I have to admit, I’m a little disappointed with Apple’s lack of any hardware announcements today. Mostly because i hold Apple stock, and “The Street” had high expectations for new products today – I’m holding my breath to see what happens short-term to their stock price.
But, if you look under the hood, Apple is making some significant investments in their foundational platform. These investments should play out very favorably over the next months and years.
iCloud – my biggest complaint with iCloud is that storage was expensive, and integration was clunky. That’s all changed. Apple announced pricing today that is 25% of the cost as dropbox, with what I would argue is better integration if you are in the Apple ecosystem. I also found it interesting that they showcased other 3rd party cloud integrations, with dropbox not showing up at all.
Health – Their new health app and health kit will enable 3rd parties to contribute to a centralized view of your individual health and wellness. Additionally, it will allow you to communicate and collaborate with your medical providers.
Home and Family – As a frustrated user of smart-things, I realize the need for a well-designed, central location of connected things in your home. Don’t under-estimate this announcement from Apple. It will slowly revolutionize how you manage your home. Apple is also being very coy about the power of their new entry into their understanding of your family. A common notion of “family” is extremely powerful. Apple will eventually give me the tools to manage my home schedule, devices, and media from a central location.
Messaging and Phone Calls – Apple has finally achieved integration with your cellular presence and your computer usage. Being able to transfer phone calls from your phone to your laptop, and back again, was a pleasant surprise for me.
Metal – Apple is quietly eliminating console gaming platforms. Metal boots 3D performance so significantly on iOS devices that you will be able to use your iPhone to play games that will rival consoles 9at least for 90% of consumers – there will be that ‘fringe’ 10% of gamers that notice the shadows are not quite as deep, or that the polygon count is a little rougher than a console game). If Apple finally pulls the AppleTV out of “Hobby” status, the combination of iOS and the AppleTV could totally eliminate the console gaming industry.
Swift – Apple is doing for their developers what they have done for most consumers – they are making the development process more approachable. By simplifying code, and abstracting many of the common, difficult coding tasks into toolkits, they are making the world of development easier to enter. I believe the new development language Apple announced today, Swift, will double their development community in the next 18 months.
But, the most intriguing thing to me about what Apple announced today, was how integrated their thinking is. The features in iOS and OSX are integrated thoughtfully. Their toolkits for developers allow those developers to take advantage of Apple’s advances extraordinary quickly. And, after many poorly designed tries, they are starting to leverage The Cloud in a way that will actually emancipate their customers from technology
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