR will be extensive. In business, there is the possibility of greatly improving the quality of video conferencing by mapping out meeting rooms in 360-degrees to allow those individuals not able to make the meeting to be more able to interpret atmosphere and nuances in speech etc. simply because they will feel as though they are there. This will create an ease of communication unattainable over long distances for current businesses, allowing greater efficiency and further globalisation of skills and knowledge, fueling further global economic growth and living standards in material terms.

In the entertainment department, apart from enhancing virtual reality gaming, AR is also speculated to allow videos filmed using 360-degree cameras to be experienced when wearing the glasses. Unlike current options for this, such as HTC Vive, Apple are aiming for negligible differences between the quality of normal sight to sight with AR – the glasses are expected to have the graphical qualities of normal sight; such technology is staggering bearing in mind that Apple’s first smartphone was only released ten years ago!

According to Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO, the AR glasses are being designed to be fully integrated into people’s lives – not just a fun game. In his own words, Tim Cook argues that using AR will be almost as normal as “eating three meals a day”. Apple imply the technology developments will be transformative enough to manipulate society into accepting them, only ten years after they had immense success at doing so with their smartphone technology. 

Apple is not intending to lose its global domination and through its extensive technology developing investments the world has only to wait for another complete change of lifestyle. From business to entertainment, Apple will only become ever more influential - can Apple’s growth ever stop?