iOS 11, Android O: What Apple can learn from Google's IO17

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kristine
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iOS 11, Android O: What Apple can learn from Google's IO17

Postby kristine » 22 May 2017 09:59

"Great artists steal" in the sense of recognizing good existing ideas and building upon them. Now that Google has laid out its hand at IO17, detailing its plans for Android O and the search giant's various apps and services, what great ideas can Apple borrow for its own products? Here's a look.

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Google Lens

One of the flashiest things Google showed was Lens, an app that makes use of Augmented Reality, OCR and (2017's Buzzword) Machine Learning to identify objects using the camera and provide contextual data about them. It makes for a cool demo, but is this app--built upon the very nifty Word Lens AR translation app Google acquired three years ago--really a core foundation of Google's Android development platform?

Google Photos

Google Photos introduced a couple interesting features (including the potentially rather dangerous idea of automatically sharing photos it thinks are of a given contact to that person) but it, too, is an app driving data to Google, not a development platform. Photos took up a sizable chunk of the company's keynote just to show off, essentially, face recognition. That's not really new.

Google fluffs the cloud

Google Photos new ability to effortlessly share albums with family members is something Apple hasn't shown off before (Apple Photo's iCloud Sharing is not automatic and has other limitations), but it's a technically minor feature that could be dribbled out as a x.1 feature update were it from any other app developer.

Google Assistant as a search engine

At IO17, Google's voice Assistant was demoed as a text-oriented bot--effectively exposing the service as a conventional search engine. Apple's Siri already lets you edit its interpreted voice requests, but adding a fully text-based way to interact with Siri (similar to Spotlight Intelligence, with a wider scope) would be a welcome addition in iOS 11. Along those lines, Apple has already patented the idea of integrating Siri into iMessage conversations.

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