Mobile technology is changing many aspects of our lives, including how people search for homes. To keep up with those changes, several of us from the iOS team at realtor.com® head over to Apple’s annual developer conference to see what’s on the roadmap for their software products.
This time, we walked away incredibly excited about how the newest possibilities will allow us to make the home search experience even better for you, our users.
At these annual conferences, Apple announces their newest products as well advancements in their software products like iOS, MacOS, and more.
I wanted to highlight a few of the announcements that really resonated with us, and how they will improve your home search experience.
New App Store
The App Store is undergoing a significant facelift, highlights include:
- A Today tab where new exciting apps or improvements of existing apps are highlighted by Apple’s editorial team.
- Apps and Games are now split into separate tabs. This is great for users looking to discover apps like realtor.com®.
- App Product pages have been redesigned to make the content standout and allow developers to tell a story of why their app is valuable.
- Things like Awards, Chart position and Reviews get prominent placement.
Also, there is an option to significantly increase the number of videos and images of the product to help users learn more before downloading the app.
Collaboration through iMessage
So much of searching for your dream home is a team activity, whether it’s with your significant other, family or your agent. Apple introduced significant changes to Messages by providing its own App Store with last year’s iOS 10 introduction.
We immediately jumped on this opportunity by adding an iMessage app for realtor.com®.
Apple has upped its game with some significant improvements that will be available with iOS 11. Here are some that stood out to us:
- Improved discoverability of your apps within Messages. This will allow users to bring app content directly into Messages like home information from the realtor.com® app.
- Messages are now synced across all of your iOS devices so you can seamlessly continue your search regardless of the device you are using.
- Apple Pay is now available in Messages so making payments is simple as sending a text message.
Augmented Reality
This announcement was one that excited us the most. Apple’s introduction of ARKit, will allow developers to build augmented reality experiences inside their apps – think Pokemon Go but for real estate.
Apple is already talking about some of the great possibilities in the real estate category, like imaging a room remodel, a virtual tape measure, virtual home tours, and more. We expect to have great ideas of our own in this space.
The significant part is that these augmented reality experiences will become available to anyone with an iPhone 6 and above. We’ve already integrated virtual home tours into our Android app via Matterport.
Keep an eye out in this space and how we leverage this technology, as it’s sure to grow and change.