According to aMacRumor report and regulatory filings with the UK government, Apple may have quietly acquired UK-based motion capture firm IKinema. Citing an industry insider,MacRumors maintains that IKinema customers been without an update for weeks. Apple’s vision for the software has been clear from the start : we’re delivering the biggest AR platform in the world,Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior VP Software Engineering, said at WWDC 2017.Apple set out to provide developers the tools they needed to build, detailed and compelling virtual content on top of real-world scenes for interactive gaming, immersive shopping experiences, industrial design and more. Creating such worlds takes horsepower, of course. Of course, when it comes to machines equipped with such horsepower, Apple already has the tool: its soon-to-launch Mac Pro. These should carry more than enough power for the creation of AR environments. With a platform in place, an army of developers equipped with tools for the implementation of AR in apps, and partnerships across the space, it's no surprise that Apple wants to make the creation of such experiences as easy as possible even while making the end user experience more convincingly realistic. Samsung took the same basic idea to a different level at its Galaxy Unpacked event in August.
Yet, the company has always been careful to situate AR as a mobile technology, people peeking through iPhones or iPads to shop or play with Legos, or even experience public art installations. Finding this kind of data, even hidden deep within OS developer files, marks an uncharacteristic transparency from Apple—as though the company is planning something sooner rather than later. It points to the headset being a much more passive display accessory for iPhone than a device with an OS of its own.