Apple unveiled hundreds of new features in the newest versions of its mobile and desktop operating systems on Monday, the first day of the company’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco.
“There were a lot of incremental gains in the areas of health and security,” said Kevin Krewell, a principal analyst at Tirias Research, a high-tech research and consulting company based in San Jose, Calif. “There were a lot of minor advances in the areas of health and security.”
The concept of “Apple stuff works better with Apple things in the Apple environment” was also carried over, according to him, according to TechNewsWorld.
Added Gartner Senior Principal Analyst Tuong Nguyen, “The focus of the whole presentation seemed to be on making Apple products more helpful for customers.”
FaceTime has received enhancements in the latest version of Apple’s mobile operating system, iOS 15, that make online interaction between groups of people more realistic. These enhancements include the use of spatial audio, voice isolation, and the use of “portrait” mode for faces, among other things.
Trying to Keep Up With Zoom
It also broadened the program’s sharing capabilities as well as its reach outside of Apple’s “walled garden,” according to the company.
According to Tim Bajarin, president of Creative Strategies, a technology consulting company in Campbell, Calif., “They significantly extended FaceTime’s capabilities so that it can be utilized in collaboration.”
Nevertheless, he told TechNewsWorld, “Apple did not eliminate the 32-user limit for FaceTime.” “Businesses who utilize video conferencing need 50, 100, or more participants in their conferences and seminars, so I don’t see how Apple’s new capabilities will enable it to compete with the Zooms of the world,” says the author.
The company is instead offering more services to a larger customer audience, according to the expert’s explanation of the situation.
Apple’s forthcoming improvements to FaceTime, according to Mark N. Vena, a senior analyst with Moor Insights & Strategy, a technology research and consulting company headquartered in Austin, Texas, were motivated by competition in the online group meetings sector, according to Vena.
His comments to TechNewsWorld were summed up as follows: “They’re obviously feeling the pressure on their videoconferencing applications.” It has been determined that it is necessary to open it up and enable access to FaceTime calls from Android devices or a web browser.
This removes conference calls from the confines of the “walled garden,” according to the author’s conclusion. “It will be fascinating to see what this means for Apple’s messaging app in the coming months.”
Investment in artificial intelligence and machine learning
However, although Krewell acknowledged that the new FaceTime features were welcome additions, he maintained that the software was still very much a part of Apple’s exclusive environment.
As he explained to TechNewsWorld, “it is not an open platform.” The API for developers has been updated, and we’ll have to wait and see whether other platforms take up the mantle and link it to their systems.
The senior analyst at Reticle Research, a consumer technology consulting company based in New York City, Ross Rubin, said, “If they want to be a more viable alternative to Zoom, they have to give outside access to FaceTime.”
TechNewsWorld quoted him as saying that “Apple continues to invest significantly in artificial intelligence and machine learning with iOS 15.” “We can see this in the new notification modes that learn your habits, the new translation capabilities, and the matching of music to your pictures,” says the author.
“We also see a clearer distinction between what they’re doing with the iPad and what they’re doing with the phone,” he said. It’s a combination of an enhanced user interface and the porting of the app library feature from iOS that’s enhancing the iPad’s content possibilities.
Another new feature in iOS is Live Text, which allows you to type in real-time. It enables you to aim the camera of an iPhone at any text in the real world — such as on a whiteboard or on signs — and have it converted to digital text at the touch of a button with one click.
The function is also useful for pictures that have been saved on the camera’s memory card — and it is intelligent. If you catch a phone number, you will be able to call the number immediately after capturing it.
Control over the whole universe
Apple is also beefing up its presence in the electronic keys market with the release of iOS 15. As Krewell pointed out, “one of the most intriguing aspects about the new iOS is the addition of keys into the Apple wallet.”
“”You can open your hotel room from your phone and keep ID cards in your wallet because of ultrawide band connection,” he said. That is very handy.”
Another new feature in the next version of iOS is the ability to see how much of a phone’s resources are being used by an app. As Vena said, “They’re giving you a report card on how well the applications are working on your phone.”
“It enables a user to get their hands around what an application is doing,” he said.
The company also introduced a new version of macOS (Monterey), an update to iPadOS, a new wearable operating system called watchOS, and an additional service called iCloud+.
Apple is launching a new feature called Universal Control in macOS that will allow users to control their computer from any location.
“Their cross-device synchronization is much more comprehensive than in the past,” Bajarin said. If you have Universal Control installed on your computer, you may use it to share a keyboard and mouse, or even files, across many devices.”
“It’s the most obvious illustration that we’ve seen in a long time of how their products function better together,” Rubin said, adding that
Marketers are being seen in a negative light.
Apple is also tightening the screws on privacy with the next macOS, which will be released in September.
“They’re not going to tell you whether or not your email has been opened,” Vena said. “They are not going to disclose their IP address. Not having access to those data points may make things more difficult for adtech firms, as previously said.”
Users may also establish “throwaway” email accounts using a function in Apple’s iCloud+ service, which enables them to send emails to themselves. When login into websites or replying to offers on the internet, such email addresses may be utilized to minimize the usage of a main email account, which can save time.
“They’re really undermining the capacity of these app businesses to remarket to you,” Vena said.
In addition, iCloud+ offers a function known as Private Relay. Krewell stated that Private Relay “proxies your position and prevents you from being traced.”
“A lot of the characteristics of a VPN are being included into iCloud+,” Vena said.
Apple is enhancing the multitasking capabilities of the iPad with the latest version of iPadOS, making it simpler to switch between several windows, as well as introducing a fast notes function and a “shelf” feature.
It’s also increasing the size of widgets on the iPad’s home screen, according to Apple.
The Health Market is ripe.
When it comes to exchanging medical information, Apple has made it easier than ever before with the new watchOS.
According to Bajarin, “being able to monitor another person’s health information, with their consent, sounds like a good idea.”
In his words, “we’re approaching an era in which you’ll have a lot of Millennials with old parents who live thousands of miles away, but who want to know about their parents’ health on an ongoing basis.”
Rubin said that the health care industry is an area where Apple can get an advantage over its competitors.
It’s because they’re running behind schedule in a lot of the media-centric services that they provide, he said. “Spotify was there in the music sector long before Apple Music arrived. With television, they had to build from the ground up in order to compete with Netflix, Disney, and HBO Max.”
“When it comes to health, there isn’t a whole lot out there,” he added. Apple Fitness is not the only exercise subscription service in competition with it. “However, there is nothing that competes with the sorts of things Apple is doing with fall detection and medical records.”
“It’s also a place where Apple’s emphasis on privacy, as well as their reputation for trust, has a genuine potential to pay rewards,” he said.
Despite the fact that augmented reality was not a primary emphasis of Apple’s WWDC event, Nguyen saw clues of the company’s AR ambitions throughout the presentation.
“Take, for example, spatial audio, which may be used to augmented reality,” he said further. “The 3D maps that they discussed may be used in augmented reality applications. It was also discussed how to make object capture more straightforward — where a 3D object may be produced by stitching together a series of pictures of an item — which is a significant issue for developers and content producers in the augmented reality space today.”
In his words, “Everything they’re doing here is laying the groundwork for something much, much larger.” In the short term, these separate announcements may thrill certain groups of customers; but, when these parts come together and become more sophisticated, consumers will look back and say, ‘We should have noticed the clues,'” says the author.
