Apple Maps May Get AR Integration Soon

With virtual, augment and mixed reality expected to be the next big battleground for tech companies and consumer electronics firms, Apple is jumping on the bandwagon headlong, fifty-fifty though information technology has been slightly late to the party compared to some of its peers, like Google, Facebook or Microsoft.

However, now that the Cupertino giant is getting into the field, it'due south seemingly going all-in, and having acquired Akonia Holographics late concluding month, the company is at present looking to hire a number of engineers (both software and hardware) with AR-related expertise to bring the emerging engineering into its products and services.

The company has seemingly advertised for a number of openings that have the term 'AR Application' in the title, including AR Application Engineer, UI Artist (AR Applications), Technical Artist (AR Applications), Senior AI Applications Engineer, Senior FX Creative person (AR Applications) and more.

Following in Google'southward footsteps, the company is expected to add augmented reality to Apple Maps first and foremost, given that the posting for an 'iOS/macOS Engineer' says that applicants need to be 'Familiar with Maps and Cadre Location APIs' and 'Familiar with Augmented Reality APIs'.

Nigh of the higher up jobs were posted last month, betwixt August eleven and August 22, with the exception of the last 1, which was posted back in June. The new recruits are expected to piece of work out of Santa Clara, California.

Apple has ofttimes been rumored to be working on Augmented Reality, and the latest developments – the job listings and the Akonia acquisition – are further proof that the visitor is, indeed, working difficult to brand up for lost time.

While at that place'south no concrete info about how close the company is to releasing a consumer product with AR integration, the latest development suggests that information technology is fully committed to the engineering science, and is very likely well on its way to designing something that might finally bring the engineering science to mainstream consumers.

While it may all the same take a while for Apple tree to release AR hardware, the company last year introduced ARKit, an Awarding Programming Interface (API) that is somewhat similar to Google'southward ARCore insomuch every bit it lets 3rd-party developers built Augmented Reality apps for mobile devices. Since the API was made available concluding yr, millions of ARKit apps have been downloaded from the App Store, and that number is only likely to increment exponentially going forward.