Apple’s Next iOS Will Make AR a Legitimately Cool Thing

Later this year, Apple will release the latest version of its mobile operating system, iOS 11, for iPhones, iPod Touches, and iPads, and it may well cause you to question the very nature of reality.

The operating system features a software framework called ARKit, which allows iOS devices to see and track the world through their cameras, and correlate that to the motion of the device. The result is that developers can now build augmented reality applications using the full power of the device they’re running on. And even though this new software is still in the testing phase, developers have started showing off some amazing demonstrations.

Here are a few examples of the sorts of things we expect to see everywhere in the near future:

Exploring new worlds

Many of the early demonstrations have revolved around the idea of using an iOS device as a “portal” to another world. This could look like recreating A-ha’s seminal “Take On Me” music video:

Digital pets

Now you’ll never be lonely again:

My #wwdc lab was quiet, so I modified the ARKit sample code to place dogs randomly throughout the building pic.twitter.com/2arBY4F1Vj

— Nick Shearer (@nickjshearer) June 8, 2017

Never get lost

Instead of trying to figure out which way is which on Apple Maps, you could soon just open up an AR map that points to exactly where you need to go:

Measuring becomes a breeze

Instead of finding the tape measure, just point your phone at every corner of a room to know exactly how big it is:

Meetings that are actually interesting

iOS 11 will allow users to turn any surface into just about anything else. Here’s a demo of East London buildings superimposed on a digital table in the middle of an empty room. Imagine meetings where the presentations actually come to life:

ViLo: The Virtual London Platform by CASA on ARKit from Virtual Architectures on Vimeo.

These are all just demonstrations of what’s technically possible. Apple hasn’t yet said when it’ll unveil iOS 11, so Apple users won’t be able to download any apps built on this technology just yet. But these are exciting examples of what the future of computing might soon look like. Imagine if Apple is actually working on a pair of smart glasses that could support this same technology: the world might never look the same again.