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ARKit is going to be a lot of fun while we wait for it to become useful

ARKit is going to be a lot of fun while we wait for it to become useful

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The early days of Apple’s AR platform will look a lot like the first few months of the App Store

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ARKit has looked like a promising platform for augmented reality in the few short weeks since the first two beta versions of iOS 11 were released to developers. But when iOS 11 officially drops this fall, it’s more likely that we — both consumers and developers — are still going to be figuring out what to use it for. Which means, in the early going, we’ll probably be using ARKit apps to goof off.

Take this example from Federico Viticci on Twitter. Unlike some of the more ambitious ARKit demos, Viticci isn’t using a specially developed app to put digital tchotchkes on that very real (and very good) dog. Instead, he’s just using the demo that Apple whipped up to show off ARKit at WWDC to make a funny joke. He’s not alone: the first week of the iOS 11 beta was full of weird stuff like AR fidget spinners. These uses of AR are completely inane, but they also look just fun enough to pique people’s curiosity even if they don’t know much about augmented reality.

With that in mind, the early days of AR on iOS devices are probably going to be a lot like the early days of the App Store. When the App Store launched in 2008, the most popular apps weren’t Facebook or Instagram, even though they’d go on to be the most dominant. What got the most downloads, the most attention, and made the most money were gimmicky apps like iFart Mobile or iBeer. One developer even released an app called “I Am Rich,” which cost $999.99 and did absolutely nothing — and a few people even bought it.

Expect the same Wild West approach in the early going of iOS 11. Sure, there will be a few polished ARKit apps, and some of those might break through the noise. (This Tesla Model 3 configurator demo seems pretty solid, for example, as does this example of a dance tutorial app.) There will definitely be games, too. There are already a bunch of those available on the Play Store despite the fact that Google’s AR platform only works on a few obscure phones, and we know an improved version of Pokémon Go is on the way.

Developers will need time to push the limits of ARKit — and consumers will need time to decide what’s good

But the most popular ARKit apps will likely be the ones that cause you to chuckle, like apps that let you put stuff on your dog, mess with your friends’ faces, or plant floating cats around your office. That means, for a while, ARKit apps won’t look all that different from what you can already do with lenses and filters in Snapchat or Instagram.

And you know what? That’s fine! ARKit is an entire platform, which means there’s more potential for innovation than the tightly controlled AR experiences Snap and Instagram offer. Hopefully by the time the novelty of these early ARKit apps wears off, developers will have a better feel for what that platform is capable of. And if the new iPhone has depth sensors built in, like some rumors suggest, that means an even more powerful AR experience will be available (at least to those customers who can afford the upgrade).

Maybe someday in the not-so-distant future we’ll all be using iPhones to measure things, tour a home before it’s built, or explore entire digital worlds. But before any of that happens, there’s a good chance ARKit apps will be more about fun than function.