News: Apple Recruitment Video Features Augmented Reality Clues at the Center of Call for New Team Members

Whenever a new Apple event invite arrives, the entire tech industry begins tearing the invite's graphics apart in a bid to decipher what the company may be planning on releasing in the coming weeks.

Therefore, it only makes sense to give the company's latest art-as-marketing piece — an innovative job advertisement — that very same tea leaf-reading treatment. As it turns out, there are several augmented reality clues at the very heart of Apple's video-based request for new team members.

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As usual, Apple's marketing materials are beautifully done, but in this case, if you tease apart the video's many graphics, you'll see that Tim Cook's focus on AR is definitely in the spotlight.

The roughly one-minute video features a voice-over delivering the company's pitch, while the graphics focus on the Apple logo as it morphs into a wide range of subtle and not so subtle visual messages. At one point, at the exact mid-point of the video, the graphics shift into a series of 3D, polygonal, and reality-bending imagery that serves as a fairly bold nod toward AR.

"Those open to daydreams, and night dreams, and visions, and mirages, who can see the millions of shades of green in a field of grass… you are welcome here," states the voice-over playing during the AR-inspired sequence, inviting potential candidates to join the Apple team.

The video, which is essentially a job ad, is as well thought out and inspiring as many of Apple's commercials, but the strong focus on AR at its heart is telling.

In addition to Cook's recent emphasis on AR as the future of the company, a quick look at the company's job listings reveals positions for machine learning engineers, computer vision research engineers, visual perception scientists, and many other technical and managerial roles that could support the rollout of an AR wearable device.

But this is nothing new. Apple has been staffing up for AR since at least 2018, it's just that now the company's effort appears to be ramping up even more. So far, ARKit has delivered an impressive array of updates and immersive computing features, but most independent developers still seem primarily focused on traditional, non-AR apps within the iOS ecosystem.

Nevertheless, if all the signals we've been collecting are any indication, Apple could soon send another major ripple through the tech space via AR smartglasses. And this new call to call to arms video may be the company's pre-emptive effort to snap up the best AR software and hardware talent before that major new push begins in earnest.