Apple Advanced Technology Group

Welcome to Apple Computer's Advanced Technology Group! Please note further material can be found at Apple Research Labs which seems to be the new division name after ATG was disbanded.

ATG's Mission

To oversee the development of concept products and core technologies to be incorporated into future Apple products.

ATG's Vision

To enhance people's lives by developing systems that provide a rich environment for work and play, learning and business. The emphases are on social interaction and access to knowledge through systems of hardware, software, networks, services and content. Our work is customer-centered, aimed at developing simple, smart, system-oriented, cohesive designs. We develop the technologies for the next generation of products that are sensitive to the special needs and capabilities of our customers who live in a rich variety of cultures around the world.

ATG's goal is to create a working environment that is:

• Creative
• Exciting
• Intellectually deep, challenging, and stimulating
• Relevant to Apple - pushing the product boundaries

We live the future, the better to invent it. We do this through rapid prototyping, deployment, and evaluation of systems to ourselves and target customers. Above all, we intend to create systems that:

• Are multicultural
• Are information-rich
• Span the range of devices from minimum to maximum - from the least expensive to the most imaginative
• Establish a new economic model for business
• Are engaging, seductive, addictive, fun.

Technologies

Cocoa

Cocoa is an environment that enables children to create their own simulations and publish them on the World Wide Web.

ProjectX

Project X is a demonstration of new navigation technology innovation from Apple Research Laboratories. Using Project X, you can fly through 3D representations of websites and/or desktop files.

V-Twin

V-Twin is an information access toolkit that provides full-text indexing and search to applications that use it. V-Twin is currently being used in Cyberdog, and Mac OS 8 will use V-Twin to support Find-by-Content.

Success Stories

Many ARL technologies have become products that many of you use today. A few of the names you may recognize are listed here.

• Cocoa
• OpenDoc
• QuickDraw 3D
• QuickTime Conferencing

Papers

• What Are These Things Good for, Anyway - The purpose of this paper is to seek a dose of reality by examining how computers are actually being used by real-life elementary school teachers and students. At a school that has been using computers for seven years,the author interviewed teachers, administrators, and support personnel about how computers are used and how they have affected teaching and learning. John Steinmetz; December 15, 1993.
• Computing the Inverse Square Root - The inverse square root of a number is computed by determining an approximate value by table lookup and refining it through iteration. Ken Turkowski; October 3, 1994.
• Fixed Point Square Root - The square root of a fixed-point number is computed using a simple method similar to longhand division. Ken Turkowski; October 3, 1994.
• Circular Arc Subdivision - A circular arc is converted into a series of straight line segments, by taking advantage of the property that when a circular arc is bisected, each half-arc has a chordal deviation one quarter that of the original arc. Ken Turkowski; 1995.
• Interface for Adaptive Systems: Design of a Personal Wayfinder - Today's computerized devices are, for the most part, unaware of their users. They present the same images, the same interaction techniques and the same functionality, regardless of the characteristics of the person using them. Joost Kemink; 1994.
• User-Centered Processes and Evaluation in Product Development - In his paper, "Interdisciplinary Collaboration", Scott Kim discusses the importance of "noticing the assumptions in your own discipline that might limit your view of the world". We present our experiences as a case example of some of the problems and successes in a collaborative effort to improve the design of the user interface for Eager, a programming-by-example system. Shifteh Karimi, Allen Cypher, Karen Kvavik and Deborah Mayhew; July 1994.
• Volumetric Hyper Reality, A Computer Graphics Holy Grail for the 21st Century - This paper starts by examining the issues related to integrating real and virtual objects in a virtual reality environment. In particular it discusses the problems of occlusion, shadows and specular reflections. Gavin Miller; May 23, 1995.
• Evolution of the PowerPC/SCI Prototype Interface - In the process of implementing the 68040 to SCI bridge, and in our current design of a PowerPC 601 to SCI bridge, we have identified a number of interface incompatibilities, described in a paper presented at the last SCIzzL conference. The purpose of this paper is to update the reader on the progress of our PowerPC-SCI nterface as some implementation details have changed. Glen D. Stone and Haakon Bryhni; March 1995.
• The World Wide Web as Social Hypertext - The Web as social hypertext has a number of ramifications: it provides a new way of searching that leverages our social intelligence; its non-mutuality lowers the social costs of information access; and, most importantly, it provides a mechanism for the construction and portrayal of identity. Thomas Erickson; October 12, 1995.
• How to Develop High Potential Employees and Maintain Future Competitive Advantage - This article reviews the design and implementation of a 360 degree career development program (curriculum, assessment, mentoring, development planning) to develop high potential employees. This is a program to develop employees as professionals and leaders. Denise Coley; 1995.
• Rapid Prototyping of Awareness Services using a Shared Information Server - A white paper by Bill Walker explaining the design of and motivation for SIS.

Related Articles

• Apple e.g.
• MCF
• HotSauce
• AppleNet
• SK8
• SharedInfoServer
• Apple Data Detectors
• NetScan
• Apple V-Twin
• NII Band

See Also

• Apple Computer