Apple’s AR is closer to reality than Google’s | Hacker News Reader

Apple’s AR is closer to reality than Google’s

theverge.com

173 pointsokket107 comments

Apple's ARKit is the result of work going back to 2003 by Metaio, a leading AR SDK vendor that spun out of Volkswagen. Apple acquired Metaio in 2015 and shuttered operations, including Metaio's popular AR conference [1].

Google Tango emerged out of Google Advanced Technology and Project Group (ATAP) in 2015 after a 2 year incubation period [2].

Both do a great job of Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) - the foundational tech needed for AR applications. ARKit is tied to development for iOS applications and form factors - all handheld at the moment. Tango is tied to development for Android applications and Asus/Lenovo phablets - all handheld at the moment. This tech isn't new, but Apple and Google and bringing it to the masses, whereas it had mainly been confined to niche advertising uses previously.

The author glossed over many of the smaller vendors that have been doing AR SDKs and cloud services for years. Also skipped over Microsoft's play in this market, which currently revolves around PTC Vuforia and Unity development of Windows 10 AR apps for Hololens.

Here's an overview of where the players in the AR development solutions market have plays: http://www.vdcresearch.com/News-events/iot-blog/images/ARKit...

[1] https://techcrunch.com/2015/05/28/apple-metaio/

[2] https://plus.google.com/+GoogleATAP/posts/c3nZ3a12NKa

Good points, just wanted to point out that, according to their documentation[1], Apple ARKit doesn't do SLAM, but Visual Inertial Odometry, which is one of the (important) components of a SLAM system, whereas Tango does the full SLAM pipeline with loop closure and relocalisation, and should therefore enable more, larger scale applications and allow for persistence between device/app reboots etc.

[1] https://developer.apple.com/arkit

Apple ARKit doesn't do SLAM, but Visual Inertial Odometry, which is one of the (important) components of a SLAM system, whereas Tango does the full SLAM pipeline with loop closure and relocalisation

This is actually not as cut and dry as it sounds. Generally speaking the difference between VO and SLAM is how it handles accumulated errors to do LC/relocalization. Almost by default a robust VO system using some kind of sensor fusion does a form of relocalization but rarely loop closure.

I say this because I feel like it undercuts Apple's effort by stating it's a purely VO approach and I don't want people to get the impression that you can't do round trip SLAM without active depth (IR etc...).

I was in no way trying to undercut Apple's efforts, just stating what's written in their documentation [1], i.e they're currently only performing tracking with VIO as compared with Google's [2].

"Almost by default a robust VO system using some kind of sensor fusion does a form of relocalization but rarely loop closure." This is not true, Visual(Inertial) Odometry systems typically estimate "odometry" i.e frame to frame motion tracking hence the name, such as in [3] and [4], whereas SLAM systems, such as [5], store a map of features, and their descriptors to relocalize which isn't necessarily a typical feature of pure VO systems.

[1] https://developer.apple.com/arkit

[2] https://developers.google.com/tango/developer-overview

[3] https://github.com/uzh-rpg/rpg_svo

[4] https://github.com/ethz-asl/rovio

[5] https://github.com/raulmur/ORB_SLAM2

Sure, didn't mean it to sound accusatory.

So the reason I say that it's "almost by default" is because on really quality VO systems, if you turn in a 360 degree circle, the image descriptors and pose estimates returned are almost exactly the same. It's not of course the same, but the effect for an end user is the same and can be extended relatively easily.

This comment is spot on. Actually if you have a device with ARKit on it, you can see for a fact that they do have relocalization: cover the lens for a few seconds until tracking is lost, then return to the point of origin, you will see that the intial cube (placed at the origin) snaps back to the correct place. What they probably don't do is global mapping of the entire session.

You just made the same point that the article made. How many people will be able to use ARKit based apps when iOS 11 ships in September - all 64 bit iOS devices that Apple has ever sold.

What percentage of Android devices will get to use Google's AR solution? How many devices that have hardware capable of using Google's solution will ever see the OS update?

Google can shift strategy - AR for all even without tango - and I hope they can do it quickly, otherwise they are at a significant disadvantage.

What strategy could that be with the majority of phones with Android running really old OS's and lowend hardware?

Just markerless AR based on video analysis combined with gyroscope. It isn't the hardest thing. Even if it is just 30% of Android phones that is still a larger userbase than iOS.

Android's fault is over reliance on tango hardware because they are going for perfection rather than good enough.

Google has a much harder job here given that Android hardware is more diverse and that the OS images are not under their control. Apple has a significant advantage in that the lowest-end iOS 11 devices ever shipped are >100 GFLOPs with GPU, the lowest end they sell now is about 172, and they control all of the software so they can use the GPU on every device.

They have chosen to do that.

I am quite happy that one year later Android N only managed to acquire 9% and KitKat is still rocking with 18%.

Maybe now that Google sees no one gets their new shinny OS every single year, they change their attitude.

Trello is not the solution as it is only available in Android O, it still leaves to the OEMs the choice to actually make it work and with Android N at 9% one year later, who knows how many years it will take until Android O becomes relevant at all.

Trello causes some issues for OEMs as it will affect their carrier deals. But once we are past that I think Android updated will come faster.

How many years are you willing to wait for it to happen?

I am yet to see Android 7 devices at prices I am willing to pay, one year after its release, with 9% market worldwide.

Rooting devices is not an option for regular users.

> I am yet to see Android 7 devices at prices I am willing to pay,

Well, that only proves that people don't want to pay for security ;)

> one year after its release, with 9% market worldwide.

Android N was not released a year ago, it wasn't even announced a full year ago.

And when it was released it was so buggy OEMs had to wait until February for a fixed version.

For a moment I was confused why Trello was being mentioned and this and the other reply are the only mentions of it on the page. Easy typo to make or autocomplete false-positive, I suppose.

I'm excited for Treble, personally. I'd like to slightly modify your statement to say that it's available for any device that supports it. Google Pixel and Pixel XL shipped with Nougat but they are using it to test the transition from a non-Treble system layer to a Treble-ized (?) one with Android O's release. So other OEMs could choose to support Treble on older devices, given that they meet the requirements and also have support from the BSP vendors like Qualcomm.

That said, I agree with you that it probably will still take some time before we see a huge impact, and it's a shame it's taken this long; better late than never, I suppose?

> Easy typo to make or autocomplete false-positive, I suppose.

Thanks for the remark, yeah my device auto-correct does funny things and I do not always notice what it did.

> So other OEMs could choose to support Treble on older devices, given that they meet the requirements and also have support from the BSP vendors like Qualcomm.

The thing is Treble is nothing new, it is just the attempt N + 1 to sort out the update situation in a technical way, where the all issue is political.

Android already has an HAL that OEMs should adhere to [1], so if they haven't adopted correct behaviours willingly, it is not now that they will start doing it.

[1] https://source.android.com/devices/

The problem is not just device diversity, it's also about calibration. This is an issue that's been known for years now. Most Android phones are terribly calibrated and even within a single apparent model there can be component and calibration differences, especially between regions.

I was somewhat amused by the contrast between Google's partnership with Lowe's for Tango and Apple's partnership with IKEA for ARKit (https://www.macrumors.com/2017/06/19/ikea-plans-furniture-ap...). Judging by Tango demo videos, they've only authored 3D models of a tiny subset of the appliances and furniture Lowe's carries, which, unless you were really leaning toward that one model of LG oven, makes it more of a proof-of-concept than a practical tool.

Meanwhile, Apple went and partnered with the one vertically-integrated big-box store that happens to have 3D models of every single thing they carry.

That's surprising that IKEA partnered with Apple. IKEA's concept is, to quote them, "providing a range of home furnishing products that are affordable to the many people, not just the few." while Apple is about premium end.

I fail to see how Apple's walled garden lock-in approach melds with the IKEA Concept.

Apple has sold iPhones to how many people? IKEA would be foolish to turn down such a potentially huge audience.

> Apple is about premium end

Apple certainly has premium priced products, but they have been directly targeting mass market consumers since at least the original crazy colored iMac G3s.

It's an inherently loose comparison but they're both about solid value for the money – good design without luxury glitz. People like to parrot the trope about Apple being super high-end and overpriced but that's about reaffirming tribal loyalty rather than the product of rigorous analysis, just as some people like to joke about IKEA furniture being hard to assemble or crappy but they have millions of satisfied customers and their main challenge is keeping things in stock.

Sarcasm, right?

If you spend time with people who really have to make decisions before spending money, you'll find they don't use Apple gear because they can't afford it and to them it would be a luxury.

I'd also disagree about luxury glitz. Apple has continued to make devices with shiny aluminum shells. It's not importantly more robust (in fact it dents quite easily) and it's a lot heavier than other choices, whether plastic or magnesium and carbon fibre. It's all part of their image. There are many other ways Apple conveys a luxury image.

Genuine poverty is a problem but it's not like we're talking about Bentleys here - an iPhone isn't free but anyone middle class can afford one, and they're about the same as comparable Android devices. The difference is that people on a budget buy the previous generation iPhone rather than a new but low-end Android device.

On the subject of materials, Apple makes quality devices which look nice but that doesn't make them high-end luxury devices any more than IKEA is selling luxury furniture because they have good designers make their products. For what the actual luxury market looks like, check out:

https://www.vertu.com/us/en/home/

https://gresso.com/smartphone-collection/

https://www.theverge.com/2015/1/5/7498785/88-tauri-tonino-la...

The contrast is obvious: most of that is showing expense for expense's sake, whereas Apple's designs are primarily focused on being functional rather than showing off your wealth.

You're talking as if there are only a few categories and we only care about "middle class." There are spectrums. I guess you don't see it, but I see many people; those who drive taxis, work in variety stores, are low income retired, etc who would definitely consider an iPhone a luxury item. There is a very low chance that anyone from those groups who needs basic smartphone features is going to buy an iPhone unless someone offers them a used one. Especially when you consider how much Apple wants to be an ecosystem, a device for every category that is expensive for every category.

If you really want to compare phones to cars, the iPhone is a BMW, it's still affordable to the middle class but that's about it. But the market is quite different than cars, by proportion and features the others you mentioned aren't luxury, they are exotic.

Along with the inappropriate image-conscious choice of materials, there is also the glowing Apple logo. It's a beacon to club members.

Apple just doesn't cater to the cost conscious consumer. Ikea does. They have $19 tables. There's absolutely no comparison in the Apple world, they don't even want to try to address that kind of market.

the iPhone is a BMW

I don't know about the US, but here in Sweden you can get a brand new iPhone SE for $30-35/month on a contract. That, while not completely trivial money to many people, is very far from BMW territory.

I guess you don't understand people who don't have money (which isn't surprising considering you're in Sweden). To such people, $30 a month, $360 a year is not justifiable or sometimes attainable (for example having a contract plan). For some it's not the most rational decision, since their cheaper alternative may not last well or have shortcomings in its quality, but that's how people without money are forced to act, and saying they should have the mindset of someone who feels confident in long term choices is not realistic. For some, it really is the decision between having a "better" device (which is arguable, AR is one way Apple wants to avoid being part of a mature commodity market where everything basically just works), feeding or buying their children a gift, or some other more highly valued thing.

I would also like the point out the market reality, that while Apple dominates in some areas, primarily cheap Androids are the main element for these reasons, along with factors such as more expensive and proprietary accessories. This is because people make choices relevant to their situation.

I get and agree with what you are saying. But we're still talking about people who can afford to go to IKEA and pick and choose among new sofas and kitchen counter tops. That is a relatively affluent group already.

They really don't have any choice, and Ikea has some really cheap (in both senses of the word) items. Apple does not.

"Just the few"? I would say there are significantly fewer people with Tango enabled Android tablets than iPhones/iPads that ARKit can be run on.

Yep, there are probably several thousand ARKit-compatible iPhones to every 1 Tango tablet in use out there. Tango's basically not a launched product, just a bunch of developer kits.

I may be skewed slightly because in Australia, Apple/iOS is overwhelmingly popular and is part of why we get first run of nearly every product even when the rest of that run is mostly only the USA.

But phone plans made otherwise expensive devices very affordable to even the average consumer, because the payments are deferred. That is also a model that was quite popular here in Australia before the iPhone, but I believe was a bit less common in the USA before the iPhone launch based on some other articles I read about that model basically being genius for launching the iPhone.

Ikea's AR catalog, which was released years ago, was based on metaio. So in a way Apple bought Ikea as a collaborator when they bought Metaio.

> IKEA's concept is, to quote them, "providing a range of home furnishing products that are affordable to the many people, not just the few." while Apple is about premium end.

No, no. You've bought in to Apple's marketing (as they want you to). Apple sells nice enough devices at high enough prices that they feel premium, but are still accessible to practically everyone. Their pitch isn't "we sell premium devices", it's "if you stretch a little more, and buy this phone, then you too could feel like you're premium".

Apple devices are decently priced when they are refreshed. The premium marketing pitch or more precisely the focus on the premium experience however allows Apple to keep the release day price for the whole life of the product.

That alone is serious money. Up to 1 month before releasing a new version, an Apple product still has the same margin or more than on day 1.

All true, but if you factor in average usable life, Apple devices are cheaper than any competitor. In my opinion and experience -- thinking about phones and tablets in particular. Laptops might be a closer call.

All this assumes that the purchaser takes care of their stuff. Other people seem to actually want disposable gear and treat it as such.

> but are still accessible to practically everyone.

Unless one is going for a used device I highly doubt this. I know a lot of people who truly can only afford the 50€ to 100€ phone that usually lasts them 2 to 3 years.

Ikea has been a leader in AR since 2010 [1] with the first big retail roll out of a marker based AR capability. Makes sense that they would get the first crack at the next generation and for once a leader here is getting a chance to lead.

[1] http://www.retaildive.com/ex/mobilecommercedaily/ikea-takes-...

Seriously, can anyone longer-than-5 list AR use cases that make sense?

Today I learned about that restaurant menu app, which shows food on top of the empty plate. Luckily, you can even rotate it! Making the world a better place...

Think industrial, not consumer. The latter will be games and art for a while.

The former needs to visualise interior design changes, factory layouts or even just overlay navigational information for leisure boat and/or plane piloting. I would love an underwater AR that tells me what fish I'm looking at, or a cosmology one that lets me pinch-and-zoom the night sky. I agree that the middle-income consumer won't see anything grand for a few years. But that's not the point.

and porn

Data visualization

Better ergonomics for workstations

Conferencing (of which there are numbers sub-functions that AR can render better)

Better, safer driving ui's (HUDs have been shown better for years)

Remote controlled device management

Gaming, of a lot of types

There. 6. But this is kind of a silly demand.

I like ergonomics, I would love to see code and my tabs not all stuck in my “flat window”. A mac extension for AR, would love that!

As vision models get better there's lots of future applications - a database of all known insect and plant life with realtime overlay. Guided plumbing / electrical repair and teaching. Virtual pets that interact with each other and real objects. Redesign / repaint your interior. Optimal flooring / carpet cutting with easy measurement tool in the demo. The technology is in its infancy, give it a chance

The last time I bought a couch a few years ago I had a horrible time trying to figure out exactly what size to get and what it would look like in my place.

The announcement of the IKEA app that let you try out their furniture in your house by showing it in AR is amazing to me. That would've been SO helpful.

It seems like it be a lot of possibilities for games, some of the things I've seen posted to Twitter have included people making virtual ruler that's accurate to within an inch or so. That alone would be a pretty useful app just for rough calculations of space sizes.

But more than anything… There's probably some pretty cool stuff none of us are going to be able to think of until it shows up in the next six months. And that's what I really want to see.

Yep. Most of those are made possible by AR's second, less frequently talked about enabling technology of accurate object detection. With it, the sky's the limit - literally repaint the world with your imagination. Grab objects and place virtual versions of them wherever. Overlay educational material on objects. Alter objects appearance in a much more meaningful way than mere filters. Without object detection though, AR use cases are more limited, which I think a lot of people riff off of when looking into it.

Faster and more stable live-translation of text: https://petapixel.com/2015/01/14/googles-translate-app-can-n...

visualization of underground assets (e.g. sewer, storm, and water pipes) has the potential for real productivity gains: https://twitter.com/Esri/status/878992832291233793

Here is my attempt:

- an app to prototype a showroom “on the fly”, there is value in that for retail right?

- Public spaces to play games socially, silly but can be addictive

- Use AR face mask to see what you look like before Botox or plastic surgery

- turn your classroom into a history/science lesson, subtle advertising for the history channel lol

- AR to enhance shopping online (I think this one is the coolest)

- Bring Disney world in your living room!

There, 6! Lol, I would love to hear what anyone thinks of these ideas!

Botox and Disney :)

It wasn't easy to come up with that list, was it?

My point is - AR and VR is way overhyped. As if a lot of people were trying to find the next big thing and that's the best they could come up with. As an additional layer to smartphone apps, I agree. But the next big thing - a huge NO.

I actually agree, that's one reason I think AR glasses and goggles and especially full VR headsets will always only have a small niche at best. But on the other hand Apple's solution has about a billion compatible devices out there right now. If AR is ever going to have some genuinely useful applications for the general consumer market, this is how it's going to start. In other words if ARKit fails then I really don't see how any other AR approach can have a chance.

Devices are important, because they mean distribution. But the more important question is: do people really need it?

Well...20 min of deliberation, but some were ideas from request people wanted to be built, that I would of never thought of ( like the Botox one) lol.

I think in all seriousness, it will be a big thing for media and entertainment, idk how big though. I’ve been sucked into the AR hype since 2011 and I probably will never get out of it :).

There are none. Vuforia has been doing this for years on multiple platforms. All we've seen is marketing gimmicks. The only reason people think they are interested now is due to the Reality Distortion Field.

Seriously, can anyone longer-than-5 list AR use cases that make sense?

For consumers, using an iPhone/iPad, not really. For industrial use in civil engineering, GIS/surveying, petrochemical industries etc. I can think of dozens of ideas.

Your laptop/phone/tablet/monitor screen is floating to the side of your view at all times without you having to hold it or carry it around, leaving you free to engage in the real world and use both your hands to do other things.

Oh and instead of being limited to a small, 2d image your screen can change to be any size, can warp into any shape, isn't flat anymore but instead 3d, and you can directly see anything in the world that can be described and existing in 3d space. Your screen isn't a screen anymore, it's a person, and the next moment it's some piece of information, and the next moment it's instructions showing you the proper hand gesture you need to follow to handtoss pizza dough, and the next moment it's a map pointing you in the right direction to get to a bar you're meeting your friends at. And it follows you around.

...

Does that not seem like a large improvement over all existing visualization devices we have currently?

The article seems to point out Apple's advantages, however, using a dedicated global shutter fisheye camera, in the case of tango makes it much more suitable for large scale AR apps, imo, which would make it much more suitable for games etc. Also, ASUS already released phones with tango hardware [1].

[1] https://www.asus.com/Phone/ZenFone-AR-ZS571KL/

Which do you think will get more developer support - Apple's solution that runs on every phone shipped since 2013 or a solution that only runs on a relatively few Android phones?

Apple's offering is currently further reaching, but I won't be surprised, if in the coming years, most high end smartphones start shipping with tango-like hardware, especially if AR's appeals broadens. ARKit should certainly be a contributor to that.

Android's at a huge disadvantage here. If it requires special hardware and a special version of the OS it's going to take half a decade to ripple through that ecosystem and take hold. Meanwhile Apple's preparing to ship it as standard in iOS 11.

What exactly is the iPhone doing that any Android flagship phone can't do? Android flagships have already had the better camera's for a couple of years and I don't see that crown reverting back to the iPhone anytime soon.

1) They're getting their devices updated.

2) Only a small portion of Android phones are "flagship". The rest aren't. The crazy fragmentation of the Android ecosystem makes the real marketshare for something like this small and a long way away. Android phones are still at the mercy of carriers and OEMs. Google doesn't have the ability to push out the latest OS like Apple does.

>They're getting their devices updated.

I was looking for a technical answer instead of the same old rhetoric. Adding this additional functionality to Google Play Services and to the Support Library would make it available to all devices using GMS.

>Only a small portion of Android phones are "flagship"

This is a ridiculous statement. Do you have any numbers to back up your claim that only a small portion of Android phones are flagships? Any phone with an SnapDragon 8 series SoC, Exynos 8 series SoC, Kirin 9 series SoC would easily be able to handle this.

Fair enough. As far as I know, Android handsets should be able to do this as well. I’m mostly a layperson, so I don’t know what technical specifics separate the chipsets on each device.

My interpretation of “flagship” is the Pixel or (formerly) the Nexus lines. What Google considers the flagships. I could also be interpreting that incorrectly. I’m just used to Samsung, LG, and Moto having some level of control and obstruction on when their phones get OS-level updates. Not sure if the Play store apps have enough system-level permissions to implement whatever core services would be needed to support an SDK for other apps to use.

“Same old rhetoric” seems a bit unfair. It’s been my observation for a while now that you can’t rely on any given Android phone to have the latest OS installed. They usually don’t. (EDIT: And that usually means features can’t be relied upon for app developers, which is why it’s relevant here.)

A flagship phone in the Android world is anything that uses the latest and greatest SoC. And right now that's usually anything with an SD 835, Exynos 8895 and Kirin 960.

>It’s been my observation for a while now that you can’t rely on any given Android phone to have the latest OS installed. They usually don’t. (EDIT: And that usually means features can’t be relied upon for app developers, which is why it’s relevant here.)

The major features usually require an OS update, but Google has been compartmentalizing the OS for some time and making things downloadable from the Play store or available via Google Play Services. They also use a Support Library to backport new API's to older OS versions.

Thanks. My understanding seems a couple years out-of-date.

Those updates don't ship neither kernel nor driver updates, which are actually what matters in AR, given the sore state of OpenGL and Vulkan support across Android devices.

It doesn't matter what SoC a device has, if the OS only sees a buggy OpenGL ES 2.0 driver.

The idea that the iPhone is some also-ran in the camera department is laughable. Anandtech iPhone 7/+ review, summary of camera:

I would say that the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus could both use a bump in sensor size to really be the best in all situations, but as-is they’re the most well-rounded for stills even if the HTC 10 can definitely produce better images in a number of scenarios... In video capture there’s almost no competition...

http://www.anandtech.com/show/10685/the-iphone-7-and-iphone-...

I didn't say the iPhone camera is some also-ran. It's still a very good camera (these phones all use the same Sony sensors for the most part so it all comes down to processing). I simply said that it's not considered the best camera anymore and that it has been repeatedly surpassed by Android phones. Android phones are now the kings of the smartphone world. The DXOMark rankings say it all and there's a lot of Android phones ahead of the iPhone. Regardless of what you think of the DXOMark rankings, the reviews of each of these high ranked Android phone camera's already support the DXOMark rankings.

> Android phones are now the kings of the smartphone world.

Citation needed. There's a lot of good phones on the market but the iPhone is still as good as anything - best OS, best CPU, tier 1 battery life/GPU/camera screen. The first phone to consistently beat it in ratings over nearly a decade was the Note 7 and we all saw how that turned out and the mere fact that Samsung drops all their plans and engineers around Apple's leaks should be enough to tell you who the king is.

> The DXOMark rankings say it all

They haven't even reviewed the 7+ so no they don't say what you want them to.

>Citation needed.

Sure, but this is just only of many:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8J2AvHwELlc

It's really not even a contest. Just have a look at the blind camera test done by MKBHD. The iPhone camera didn't fare too well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtmGMcMeEJE

>They haven't even reviewed the 7+ so no they don't say what you want them to.

If they did it would still have scored below the Android phones.

> It's really not even a contest.

(1) It was a contest, the iphone won in some areas and (2) you missed the companion piece [1] comparing video where the iphone won fairly handily. (3) The pixel is one phone, you keep talking about "android phones", (4) you're back to claiming the iPhone is an also ran ("not even a contest"), make up your mind where you want to put your goalposts down.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfptPhPCmAU

> If they did it would still have scored below the Android phones.

I guess if you believe hard enough you don't need actual facts. Here are the facts:

(1) Every year the best iPhone launches with a camera that is among if not the best in the world.

(2) Last year was no exception with many reviews saying essentially the same thing: best camera on a smartphone.

(3) Some android flagships have comparable cameras and these (a) usually launch a few months after the iphone, (b) sometimes beat the iphone camera in raw spec(s) but (c) despite spec advantage often aren't clearly better in still comparisons (CNET: On paper, ... camera hardware looks impressive... But when it comes to photography, the proof is in the pictures. That's something the iPhone 7 Plus proved in our tests against single-camera shooters like the Google Pixel and the Samsung Galaxy S8.) and (d) they tend to get wrecked in video comparisons.

Somehow you have spun that as "Android flagships have already had the better camera's for a couple of years" and that "it's not even a contest" both of which are simply nonsense.

>It was a contest, the iphone won in some areas and (2) you missed the companion piece [1] comparing video where the iphone won fairly handily. (3) The pixel is one phone, you keep talking about "android phones", (4) you're back to claiming the iPhone is an also ran ("not even a contest"), make up your mind where you want to put your goalposts down.

It would seem you're confused about the iPhone winning in some area's. Let me recap the results:

  1. Pixel
  2. Draw
  3. iPhone
  4. Pixel
  5. Pixel
  6. Pixel

That seems very definitive to me which camera was superior. As for other Android phones, according to DXOMark there are 11 Android phones ranked higher than the iPhone 7.

>Every year the best iPhone launches with a camera that is among if not the best in the world.

Yes, it's among the best. It's just not the best anymore. They're now having to rely on gimmicks to differentiate themselves.

>Last year was no exception with many reviews saying essentially the same thing: best camera on a smartphone.

And then the Pixel launched and took the crown in many reviews that proclaimed it as the best smartphone camera in the world.

>Some android flagships have comparable cameras and these (a) usually launch a few months after the iphone, (b) sometimes beat the iphone camera in raw spec(s) but (c) despite spec advantage often aren't clearly better in still comparisons

Yeah, they really are better in still comparisons and especially under low light conditions.

https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2016/10/29/13466786/...

>Somehow you have spun that as "Android flagships have already had the better camera's for a couple of years" and that "it's not even a contest" both of which are simply nonsense.

DXOMark indicates otherwise and it shows the iPhone continuing to fall further and further in the rankings. The only nonsense here is you trying to convince yourself that the iPhone still has the better camera when countless reviews and blind tests have proven otherwise.

1. Vulkan vs Metal 2 in fragmentation devices. All Apple SDK include CoreML is running on top of Metal 2. If I'm right, only a small number of Android apps and 3D gaming utilize Vulkan.

2. Pushed for Healthcare, Android lack the ability to safeguard patients' data since Android is open source and could be steal

3. ARKit is one of the many AR out there, still early to judge whether iOS can get AR wide adoption by developers, it's easy to develop while Androis flagships could work on AR using 3rd parties SDK seem not as smooth as ARKit without Tango enabled and need lot of testing on different devices than on iPad and iPhone.

4. Camera quality are subjective, Flickr have plenty to show creative photography. I always feel most flagships can take good and bad photos just like DSLR, if you don't know how, you are just an owner, not a photographer. Just like, you are just a player, not a professional.

HEIF is an awesome format which can recreate bokeh close to DSLR and other effects without a specialize hardware.

"HEIF is an awesome format which can recreate bokeh close to DSLR and other effects without a specialize hardware."

HEIF has certain desirable compression (and other) properties for storage, but that is entirely orthogonal to bokeh, which is an optical visual characteristic that is generated (optically or algorithmically) during capture. And, needless to say, we're several generations away from an iPhone class camera having enough depth differentiation to come close to any Circa 2000 DSLR's bokeh. Right now bokeh on the iPhone is an awkward techology demo, which more often than not doesn't quite work. Yet.

1. All devices running Android N and above have Vulkan. Although, I still fail to see why OpenGL ES could not be used as a fallback.

2. Android being open source does not make it unsuitable for safeguarding patient data. I'm surprised you would even mention this as it undermines your entire argument. The open source nature of Android actually makes it more secure because you have more eyes on the code. Security through obscurity is always less secure.

3.Google could also provide a variation of the Tango SDK to support normal devices.

Calibration. Apple devices are famously consistently and well calibrated. Android phones, even high end ones, are all over the place. This doesn't matter for games, you just get used to the 'feel' of the controls for your device and if the sensitivity of another device is different who cares? But for AR precise and consistent calibration of all the sensors is essential.

If you are a developer, still which one is more appealing?

iOS ARKit requirements - any phone that runs iOS 11.

Android Tango requirements -

a) the latest Android OS -- judging by history a year out it will only get around 10% penetration (https://developer.android.com/about/dashboards/index.html)

b) a high end Android device - with the average selling price of an Android phone hovering around $220 (http://fortune.com/2016/02/15/apple-android-asps/), there aren't that many high end Android phones being sold.

To be fair, requirement (b) implies (a)... Except when it doesn't. Yay, Android ecosystem.

Does it really run on every phone since 2013, or merely 'run' (= not usefully) on every phone since 2013? The folks in my office complain that newer iOS makes older iphones slow to the point of near unusability.

iOS 11 only runs on 64 bit devices. The 5S should be able to run it pretty well.

From what I've been watching on Twitter it loses some accuracy on the older devices (I think it's 3 degrees of freedom tracking instead of six) but it's still there.

It will be interesting to see the reviews/tests on older hardware.

The 6DOF tracking only works on the 6S and up. On older devices you get 3DOF

You are correct that Google has to shift its AR strategy to run on all Andriod devices. It shouldn't be an impossible shift.

What strategy could they have to force carriers and vendors to update the OS or force users to buy high end phones?

If Android adopted software only at rather than relying on tango he, then they could have a use base of more than 25% of phones that are high end, more than apple. Google has to move on the software only AR side and now.

It would be favorable for google to have AR capabilities on their Pixel phone. They would sell their own phones more and release novel tech.

But you need developers putting apps in the app store, that's the real power behind platforms in terms of generating utility for users.

Legal enforcement.

No updates in place, no access to the Play Store.

They already have to sign a contract with a set of requirements, providing updates is just yet another clause.

I think the bigger issue here is with battery capacity. You probably can't use AR for more than an hour before draining half your battery—this was the case when Pokémon Go came out (although that may or may not be an optimization issue with the app itself).

One thing which sucks a bit is that ARKit doesn't appear to have vertical plane detection yet[0]. This makes stuff like hanging virtual paintings on walls rather difficult.

[0]: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/44422118/how-to-detect-v...

ARKit enables you to get 3D points or features correct? I was thinking maybe doing some geometric processing to detect planes can handle vertical plane detection

Why not just use a simple LiDAR sensor? In the near future small solid state sensors could become far more affordable.

All the LIDAR sensors I've seen are bigger than a phone and cost about as much.

Ah yes, I'm aware that today's sensors are pretty large and extremely costly. But in the near future I wouldn't be surprised if a small, far more affordable sensor became available, even if at the cost of some range and precision/accuracy.

I really don't understand the hype for ARKit. What is so unique about it that you can't do with Qualcomm's Vuforia? What makes it a game changer?

Much much easier to code with on iOS. Also gives lighting adjustment and scaling.

FYI, Vuforia was sold off by Qualcomm about a year and half ago

i submitted an ask hn and got no substantive responses so i'm asking here: if i want to build a cross-platform ar app which sdk should i use? vuforia?

Unity?

Yeah probably unity with ARKit on iOS and Tango on Android.

I think if you are okay with marker AR(AR only in a defined space) then Vuforia + Unity. Else, I’m not sure if there are any cross-platform ARKit like sdk’s, maybe wikitude?

Why does the article say Google’s Tango is about the future where as ARKit is now. It feels like they are implying that somehow ARKit is inferior to Tango. Is it true? Is Tango considered to be better somehow?

Some of the higher comments go into this and it appears that ARKit only implements some of a full AR Stack (Visual Inertial Odometry) while Tango supports it all (SLAM) so it can also have persistence between device reboots and be useful in bigger applications.

I will note I am just repeating the comment and you can see it here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14640682

The article is typical clickbait, with little content let alone nuanced analysis. For those looking for a quick technical overview of SLAM take a look at blog post (by now head of vision at Magic Leap)

http://www.computervisionblog.com/2016/01/why-slam-matters-f...

ARkit looks like a prelude to AR glasses. Where given the ability to control hardware specs, the advantage is not transferable.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com