Apple Inc. has long been known as an innovator, but it seems to be losing its way.

At its annual Worldwide Developers Conference this past week in San Jose, California, Apple disappointed many industry observers who expected, or at least hoped, it would announce new hardware. Also, judging by the blizzard of innovations launched at their respective developer events, both Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp. came across as far better prepared than Apple to confront an AI-first future in mobile, edge and cloud computing.

Apple offered nothing revolutionary in terms of new products, technologies, or even a vision to distinguish it in a fiercely competitive market for mobility solutions. In fact, many of the new features of its next-generation iOS 12 device OS are me-too in nature:

• Apple’s forthcoming Core ML 2 is not appreciably different from Google’s recently released ML Kit.
• Apple’s forthcoming Siri Shortcuts feature is not all that different from Amazon’s Alexa Skills and Google Actions.
• Apple’s forthcoming “digital health” features in iOS12 are roughly in line with those that Google announced a few weeks ago in the next version of Android.
• Apple’s forthcoming Screen Time digital-health feature is similar to Google’s Family Linkand Android Dashboard.
• Apple’s forthcoming Measure app is equivalent to Google’s own AR measuring app of the same name.
• Apple’s forthcoming FaceTime group video calls are a capability that has been in Microsoft’s Skype and Google’s Hangouts for years.
• Apple’s forthcoming MeMoji animations are similar to Snapchat’s Bitmoji and Samsung’s AR Emoji.

So what exactly did Apple present at WWDC and what will it deliver in added value to its vast worldwide customer base? Its announcements and demonstrations focused on platform and tools to help developers make better apps for its iPhone, Mac, Apple Watch and other platforms.

New version of its developer tool

Apple made available the download of the beta of the next version of its Xcode programming tool. This tool contains the latest SDKs for all Apple operating systems and platforms.

Most notably, Xcode 10 enables developers to design apps that will work without modification on Macs, iPhones, iPads and other Apple hardware platforms. The tool supports access to the Face ID authentication service across Apple platforms. And it offers developers access to expanded near-field communication capabilities, so that NFC chips in iPhones can access enhanced payment support functionality.

New version of its desktop operating platform

Apple introduced macOS Mojave (aka macOS 14) the latest upgrade to its desktop OS. In this release, Apple is moving more features from iPhone over to the Mac, including the News Voice Memos, and Home apps, though the vendor said it has no plans to merge those operating systems completely. Mojave will be the last release of the OS to run 32-bit apps, and won’t run on most Macs that were produced before mid-2012. What it will incorporate are the following new features and enhancements:

• Dark Mode: This enables users to change the user interface’s look and feel in order to darken the display and dim harsh or bright elements.
• Dynamic Desktop: This causes the desktop and theme of the OS to change throughout the day.
• Desktop Stacks: This automatically declutters the desktop into folders of icons that stack and organize themselves by category or context.
• Finder Sidebar: This supports full metadata browsing for images, multimedia, documents and files, making it easier to understand what’s being looked at when browsing through the disk drive.
• QuickLook enhancement: This enables users to do context-aware editing from within previews of documents, images and other content items.

New version of its mobile device operating platforms

Apple delivered previews of forthcoming new versions of its device operating systems — iOS 12, WatchOS 5, tvOS 12 and MacOS Mojave — but those aren’t finished and won’t be widely released for several months. Most notably, it previewed iOS 12, which will have the following enhancements:

• Performance: iOS 12 apps will launch as much as 40 percent faster, the keyboard will appear 50 percent faster, and slide-to-take-a-photo will be 70 percent faster. Driving these speed improvement will be an OS processor performance metric that provides bursts of power when needed that then drop off quickly. However, Apple didn’t mention what the impact of this feature on battery usage might be.
• Photo search: iOS 12 will offer improved photo searching, with the ability to automatically categorize and prepare search suggestions, allow users to seek images from specific places, and refine searches based on context.
• Proximity sharing: iOS 12 will use end-to-end encryption and proximity sensors to allow users at the same event to share photos with one another.
• Digital health: iOS12 will include enhanced support for digital health, in the form of new tools to help consumers keep track of their mobile usage. It offers Do Not Disturb mode, which will calm down the phone during particular times of day and be activated at any time, triggered for a period of time, activated during an event, or end only after leaving a particular location. The operating system and Siri will allow users more control over managing notifications and iOS devices will now receive support for grouped notifications. Incoming notifications can be grouped not just by application, but category, context and user-defined metrics. And users can see how they use their phone over the week, including graphs of what apps are the most talkative, how often the user is tapping at their phone, picking up their phone or otherwise interacting with the device. iOS will also allow users to set time limits, or warnings, allowing them to better control their time on the phone.

New automation features for Siri platform

Digital assistants are a core focus for practical ML in Apple’s product architecture. In this regard, the Siri digital assistant now works on all Apple platforms and leverages embedded ML that is continually trained from locally acquired data, thereby protecting user privacy.

To help Siri users be more productive, Apple announced Siri Shortcuts, which helps users quickly automate tasks related to their apps, directly from the lock screen, in Spotlight or from the Siri watch face.  Users will be able to pull together different actions and trigger them with a single assigned word.

The feature uses Core ML to analyze users’ app-mediated daily routines and recommend personalized shortcuts, reminders and notification right when and where they’re needed, based on context such as location, time of day and type of motion such as walking, running or driving. Users will be able to assign their own custom voice activated lines with Siri. Shortcuts can also be set to trigger automated actions.

New development toolkit for its augmented reality platform

Immersive technologies are the foundation for a wide range of mobile, edge and embedded application in which Apple devices are being employed.

In that regard, Apple announced ARKit2, its next-generation augmented reality software development library for mobile devices. ARKit2 includes improved face tracking, realistic rendering, environment recognition and shared experience support. It enables multiple individuals to use their iOS devices to simultaneously view AR experiences or play multiplayer games, as bystanders spectate. It supports saving and resumption of AR experiences at a later time in the same state. And it lets them incorporate real-world objects into AR experiences, giving users greater immersive opportunities.

ARKit2 includes a new file format called Universal Scene Description or USDZ, which stores 3-D objects and animations in a zero-compression, unencrypted zip archive in which they can be rapidly modeled and placed into the real world by AR app developers. With USDZ assets, it’s possible to place fully interactive 3-D models into documents and web pages and, with a single click, bring fully animated 3-D objects out of a page on a mobile device and place them into the “real world” using AR.

Apple also launched Measure, an iOS AR app that uses a phone’s camera and sensors to accurately measure objects a device can see, transforming the device into a virtual measuring tape that can work in three dimensions, as well as automatically detect and measure rectangles and other shapes.

New features in its machine learning platform

Machine learning is the core of intelligent edge applications across all Apple devices and operating platforms, including iOS 11.0+, macOS 10.13+, tvOS 11.0+ and watchOS 4.0+.

The company announced Core ML 2, which supports faster on-device processing of more compacted ML models on iOS and its other operating systems. It supports an extensive set of standard ML and deep learning models; seamlessly leverages each device’s CPU and GPU for maximum performance and efficiency; and performs all ML/DL inferencing and training directly on the device.

In addition, Apple announced the new Create ML framework, which lets Swift developers build and train Core ML models with just a few lines of code and without need for ML expertise and to accelerate training of computer vision, natural language processing and interactive-gaming models, leveraging graphics processing unit-equipped Apple hardware platforms.

New sensitivity guidance in its app-store

Developers can easily run afoul of a gantlet of licensing, compliance, legal, privacy and other sensitive issues when they publish their wares out to the vast Apple worldwide user base.

In this regard, Apple updated its App Store Review Guidelines to address data security, cryptocurrency mining, free app trials, advertising and other sensitive topics, including proper handling of sensitive user data and prohibition on using this data to target users. For users, it has renamed iTunes Connect to App Store Connect and now provides an app that makes it easier to manage apps, view trends, respond to reviews, reply to active Resolution Center issues and receive push notifications of changes in app status and new customer reviews.

Speaking of sensitivity, were there any General Data Protection Regulation compliance tools or guidance for Apple’s enterprise customers? Not that I could detect, and there was no specific mainstage mention of this concern to match what Microsoft Chief Executive Satya Nadella had to say at the recent Microsoft developer event.

However, Apple did announce that its Safari Web browser on macOS Mojave and iOS 12 devices will now notify users when Facebook’s Like button (and similar “share” buttons and comment widgets) attempt to discreetly track their activity. It will also flag sites that attempt to “fingerprint” Web browsers and then use that to track people across websites.

Image: Kasman/Pixabay