LIDAR

TikTok announced today a new augmented reality effect that is the first to use the LiDAR scanner of iPhone 12 Pro models. The effect celebrates the New Year with AR golden balloons and confetti that interact with the environment thanks to the new iPhone sensor. The announcement was made through TikTok’s official Twitter account.

Both AAPL and LiDAR stocks have risen in early trading following yesterday’s report that the company plans to launch an Apple Car in 2024.

At the time of writing, AAPL is up around 4%, while two LiDAR stocks are up more than 30%.

One of the headline features of the two iPhone 12 Pro models is the LiDAR scanner. Night mode Portrait photos had already impressed me, and an app to create 3D scans of your home has now done so, too.

Canvas is an iPhone app that you can use to scan your rooms, and then pay a modest fee to have them turned into professional CAD models that can be used to help remodel your home. You may have spotted that it was featured in the iPhone 12 launch…

While we can’t say for sure that an Apple Car will ever go on sale, it’s a certainty by this point that the company is devoting substantial development resources to the project. Tim Cook said recently that there would be “massive change” in the car industry, and that “autonomous driving becomes much more important.”

But as a recent opinion piece on sister site Electrek argued, and Elon Musk warned, actually manufacturing a car is massively more complex than making consumer electronics devices. Apple will therefore be looking for partners to pull together different elements of the car. Re/code has put together an interesting look at the most likely candidates … 
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This is not the first time an Apple patent has surfaced relating to three-dimensional camera technologies. A previous patent highlighted advanced 3D object recognition and verification. A new patent—published today by the United States Patent & Trademark Office and detailed by PatentlyApple—shows Apple is continuing to work on 3D camera technologies that could land in future iOS devices. Apple’s patent described a 3D imagining camera that uses advanced microlenses, depth-detection, chrominance, and luminance sensors. The camera could recognize facial expressions and gestures while creating 3D models of scanned objects. PatentlyApple explained:

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