Posts tagged with "AR"

Amazon Adopts ARKit in iOS Shopping App for Select Products

In an update released for its iOS shopping app, Amazon has introduced a new way of viewing items from the online retailer: AR View. Built on Apple’s ARKit technology in iOS 11, AR View provides shoppers with a better understanding of how products will look when placed inside their homes.

AR View is accessed inside the Amazon app by tapping the camera button, then selecting AR View from the assortment of camera options. You’ll then get to browse through a limited selection of product categories, such as Living Room, Kitchen, and Electronics; there’s also a Top Picks section. Unlike the similar AR experience from IKEA Place, only one product can be previewed in Amazon’s AR View at a time. After placing a product in AR, you can move its position or rotate it, and pressing the button with three dots will take you to the full product page for initiating a purchase.

Amazon claims that thousands of items are available in AR View, but currently only a fraction of that estimate appears for me inside the app; we should except the number of AR-compatible items to grow over the coming holiday shopping season. It also wouldn’t be surprising to see AR View roll out to other parts of the app in the future, such that if you’re viewing the product page for an Amazon Echo, for example, there will be a button that allows you to instantly view the item in AR.

Today’s version of AR View is a first step toward enhancing the Amazon shopping experience with AR. There’s plenty more work to be done, but it’s exciting to see a glimpse into how transformative AR can potentially be for online shopping.

Made with ARKit→

ARKit is one of the iOS 11 features I’m really excited about along with iPad improvements, changes to Notes, and better screenshot workflows. The “problem” with ARKit is that Apple isn’t offering a proper AR app for iOS yet – it’s a framework for developers to create AR experiences. Thus, until you play with an ARKit demo, it’s hard to understand the extent of Apple’s efforts and the potential for future ARKit-enabled apps.

Fortunately, the folks at Made with ARKit have been collecting early demoes shared by developers showing a variety of AR apps that will be possible later this year. And some of these are already incredible. From a rocket landing in your backyard to robots dancing in your living room and obvious measuring tapes, these videos give us an early glimpse at the promise of ARKit and the quality of tracking and rendering on an iPhone’s screen.

I don’t know if these showcases will turn into actual shipping products this Fall, but I have a feeling this new category of apps will become a great reason for millions of users to upgrade to iOS 11 quickly. I can’t wait to play with some of these AR apps.

Permalink

IKEA to Launch Augmented Reality iOS App in the Fall→

At WWDC, Craig Federighi demoed ARKit, Apple’s new augmented reality API and mentioned that Apple was teaming up with IKEA on AR. The collaboration was mentioned again recently by Tim Cook in an interview with Bloomberg Businessweek.

Now in an interview with Digital.di, Michael Valdsgaard, Digital Transformation Manager for Ikea’s parent company, has provided further details of its upcoming AR app:

This will be the first augmented reality app that allows you to make reliable buying decisions.

IKEA has big plans for the app:

At launch, 500-600 products will be in the app. In future, it will play a key role in new product lines.

According to Valdsgaard,

When we launch new products, they will come first in the AR app.

Based on the interview, IKEA and Apple feel like a natural fit. IKEA has hundreds of 3D models ready to use with ARKit and Apple has a huge install base of iOS users for IKEA’s app. Moreover, IKEA can help demonstrate the types of applications that AR can enable beyond the gaming industry.

Permalink

Tim Cook Says VR Is Nice, but Augmented Reality Is the Future→

Adario Strange, writing for Mashable, picks up on Tim Cook’s answer to a question that was posed to him last Friday when he was interviewed by Senator Orrin Hatch at the Utah Tech Tour.

“AR [augmented reality] I think is going to become really big,” said Cook. “VR [virtual reality], I think, is not gonna be that big, compared to AR … How long will it take? AR gonna take a little while, because there’s some really hard technology challenges there. But it will happen. It will happen in a big way. And we will wonder, when it does [happen], how we lived without it. Kind of how we wonder how we lived without our [smartphones] today.”

This is not the first time that Tim Cook has commented on the potential for AR. Soon after the release (and phenomenal success) of Pokemon Go, Tim Cook said that Apple was “high on AR in the long run” when answering a question during an Apple earnings call:

It also does show that AR can be really great. We have been and continue to invest a lot in this. We are high on AR for the long run, we think there’s great things for customers and a great commercial opportunity. The number one thing is to make sure our products work well with other developers’ kind of products like Pokemon, that’s why you see so many iPhones in the wild chasing Pokemons.

You can watch the full Tim Cook interview from the Utah Tech Tour on YouTube.

Permalink