as part of his one day tour of canada yesterday tim cook offered an interview to the financial post following his visit to ecommerce platform shopifys headquarters cook used the interview as an opportunity to tout apples efforts in augmented realty as well as talk about the homepod regarding ar cook reiterated his bullish views on the technology saying that he sees it as the most profound technology in the future because of how it amplifies human performance furthermore he says he believes that ar will continue to gain adoption at a fast rate i believe that ar is the most profound technology of the future cook said it amplifies human performance it amplifies humans not substitutes and doesnt isolate im a huge believer in it i see ar taking off very quickly he added i see developers across canada adopting at a very fast rate bringing their craft to market and i couldnt be happier with it also in the interview given on the eve of apples homepod release announcement cook offered some color as to what sets its smart speaker apart from competitors while some have criticized the homepod for being a me too product in response to efforts from amazon and google cook says thats not the case the apple ceo explained that the integration between the homepod hardware and ios is one thing that will make it unique competition makes all of us better and i welcome it cook said but if you are both trying to license something and compete with your licensees this is a difficult model and it remains to be seen if it can be successful or not he also adds that sound quality is a differentiating factor of homepod saying that one thing that was missing from the smart speaker market was quality audio we think one thing that was missing from this market was a quality audio experience a very immersive audio experience cook said music deserves that kind of quality as opposed to some kind of squeaky sound the full interview is definitely worth a read and can be found here do you agree with cooks beliefs that sound quality and integration with ios are what set homepod apart from the competition let us know down in the comments