A Look At OS X Yosemite And iOS 8.1
by Brandon Chester on October 27, 2014 8:00 AM ESTConclusion
It has definitely been a busy few months in the Apple world. September delivered the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, along with iOS 8, and a preview of the still mysterious Apple Watch. This month we got the iPad Air 2, the iPad Mini 3, the iMac with Retina 5K display, iOS 8.1, Apple Pay, and OS X Yosemite. Those last three points are some of the most interesting, and they all happen to be part of Apple's software ecosystem. I don't think that's a coincidence. We're reaching a point where it's becoming more and more difficult to differentiate your products based on hardware alone. Great software driving a great experience is where the focus needs to be moving forward.
Apple's strategy to provide that experience appears to be deep integration of their services across all of their product lines. It starts with the cloud, with new additions to iCloud like iCloud Drive and Photo Library. From there it goes to software commonality, with a design language that exists on both iOS and OS X, and applications that exist on both platforms. On the opposite end of the spectrum from the cloud are the new continuity features which provide integration between all the devices that you have right there with you. SMS Forwarding and iPhone call transferring expands communication on iPad and the Mac to new areas, while Handoff makes the transition between applications seamless and accurate right down to where your cursor was.
What interests me the most about Apple's stategy is how it provides incentive for a user with one Apple device to buy other Apple devices. This exists to a certain degree with other manufacturers as well. If you own a Samsung smartphone, you may be more inclined to buy a Samsung tablet due to the similar hardware design and user interface. But apart from any brand loyalty you feel, you don't really have any incentive to buy a Samsung laptop which runs Windows and doesn't integrate with your other devices. Apple's integration covers their entire lineup of devices. An iPhone user has a lot to gain by choosing a MacBook over a Windows Ultrabook, and an iPad over a Nexus 9. It would be interesting to analyze what percentage of people purchasing a new Apple device already own one or more Apple products.
Overall, I'm happy with the work that Apple has done with iOS 8.1 and OS X Yosemite. It's clear that a lot of this has been in the works for some time now, and integrating products and services to this degree requires a lot of planning to position your hardware and software so that it will be capable of working together in the ways you want them to. The Yosemite redesign has also gone quite well, and there aren't as many jarring inconsistencies as there were with iOS 7 at launch despite OS X being a more expansive operating system. Apple has definitely learned from their experiences with the iOS redesign. That being said, there is still a lot of work to do. Apple Pay needs to expand rapidly, and iCloud Photo Library isn't as far developed as I had expected it to be.
It's hard to say where Apple will go as we move forward. It will be hard to outdo the work that has been done with Yosemite. However, history tells me that there are still great things yet to come from Apple. It seems that year after year Apple is able to make updated products and proclaim them to be the biggest advancements in that product's history, and regardless of my initial reaction, I somehow always find myself agreeing .
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KoolAidMan1 - Monday, October 27, 2014 - link
Maybe its because the products are actually good?Nope, its collusion and misinformation, says the fanboy.
mabellon - Monday, October 27, 2014 - link
Cool links. I completely forgot Samsung even had this. It would be nice if it was at least mentioned in the article.That said, Samsung's solution is the cheap hacky thing you do when you don't control the software on both platforms. It's mostly just shared input (keyboard/mouse) and copy+paste support. For example, using your phone as a second screen to respond to an SMS while cool is not at all the same as responding seamlessly from the OSX Messages app. Better than nothing and still would have been nice to see a mention in the review.
Also, I read the links you posted and they had nothing to do with the actual point made by Brandon in the article. His point was that there was no incentive to purchase a SAMSUNG laptop. As far as I can tell, Samsung SideSync works with any Windows PC. And frankly that makes sense because Samsung doesn't sell that many PCs.
Bob Todd - Monday, October 27, 2014 - link
Frankly, that looks retarded. My Atrix had a laptop dock with some full desktop Linux apps like Firefox, that doesn't mean it was a good experience. And that's the key here. Features for the sake of features that aren't worth using vs. things that will make your life easier.I'm predominately a Windows and Android user (Apple for work), but the integration with iOS 8.1 and Yosemite has some nice features which I hope Microsoft rips off for Windows 10.
* SMS Relay: don't have to check my work phone for texts, just respond from my laptop
* Answer calls directly from my laptop without fumbling for my phone
* Instant hotspot: don't have to grab phone, unlock, turn on tethering when I need to get online remotely
Even ignoring Handoff, those are nice features that can make your day-to-day life easier. I think Apple has actually been doing a _terrible_ job of integration across their products until now. They are unique in this space as controlling all of their hardware and software. This stuff should have been here 2 years ago.
In my dream world, Microsoft and Google make APIs to do these same things that work between their devices. Chrome OS doesn't fit my needs. Windows Phone app ecosystem still sucks. So unless they work through this together, just one of them building this functionality in a closed manner for _their_ systems won't do me any good.
Impulses - Friday, October 31, 2014 - link
There's literally dozens of apps on Play that accomplish the same thing as SMS Relay... I am jealous of call forwarding tho (then again I don't really talk much on the phone) and super jealous of instant hotspot. I'm gonna have to work on a Tasker shortcut to at least activate the hotspot on my phone from my smartwatch.gudomlig - Monday, October 27, 2014 - link
typical of apple. new features limited to small subset of hardware. why would you ever need applepay for a desktop or laptop is beyond me. and transparent windows and flatter presentation...um windows aero anyone? apple has totally lost their innovation, they are just copying what their competitors have already done.tim851 - Monday, October 27, 2014 - link
> why would you ever need applepay for a desktop or laptop is beyond meProbably as a PayPal alternative.
SirPerro - Monday, October 27, 2014 - link
I know a good paypal alternative. It's called credit card.Apart from NFC/Simplicity for the act of paying in a store, what does apple pay offer in a laptop which paypal/credit cards haven't offered for years?
Furthermore. How is ApplePay supposed to success on a niche operating system anyway?
invinciblegod - Monday, October 27, 2014 - link
thats a horrible paypal alternative. Apparently you forgot why people like paypal, which is that you don't need to make a new account for every website and the website don't get your credit card information.solipsism - Monday, October 27, 2014 - link
1) Pay coming to Mac OS X would mean a secure element on the device, tokens being stored for each card, and perhaps a convenient biometric to help prove your identity, just like Pay on the iPhone 6 series.All that is inherently more secure than storing your actual card numbers on your OS. That said, I think that would be a flawed setup because, currently, Pay rightly only works with direct payments and within apps, neither of which is feasible on a laptop or desktop.
What Apple would have to do is grow their Pay concept into having the financial institutions issue a unique token for each website/company that you have an account with so that if any one of those server's gets compromised it can't be used to make payments -or- create a service that is closer to PayPal so that no website will ever store your personal card data again, but that will mean Apple will be a middle man, which I don't think they want to do.
Regardless of how they proceed the current Pay system isn't complete if purchases on websites are weak point in terms of security.
2) Calling iOS "niche" or simply not including it with a comment about Mac OS X in a discussion about a service to service an ecosystem is ridiculous. Are you going to say that Pay will be useless on Watch that runs WatchOS simply because it will be a new OS when it launches? The multination and financial institutions are already backing Pay. It was a success before it ever launched. This is the future of mobile banking. Now that the path is being paved and the backend rejiggered there is no reason for others (save for contracts) to jump on board with a similar secure end-to-end system.
Bob Todd - Monday, October 27, 2014 - link
You can turn on tethering on your Windows Phone from Windows on your laptop? You can answer calls on your Windows laptop from your Windows phone? You can send/receive texts from your Windows laptop through your Windows phone?Bottom line is that Microsoft is just as guilty as Apple at doing a crap job of integration across their devices.