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Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference is where the company flexes its muscles, showing off new features and unveiling release dates. At Monday’s W.W.D.C. keynote, C.E.O. Tim Cookand senior vice president of software engineering Craig Federighi didn’t just show off new products. Instead, they made it clear that Apple won’t hesitate to aggressively integrate features from competitors, some of which only exist because Apple had yet to incorporate their functionality.
Despite the absence of new products to unveil (no iPhone 6, no watch, no new Apple TV), the keynote was indeed impressive, and new software should be in the hands of consumers this fall. Among the big-name players that Apple gunned for while unveiling OS X Yosemite and iOS 8: Dropbox, Snapchat, WhatsApp, and Android/Google. Let’s take a look.
Dropbox: Apple’s new iCloud Drive offers a file storing and sharing system that seamlessly integrates with the most popular native iOS apps. The files are synced between iOS, OS X and Windows devices, and a Finder-like navigation will be familiar enough to Mac users (for the first time, a similar display will be available on iOS). Mail attachments can now be up to 5 GB.
Should they worry? Google Drive and Dropbox users are pretty loyal to their particular cloud-storage and sharing systems, so Apple has some hurdles to clear. And given that Apple’s own hitherto clumsiness in handling the “cloud” are mostly to blame for those hurdles, it may be playing catch-up for some time. But if the product works seamlessly enough, the built-in functionality may be attractive enough for users to make the switch (not to mention the less techie crowd, which Apple could easily win over).
Snapchat: Snapchat’s most unique feature is that photo, video, and text messages disappear after being viewed. It’s always been a relatively simple idea, with use cases that range from the racy to the mundane (“look what I cooked!”). Simple enough, it seems, that Apple can incorporate it directly into its Messages app—users will now be able to send video, photo, or audio messages that self-destruct. Now, iOS users will also be able to name group messages as threads, leave them whenever they please, and turn on or off notifications should a group become particularly chatty. Snapchat doesn’t offer group discussions of “snaps,” though you can either share a particular image, photo, or video with as many of your friends as you like, or broadcast a series of snaps to your entire feed.
Should they worry? Probably. Snapchat’s popularity rests in part on its ease of use, and because it isolates those types of interactions within a single app. But if Apple’s functionality works as easily as it did on the W.W.C.D. stage, users could be persuaded to consolidate their Snapchat behavior within Messages, which is Apple’s most popular app.
WhatsApp: WhatsApp C.E.O. Jan Koum wasn’t too pleased with Apple’s new iMessage functionalities, which mirror WhatsApp’s group text and notification features. He expressed his irritation with this amusingly passive-aggressive tweet:
Should they worry? With 500 million active users across the world and a fresh $16 billion from Facebook, WhatsApp is big enough to innovate on its own terms. But Koum is smart to be paying attention: Apple’s announcements make clear that the company is not willing to cede more and more ground to third-party messaging apps. If it’s a basic phone function, Apple wants to own it.
Google and Android: Tim Cook landed a few blows on Android, noting that Google’s mobile software platform “dominates" mobile malware, and highlighting Android’s difficulty at getting users to upgrade to the latest version of its software (89 percent of iOS users are on the latest large-scale release, while only 9 percent are on Android’s KitKat). Cook made certain to point out that nearly half of the iPhones sold in China were in the hands of former Android users who, in Cook’s words, “wanted a better experience.” Third-party keyboards, widgets, and interactive notifications (users will be able to reply to texts, accept calendar invites, and more in drop-down notifications) are already available in Android.
Apple took the liberties of further incorporating search into Safari, minimizing the need to actually access Google’s Web site or search results. As mentioned above, its Dropbox competitor is also looking to take a swing at Google Drive.
Should they worry? The Apple-Google wars have been going on for years, and will continue raging in mobile until Apple makes devices cheap enough to appeal to the entire smartphone market. Apple appears to be a smaller thorn in Google’s side, however, when it comes to search and Drive.
You can also use your computer to send texts to non-iOS friends (until now, you’ve only been able to send iMessages), and pick up and make phone calls. To demonstrate this functionality, Federighi denied a call from his mother and instead rang up Dr. Dre, the Beats Music executive on the receiving end of some $3 billion of Apple’s money. The phone call was predictably awkward, despite Dre’s attempt to make a joke (he asked what time he’ll be expected to report to duty at Apple headquarters).
Other features that were announced on Monday include family sharing of apps and other purchases (and a quick way for children to ask their parents for permission to purchase digital products); HealthKit, a body metric tool on which Apple is partnering with the likes of Nike+ and the Mayo Clinic; Handoff, a smarter link between iOS and “desktop” Macs that enables you to begin writing e-mails and messages on one device and seamlessly switch to another to finish composing; and Home Kit, which will allow iPhones to control thermostats, garage doors, cameras, and whatever else we blindly cede control to the robots before they gain sentience and eat us as snacks during breaks between games of 2048.
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