I’m scrambling around a wooden floor, trying to fend off a giant virtual ball with my iPad Pro. It’s a bowling alley, but it feels like a basketball court. A crowd cheers. Eli faces off across from me, pushing his iPad Pro forward, launching the ball at my face. I lose my footing. The ball shoots past me. I run after it. Too late. The pins were knocked down. I lost. Again.
But we’re on a big court that’s totally empty, except for us and our test iPads. We see the big ball, bowling pins, and us, running around among these things as if they’re in our shared space. Welcome to Apple’s imminent AR future: fast-paced, collaborative, and… still, headset-free.
Apple unleashed a number of AR tools at its WWDC developer conference that are coming this fall, including a whole AR-making toolkit called Reality Composer. ARKit 3, which needs a recent A12-equipped iPhone or iPad to do its most impressive effects, is what Swift Strike is meant to show off. And it shows how far things have come in a year.
I came away thinking that all I was really missing was the convenience of wearing a pair of AR glasses so I would not have to worry about looking down at an iPad all the time.
MacDailyNews Take: Patience, Padawans.
So when real people are in the game, it looks silly because they’re staring into their iPhones or iPads (which is, admittedly, like real life today), but imagine this in the future with Apple Glasses instead. Then it will all work so much better. — MacDailyNews, during Apple’s WWDC Keynote, June 3, 2019
I thought Apple’s iPhone would have had a decent advantage over Android smartphones with AR considering how powerful Apple’s A-series processors are. It obviously wasn’t enough to stop the masses from buying Android smartphones. It seems as though Apple’s early AR push went for naught. I suppose most consumers either don’t know about or care about AR. AR seems really useful. I like how you could look at the iPad screen and see the Mac Pro in an exploded view. I would think that would be useful for a lot of different things like dissection or repairs. Apple isn’t able to leverage AR at all when it comes to sales.
Those in the Android camp that are currently interested in AR/VR have purchased the models that support it. Those that are not interested at the moment purchase models that fit their use and budget expecting that as usual future models that fit their price range will have those features trickle down.
Apple will have to get some compelling content/Apps if they are serious about taking the lead.
This is like putting up a large building. They spend a lot of time putting in a deep foundation which is mostly invisible, then quickly the upper structure reaches to the sky.
Many others have already done so, are continuing to do so and are currently reaping the rewards of their prior planning. Apple is no different here.
iPhone market share is over 50% in the US, Japan, UK, Canada, Australia, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. Also, iPhone is the best selling smartphone in urban China. These are the biggest and most lucrative smartphone markets in the world.
Android only dominates in countries and regions where per capita income means that iPhones are financially out of reach for the mass market. I. These markets, Apple’s products are aspirational luxury goods and Apple utterly owns the top end of the market.
Android market share is a profit-less slum.
I love their approach to this, at the moment it doesn’t matter that only a few people use this technology. They are priming the hardware, operating systems, developers and users for the day when they actually release their AR/MR glasses and when that happens they won’t be starting from scratch.