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Apple Marketing Lead Greg Joswiak Talks ARKit in New Interview

Thursday June 29, 2017 1:45 pm PDT by Juli Clover
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.

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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.

Tags: Greg Joswiak, ARKit
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Zirel
24 months ago
While VR is easy, just dump a faster, more powerful graphics card, AR is very complicated, because you can’t solve it just by catching the silicon drift.

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...
Rating: 5 Votes
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Relentless Power
24 months ago
I think AR-Kit is interesting in its infancy with mapping objects on to a surface. But that's just the start and how it will Expand with iOS devices. Once it expands more into the gaming era With the iPad or how someone could potentially stage their home with virtual furniture to see what it would resemble Before purchasing is clever.

I can only imagine how this will expand in its capabilities in two/three years time from where it is now.
Rating: 4 Votes
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FactVsOpinion
24 months ago

So instead of being hands free, moving your head around in free-space.
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?


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.

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.
Rating: 3 Votes
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ShinySteelRobot
24 months ago

So instead of being hands free, moving your head around in free-space.
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?

You've confused Virtual Reality with Augmented Reality. Totally different tech.
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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.
Rating: 3 Votes
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zapm
24 months ago

So instead of being hands free, moving your head around in free-space.
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?


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.

Check out this article: http://www.pcmag.com/article/347242/ar-vs-vr-whats-the-difference
Rating: 3 Votes
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FrenchRoasted
24 months ago
Waiting to see pictures of people running around with an iPad strapped to their heads.
Rating: 2 Votes
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Thunderhawks
24 months ago
I don't get the negative attitudes of some people here.
This is awesome stuff coming and the creative minds are just beginning to think of uses.

It will be made better and better, so let's NOT poopoo the future without seeing what is possible.

As for how many old generation iPhones and iPads are being left in the dust : That is the price to pay for technological advances.
Rating: 1 Votes
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Spectrum
24 months ago
Cool demo: But I was constantly distracted by: Why does this dude have his cap on back to front? The strip of plastic poppers is perhaps the least elegant part of a cap. Why have it slapped across your forehead?

OK. I'll get back to work now...
Rating: 1 Votes
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Michaelgtrusa
24 months ago
I'm really loving what i've seen thus far. new vids every day.
Rating: 1 Votes
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red41
24 months ago

That's exactly the problem I have with this approach they have. Could users develop 'gorilla arms' from that?

Oh wait...Apple argued about the same thing using touchscreens on iMac.
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Blind? LOL. You do know that with VR goggles, you can have an external camera to view the actual world around you? HTC Vive has that feature so that if you need to see what's going on, you can activate a little window inside the screen to see your true surroundings ( ie. friends, crowd, walls, etc ).

As for a pair of smart glasses, sure that's the obvious route but that should've been offered as an alternative right now besides holding up the devices for privacy reasons.
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DOA? Grow up. Oculus is VR, not AR. Get it right. And Oculus is STILL around. I've seen it and used it.

Thousands of dollars? Don't make me laugh. It's close to $1,000. But even if you want a new PC and Oculus, no more than $2,000 would do it. And WHO CARES if it's tethered to a PC? It's supposed to do that for seamless processing. And until then, I expect VR to evolve into portable/wireless form.

In fact, The Void VR is wireless and uses a body vest to track motion and interact with physical objects. Don't believe me?

Go there: https://www.thevoid.com/

DOA, my a$$.

I don't care how ( Schiller's voice ) INCREDIBLE it is to run AR on a phone. That was already a given years ago. Nothing amazing about it these days. Look at Pokemon Go. That was a form of augmented reality gaming. It's old news.

Besides, I SAW that coming a long time ago when Apple were talking about AR and I knew it would end up on iOS.


So $2000 would do it but that's not thousands of dollars. Got it. From what I've read Oculus has sold around 250,000 units, that's not exactly flying off the shelves. And to your point that VR will eventually evolve into a wireless device, that's what I'm saying about Apple's entry into AR. People are complaining that Apple's AR isn't interesting because it's on the iphone or ipad and I'm saying I don't think Apple is done with the platform, they aren't saying "Well we got it to work on an iphone, let's call it a day".
Rating: 1 Votes

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