Apple’s plan for device domination

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Mark Lyndersay

3 minutes ago

Bit depth#1464

Mark Lyndersay

The APPLE 2024 Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) wasn’t an occasion for any stunning new announcements.

The new features were expected to be revealed in the company’s new operating system updates for six platforms: Vision OS, iPadOS, TV OS, Watch OS, iOS and Mac OS.

That alone is noteworthy. First, Apple is more decisively splitting the development of its iPhone and iPad operating systems, suggesting further divergence in the feature sets for each device.

The new VR headset’s operating system is being promoted as a mainstream platform, but it’s a product that hasn’t proven itself decisively in the marketplace as a mainstream platform.

The $3,500 Vision Pro has yet to make an impact on the global VR headset market, which shrank 44 percent in 2023 despite an average unit cost of $700.

By comparison, the iPhone has taken over 50 percent of the US and Japanese markets.

It’s also worth noting that the new features on all of these platforms cannot be described as groundbreaking. There are fixes, overdue improvements, and interesting refinements, but nothing will make a potential customer sigh and say, “I have to buy this Apple product because of what it can do.”

With the exception of the Apple Vision Pro, each of these devices has been in the zeitgeist for years and their promotions are well-known.

Vision Pro’s greatest and undeniable impact has been on people with sensory disabilities, where surprising applications of the technology are beginning to emerge.

WWDC is an Apple event designed to generate enthusiasm and innovation among software and hardware developers who create products and services for the Apple ecosystem.

As increasingly synchronized software develops, the company is taking an interesting approach to connecting its products into a unified whole.

The first is its commitment to developing and refining the code base on which all of its platforms run, based on improvements to the NeXTSTEP variant of Unix, the operating system it received after Steve Jobs’ NeXT company was purchased.

From 1997 to 2001, the company refined its industrial-looking operating system before shipping it to computers as OS X.

This code, in its various incarnations, forms the basis of the operating systems in all of the company’s devices, providing synergistic benefits that the company is not shy about exploiting.

WWDC 2024, with its spectacular introduction to skydiving, along with the star of the presentation Craig Federighi in a silver helmet with Craig Federighi’s curved hairstyle, seemed to be the announcement of new operating systems with new features. Apple has been pursuing a cautious strategy of operating system updates for over a decade.

Close.

A user’s choice of devices ultimately comes down to what the computing devices they choose can do for them.

However, what keeps users on the platform and their device of choice is the unwillingness to give up what the device can do for them.

This is contrary to the accepted process of commoditization of software, services and hardware.

Many of this year’s software features add to the idea of ​​an Apple-only ecosystem.

Siri at 13 is getting an update with Apple Intelligence, which promises a significant improvement in Siri’s intelligence in the small language model that runs on the device, along with a design modernization (iPhone pulse edges) that makes it look less like Star Trek TOS Space Unit . Apple Intelligence will apparently only run on devices powered by Apple Silicon. Close.

Apple’s deal with OpenAI to bring ChatGPT to its devices was announced with some caveats.

Siri may also decide that an issue is better answered by ChatGPT, but Apple insists that the choice is up to the user and must be explicitly requested.

Even this cautious introduction of ChatGPT is in keeping with the company’s efforts to keep users on its platforms using the services it oversees. Close.

The new Genmoji feature brings AI image generation to Apple’s already weird emoji system, while Image Playground appears to create even weirder images for messaging. Could Trini’s stereotypical stereotypes of stereotypes be far behind? Close.

The app’s writing prompts and grammar correction directly challenge Grammarly’s value proposition.

It looks like the new Passwords will compete with 1Password and Last Pass and will work on iOS, macOS, iPadOS, VisionOS and Windows. Close.

1Password and Grammarly aren’t the only services that will be included in Sherlock in the new OS updates. Native voice transcription will boost your Otter subscriptions.

Window tiling (finally) competes with Magnet and Better Snap Tool. There are others, but their use is locally limited.

Mark Lyndersay is the editor of technewstt.com. You can find an extended version of this column there