Atlantico.fr: What are the most anticipated tools and devices for this fall?
Daniel Ishbieh: Among the devices that I will discuss, some questions arise about the release schedule.
Firstly, there are the augmented reality glasses from Apple which will usually be announced on September 8th. Yet we are still in the foresight. There are a lot of indications that they will release augmented reality glasses.
It’s quite similar to what Google wanted to do with Google Glass. Google had to partially abandon the project because communications technology did not exist.
5G was launched in August 2018 in the United States. The connection speed has been extended. It is enough to be able to superimpose the information on the glasses. See you on the street, I can post your profile to Facebook. This can of course have an impact on privacy and it may be necessary to seek permission from the people involved. Likewise, if you pass down a street and are adept at using a particular old-fashioned pen, technology will tell you that in the store twenty meters away, there is the type of pen you prefer.
It will be a new type of application that superimposes information on everyday life. In the museum, when looking at a painting, information about the rotten work, overlapping it through glasses. It is a real revolution. There are a lot of indications that Apple will release these glasses. Some programming interfaces in the new OS indicate that they are intended for augmented reality applications.
This launch will be significant for Apple as the company hasn’t created a surprise for some time. The Apple Watch wasn’t very impressive. They can hit a big hit with these glasses.
Google, which has been working on this technology for much longer than Apple, will likely respond very quickly.
As for the second highly anticipated device, it’s Google. These are the Google 2 earphones. They launched the first model in the US two years ago. It has not been imported to France. These are varieties of pastels that we put in the ear, a bit like Apple’s air capsules. These Google earbuds have a very amazing feature. When using these earbuds, a machine translation unit is integrated. If you are in a foreign country, and you have an Android phone, and if I say a sentence in French, the phone will translate what I say into my conversation in its own language. He will answer me in a foreign language and I will hear his answer in French. In fact, Google has made tremendous progress in the field of artificial intelligence related to language. Microsoft is working with Cortana and Apple with Siri also on this technology, but Google is starting to get very effective.
The earbuds are clearly used for music, too. They have the so-called “passive” insulation – they do not completely block outside noise.
Then there’s Microsoft’s Xbox Series X that comes out. It’s still very difficult to tell if this will be a huge hit. However, there is a phenomenon that is an asset to the company. Microsoft launched a service called Xbox Pass. It works like the Netflix type of video game. They are already ten million subscribers in the United States. Games can be accessed on your current Xbox, even with older games as well as on PCs. It caught Nintendo and Sony who hadn’t planned similar shows.
The new Xbox is still pretty amazing. This is what we’ve seen most powerful with a single, terabyte hard drive in an SSD. Will people who subscribe to the Xbox game get the new console? For some, it’s entirely possible.
Microsoft adopts a blue ocean strategy. Same approach Nintendo used to launch the Wii in 2006. If you can’t win an arena, you change the arena. Back then, keyboards were battling for power. Nintendo changed the rules of the game by positioning itself to expand the audience of video games and they won the battle by doing so.
Therefore, Microsoft took a different approach to Nintendo and Sony by launching this Xbox Pass. He is very smart. The futuristic console they are about to release also has a nice look like the black one-piece, side to “2001, A Space Odyssey” which is pretty impressive.
There is also another product to talk about. Oculus Connect 6. This is an augmented reality headset. It is rather an entry-level level but of high quality. Oculus was acquired by Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg has made it possible to use all the VR games designed for the other Oculus headphones in this model. Facebook developed a concept to try and get virtual reality. It’s called Facebook Horizon. It’s a bit like Second Life in the early 2000s, it was a virtual environment in which it was possible to evolve and get to know other players. Many cities and activities could have been created. Facebook has translated this into virtual reality.
Mark Zuckerberg has also determined that they sell a lot of headphones and applications related to virtual reality. This is an area that will therefore start to take over after a very difficult start.
