Apple's vice president of product marketing Greg Joswiak this week sat down for an interview with The Australian, where he spoke about the company's augmented reality efforts, including ARKit and the response that its gotten from developers so far.
Enthusiasm about ARKit has been "unbelievable" says Joswiak, who went on to describe some of the things developers have built so far, including virtual tape measures that can accurately measure real-world objects. "It's absolutely incredible what people are doing in so little time," he said. Joswiak declined to speak about Apple's future AR plans, but said the company is going to "start at zero" with the iPhone and the iPad.
Apple was not talking about any plan to build AR glasses or a headset, but would instead promote its use on the iPhone and iPad, he said. "I think there is a gigantic runway that we have here with the iPhone and the iPad. The fact we have a billion of these devices out there is quite an opportunity for developers.
"Who knows the kind of things coming down the road, but whatever those things are, we're going to start at zero."
Joswiak also spoke about HomeKit, where he said he expects "plenty" of compatible HomeKit devices to be in homes in Australia before the HomePod speaker launches in December, and he highlighted both the new Siri voices in iOS 11 and Apple's work on machine learning. Apple has been using machine learning techniques since 2007, when the original iPhone launched. "We used machine learning to learn what you typed back in 2007," he said.
Machine learning, ARKit, and artificial intelligence play a major role in iOS 11. With ARKit, developers are able to quickly and easily build augmented reality experiences into their apps and games. When it launches this fall, ARKit will be the largest AR platform in the world, thanks to the myriad iPhones and iPads that are out on the market.
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(View all)Apple has, by far, the best AR until now, and it has it ready to be literally in the hands of 100’s of millions of consumers right when iOS 11 launches. They have won the game, and Google and Microsoft have a lot to catch up...
Also, they own PrimeSense, the real engineers behind "Google" Project Tango...
I can only imagine how this will expand in its capabilities in two/three years time from where it is now.
So instead of being hands free, moving your head around in free-space.
Pair them with a set of smart glasses. Who knows, Apple may eventually come out with their own. The problem with VR is that you become completely blind to the actual world.Then with the aid of hand controllers being able to interact with virtual objects.
You have to stand there, looking at a small screen, whilst using both hands to hold it in front of your face.
You sure Apple's version is really the future?
Check out this article: http://www.pcmag.com/article/347242/ar-vs-vr-whats-the-difference
So instead of being hands free, moving your head around in free-space.
That's not "apple's version" of AR in its limit. That's just AR on a phone. The software technology Apple developed would just as easily work in a headset or other device; and work better than competitors.Then with the aid of hand controllers being able to interact with virtual objects.
You have to stand there, looking at a small screen, whilst using both hands to hold it in front of your face.
You sure Apple's version is really the future?
In addition, nearly the whole world has a phone already and uses it in way that could be meaningfully enhanced with AR, so Apple's approach is the right first step.
So instead of being hands free, moving your head around in free-space.
You've confused Virtual Reality with Augmented Reality. Totally different tech.Then with the aid of hand controllers being able to interact with virtual objects.
You have to stand there, looking at a small screen, whilst using both hands to hold it in front of your face.
You sure Apple's version is really the future?
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I wonder how good the ARKit is going to perform on those "billion" devices out there. Are we really expecting backwards compatibility all the way? How neutered will ARKit be on even one year old devices when iOS 11 launches?
Apple wants to ensure ARKit is a great experience on all supported devices. To that end, ARKit is fully enabled on everything back to iPhone 6S and other devices from that era (basically if your device runs on an A9 chip, you're good to go).Older devices running on A8 chips and before won't support ARKit, so I can't run it on my iPhone 6 Plus.
Of course, newer devices will probably run ARKit more smoothly, but AFAIK Apple doesn't "neuter" ARKit in any way.