Discussion

By Gordon Pritchard on Jul 29, 2022

Do we really need yet another proprietary AR app clogging up our phones? Why is it that AR developers always seem to insist on creating a unique app for each AR application?

By Dov Isaacs on Jul 29, 2022

Quite Frankly (pun intended), this is a perfect example of the problems we will have going forward.

The scanning of a picture and the “app” on a phone might appear very ingenious today, but what happens when the developer of that “app” either goes belly-up or discontinues support for it or the particular format? You are left with a pretty pamphlet with headlines, but missing the content you wish to access. This is the problem with short-term and short-sighted proprietary formats and protocols. We have lost so much content over the last forty years due to this craziness?

Ask high school and college graduates who were persuaded that they didn't need printed yearbooks and that a CD of their yearbook with a proprietary Windows 3.1 16-bit application along with proprietary file formats would suffice. All that is left of such gimmicks are coasters (such as were provided by all the early AOL signup CDs). So much for accessing memories.

This is exactly why very long term international standards are so important, whether for documents (such as PDF), images (TIFF, JPEG, etc.), movies, etc.

- Dov