WWDC Recap: Apple is betting big on AI, AR, and VR
At its annual developer’s conference, WWDC, Apple’s finally focused on Machine Learning, Augmented Reality, and Virtual Reality. These announcements came as no surprise, as, in fact, Apple has been harshly criticized for failing to provide support for these technologies earlier as Google and Facebook have done.
The purpose of Apple’s new updates are simple — to allow developers to create apps and content that leverage ML, AR, and VR technologies. Supporting developers in this way means supporting the creation of better apps and content, creating a better user experience, and, ultimately, incentivizing more purchases of Apple hardware and software. Apple’s ecosystem is a highly integrated one, the core of which is apps and content. In Q1 2017, for example, nearly half of Apple’s overall $2.3. billion revenue growth came from its Services business, and this segment’s growth was largely fueled by its AppStore category.
Machine Learning Going Mobile
Although it acquired Siri, one of the first vocal assistants, Apple’s ability in the AI arena has been surpassed by the likes of Amazon’s Alexa. Even its new HomePod speaker is more about sound than Siri. Now the company is trying to bring Machine Learning (ML) to mobile, thereby following (or perhaps reinforcing) the current market trend. The reason is that bringing AI to mobile devices perhaps represents the biggest possibility for change. After all, mobile now represents 65% of digital media time and apps themselves account for 89% of that mobile time. This high usage sparks demand for apps that can deliver more value to consumers.
Apple’s new Core ML addresses this demand, allowing developers to use Machine Learning (ML), the core technology of Artificial Intelligence, directly on the iPhone and iPad. Its ‘ready-to-use’ models mean easy integration of this technology into new applications, the result being a proliferation of apps available on AppStore that can accurately predict and respond to user actions. Machine learning will be open to more businesses and will no longer be reserved for just those companies who have the computational power and data sets to train models.
Augmented Reality… Staying Mobile
In the AR realm, Apple unrevealed their “ARKit.” The tool, with its capabilities of scene understanding, light estimation, and positional tracking, will allow developers to create apps that run AR on the millions of existing iPhones and iPads. The quality of the AR demos at WWDC demonstrated that the tech giant is serious about supporting AR app and content creation.
Although Google has already developed the Tango AR platform, Apple’s entrance into the game is significant for two reasons. Tango is available only on a few devices, whereas ARKit is available across all iOS devices. Additionally, Apple, unlike competitors, is largely successful at pushing its customers to update to the newest version of its mobile operating system. This is evidenced by the numbers: while 86% of iOS devices run the most current system release only 7% of Android devices do the same. These numbers translate to higher user adoption, as a higher percentage of users’ phones will be better capable of running AR. In short, AR support is not new, however, Apple is the one player who is able to bring millions of users onboard.
Apple is not the first-mover when it comes to bringing AR to mobile. Facebook has already invested in providing this kind of imaging on devices people already own. A focus on mobile devices (as opposed to separate, dedicated AR-devices such as Microsoft’s HoloLens) will allow both companies to quickly launch, test, and reiterate, thereby improving AR tech and user experiences. With the support from Apple, AR is now poised to benefit companies.
Virtual Reality Coming to Mac
Developers no longer have to buy a PC to do VR as Apple has finally provided them tools with which to create VR content. The new iMacs and the new MacOS High Sierra will provide vastly improved graphics, allow VR content creation on lighter-weight laptops, enable render directly to a VR headset, among others. Further, Apple will bring Unreal Engine 4 and Unity (the two most popular development environments for games) to MacOS.
With these updates, Apple effectively supports VR content creation efforts. Supporting content creation, instead of making it, is also a trajectory Facebook has assumed; the company shut down its original VR content division, Oculus Story Studio, just months ago.
In all, Apple wants to spread ML, AR, and VR technologies through its iOS and MacOS ecosystems. Doing so starts with providing developers with the necessary tools. Although many find Apple ‘late to the game,’ particularly regarding ML, its entrance may be what is needed to propel the mainstream use of these technologies forward.
