Apple, which is "never satisfied", continues to attack from all sides

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Although the outside world had basically guessed what upgrades and new services Apple would release before the start of this year's Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), Apple still brought many surprises to everyone at the conference, one of which was the further enhancement of its software artificial intelligence. In the live demonstration that day, Apple showed that its latest OS X system can already recognize certain natural languages. The latest iOS 9 on the mobile side will make Apple's smart mobile devices more "alive" in the future: they can understand users' words, perceive changes in scenes, and feedback the results that users need most.

Another thing that has excited developers is the open source of the Swift programming language that Apple developed independently a year ago. Developers believe that this means that Apple's ambition to expand the application of the Swift language is further demonstrated.

In addition, Apple's mobile payment service Apple Pay continues to expand its territory. In addition to strengthening cooperation with Square, which will launch a new generation of card readers, Apple has also expanded the support of Apple Pay to the UK.

After today's conference, some other application service providers may be getting restless. Apple is attacking from all sides: the new News app aggregates news content and presents the most interesting content to users in an optimized and rich form, which will directly threaten Flipboard. The new Notes adds fonts, hand-drawing and other features, which will affect Evernote in the future. Apple Music, which Apple spent a lot of time introducing at this year's conference, has ushered in a strong competitor in the music subscription service market.

For Apple's latest generation product, Apple Watch, Apple also released an upgraded version of the Watch operating system at this conference, but apart from some improvements in usability and functionality, there are not many highlights.

This WWDC conference showed people an Apple that continues to expand its territory and is insatiable: in the solid and huge ecosystem that has been established, Apple's ambitions have not been restrained in the slightest. At least from this conference, Apple is making full efforts in developing languages, mobile payments, map applications, music subscriptions, media content aggregation, etc., and is either continuing to lead or catching up. With the further improvement of artificial intelligence and its application in personal computers and mobile terminals, Apple is one step ahead in the humanization and ease of use of its services.

Apple devices are getting smarter

Every year at the WWDC conference, the upgrade of the operating system OS for Apple computers and the operating system iOS for mobile devices such as iPhone and iPad is undoubtedly the main highlight. This year's conference is no exception, and Apple spent the most time introducing the newly upgraded OS El Capitan system and iOS 9.

Behind these regular upgrades, people see more powerful intelligent recognition that permeates almost everywhere in Apple systems. For example, in OS X, Apple has further strengthened the Spotlight search function. Unlike the previous search keywords that require computers to "understand", users can now use more natural language to search, and Apple computers can also understand it.

Apple senior vice president Craig Federighi demonstrated some of the features. For example, when you want to find unprocessed emails, you can enter "the mail I ignored last week" and the system will present you with the unprocessed emails from last week without requiring you to search for related senders or email subjects and other keywords to search.

In iOS 9, the "intelligence" of mobile devices is further demonstrated in the new generation of Apple's mobile operating system. For example, Federici demonstrated on site that users can directly say to Siri, "When I get into the car, remind me to get a cup of coffee." In other words, the system can now recognize the different scenarios in which users are in order to give corresponding results or actions. Another demonstration is a scenario that users often encounter in their daily lives. Suddenly a phone call comes in, the number seems familiar, but they can't remember whose number it is. Now iOS 9 can estimate the ownership of the number through a large amount of information in the phone, such as emails, text messages, etc., and the screen will show who the number may belong to.

An Apple app developer told Tencent Technology that he is beginning to worry more about Google. He believes that the built-in search function of the Apple system may be further developed in the future as the intelligence develops further, thus threatening Google's position in the search field.

The above improvements made by Apple at the operating system level all show its further efforts in device intelligence. With the continuous upgrading of software intelligence, the "smartphones" or other "smart" devices in everyone's hands will become more "alive" in the future: they can understand your words, perceive changes in scenes, make predictions, and truly become the personal butler and assistant of everyone's life.

As intelligence continues to develop, Apple has not forgotten to emphasize its emphasis on privacy to users: at the end of each specific function introduction, Apple will emphasize that all information is "on device, stays on device". Apple said that users can use it with confidence, all information will only be in your device, and users will always have control. (Always in control)

Open source Swift highlights Apple's ambitions

In addition to the regular upgrade introductions, another highlight of this year's WWDC conference that excited developers was Apple's announcement that its self-developed Swift language would be open source. When Federici announced the news on stage, the audience burst into the longest applause and cheers of the entire conference's keynote speech.

What does Swift open source mean? Many developers told Tencent Technology that this shows that Apple's ambition to expand Swift applications is more obvious, and open source is also the only way for Apple to expand the scope of Swift applications.

"Apple's intention is to make Swift a future language that can be seen everywhere, not just on the iPhone, but also on the server," a developer told Tencent Technology. He believes that this will definitely be good for the further establishment of Apple's ecosystem.

eBay software engineer Vincent told Tencent Technology that this means Swift can not only be used for OS or iOS development, but also for any cross-platform program development, just like Python, Java and other languages.

"Apple has big ambitions for Swift, and open source is indispensable if it wants to expand its territory," said Vincent.

He believes that when Apple launched the first generation of Swift last year, it was still very imperfect, but it is much better now, so when it launched Swift 2.0 this year, it had the confidence to announce its open source release.

It is not difficult to foresee that as Swift is open source, its application will become more and more widespread. Just as Federici said at the scene, Swift should be "ubiquitous and used by everyone", which has well summarized Apple's "ambition" to promote Swift. On the very solid ecosystem that Apple has already built, Swift may further consolidate Apple's empire from the bottom up.

Apple Pay leads Watch OS but few highlights

Since the announcement of Apple Pay last year, Apple Pay has been advancing rapidly. At today's WWDC conference, Apple Pay announced a partnership with Discover, the fourth largest card issuer after Visa, MasterCard and American Express, and will enter the UK next month. In order to further strengthen the integration of Apple Pay and merchant membership points system, Apple simply renamed the original "Passbook" application to "Wallet". According to Apple Vice President Jennifer Bailey's introduction on the spot, in the future, when using Apple Pay, it will be able to automatically select the most suitable credit card for consumption according to different merchants. For example, when a user consumes at Macy's, if the user has a Macy's points credit card, Apple Pay will give priority to this credit card and will automatically accumulate points.

In addition, Apple also announced further cooperation with Square. In order to support Apple Pay, Square will launch a new generation of card readers later this year to fully support Apple Pay.

eBay mobile product manager Li Hai told Tencent Technology that Square has achieved a very high penetration rate among small and medium-sized businesses in the United States. Now that Apple has successfully connected with Square's market, it will undoubtedly gain the upper hand in the field of mobile payments.

Apple's launch of a streaming music service had been hyped by the outside world before the WWDC conference, but some developers were not optimistic about it and even felt that the conference spent a lot of time introducing "Apple Music" at the end, which was boring.

One developer believes that Apple no longer has the dominant influence in music that it once had. He said that in the past iPod era, Apple had an advantage, and Jobs even ridiculed music subscription services at that time, but people's payment habits have indeed changed over the years, from buying music to subscribing to music streaming services.

He believes that the market for music subscription services is now fragmented and this trend is inevitable. It will be difficult for Apple to regain its advantage in this field.

In the United States, the main music subscription services include Spotify, Pandora, Google Play, etc. Some developers believe that Apple wants to grab a certain share of this "big cake".

For Apple Watch, a new product that Apple has just launched a few months ago, at this developer conference, Apple launched an upgraded Watch OS. However, some developers believe that this upgrade does not have many groundbreaking elements, but only improves some functions and usability. Natural bottlenecks such as small screen and short battery life of smart watches limit the imagination space in application development.