Commonalities and differences in Apple’s and Google’s announcements

A great way to see the upcoming trends in technology is to see what the big players in the business are doing, in this case I’ll compare how Apple and Google see the future of technology by analyzing their announcements at their developer conferences.

Developer conferences are a big deal nowadays, some time ago there was not a lot of interest in tech company’s developer conferences, but that started to shift in the mid 00’s when Steve Jobs made these conferences exciting and something to look forward to. Now they are a big deal, anyone and everyone in the tech business is there to hear what these companies have to say, since they will dictate how we interact with technology in the near future.

In 2018 Google’s I/O conference was all about Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. Their focus was primarily in their Google Assistant service and how they will improve it with these technologies. A big example of this was Google Duplex, which they demonstrated in a mind-blowing example that left the audience’s jaws dropped, Google demonstrated how their technology through deep learning and and artificial intelligence could place a call for its user to make appointments, reservations, etc. and be undistinguishable from a human voice, from tone, to conversational nuances, duplex had it all down [2]. This in addition to the extensive amount of information that Google collects on their users will help their deep and machine learning technologies to serve their users by staying one step ahead of them to make their usage more efficient, from predicting text on emails to suggesting to share photos that you took with your friends, giving suggestions based on your past behavior and ordering a self driving car [2].

Although Apple also focuses on machine learning, by making its Siri service smarter and by allowing its users to make shortcuts to have commands that do things for them [1]. Although, Apple’s WWDC 2018 was focused around updating their operating systems, augmented reality and integration throughout mobile and desktop platforms [1]. Apple bet big on AR and launching ARkit for developers to play around and experiment with the technology which apple demonstrated with a multiplayer game in a shared environment based around AR, Apple launched its own utility app called Measure to showcase this technology allowing users to measure things with their camera through the technology [1].

A way that both companies were very similar was their commitment to allow users to monitor their own usage to counteract the trend towards people being stuck to their phones the whole time, but now I will point out some key differences that I found in the way they develop their technologies. Google stores all its information and integrates it to various platforms but Apple keeps all of its technology and information proprietary to its ecosystem of devices, this can be a strength or weakness depending on the case, but Google has better integration through platforms and expands its reach into more users through various devices. But Apple keeps its tech all to themselves limiting their reach but keeping more control over their ideal user experience.

References: 

[1] Apple WWDC 2018 https://www.apple.com/apple-events/june-2018/ 

[2] Google I/O 2018 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogfYd705cRs 

Users who have LIKED this post:

• 
•