There’s a pretty amazing demo of augmented reality technology at the new Apple Park visitor center.
The visitor center — which opened to the public on Tuesday afternoon — features a large-scale model of the new campus.
The model is large but bare bones. It looks like a classic architectural model with plain mockups of the buildings and the campus’ contours.
But pick up a nearby iPad, point the camera at the model, and it suddenly springs to life with lifelike plants, trees, and details galore. Check out the video below.
#ARkit at #ApplePark Visitor Center #AppleEvent pic.twitter.com/nWddpNxpgK
— Nobi Hayashi 林信行 (@nobi) September 12, 2017
The AR app allows visitors to see the giant new campus from all angles, and to explore the giant spaceship, the surrounding buildings and the campus’ thousands of trees. It even changes the time of day, showing how the campus appears at night.
“This is awesome! says Japanaese tech journalist Nobuyuki Hayashi, who filmed the video and posted it to twitter. “Amazing.”
The demo was made with Apple’s ARKit, a software framework help developers create augmented reality apps for iPhones and iPads running iOS 11. The new operating system will be available to the general public on September 19.
iOS 11 will allow users to run Augmented Reality apps on millions of iPhones and iPads. Tim Cook has said it will be the largest AR platform in the world.
AR has the potential to create a whole new paradigm of apps. By embedding digital content into views of the real world, AR has the potential to shake up shopping, entertainment, and information. Tim Cook said AR is “big and profound.”
Although the new iPhone X is built for augmented reality, with 3D sensors front and back, the technology didn’t get a ton of attention during Tuesday’s keynote, perhaps because there’s not yet a critical mass of compelling AR apps.
That will likely change this coming year as customers and developers get their hands on capable AR hardware like the new iPhone.
The demo in the visitor center is a little gimmicky, and Apple might have gotten similar results with simple 3D model of the new campus that visitors could explore.
But the AR dimension makes it novel and inviting. It encourages visitors to explore. It’s easy to see how this kind of interactive play can be exploited by museums, art galleries, stores and more.
It’s another exciting demo of the AR’s potential.
Leander Kahney is the editor and publisher of Cult of Mac.
Leander is a longtime technology reporter and the author of six acclaimed books about Apple, including two New York Times bestsellers: Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products and Inside Steve’s Brain, a biography of Steve Jobs.
He’s also written a top-selling biography of Apple CEO Tim Cook and authored Cult of Mac and Cult of iPod, which both won prestigious design awards. Most recently, he was co-author of Cult of Mac, 2nd Edition.
Leander has been reporting about Apple and technology for nearly 30 years.
Before founding Cult of Mac as an independent publication, Leander was news editor at Wired.com, where he was responsible for the day-to-day running of the Wired.com website. He headed up a team of six section editors, a dozen reporters and a large pool of freelancers. Together the team produced a daily digest of stories about the impact of science and technology, and won several awards, including several Webby Awards, 2X Knight-Batten Awards for Innovation in Journalism and the 2010 MIN (Magazine Industry Newsletter) award for best blog, among others.
Before being promoted to news editor, Leander was Wired.com’s senior reporter, primarily covering Apple. During that time, Leander published a ton of scoops, including the first in-depth report about the development of the iPod. Leander attended almost every keynote speech and special product launch presented by Steve Jobs, including the historic launches of the iPhone and iPad. He also reported from almost every Macworld Expo in the late ’90s and early ‘2000s, including, sadly, the last shows in Boston, San Francisco and Tokyo. His reporting for Wired.com formed the basis of the first Cult of Mac book, and subsequently this website.
Before joining Wired, Leander was a senior reporter at the legendary MacWeek, the storied and long-running weekly that documented Apple and its community in the 1980s and ’90s.
Leander has written for Wired magazine (including the Issue 16.04 cover story about Steve Jobs’ leadership at Apple, entitled Evil/Genius), Scientific American, The Guardian, The Observer, The San Francisco Chronicle and many other publications.
Leander is an expert on:
Apple and Apple history
Steve Jobs, Jony Ive, Tim Cook and Apple leadership
Apple community
iPhone and iOS
iPad and iPadOS
Mac and macOS
Apple Watch and watchOS
Apple TV and tvOS
AirPods
Leander has a postgrad diploma in artificial intelligence from the University of Aberdeen, and a BSc (Hons) in experimental psychology from the University of Sussex.
He has a diploma in journalism from the UK’s National Council for the Training of Journalists.
Leander lives in San Francisco, California, and is married with four children. He’s an avid biker and has ridden in many long-distance bike events, including California’s legendary Death Ride.
You can find out more about Leander on LinkedIn and Facebook. You can follow him on X at @lkahney or Instagram.
