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I'll try not to be too casually dismissive but let me start by saying your gushing reads nearly content-free. You asked to let you know if you're over-blowing i

• hardwaresofton 4y ago
  > I'll try not to be too casually dismissive but let me start by saying your gushing reads nearly content-free. You asked to let you know if you're over-blowing it and yes I believe you are. I'm a millennial and don't see anything that blows me away by this keynote. Appreciate it! Yeah, I figured maybe I'm just not used to enough WWDCs -- but surely they can't be this feature packed every time. There are some seriously good consumer-facing features in here, that I find it easy to not be cycnical about. > Should they be broken up? Yes, together with the other tech giants. Are they doing something that's particularly amazing compared to what Google is doing with the Pixel? Not really. Google was doing magic eraser before iOS 16. But this isn't really about just one feature in particular -- the combination of these features under Apple just seems more cohesive than when Google puts them together. When I see Google Pay, I don't think it's going to kill Venmo -- when I see Apple doing peer to peer payments, I worry for Venmo. There's also an implicit trust (their continued emphasis on "privacy", they're leaning into it hard), and Apple has built a reputation on having things be easy to use for the end user -- even if it's at the expense of control and power users. Google has less of that golden UX reputation, and a lot of people get really turned off by the proliferation of low price and also low quality devices that are full of bloat/spyware and end up sacrificing user time. Low price does not imply low quality, and I prefer the relative openness of the Android, but I have to admit that Apple does UX pretty well. > They're "just" a tech company, if a monolithic one. They're not meaningfully improving the lives of humans in a way that lifts millions out of mental illness. Emoji wallpapers are nothing more than distractive features to our inevitable suffering. This is interesting... uhh that's one of the biggest companies in the world. Not one of the biggest tech companies, one of the biggest companies period, by revenue. I'd argue they're doing a lot for improving lives of humans, though not necessarily related to mental illness -- that you have to lay at the feet of some of the social media companies and other things. Emoji wallpapers are distracting features, but what about the people who organize local protests or use their iPhones to look up vital information? Gotta take the good with the bad here -- most of the examples were also pictures of people who were important (i.e. presenters' family members). For example one of the presentations that really hit me was the easy of parental controls/time limits for devices -- in my mind they've just become the default correct choice for parents who have to grapple with how to control their childrens' exposure to the internet/content. It's a bit of a first world problem, but still it's one that parents the world over will have to deal with and they've chosen to spend time making it easy. Apple is somewhat sheltered from the bread-and-circus promoters designation in my mind because they really do produce tooling -- iDevices have stayed tools and for the most part are not as surveillance heavy as other similar tools. > Let's try and temper our praise of what tech companies are actually doing for humans so we can focus on what's important in life: the reduction of human suffering globally, improving outcomes in welfare holistically for all people everywhere. I agree with this sentiment, but it seems little weirdly moralistic -- the world is actually doing massively better, human suffering is trending downwards. It's not all gone obviously but most of human life is getting better -- Apple can do more to help move that along, but doesn't seem like a reason to downplay their accomplishments either. Again, I just want to state I'm not a diehard Apple fan, but I think I can reserve the right to be impressed!
  • kaba0 4y ago
    I’m not sure what exactly did you find that impressive, the whole thing was very “incremental update”-y to me. Several features probably spent more time under marketing than under development.
    • hardwaresofton 4y ago
      But these incremental updates tell a very compelling story to me looking at it holistically, and from a customer/user point of view. That's the thing about competition -- it just sneaks up on you, and the firms that are just slowly making really good incremental updates win over the long run. It's little by little, then all at once. For example, being able to clip your iPhone to your monitor, and get two camera feeds at once. This looks kind of silly and like a gimmick, but this is going to shake up the live streaming space a little bit. People have been mucking with buying DSLRs, setting up software, getting a second overhead camera, making sure things don't overheat. If they do this right, that's all over, and now more and more people are going to be using the iPhone (they probably already have) along with maybe an external monitor. At some point, a nerd will implement the pairing and use-as-camera ease (if it isn't already possible) on windows/linux, and it will get even easier. Another thing towards the end -- apple dipping it's toes into collaboration, and building it into the platform and across apps. Google is definitely reaching a lot of people with Chromebooks and building itself a platform, but Apple's UX and focus on being buttery smooth/sacrificing customization for widespread usability feels like it's going to win. Is Apple search inevitable? Isn't it basically already here? Every search that someone does from Spotlight is that much closer to being one less search that Google can see/monetize.
      • ColinHayhurst 4y ago
        > Isn't it basically already here? Every search that someone does from Spotlight is that much closer to being one less search that Google can see/monetize. Well yes, sort of already there, yes. But Google will still get to see/monetize for a while yet, as explained below. The class action lawsuit might accelerate that process. Apple’s WWDC announcement that Spotlight will now feature more prominently on home screens is the next step in directing your searches, with Siri and/or other search tools/partners. With Spotlight your are directed you to web search results not from the search preference set in your default browser, but instead for the preference set in Safari. And Google is the default preference in Safari. So Google will still see most of the searches (and keep paying $billions for the traffic). An example might illustrate this clearer: say Firefox is your default browser and Ecosia (or Mojeek) is set as your search preference. In this case the Spotlight search would go ahead and do the search in Firefox using the search preference set in Safari (which is likely to be Google). Ecosia or Mojjek or any other different choice you make, is bypassed. Astonishingly, even if you delete Safari, the default search choice of Safari will still be used by Spotlight.