Apple's ARKit 4 anchors 3D reality into real-world Maps locations
With ARKit 4, Apple is building the foundation for a virtual world of animated, interactive 3D "reality" explorable by anyone with a newer iPhone in their pocket.
Dan worked as a journalist covering the tech industry, and in particular Apple, for more than 15 years. He's contributed to AppleInsider since 2005. Prior to that, he managed Information Technology teams and handled technical operations ranging from startups to enterprise organizations including U.S. government, higher education, and healthcare research organizations.
With ARKit 4, Apple is building the foundation for a virtual world of animated, interactive 3D "reality" explorable by anyone with a newer iPhone in their pocket.
Apple's slickly produced WWDC20 keynote didn't directly emphasize it, but the new macOS Big Sur that will ship to the public this fall is officially "macOS 11," marking an end to the twenty-year progression of "Mac OS X" branding. But don't worry, it's not the end of the Mac.
Apple Silicon Macs are changing some long-time user interface methods, and startup key combinations for restore or Target Disk Mode have been significantly changed.
To support the Apple Silicon Macs shipping by the end of 2020, the company is sending developers a transition kit to help them prepare code to run on the new architecture. The new box effectively shoehorns an upgraded iPad Pro into a Mac mini box. Here's why.
Some observers were surprised that Apple's big news in transitioning Macs away from Intel processors didn't refer to the move as a migration to "ARM." Instead, Apple's chief executive Tim Cook introduced it as a move to Apple Silicon. Here's why.
Prominent third-party developers have long tried to leverage public outrage to reduce their contributions to Apple's App Store. But a world where rich developers get a free ride from Apple is also a terrible deal for the general public, as a brief review of history makes very clear.
Algoriddim has launched a major update of its djay Pro live music mixing app incorporating new artificial intelligence processing that leverages the Neural Engine on Apple's "Bionic" branded mobile chips.
The COVID-19 pandemic has forced Apple to shift its Worldwide Developer Conference into an online-only format, but that isn't stopping the event from being the most anticipated event Apple has ever put together.
Next week, Apple's 2020 Worldwide Developer Conference is expected to detail a migration away from Intel's x86 chips to new processors of Apple's own design. Here's how that could dramatically affect the next decade of computing.
Apple is highlighting ways to "make a difference in standing up to racism" in the App Store with a feature promoting "apps to engage and stay informed."
Few things have drawn more attention to police brutality incidents than the unflinching eye of smartphones — with the iPhone in particular leading the way.
Apple pursued AR as a way to sell premium hardware and to attract developers to iOS. Here's why Apple's AR vision uniquely succeeded despite opposition, naysaying, and competitive ideas — and why Google and its Android partners failed to do the same with smartphone VR.
Between 2014 and 2019, Google and its Android licensees promoted various smartphone-based virtual reality systems. At the same time, Apple remained conspicuously absent from the smartphone VR headset race, which in hindsight appears prescient. Here's a look at why.
Apple's wearables business, anchored by Apple Watch and expanding with AirPods, is proving to be both strong and resilient even as rivals struggled to find a footing for their own ultra-mobile products. A key reason backing Apple's success in the segment is its custom silicon work that began a decade ago for the launch of iPad. Here's a look at why.
Last March, analysts and tech bloggers dumped out arrogant contempt over Apple's latest product introduction. This year, those new offerings helped save Apple's Q2 earnings and are projected to bolster its June quarter performance despite the pandemic.
It's not exactly surprising that with all of the uncertainty in the world, Apple decided that it couldn't provide useful revenue guidance for its fiscal Q3 ending in June. It is unexpected, however, that Apple felt confident in announcing a silver lining to the pandemic — it expects to sell more Macs and iPads in the summer of 2020 compared to 2019.
The same sources who were wildly wrong about Apple's inability to sell iPhone X were also way off base earlier this year in fantasizing dire impacts COVID-19 would have on Apple's global supply chain, its presence in China, and the effect that retail closures and an economic downturn would have on the demand for Apple's products.
Despite the extraordinary circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic, Apple has reported strong sales of its newly launched iPhone SE. But the company isn't seeing customers scaling down buying decisions to save money, as pundits have predicted.
In the rough business climate caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, Apple has taken pride in going beyond "competent business as usual" to help. But the company and its trillion-dollar peers should now take the initiative to gather testing data that governments globally are failing to handle. Lives— and their profits— depend on it.
Apple's sales of iPhones in the first calendar quarter of 2020 were down by only 1% in a China market that contracted by 22% year-over-year, as buyers rapidly shifted to online orders and enthusiastically bought iPhone 11 models.
Parallel reports have all recently claimed that Apple has decided to "delay the mass production" of its upcoming "iPhone 12", but these reports don't offer any meaningful evidence that this could result in a materially late launch. Here's a look at why.
Several years ago, Apple's best chips began decisively beating the performance of the best chips available to high-end Android phones. Now, even Apple's $399 iPhone SE uses a more powerful brain than even the most advanced Android flagships with prices above $1,000. How is this possible?
Reacting to the COVID-19 pandemic, Apple has ramped up efforts to fund a variety of relief efforts and has arranged for the production and sourcing of vital gear to assist in the pandemic. Here's a look at what else Apple has done so far, and why.
Apple's latest iPhone SE release represents a basic, familiar, and affordable "classic" model of iPhone that wouldn't normally be expected to garner too much attention. Yet it has, due in large part to Apple's use of its most advanced A13 Bionic chip in what is now its least expensive new iPhone, just six months after initially launching the A13 in its most ultra-premium iPhone 11 Pro. Why is Apple shaking up the status quo, and who is this new model for?
The same people who have consistently failed to comprehend Apple's business model over the last few decades are now postulating that COVID-19's economic devastation will make Apple's products broadly unaffordable on a global level.
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