Before WWDC 2017, it was widely assumed that Apple’s biggest game in town was the HomePod, the Siri smart speaker. HomePod did launch, but the most exciting and surprising thing was the name that seemed to be for developers only: ARKit.

In stark contrast to the tepid VR market, ARKit has only been on the market for a little more than a month, and developers have already released a number of amazing apps, and these ARKit app demos have become the latest “Internet celebrities”.

ARKit’s “Internet celebrities”

AR a tape measure

People who go out with a tape measure are few and far between, but when it comes to measuring, without measuring tools, it will be very tricky. AR measurement application is born to deal with this situation.

The practical app is called AR Measure, which is almost as accurate as the real thing. What’s more, all you need is an iPhone, so you won’t have to worry about finding a tape measure when you need to measure.

Nedd

Doraemon’s arbitrary door is A childhood memory of many people, open the “arbitrary door” can be shuttled around the world, and Nedd uses ARKit in reality to create A “through” the door. You can “peek” through the door, and when you walk through the door, the scene automatically changes to looking out from the virtual world, which is quite interesting.

AR Nike sneakers

Nike teamed up with Momofuku, a two-Michelin-star restaurant, to create a co-branded shoe Nike SB Dunk High Pro Momofuku and created an AR model for the new shoe on an iOS app called SNKRS, All you have to do is scan the menu at Momofuku and the AR shoes will appear. You can also see the details of the shoes from all angles and order them.

World Invaders

This is probably the most “fun” ARKit App out there, and the experience is similar to the air war of the Red-white era, except the targets are all floating in the real world. If you don’t mind the funny looks your co-workers give you, the office can always take an AR shot.

AR building

For architects, ARKit is more practical. Australian developer Joyce created a SketchUp model of an ancient city that was “built” on top of a park. Joyce says such ARKit apps will enable architects, developers and interior designers to complete their designs more efficiently.



Why is ARKit so popular?

Apple’s ARKit has a lot in common with Google’s Tango in some ways, and Facebook is also putting a lot of thought into AR. However, Apple is more favored than Google and Facebook today because Tango requires specific hardware support and specific models and systems. AR of Facebook is limited to its own Camera App, which is a relatively closed development environment. Apple’s ARKit, on the other hand, lowers the barriers and costs for developers.

The reason why developers can develop so many interesting ARkit applications is not only because ARkit greatly reduces the threshold and cost of development, but also has an inseparable relationship with a large number of users. Once ARkit is launched, it can cover hundreds of millions of iOS devices, and the AR experience can be realized only by single shot. That’s a big part of the ARKit mini-burst.

In addition, apple is likely to build an App Store-like AR open platform in the future, and it is also expected that Apple will turn AR into a second App Store.

The future of Apple AR

In recent days, the idea that AR will be the killer of smartphones in the future has become particularly popular, which has been frequently featured in headlines of news reports at home and abroad. This has been suggested for a long time, but the sudden explosion of developers following Apple’s ARKit launch has made that future seem more realistic.

We don’t know what Apple’s expectations and plans are for the future, but according to many media reports, Apple is likely working on AR glasses, if not in the development stage, then at least in the process of exploring. Apple has now released ARKit, so it’s likely that this is paving the way for future AR glasses. Apple’s ongoing exploration and attempts in ARKit can be applied to AR glasses in the future.

However, Apple’s AR eyes may be a little far away from us, and we’ll have to familiarize ourselves with ARKit’s new experiences in the near future. Now that developers have given us an early glimpse of its power, the iPhone will have a big role to play in AR from now on.