This June on WWDC Apple announced its ARKit — a platform for developing augmented reality apps. Also add into the fray a new generation of Apple devices like iPhone8 coming this fall. Finish with the release of iOS11, which will support AR functions on multiple devices out of the box. What do we have as the result? A bright new future ahead of us. A world where AR and VR will become an integral part of our everyday lives.

There is a list of the main ARKit components the developers can use to build their apps:

• Stable tracking of motion at any speed
• Finding a plane (like floor or tabletop) and estimating its boundaries to insert AR objects on it
• Dynamic estimation of lighting level to create realistic effects
• Analysis of scales and proportions
• Built-in support for Unreal, Unity and Scenekit engines
• Xcode templates for building custom apps

Developers worldwide (including Quantic Apps, of course) are eager to discover and master the capabilities of ARKit. Meanwhile, a substantial part of consumers are still not aware of the full potential of using AR on their iOS devices. In the same time, many businesses are not yet sure how using AR with their product can drive profit. We compiled the list of 5 real life use cases of ARKit by Apple to show everyone that AR is much more than a geek’s toy. Much, much more…

Education using AR

Imagine a school, college or university lesson on STEM science like  physics, chemistry, biology or even history and sociology using AR. Actually, this can involve any subject where practical exercises involve experiments with consumables or modelling different situations in society.

Using AR apps for creating a set of consumables for a chemical, physical or even biological experiments is much cheaper and safer than buying consumables, holding experiments… and cleaning afterwards. Brewing chemical concoctions with dangerous vapors? Creating electrical circuits? Vivisecting frogs? All of this can be done using apps built with Apple ARKit.  Every teacher would be glad to remove the danger while retaining the quality of the experiments.

Real life examples of such apps would be the likes of Labster.com or Dance Reality, a freshly-created app that teaches you to dance using your iOS device!

Construction and architecture using AR

Undoubtedly, you had to have some minor refurbishments to your apartment or house at some point. Even moving the closet involves certain measurements and requires having certain tools. Well, not any more. Using ARKit from Apple allowed Smart Picture 3D create their Measurement Cloud — a simple tool for measuring the proportions of any object the camera can see. While definitely useful for planning the furniture positioning, this feature can scale up to placing AR models of future buildings into the existing landscape and modeling their exterior, complete with lighting and reflections on nearby buildings.

Entertainment using AR

The ones who didn’t hear of Pokemon Go, please raise your hands. No, we won’t measure the size of our collections, no… though it’s tempting. Yet applying the AR capabilities in entertainment is obviously one of the most lucrative fields and should be considered by any business, big or small. Little helping dwarves scattered around the workplace and helping the new employee with orientation during the onboarding process. Real life Minecraft using AR? Easy! 3D drawing of beautiful pictures, you name it.

Virtual tourism will emerge, where AR-enabled apps will read special tags on museum expositions and provide explanations on every piece of art, complete with simulated scenes of its usage or creation. Now anyone will be able to visit museums and carve their own path across the halls, without the need to hurry or walk slower and listen to the explanations in a strict sequence and tense silence, to hear what the guide has to say. This is a huge profit possibility, given the millions of Apple devices that will receive iOS11 this fall, and their owners who will be eager to experience all the wonders of the world within their mobile device.

On the brink of entertainment and usefulness lies a simple and fun app called Pixie that helps you locate items using their BlueTooth trackers and AR. Finding the lost keys or a phone in silent mode will not be a problem ever again.

Tutorial using AR

Do you know how to construct an IKEA office table or a chair? Well, it’s like learning to cycle — once you’ve done it at least once, you will quickly recall the actions in the future. However, what about that first time? Paper instructions might be not that self-explanatory sometimes… especially with IKEA appliances…

ARKit from Apple brings a wonderful new world of possibilities to goods manufacturers. Including an AR tag with the product allows providing an interactive AR instruction that can be re-accessed any time for the user’s convenience, and will never be lost or torn). Also think of maintenance and repair manuals. Forget bricks of paper or numerous videos. An interactive app is here to make your life much, much simpler!

Consumer information using AR

Another field of application for aforementioned tags would be consumer information in groceries and pharmacies. Scanning such tag will bring up information of the product fabrication and end of term date, nutritional values, possible meal recipes and diseases that prohibit consumption of this  product. These AR tags will transform the way we do shopping!

There will be a myriad of new apps we cannot even imagine as of now, of course. ARKit, in our opinion, can be the tool that will change the business landscape across multiple industries and services. Forever.

What do the people say of ARKit?

Tim Sweeney of  Epic Games (game developers using Unreal engine) said that “Apple entering the AR market is a milestone of a beginning of using AR and VR as the mainstream technology for mobile devices. This fall the market will grow from several million enthusiasts to hundreds of millions, and possibly even billions consumers.”

Arc Touch co-founder Adam Fingerman said “ARKit from Apple is a much more attractive platform for developers and businesses looking to provide augmented experiences to their customers”

Loup ventures CEO, Gene Munster said “Apple’s ARKit is light years ahead of anything we had before. AR will become the leading user interface in the future and iOS devices will be the main access points for the next 5 years or so, before being replaced with some wearable. The ARKit will enable the developers to build immersive AR environments far beyond the limits we knew before today”

http://www.cnbc.com/video/3000624595

Conclusions

Apple will reap the fruits for their titanic multi-year effort of providing hundreds of millions of devices with powerful processors and cameras. iPhones will become the de-facto standard for experiencing  AR in our everyday lives, so creating AR-powered apps will be an extremely important market in the next few years. As Tony Rodriguez, Digimarc CTO said, “The real power of ARKit lies in giving an Apple user capabilities to discover rich experiences in the world around them, filled with a wealth of interactive information”.

We are ready and willing to embrace this brave new world. Let’s bring your dreams of augmented reality to reality— together!

The post 5 Real Life Use Cases of ARKit by Apple appeared first on QuanticApps.

iOS 11 is due this fall along with the new series of Apple devices and gadgets. New features in iOS 11 are widely discussed as some of them are slightly improving the user’s experience, while some can be the real game changers. We’ll help you learn to get the most our of your iOS 11!

Design updates in iOS 11

First things first, there are gentle interface design updates across many apps and features in iOS 11. For example, fonts become bolder across the OS, Phone and Calculator apps have new look and feel, Lock screen and Control Center received a complete overhaul. We will describe this in more detail below.

The Control Center is now completely customizable, supporting a much wider range of settings. Unlike in iOS 10, the tool is not split across many screens any more. It also takes the whole screen, so much more icons can be placed there. You can add and remove the icons in the phone settings.

iOS 11 supports a much better 3D Touch integration for a more deep and satisfying UX. Tapping and holding an icon brings up a variety of additional actions, providing much better control over the apps and functions like Apple music. In addition, iOS 11 delivers a one-finger keyboard for convenient typing with a single finger.

The Lock screen has been united with the Notification Center, so swiping down to get to Notifications brings up the Lock screen. All the missed notifications are listed there and can be accessed with ease, while swiping upwards brings up the already read notifications. “Today” view is still accessible via a wide swipe to the right and the rest of the features are still there, they are just merged with the Lock screen now.

App Store got a complete redesign. Games and Apps are now separated, and Today view holds the newest apps and games, updated daily based on Siri’s recommendations. Game and App of the Day are featured, along with Apple’s editorial choices, interviews with developers, detailed tutorials and real-time reviews of the apps, to provide more grounded choices of new content.

Siri got even better!

Siri got a better-sounding male and female voices and the Apple AI algorithm received great improvements due to deep learning. This leads to much better results on learning user preferences, synchronizing them across multiple devices and predicting the user anticipations. Cross-device Siri sync will help it become smarter much faster. As always, Apple is all for privacy, so end-to-end encryption is used to ensure data security.

In addition, Siri can now speak and translate English into Spanish, German, Chinese, French and Italian, with more languages planned ahead. Another great thing about Siri is that Apple is finally delivering speech controls for Apple Music, in addition to syncable playlists, so that you can discover what music are your friends currently listening to, listen to it and share your playlists to  them!

New features for iPad in iOS 11

iPad owners were not left unnoticed. iOS 11 introduces a bunch of useful and convenient features for improving work and entertainment using iPad. Simple swipe up closes any running app, the Dock in the lower part of the screen allows organizing apps into folders for convenience.  

iCloud Drive was replaced and expanded into Files feature, mimicking the Mac Finder. Files provide access to local content on iPhone or iPad, app data, iCloud, Google Drive and Dropbox. Files has open API, so developers can use it for simple integration to their apps and provide convenient exchange for photos, videos, documents, music and other content between apps. To say even more, Mission Control’s twin brother, App Switcher is here to allow browsing every launched app at once, and Drag and Drop feature is there to simplify the content exchange between apps.

iPad Pro owners get extended system-wide Apple Pencil functionality and all iPads now support in-app drawing in Notes and Mail. For example, Pencil can be used to instantly annotate any screenshot using Instant Markup feature (which actually works well on iPhones too). To say even more, Notes now provides handwriting and document scanning. Keyboard functionality was also greatly improved by adding “Flick” feature, enable more quick and simple typing of numbers and symbols.

Maps were also improved, due to Apple purchasing several mapping startups. It utilizes them by providing detailed indoor maps of public places like malls and airports, showing locations of bars, restaurants, security, restrooms, administration and other important indoor facilities. Driving also gets much easier, as iOS 11 is adding lane guidance and data on speed limits for a safe and convenient driving.

New apps and features for them in iOS 11

Do Not Disturb in a Car is a great new feature that works automatically and mutes all notifications when it detects a connection to a car Wi-Fi or movement with a car speed on a road. In this mode, calls and notifications are muted and auto-responded with configurable explanations. Important calls and messages can still go through by replying *urgent* to the autoresponder. Parents can also remotely configure the app to be always on on their children’s devices to promote more responsible and less distracted driving.

Remote automatic configuration is another great feature iOS 11 brings to the table. Just placing a new iOS device close to a configured one brings up an offer notification for synchronization. If a user agrees, all contacts, linked credit/debit card and preferences are copied automatically, removing all the hassle.

Paying through chat  is now possible in addition to previous Apple Pay functionality. If banking cards are linked to the device, payments can be issued and paid directly from the chat, using finger scan for transaction authorization.

Core NFC feature greatly improves the everyday experience. It scans corresponding tags, which are surely to appear everywhere around us soon. For example, scanning a pack of oatmeals in a grocery store shows their expiration date, nutritional value, possible recipes and even can provide recommendations based on user’s health conditions, synced from corresponding apps. Yes, health data in iOS 11 can be collected and synchronized across all your Apple devices, for the purposes described above and a plethora of other uses.

In museums these NFC tags will provide a possibility to quickly get a summary of any piece of the exposition, which will drastically improve the experience of solo exploration, without loud groups, planned routes and tedious guides.

Apple AR Kit in iOS 11

Apple unleashed the full potential of AR for developers, providing a powerful AR Kit, which allows using all the sensors and systems of iPhones and iPads in order to create realistic and immersive educational and entertainment environments. When the camera is pointed at a flat surface like a table, AR Kit allows adding a variety of virtual objects on it. Tremendous computational power of iPhones and iPads ensures the developers are able to create any environment the user might desire to experience. We will describe the Apple AR Kit capabilities in more details in one of our upcoming articles.

HomeKit and AirPlay2 features

Home app and its development kit, HomeKit, receive support for various speakers now. This ensures smooth control of all audio devices in your house, either through Home app or via Siri. By the way, all the leading speakers manufacturers have already announced support of HomeKit in upcoming updates. Apple TV can also be used for accessing Home App and smoothly controlling various devices across your household.

AirPlay 2 fully utilizes this feature, so music can be configured to play on multiple speakers across the rooms, or select few at your current location, similarly to Sonos. Have the music following you across the house without having to install overpowered speakers!

Conclusions

This list is by far not complete, as iOS 11 introduces a huge number of new features and improvements, like password autofill for 3rd party apps, location tracking, Uber auto-location, emergency SOS, Wi-Fi password sharing and many, many others. We will describe them in more details in future.

As of now, iOS 11 promises to be a worthy successor to previous iOS releases, compatible with all devices (except for the oldest and currently unsupported models), and paving the way for iPhone 8. It is still under development, yet can be freely accessed and uploaded from Apple’s website, so every user can experience it firsthand. Here at Quantic Apps we are thrilled and inspired with iOS 11 new features and capabilities and look forward to developing great apps based on them! If you already have an concept for an iOS 11-based app and want to turn it into reality — contact us right away, we are always ready to turn your ideas to successful products!

The post New features in iOS 11 appeared first on QuanticApps.

We will provide a brief overview of mobile apps and web apps to depict their strengths, weaknesses and differences between these approaches to mobile development.

Mobile apps are built specifically for a certain mobile platform, using its coding language. The user must download them from an appstore and install them, so the app can work on a device. These native apps utilize any needed functions of the device (like camera, geolocation, notifications, work with contact list, etc.). They also are noted for delivering greatly customizable interface and excellent performance. Most of mobile apps (like games) can work offline and utilize the resources of the mobile device. They provide the design aligned with the design principles of the platform, thus yielding the usage experience the users are accustomed to.

Web apps, on the other hand, are built to be run in mobile browsers, using HTML5 and CSS/SASS to provide consistent usage experience across many platforms. These apps work via the mobile browser of the device and are actually simply bookmarks for web services the user can access. With web apps, most of the workload happens on the server side, with mobile device being simply a terminal to access the web-based service. Due to the fact that one service is designed to be run on any device, the interface and design might be the same for any platform, providing somewhat unusual user experience. Obviously, web apps cannot work offline and most of them have little to no access to the phone’s features. However, a user would not expect their weather app to be keen with using the phone camera — they just need the app to be able to tell if it is going to rain in a few hours, that’s it.

Thus said, mobile apps and web apps should be utilized for different purposes, to maximize the  advantages in each particular case. Below we will list several focal points to let you make an informed decision when choosing to develop a mobile app or a web app for your project.

Level of control over device hardware and features. As mobile apps are developed using the platform’s main coding language, they harness full control of the device’s functions and hardware needed, like the camera, GPS locator, notifications, gestures, etc. Web apps have to access device hardware via some web wrapper, so their capabilities are quite limited.

Offline operability. Many if not all mobile apps perfectly work offline, and if they do need network connection – they can often cache the needed information for later use. Web apps need the device to be online in order to function, which obviously limits their usefulness in locations with bad coverage.

The ease of content discovery. This is where the web apps shine, as you can easily create a bookmark to a specific page on the web, like a certain  merchandise in the store, certain weather forecast location, certain map location, etc. You do not need to download and install a mobile app for that. Thus said, web apps win the prize for accessing the content online with ease. QUite contrary, mobile apps are installed only if the user expects to use them quite often, so they justify the resources spent on their downloading, installation and ongoing updates.

Speed of operations. Mobile apps win hands down in this nomination. When the app uses the resources of the device instead of relying on the remote server to provide the action over the Internet connection, results are gained immediately.

Hassle with installation. As we already mentioned above, installation of a mobile app takes some time and traffic, meaning the user has to really need this app in order to make such investments. Web app, on the other hand, is merely a bookmark, taking seconds to create and using no system resources.

Maintenance and update problems. How many times did your Google maps app update last week? I counted 6, and it’s only Friday. Keeping mobile apps up-to-date is a pain for both users and developers, especially if multiple versions of the app are in use in several platforms. The updates must be packaged and uploaded to corresponding app stores, which takes time and effort. Updating a web app, on the other hand, needs no actions from user and is no harder than updating any other web page or service for developers. Thus said, web apps are obviously much easier to update and maintain.

Coverage of different platforms. As mentioned above, having multiple versions of the app running on multiple platforms is a nightmare for developers. On the other hand, as web apps operate via HTML5, their core code base works well on any platform, with slight adjustments needed.

Licensing, fees and publisher’s approval. Having to comply with the publisher’s policies and waiting for their approval to upload the app to the store can be costly, both in terms of money and time to market. For example, uploading the app to Apple’s App Store means 30% of the income generated by the app goes to the publisher as a fee.  Web apps are free from such limitations, but this also means they need to search for alternate ways of income generation.

App monetization. Mobile apps benefit from using platform’s standard payment gateways, greatly simplifying the process for both developers and end users. Quite contrary, web apps have to implement their own payment systems and ensure their security in order to be able to monetize the service.

The cost of app development. As HTML5 forms a huge chunk of web app’s code base, developing such apps is much cheaper, as compared to developing fully native mobile apps. However, the latter are usually developed by stale teams of developers, as finding a talented Java or Objective-C developer is quite hard and once employed, these become valuable assets that work long-term. Web development using HTML5 is easier and such developers are not valued that much, which might lead to excessively fluent teams and impair the development workflow.

Harnessing the power of UI/UX. One of the most important differences lies in the area of user interface and experience. When building a mobile app it’s much easier to provide interface and user experience similar to the majority of the popular apps on said platform. This makes the learning curve shorter and easier for the user. This does not mean web apps cannot provide the same interface, yet accessing it online is slower, fonts and colors do not always match exactly and such small details can make a huge difference for the customers.

Conclusions

Thus said, there is no panacea, as mobile apps and web apps have their strengths and weaknesses. The intended target audience, most probable area of use and, most importantly, the main idea of the app can dictate the type of the app to choose. A game should respond quickly, a banking app should provide secure interactions and a weather forecast should be able to provide information within seconds.

At QuanticApps we always help the customers analyze the needs and pain points of their target audience and find the best way to cater to those needs. Therefore, the choice between developing a mobile app or web app becomes a well-informed decision, making it much easier. We wish you the best of luck with your products and contact us anytime should you need some advice or help!

The post Mobile App or Web App: which to choose? appeared first on QuanticApps.

New web development trends emerge all the time, yet only some of them become disruptions that change the landscape of the industry. In order to gain and keep a competitive edge for their apps, web developers have to ride the tide. Thus said, keeping an eye on the whole wave of new technologies and knowing which ones are worth using are two totally different things. Below is the list of what Quantic Apps considers to be the top 6 hot web development trends of 2017.

Web apps for the Internet of Things

Yes, the talks about it have been around for some time. However, 2017 might well become the breakthrough when the new era of smart gadgets and tech begins. Why so? Just take a look at Marc Zuckerberg’s Jarvis system of house control, which already exists and helps him control many systems of his house through apps instead of hands. The market for such apps is already large as of 2017 and it will definitely increase even further. However, certain security questions arise, and these should definitely be addressed before web apps for the Internet of Things are market-ready. This means 2017 will be a year of challenges and huge possibilities for web developers who will try creating apps for the IoT.

Artificial Intelligence use in web design and more…

AI is another widely discussed topic, yet 2017 can become the year when feasible AI-based systems hit the market. Google search engine is already using AI technology, allowing Google optimize the search results even more efficiently. Wikipedia AI helps with articles validation and removing the broken or malicious links. We expect more and more applications of AI to reveal themselves in 2017, as developers concentrate their time and effort in building new AI-driven apps and tools.

A great example of used in web app is Molly — the algorithm powering The Grid.io, a simple website builder. Anyone without even the basic design skills can answer Molly’s written questions about the website design and elements — and the AI creates the page! Feel free to try it out and experiment as much as you want, you will only help Molly become better.

Virtual Reality implementation in web development

In 2017 virtual reality can become much more real as Google and Mozilla combine their efforts on developing VR APIs for the web. Having such tools at their arsenal will help web developers build apps for literally any purpose, from virtual tourism and education to using virtual tours for showcasing real estate. Adding such functionality can make many products more competitive .

Angular 2 universe changes

Angular 2 was released in 2016, and developers worldwide now have to learn the Google’s main frontend development JS framework anew. Angular 2 relies on Javascript ES6 functionality, uses TypeScript for writing apps and uses component-driven architecture intensively. In their release post the Angular 2 publishers promised major updates each 6 months, meaning lots of news for all web developers working with this framework.

Typescript is the new Javascript

Typescript is the most possible way of Javascript evolution. Typescript is an open-source Javascript superset that was developed by Microsoft and is built upon ECMAScript 6. It makes Javascript code checking and refactoring incredibly simple. Using the classic JS syntax and deploying powerful tools for various frameworks integration, Typescript is a great choice for building highly scalable apps in an easy fashion.

The latest trends in web design

Knowing the latest frontend development trends means keeping an eye on web design as well. Here are certain points of interest in web design for 2017:

1. User interfaces that track movements are quite a real possibility. When combined with libs like tracking.js, this can lead to creation of movement-reacting interfaces really soon.
2. As more and more users browse the web from mobile devices, large and bold fonts are becoming more popular.
3. Most of the users nowadays expect to see some kind of explainer videos or explanatory pictures on any app or website they browse.

This is the list of top 6 hot web development trends for 2017 as seen by Quantic Apps. Did we miss something? Would you like to add or replace certain points? Tell us in the comments below!

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