Impressive first glimpses of simple ARKit apps, like a virtual measuring tape, suggest Apple is closer to delivering AR to masses than Google's Tango
PIN Ben Schoon / 9to5Google : Comment: Better performance or not, ARKit on iOS 11 is already destroying Google's Tango Andrew Kemendo / TechCrunch : Rumors of the demise of augmented reality developers have been greatly exaggerated Mix / The Next Web : Apple's new augmented reality kit makes Minecraft look magical in AR Sean O'Kane / The Verge : SpaceX is even landing rockets in augmented reality Rebecca Hills-Duty / VRFocus : AR Headset Company CastAR Closes Its Doors Christopher Baugh / iPhone in Canada Blog : Why Apple Has Leapt Ahead of Google on Augmented Reality Tech2 : Apple's AR Kit shows promising capabilities in the hands of developers Bogdan Popa / Softpedia News : Apple Is About to Change the Way We Use Phones Ben Lovejoy / 9to5Mac : Simple but brilliant tape measure apps show just how useful AR is going to be [Video] Freia Lobo / Mashable : Your iPhone can now be a measuring tape, thanks to the magic of augmented reality Sam Machkovech / Ars Technica : Report: Valve's former augmented reality system is no more Peter O'Kelly / Peter O'Kelly's Reality Check : SpaceX is even landing rockets in augmented reality - The Verge Christian Zibreg / iDownloadBlog.com : Watch new ARKit demos: Minecraft and measuring tape Mitchel Broussard / MacRumors : Latest Apps to Showcase Apple's ARKit Include Simple Measuring Tape and Minecraft Chance Miller / 9to5Mac : The best of ARKit: Falcon 9 landing, Minecraft, Van Gogh bedroom tour, and more [Videos] Tweets: @scobleizer : ARKit is huge. Apple is gonna own AR for 18 months. http://twitter.com/... Andrew Cunningham / @andrewwrites : Google's Project Tango has cost millions and been public since 2014, and all there is to show for it is one dev tablet and a failed phone.
Context & Ripple Effects
Weeks after Apple unveiled ARKit at WWDC with demos of correctly-sized virtual objects placed on real tables, the first third-party apps are landing — a virtual measuring tape among them — and they run on ordinary iPhones and iPads rather than Tango's specialized hardware. That contrast is the story: Google's Project Tango reportedly cost millions and produced little beyond a dev tablet and a failed phone, while Apple reached comparable tracking with software alone on an installed base of hundreds of millions of devices.
First-order effects
- iOS developers get consumer-grade AR with no new hardware to target, so demo-quality apps appear within days of the beta rather than years — and every existing iPhone and iPad becomes an AR device overnight.
- Google's Tango program is effectively stranded: its dedicated-hardware approach now looks expensive and slow next to a free SDK shipping inside iOS 11.
Second-order effects
- Google is forced into a retrenchment, and the related coverage shows it arriving: its ARCore SDK strips Tango down to its essentials, trading depth-of-field and other extras for parity with ARKit on ordinary Android phones.
- Dedicated AR hardware startups lose their funding narrative — CastAR's closure lands in the same news cycle, as investors conclude phone-based AR has won the near-term market.
Third-order effects
- Consumer AR consolidates around the two mobile platform owners, whose OS-level SDKs decide which devices can run AR at all — a lead Apple extends with ARKit 3's real-time occlusion in 2019, even as it lags on browser-based delivery where Safari still lacks WebXR support.
- The pattern suggests AR's near-term future runs through app stores on phones, not standalone headsets, leaving hardware-first players to compete for whatever market remains once the smartphone layer is saturated.
The trend: Consumer augmented reality is being settled by platform owners shipping SDKs to massive installed bases, not by bespoke AR hardware programs.