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I'm a bit skeptical about the performance to be honest: Great tracking for AR requires careful selection and tuning of cameras and IMUs (inertial measurement un

by rsp1984 9y ago

I'm a bit skeptical about the performance to be honest: Great tracking for AR requires careful selection and tuning of cameras and IMUs (inertial measurement units -- essentially MEMS gyro + accelerometer). Apple has very tight control over their components so they can do this but managing this across a million OEMs and device models (as it is with the Android ecosystem) is close to impossible. Tango tried to solve the problem by specifying out a software and hardware stack for OEMs to use but now it looks like Google is just too jealous to let have Apple have a good time with ARkit, therefore the "me too".

cromwellian 9y ago
Hence why it is available only for Pixel (which Google controls) and the Samsung Galaxy 8 (a large partner) because it can be precisely calibrated. Why is it Google "me too"? Tango was released in 2014.The basic plane detection functionality that's in Tango is derived from the same mechanism that Apple uses. Facebook released an ARKit-like library at their conference before ARKit was even announced. When Apple is late to the party, it seems people say "it doesn't matter if you're first, Apple waits till its 'ready'", but when Apple is perceived to have done something first, suddenly everyone accuses Apple's competitors of being thieves and copying.
- eridius 9y ago
  > When Apple is late to the party, it seems people say "it doesn't matter if you're first, Apple waits till its 'ready'" Generally people say that in response to everyone accusing Apple of copying.
  - cromwellian 9y ago
    That's mostly in reaction to Apple's history of claiming copying and its litigious look and feel lawsuits. Remember "Redmond Start Your Copiers!" That was an official WWDC banner hung from the rafters by Apple, not some fanboys. Steve Jobs frequently gave interviews accusing rivals of copying, and then copying with the excuse "Good artists copy; great artists steal". All of those years of going on the offensive against everyone, has created a tendency of the other side to look for hypocrisy now. There's something pretentious, and deeply hubristic and lacking in humility in Apple's marketing that I think has fanned the flames of these fanboy wars. In a way, their marketing reminds of the way Trump talks, only with a larger vocabulary. Replace "Great!", "Bigly!", "SAD!", with "Beautiful", "Amazing", "Breakthrough". It's just continuous repetitive of superlatives, even for minor features.
    - eridius 9y ago
      Your quotation I think is very important here. > "Good artists copy; great artists steal" The point of this quotation is that "good artists" merely copy other people, which is what Apple is talking about when they hang banners like "Redmond Start Your Copiers", but "great artists" 'steal', which means they take the good idea and transform it to make it better. And this is very much how Apple works, and this comes back to your original pseudo-quotation, "it doesn't matter if you're first, Apple waits till its 'ready'". Apple doesn't just blindly copy what other people are doing. They 'steal' the ideas and turn them into something great before releasing them.
      - cromwellian 9y ago
        Apple has done both, as had Microsoft. Microsoft didn't just blindly copy everything Apple did. As much as I hate Microsoft of the 90s, they did innovate too. Apple doesn't blindly copy? What do you call Apple Music then? Ping? What did Apple do to innovate in that space above and beyond Spotify? That's a long list of UI features Apple cribbed from Android, WebOS, and Windows Phone that ended up (IMHO), inferior copies, where the copy didn't actually improve on (make great) the original. In what way does Apple Photos improve on the quality of Google Photo's deep learning based categorization that is user-visible and noticeable?
        eridius 9y ago
        > Microsoft didn't just blindly copy everything Apple did. Not everything. "Redmond Start Your Copiers" was in response to some very specific copying over the previous year, though I don't remember the details anymore. > What do you call Apple Music then? I call it a subscription model to the iTunes store. Subscription models have been around for a long time, even though Spotify is the poster child for applying them to Music I don't think it makes sense to say Apple is copying Spotify (or anyone else) by having a subscription music service, it's the logical evolution of paid music services. You could certainly argue that Spotify proved the customer demand was there (as well as the ability to convince the labels to go along with this), but it's not like Spotify invented the concept. > Ping? An unmitigated disaster. But I'm not sure who you think that was copying. I can't think of any pre-existing service like Ping. > What did Apple do to innovate in that space above and beyond Spotify? Provide a seamless "it just works" experience across all Apple devices, including integration into their customers' existing iTunes libraries, and into Siri, including the forthcoming Homepod. And I think it's fair to give Apple Music credit for iCloud Music Library as well, which is great. > That's a long list of UI features Apple cribbed from Android, WebOS, and Windows Phone that ended up (IMHO), inferior copies, where the copy didn't actually improve on (make great) the original. Can you elaborate? > In what way does Apple Photos improve on the quality of Google Photo's deep learning based categorization that is user-visible and noticeable? Apple Photos does it all on-device. Also, I really don't think you can claim that using machine learning to classify photos is something that Google owns. It's been an obvious idea for literally decades, it's just taken until now before it was feasible to do.

cromwellian 9y ago

Hence why it is available only for Pixel (which Google controls) and the Samsung Galaxy 8 (a large partner) because it can be precisely calibrated. Why is it Google "me too"? Tango was released in 2014.The basic plane detection functionality that's in Tango is derived from the same mechanism that Apple uses. Facebook released an ARKit-like library at their conference before ARKit was even announced. When Apple is late to the party, it seems people say "it doesn't matter if you're first, Apple waits till its 'ready'", but when Apple is perceived to have done something first, suddenly everyone accuses Apple's competitors of being thieves and copying.

eridius 9y ago
> When Apple is late to the party, it seems people say "it doesn't matter if you're first, Apple waits till its 'ready'" Generally people say that in response to everyone accusing Apple of copying.
- cromwellian 9y ago
  That's mostly in reaction to Apple's history of claiming copying and its litigious look and feel lawsuits. Remember "Redmond Start Your Copiers!" That was an official WWDC banner hung from the rafters by Apple, not some fanboys. Steve Jobs frequently gave interviews accusing rivals of copying, and then copying with the excuse "Good artists copy; great artists steal". All of those years of going on the offensive against everyone, has created a tendency of the other side to look for hypocrisy now. There's something pretentious, and deeply hubristic and lacking in humility in Apple's marketing that I think has fanned the flames of these fanboy wars. In a way, their marketing reminds of the way Trump talks, only with a larger vocabulary. Replace "Great!", "Bigly!", "SAD!", with "Beautiful", "Amazing", "Breakthrough". It's just continuous repetitive of superlatives, even for minor features.
  - eridius 9y ago
    Your quotation I think is very important here. > "Good artists copy; great artists steal" The point of this quotation is that "good artists" merely copy other people, which is what Apple is talking about when they hang banners like "Redmond Start Your Copiers", but "great artists" 'steal', which means they take the good idea and transform it to make it better. And this is very much how Apple works, and this comes back to your original pseudo-quotation, "it doesn't matter if you're first, Apple waits till its 'ready'". Apple doesn't just blindly copy what other people are doing. They 'steal' the ideas and turn them into something great before releasing them.
    - cromwellian 9y ago
      Apple has done both, as had Microsoft. Microsoft didn't just blindly copy everything Apple did. As much as I hate Microsoft of the 90s, they did innovate too. Apple doesn't blindly copy? What do you call Apple Music then? Ping? What did Apple do to innovate in that space above and beyond Spotify? That's a long list of UI features Apple cribbed from Android, WebOS, and Windows Phone that ended up (IMHO), inferior copies, where the copy didn't actually improve on (make great) the original. In what way does Apple Photos improve on the quality of Google Photo's deep learning based categorization that is user-visible and noticeable?
      - eridius 9y ago
        > Microsoft didn't just blindly copy everything Apple did. Not everything. "Redmond Start Your Copiers" was in response to some very specific copying over the previous year, though I don't remember the details anymore. > What do you call Apple Music then? I call it a subscription model to the iTunes store. Subscription models have been around for a long time, even though Spotify is the poster child for applying them to Music I don't think it makes sense to say Apple is copying Spotify (or anyone else) by having a subscription music service, it's the logical evolution of paid music services. You could certainly argue that Spotify proved the customer demand was there (as well as the ability to convince the labels to go along with this), but it's not like Spotify invented the concept. > Ping? An unmitigated disaster. But I'm not sure who you think that was copying. I can't think of any pre-existing service like Ping. > What did Apple do to innovate in that space above and beyond Spotify? Provide a seamless "it just works" experience across all Apple devices, including integration into their customers' existing iTunes libraries, and into Siri, including the forthcoming Homepod. And I think it's fair to give Apple Music credit for iCloud Music Library as well, which is great. > That's a long list of UI features Apple cribbed from Android, WebOS, and Windows Phone that ended up (IMHO), inferior copies, where the copy didn't actually improve on (make great) the original. Can you elaborate? > In what way does Apple Photos improve on the quality of Google Photo's deep learning based categorization that is user-visible and noticeable? Apple Photos does it all on-device. Also, I really don't think you can claim that using machine learning to classify photos is something that Google owns. It's been an obvious idea for literally decades, it's just taken until now before it was feasible to do.