Last week I saw the Apple 2014 Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC). I admit I wasn’t in San Francisco in the auditorium. I was at home watching the live stream through my Apple TV.
The benefit of living in London is it was on at 6:00pm local time. As opposed to 3:00am Melbourne time, when most people are asleep.
And I saw the head honchos at Apple debut the new operating systems for Mac and iOS. These are OS-X Yosemite and iOS8.
These new operating systems are supposed to help all Apple devices work together in a seamless operation. What it means is Apple wants to lock you in to their ecosystem more than ever before.
And in part two of our WWDC coverage I’m going to explain to you two more key aspects of Apple’s master plan.
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Apple wants to control your entire existence
After much self-congratulation and crowd approval over OS-X Yosemite, Tim Cook and Craig Federighi stepped us through the really big announcements.
First it was time for some more competitor bashing. Cook had already got a taste for this when he introduced OS-X Yosemite. A soft blow to the chin of Microsoft and Google. But this time round, he let rip a fully-fledged attack on Google.
Again, first a few numbers to pump up just how happy Apple is with their own work.
Currently the iPod has shipped over 100 million units. The iPad, over 200 million. And the piece-de-resistance, the iPhone, has now moved over 500 million units worldwide.
But the cream on the cake is the number of new users added in the last year. Over 130 million customers in the last year have bought their first Apple device.
Cook went on to explain that the bulk of those customers have switched from Android to Apple. Which isn’t all that surprising, considering Android is still the most widely used operating system in the world.
But Cook specifically mentioned the change was due to customers wanting a ‘better experience’. He backed that statement up claiming a 97% satisfaction rating across Apple products. This is a figure unheard of when it comes to tech hardware.
But the real Google-attack came as Cook said ‘Nearly half of our customers in China in the past six months switched from Android to iPhone’. He went on to say of many of the switches, ‘They had bought an Android phone…by mistake.’
And to top it all off was a quote from Apple fanboy, Adrian Kingsley-Hughes, and Editor at ZDNet, ‘Android fragmentation is turning devices into a toxic hellstew of vulnerabilities.’
This was all just a warm up to the actual substance of the new iOS8. It was clear Cook wanted to make a point that Apple was aiming squarely at Google as their number one competitor.
It helps when, between iPhone, iPad and iPod (all running iOS) there are now130 million new people part of the ‘Apple family’.
This isn’t lost on Apple, or their competition. And because of the continued growth in new users, Apple are changing direction not to just take over your devices…they want to take over your health and your home.
No more ‘sickies’
One of the biggest new additions to Apple’s ecosystem is HealthKit. The premise behind this is an application that brings together all your health information and diagnostics.
Let’s say for instance you have a FitBit. This tracks your activity, sleep patterns, heart rate and calories burned (it approximates this). And then lets say you have an iPhone enabled blood/glucose add-on. You use this to monitor your blood glucose levels on your iPhone.
Currently these separate third party apps and devices don’t talk to each other. You need separate apps to manage and monitor everything.
HealthKit or the standalone app, ‘Health’ brings all that information together into one app. It then builds a health profile for you. Here’s the tricky part though. The app can communicate directly with your healthcare provider.
That’s right, directly. So if your health profile indicates you need some medical treatment, it can let your doctor know and speed up the treatment process.
This is another step forward in the Immersive Technology trend I identified early last year. It’s where all aspects of your physical life blend with your digital world to improve how you live.
That includes apps and devices working together in harmony to help you manage your health better. It also means healthcare can be far more proactive rather than reactive.
It also means you’ll never get a ‘fake sickie’ ever again!
The push by Apple into every aspect of your life doesn’t stop with your health. At WWDC they also released into the wild Apple HomeKit.
And like HealthKit, this is a one-stop shop for (you guessed it) all your home-related apps.
Your house is more alive than you think
The connected ‘smart home’ is a growing industry and also part of the immersive technology trend. You might start with lights you can control from your phone. Then you might add a door lock where you can see who’s at the door, and even remotely unlock the door for guests.
And of course you can automate and control other home devices now like your oven, slow cooker and of course thermostat.
However right now we use separate apps to control these functions. Not anymore. Apple has worked with leading home automation companies to bring us HomeKit. Now you can bring together all of these controls and devices into one central application.
Imagine you’re ready to go to bed. Right now you’d turn off the TV, switch off the lights, make sure the garage door is closed and the front door locked. You’d probably spend five to 10 minutes stuffing around to make sure everything is as it should be before you get a good night’s sleep.
Now think of that process in a different way. Imagine being ready for bed, simply saying into your phone, ‘I’m going to bed,’ and the whole process is automated for you. That means the TV turns off, the lights dim and eventually turn off, the front door locks and the garage door closes. All this with one voice command.
This isn’t the stuff of the future anymore. It’s the stuff of now.
HomeKit and HealthKit are currently in the hands of Apple developers. They’ve got the beta test copies of both OS-X Yosemite and iOS8.
That means they’re working on all these things ready for general public release by the US Fall (Autumn).
There’s no doubt much of this is due to Google’s foray into the connected home and personal health. Now Apple has raised the bar and effectively said, ‘Bring it on Google.’
However, it looks like the way this will pan out is there will be a great divide. You’re either Apple or Google. As we push through the rest of this year and into the next, both Apple and Google will make it harder to use cross-platform devices.
Soon enough you’ll have to pick a side. Whether you like it or not immersive technology will be a way of life. Your health and your home will connect with your digital life. This is immersive technology and it inevitable.
This will be the biggest battle of the coming decade. Is there’s space for both? I’m not sure yet. However there’s no doubt competitors like Microsoft will fall away.
The Apple and Google war has begun.
Sam Volkering+
Technology Analyst, Money Morning
Ed Note: The above article was originally published in Tech Insider.
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