Top Articles: Apple Announcements and Implications
Week 38, 2018
The Apple Conference 2018 was held on September 12. Much was discussed, but the stars of the show were the three new iPhones and the new Apple Watch. Apple has thrown its full force behind new AI technology, which has led to some pretty interesting developments. They also continued the trend of investing in health technologies. However, these announcements had implications for multiple industries. There will be many companies who benefit from these features, but it will cause some friction in others and not necessarily the ones you might think.
The New Apple Watch Shows the Money Big Tech Sees in Health
By Zachary Tracer, Spencer Soper, Gerrit De Vynck, and Dina Bass from Bloomberg
The new Apple Watch had quite the emphasis on health tracking, including performing an actual ECG. This is the deepest foray into health tech that Apple has gone and it is representative of a trend happening in the larger tech world. Amazon bought an online pharmacy, Google’s Calico is working on how to make you live longer, Microsoft has its AI working on cancer research, and Uber and Lyft have initiatives to summon rides specifically for health-related reasons, just to name a few. Investments in health tech is also booming in Venture Capital as well. The likely reason for this according to experts is that healthcare is too big a market and too personal an issue for these companies to ignore. It’s an obvious pain point for many consumers and tech companies want to solve it.
Apple’s Latest iPhones Are Packed With AI Smarts
By Tom Simonite from Wired
Like all the other tech companies in Silicon Valley and China, Apple has heavily invested in AI for their new devices. What’s interesting about Apple is that for the first time ever, they are allowing non-Apple developers to run algorithms on their AI-software. In short, this means that we can expect new experiences on the new devices. Apple even showcased this with a few interesting AR demos. It’s been discussed in the past how crucial Apple ARKit is to AR’s success, so this speaks volumes to its potential.
What’s at the Core of the Latest Apple Announcement?
With Benedict Evans and Steven Sinofsky from a16z Podcast
Apple is in a unique position where it has to release new products every year for an extremely loyal audience, which means that its announcements often multiple layers of implication. Many of their products reuse previous products, which is a crucial point of innovation: it doesn’t always have to be something brand new to be innovative. In this podcast episode, two of the top names in tech share their thoughts on the new announcements and provide some interesting future analysis. Topics range from how the new tech works to what it is actually for.
Who Are The Winners And Losers From Today’s Apple Announcement?
By Paul Armstrong from Forbes
Apple’s announcements obviously benefit some industries more than others. With healthcare, for example, professionals will likely have access to more data, which can help them determine better treatments. On the other hand, this focus on health tech could affect brands like Fitbit whose products only have a couple functions. On a similar note, industries with other competing products may have something to worry about. For example, Apple is taking on messaging apps like Snapchat and Facebook Messenger with some really nice cameras and animoji, which could pull some market share. Smart speakers are probably still safe though.
Designing Web Content for watchOS
From Apple Developer
As a little bonus, Apple Watches can now display websites. Users can actually surf the web on their watches, which means that many webpages will need to be reconfigured to optimize the watch interface. Apple put together a nifty video on how to do just that.
