So how’s that AR transformation going?

Before the public release of ARKit with iOS 11 there was lots of breathless speculation about how AR on our phones was going to fundamentally transform how with interacted with information. Never mind that most of the public demos centered around interior decorating, measuring things, and games. Surely, people insisted, there were other amazing use cases that would catch on or, perhaps, there was a large, unmet need for better interior decorating support.

Fast forward a few months after ARKit’s release, and how often do you hear people mention ARKit now? If you’re an iOS user, when was the last time you used an AR app? The week iOS 11 was released?

I regard much of the buzz around AR as a fundamental failure to distinguish between neat and useful. Yea, AR is neat. No, there just isn’t that much need for interior decorating support.  And in fact, unless you’re actively engaged in motorcycle design or architecture (two common AR-for-work examples), most of the things you do are probably 2D tasks, not 3D tasks, and so are unlikely to benefit from accurate spatial perception and blending real and virtual 3D content. But hey, AR is neat.