Apple has spent the past five years telling the public how much the company loves augmented reality (AR) technology, and CEO Cook has been telling the outside world how he expects AR glasses to become the next iPhone; AR glasses team composed of thousands of people. Although Cook keeps telling the outside world how much he loves AR, and Apple has invested heavily in AR, it has been slow to commit to one thing – building web-based AR.
The foreign media “Protocol” pointed out that Apple has been reluctant to open the iPhone Safari browser’s support for WebAR, and such a gap will hinder the possibility of AR being adopted.
Immersive computing expert Christopher Lepkowski also bluntly said that Apple has been dragging down WebAR innovation.
Christopher Lepkowski is technical director and partner at Pretty Big Monster, a Los Angeles-based marketing firm that builds AR experiences for brands like Netflix, Warner Bros., and American Airlines. He said that it is still a few years before the popularity of consumer AR glasses, and now AR-related marketing activities have to rely on mobile phones, after all, there is no other device more popular than mobile phones.
If you have ever experienced AR on a mobile phone, you will know that some brands have tried to convince consumers to download dedicated apps in the past, so that brands can let consumers experience their own AR marketing, but it is clear that consumers often do not Willingness to download a specific app just to see movie characters walking around their living room.
Pretty Big Monster managing partner Jason Steinberg also said that when brands force audiences to download a dedicated app, they lose 50% of consumers instantly.
But the good news is that AR technology can work outside of apps, thanks to browser and device makers including Google, Meta, Samsung, Mozilla, and Magic Leap, who jointly developed the WebXR standard , making it possible to run AR in the browser, allowing consumers to experience AR directly in the web page.
The Android version of the Chrome browser began to support the beta version of WebXR as early as 2018; Samsung and Opera began to increase their browsers’ support for WebXR in 2020. But Apple has never added support for WebXR to the Safari browser in iOS.
And Apple not only does not open Safari’s support for WebXR, but other browser manufacturers can’t import WebXR into iPhone, because Apple forces these manufacturers to use Safari’s WebKit rendering engine to build the iOS version of their browser; that is to say , even if the Chrome browser is downloaded on the iPhone, its underlying technology does not support the WebXR format, so Google cannot bring the web-based AR experience to iPhone users through the iOS version of Chrome.
In the absence of official Apple support, it is not impossible to achieve a web-based AR experience, but this method is expensive.
The most popular solution at present is through the AR engine of AR startup 8th Wall, which supports key technologies such as SLAM, which is a technology that synchronizes the concept of positioning and map construction, which does not require the use of Apple’s ARKit to achieve AR experience. It’s just that you have to pay a monthly license fee to use 8th Wall’s technology. This license fee is not difficult for big brands, but it is for educators, artists, or independent developers who want to try to provide AR experience. , would be a problem.
Why Apple is reluctant to make iPhone Safari support WebXR is still a mystery, after all, the company has been a member of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) for many years, and the W3C has been developing WebXR related standards in the past.
Maciej Stachowiak, Apple’s head of WebKit engineering, has publicly stated in the past that Apple is enthusiastic about the WebXR standard; even in September 2020, an Apple employee who participated in the W3C Immersive Web Group (Immersive Web Group) even revealed that WebXR has been added. into Apple’s WebKit. At the time, many people were excited about this statement, but never saw any sign of Apple opening Safari.
Some speculate that Apple is actually hostile to the open web in general, but Blair MacIntyre, a Georgia Tech professor and WebXR pioneer, disagrees; Quite slow, but suddenly one day Apple reversed its old practice and adopted these two standards directly.
As Apple is getting closer to the day of releasing its own head-mounted display products, there are more and more signs that Apple is turning to embrace WebXR. Recently, it has also been discovered that code suggesting support for WebXR has appeared in the iOS test book. It’s just that the final result will not be revealed until Apple launches this new product.
(Image credit: Apple)