With iOS 8, Apple Shows Android a Thing or Two

What's This?

Craig Federighi, vice president of software engineering at Apple Inc., left, shakes hands with Tim Cook, chief executive officer of Apple Inc., on stage during the Apple World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC) in San Francisco, California, U.S. on Monday, June 2, 2014.

By Pete Pachal2014-06-03 01:30:20 UTC

The word "seamless" gets thrown around a lot in technology demos. But I don't think I've ever seen a better example of the concept than in Monday's keynote at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference, when senior vice president Craig Federighi showed Handoff — part of the new "Continuity" feature in iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite.

Handoff lets you begin a task on an iPhone, then pick up right where you were on another device that's close by. You start composing an email on your iPhone and — presumably when you realize you have more to say than you thought — you put it down and pull out your Mac, resuming right where you left off by clicking one button.

Syncing data over the cloud is nothing new. Google has been doing it for more than a decade with Gmail and Google Drive.

But the seamlessness of the experience, where devices in close proximity know what the other is up to — that's the kind of thing that really needs an end-to-end approach, one that takes into account both software and hardware.

In other words, to make something like Handoff, you need be Apple.

With that same approach, Apple is also in a good spot to launch platform initiatives such as HealthKit, which powers the new Health app, and HomeKit. Tracking health and fitness is by its nature hardware-dependent; after all, you need gadgets with sensors to gather the information.

Since Apple controls the iPhone, it controls the hub for all the data (and if the iWatch is real, it'll soon control the sensors, too).

By contrast, Android needs individual manufacturers to launch centralized initiatives, and so far only Samsung (with S Health and the highly tentative SAMI platform ) has shown any desire to do so. Without a push from Google, health tracking on Android will remain a relatively ad hoc affair.

HomeKit also shows Apple is taking advantage of its position. Google may have fired the first shot in the home-automation war by acquiring Nest, but Apple may have the stronger weapon.

As Federighi described it, HomeKit will enable one dream scenario of the "connected home": Just tell Siri to "get ready for bed," and the garage door will close, the door will lock and the thermostat will lower.

So far, Android doesn't have anything comparable. But even if similar features arrive in the next version, Google will have a tough time convincing consumers that Android will safeguard their privacy and security as well as iOS might (the stat that Tim Cook cited, that 99% of mobile malware targets Android, happens to be true).

Sure, there were a few moments where Apple had to stop and play catch-up. The feature in iOS 8 that lets you get SMS text messages (and not just iMessage texts) as well as phone calls on your Mac is really just following Android vendors like Motorola and Samsung, who have already been doing that.

Nevertheless, it exposes the fact that Apple can introduce these features in a singular manner — whereas on Android, each manufacturer has to come up with their own solution.

Android is an incredibly modern OS. It enables smartphones and tablets to do great things. But the next frontier is taking mobile experiences beyond the phone, by building solid bridges to your other devices, appliances and even cars.

Everyone in the industry recognizes this. But at WWDC 2014, Apple showed it's better positioned to do something about it than anyone else.