If content is king, the new Apple iPhone 12 Pro and iPad Pro 2020 are the king makers.
Heck, this will make us all royalty.
iPhone 12 Pro puts a LiDAR scanner into everybody‘s hand, and that could change the world as much as the original smartphone did.
The LiDAR Scanner captures image data from a camera and motion data from the sensor array on the iPhone or any other LiDAR-enabled device. LiDAR is the technology that allowed Apollo 15 to map the surface of the moon. This is also how the Google car creates Google maps.
This world-changing technology allows translatable data to construct accurate and precise spatial maps of the environment in real-time. The LiDAR scanner's data is crunched together with data from cameras and a motion sensor, then enhanced by computer vision algorithms.
It gives everyone the ability to realize 3D communication. In the hands of artists, technicians, engineers, brands, advertisers, and others, it will raise AR to an every-day medium.
It will be capable of accurately 3D scanning and measuring its environment and expected to perform classification in use with other software such as Safari or Google search.
Sure, this Apple LiDAR scanner is designed more for room-scale applications like games or shifting around AR furniture in IKEA's Place app, AR gaming and AR shopping. Apple has previewed a few LiDAR-specific applications and one of the more interesting ones coming soon is Hot Lava, a first-person adventure game that brings molten rivers into your living room.
Toymakers see augmented reality as the perfect way to bridge physical toys and screen-addicted kids. Fitness is another area we imagine AR is going to make a big impact and Google Translate's Word Lens feature is AR in its most simple form but it makes it possible to translate foreign text into your own language simply by pointing your phone’s camera at it.
But those apps already exist: the arrival of LiDAR on the iPhone 12 Pro will provoke a huge increase in the number and quality of AR apps - and that could be a game-changer-- not only for the iPhone camera but for a global population that is enamored of content creation.
In the meantime, LiDAR scanner on the iPad Pro and iPhone 12 Pro may wow developers rather than average users.
And the real leap should come when these sensors and apps arrive on the Apple Glasses. Oh, we weren't supposed to mention the Glasses....
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