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Comment by mbesto | Hacker News Reader

ARKit seems like one of those technology breakthroughs that actually has gotten way less hype than you would think, but is legitimately a huge advancement.

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All the hype I've seen has been about retail applications that consumers are not going to tolerate after the (minimal) novelty wears off, which is why I think it's being mostly ignored. I think the killer apps will be ones that make people better and faster at things they are strongly motivated to be better and faster at and/or are getting paid to do by someone who can buy the hardware and order them to use it.

why do you say this ? https://techcrunch.com/2010/12/16/world-lens-translates-word...

World lens has been around since 2010

Layar since 2009

https://techcrunch.com/2009/08/17/layar-proves-the-augmented...

Yelp Monocal in 2009

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZyOZBqI8FM

ARKit is still the same hold your phone up to do AR. Why is it different now ?

> Why is it different now ?

Because it doesn't require hardware and it's incredibly accurate...

it never required hardware it was the same exact implementation. you hold up your phone in a magic window

Surely you realize that there's a tremendous difference between on the one hand using solid API's and tools that are baked into the OS (and thus 'installed' on a huge number of people's devices), and on the other hand either building it yourself or relying on yet another app that needs to be installed?

Not to mention execution: my experience with Layar is that it was pretty shit for the most part. Wordlens was cool, but it's not like I can just build an app that uses Wordlens' tech, and even if I could, it would be, well, Word Lens. Not AR in the broader sense.

Everything I've seen from ARKit seems much more solid and much more practically useful than the 'floaty overlay that roughly stays in place' glorified tech demos I mostly see.

we'll have to agree to disagree. These AR kit demos are still apps. When it comes to usability for users they are still holding up their phones and looking through a magic window. Apple users have surprised me before, so I'm not discounting it. If you try the Ikea app everything you state is certainly doable without AR kit. I just don't see it as around the corner or necessarily new and emerging.

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