Recent job listings on Apple’s hiring page suggest the company is considering giving Apple Maps an AR overhaul.
The move would keep pace with Google, which showed off an AR mapping feature for Google Maps at its I/O event earlier this year. It comes at a particularly interesting time for Apple, as the company recently acquired an AR headset maker. It’s yet another hint that augmented reality won’t stay confined to our iOS devices for long!
iOS 12 adds a brand-new Apple app to your iPhone and iPad. It’s called Measure, and that’s exactly what it does. With it, you can use your iPhone’s camera to measure distances instead of breaking out a tape measure or ruler. Also, the level tool has moved from its old home in the Compass app, and now lives in Measure. Let’s see how the new app works.
The iPhone X’s ugly notch could pave the way for Apple to dominate the smart glasses market.
Augmented reality glasses are poised to become the hottest tech gadget of the next decade and Apple’s already laying the foundation with the iPhone X. It may not seem like the two will be directly related, but this clever concept shows how the key lays in the TrueDepth camera hidden in the notch.
Check it out:
Apple has recruited popular science YouTuber Mark Rober to work as part of its top secret special projects group, developing a VR on-board entertainment system for self-driving cars.
Rober has been working with Apple for the past several years, although he has kept news of Apple’s identity secret. In a Reddit AmA, he described it as a “large tech company in the Bay Area.” His name was revealed as part of several patent applications Apple has recently filed.
Apple’s ARKit technology is poised to change the way we interact with everything, including business cards.
iOS & ARKit developer Oscar Falmer previewed his newest AR business card concept on Twitter and it looks freaking rad. Using ARKit 2.0 with image tracking, Falmer’s concept pulls up all of the person’s contact info, website, social media accounts and more for you to interact with digitally.
Check it out:
Avi Cieplinski, the former Apple engineer who co-invented the 3D Touch and Taptic Engine iPhone features, has joined mapping startup Mapbox to create AR software tools.
Hot off the heels of Apple’s announcement of ARKit 2.0, creative software giant Adobe revealed its own foray into augmented reality. Soon many more people should be able to create 3D, animated content that seems to float in the real world.
ARKit was last year’s big WWDC announcement. This year Apple introduced ARKit 2.0 and, if we weren’t convinced before about the potential of augmented reality, Apple’s presentation went a long way to changing our minds!
The update to the world’s largest AR platform introduces a new more easily sharable file system, improved face tracking, more realistic rendering, 3D object detection, and — most exciting of all — shared experiences.
At WWDC, Apple could debut new multiplayer AR tools which allow two iPhone users to share the same augmented reality space.
The news was shared in a recent Reuters report. While short on details, the report suggests that it will be able to do this while minimizing the amount of personal data that is sent to servers.
Looking for a job for Apple working on a technology that Tim Cook has personally endorsed as one of the most exciting pieces of tech around?
If so, you may be interested in a recent job posting for a 3D UI Frameworks Engineer, underscoring Apple’s interest in all things augmented reality. Who knows? You could even wind up working on Apple’s rumored AR headset.
If you’re going to play Holochess on the Millennium Falcon, there’s just one rule: Let the wookiee win. To play it in your living room, the only requirement is having a new-ish iPhone.
While ARKit gave Apple an early lead when it comes to augmented reality apps, a highly respected analyst thinks a Chinese company has nearly caught up.
As evidence, KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo points out that the AR version of enormously popular game Honour of Kings will land on iPhone and Oppo’s inexpensive Android phones at the same time.
Searching my local grocery stores endless aisles of offerings of food is one of my least favorite things about being an adult, but thanks to the power of ARKit, apps are about to completely change the experience.
iOS developer Andrew Hart teased an early preview of his augmented reality app for retailers on Twitter this week and it looks absolutely amazing. The sleek app can be used to product details while shipping. But the coolest feature is its ability to spatially navigate you through the store to that Tikka Masala you’ve been hunting for.
Prepare to be amazed:
The first major iOS update of 2018 has finally arrived, bringing a host of new features and improvements to the iPhone and iPad.
Apple initially released iOS 11.3 yesterday just for the only available to download on the new 9.7-inch iPad Apple. Now the software update is finally available to all users worldwide.
iOS users have installed upwards of 13 million augmented reality apps since Apple debuted ARKit back in September, a new report from Sensor Tower Store Intelligence suggests.
That’s up from 3 million worldwide one month after iOS 11 was launched. Apps which established themselves early on, including Ikea Place, Giphy World, The Machines, and My Very Hungry Caterpillar AR, continue to be top-performers in terms of downloads.
Apple’s first big event of 2018 is practically here! Unlike most Apple keynotes, today’s “field trip” education-oriented event in Chicago won’t be streamed live.
Don’t worry. Cult of Mac will be in attendance and we’ll be live blogging everything with up-to-the-minute info on all the new goodies. Not only is Apple expected to preview some new educational software, but we could also see a new iPad, improved Apple Pencil and maybe even a new MacBook Air.
The keynote starts Tuesday, March 27, at 10 a.m. Central time. So save this page and get ready for Apple’s most mysterious event in years.
All the Yoga Flames, Dragon Punches and Sonic Booms of Street Fighter II spill out into the real world in a new demo that mixes classic gameplay with augmented reality.
Michigan-based software developer Abhishek Singh‘s “Real World Warrior” edition of Street Fighter II features all the familiar characters, moves and sounds of the original. But now, the game’s arena is the outside world.
“I loved playing [Street Fighter] as a kid with my sister on an actual arcade machine,” Singh told Cult of Mac. “I was thinking about multiplayer experiences and this kind of popped into my head.”
Watching golf is famously boring, but the just-announced PGA Tour AR app spices it up a bit. It brings a live, augmented reality view of golf games to iPad and iPhone, putting the tournament in users’ living rooms.
“Tapping into ARKit in iOS 11 allows us to showcase real-time data provided by ShotLink and CDW in a rich, visual way for fans,” said the PGA’s Rick Anderson in a statement. “The PGA Tour takes pride in bringing new technology to the sports world as a way of communicating to a large, diverse audience.”
People got bored of Pokémon Go pretty quickly, but 20-foot-tall flesh-eating dinosaurs prove way harder to ignore. That’s the gist of Jurassic World Alive, a new augmented reality game that’s coming to iOS this spring to coincide with the release of the new Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom movie.
Taking inspiration from the aforementioned Pokémon game, it lets you capture dinos by walking around, train them up, and then battle them against others. Check out the pretty awesome-looking trailer below.
The augmented reality revolution sparked by Apple’s ARKit needs a dash of accuracy if it’s really going to catch fire — especially when it comes to mapping.
That’s why London developer Andrew Hart created a location-aware toolkit that uses artificial intelligence to punch up the precision in apps built with ARKit.
“One problem with AR location experiences is the low accuracy of phone GPS and compasses, which makes it difficult to ensure that things line up,” Hart told Cult of Mac. “The toolkit uses computer vision techniques to recognize landscapes from tagged imagery, and then aligns the AR environment upon recognition. It works in different weather conditions, and means you can have really precise experiences.”
Learning to build apps is obviously one of today’s hottest skills. But one does not simply walk into a software development job. So you’re going to want some guidance.
Taking a journey down virtual rabbit holes may not be far away.
With the Pokemon Go craze now a thing of the past, developers are looking for other uses for augmented reality. Peder Norrby has created an app that shows off some of the possibilities of Apple’s ARKit and the iPhone X: a portable hole.
Your favorite horror movies could soon invade your living room thanks to Apple’s ARKit.
iOS developer Abhishek Singh has created a lot of AR experience since ARKit came out last year, but his latest is the most shocking. In a tweet posted this week, Singh showed off his latest demo that brings the scariest scene from the movie The Ring into your house.
Check it out:
Who said innovation was dead at Apple? Certainly not Fast Company, which just named the iPhone-maker the world’s most innovative company for 2018.
Apple secured the top spot “for delivering the future today.” AirPods, Apple Watch Series 3, ARKit, and iPhone X were recognized as its best products from the past year.
Rivals like Google and Samsung didn’t make the list.
Apple is reportedly interested in building augmented reality glasses that work with its ARKit framework. Although such technology is likely a few years away, designer Taeyeon Kim has created a design concept for what such Apple Glasses may look like.
Check them out below.
