Welcome to the new era of digital communication, in the world of sharing experiences, in that of integration between machines and human beings, in the one where it is not artificial intelligence that dominates the scene but the human one, which creates and realizes itself by testing itself. apps and operating systems that can go, as Star Trek Captain Kirk put it, “where no man has gone before.” The Wwdc 2021 show, introduced by Tim Cook and conducted by Craig Federighi, was one of the most spectacular and innovative in recent years, just to clarify that everything Apple has done is nothing more than the eternal beginning of an adventure that never seems to have an end.
Apple Wwdc 2021: iOS 15 and the new MacOs. Systems increasingly united to collaborate and share
by Tiziano Toniutti
Is the iPhone a distant relative of the machine it was when it was born? Technically yes, because the one who was in his technological childhood has now grown extraordinarily, he was a “child” and today he has become a mature adult. But at the same time, and this is what is really important, it is exactly the same device, because it has not changed is the logic that governs its evolution, based on the computational power it takes to allow apps to do more or less anything better. how we did it before. And the spectacular “firework” proposed in the Wwdc 2021 keynote, highlighted such a quantity of activities “done better than before” such as to make the iPhone, but also the Apple Watch and the iPad, or the Mac something different from what they were before the advent of the iOS 15, the new iPad Os, the new operating system for the Watch or the “Monterey” for the Mac.
The one introduced today is not a simple “update” of the operating systems but a spectacular step forward in that change of vision, which began some time ago, which integrates the various machines while equipping them with separate and dedicated operating systems. Apple was a computer company thirty years ago and had a completely closed proprietary operating system. Today it is the “brand” of an ecosystem in which each device communicates with the others, but in which each device can live alone, without having to make compromises to adapt to the needs of others.
Not only that: it is an ecosystem that is no longer completely “closed” as it was, strictly, in the past, some of the key apps of the ecosystem are also available on devices that are not Apple’s, others are new and made to conquer territories. for the moment occupied by others, and this is because the company has also changed its soul for some time, and in addition to producing and selling hardware, producing and selling software, it also sells services, which it is good that these do not run only on machines of Cupertino but can, on the other hand, live and function at their best on other devices as well. The world of Apple has become not only bigger, but more open, while at the same time trying to guarantee the maximum possible privacy (“a human right” as Craig Federighi points out), because it is evident from the presentation that the underlying idea of Apple and that everything, really everything we do, can pass through an iPhone and for this to happen we need our privacy, our security, to be extremely guaranteed, in every part of the ecosystem, which is a small AirTag or the ineffable iCloud.
The world of Apple has become bigger because the Cupertino devices are no longer what they seem for some time now, they are all designed as platforms capable of becoming what we want, depending on the apps we use, depending on where we use our devices, following our desires, our needs, our habits, and attending today’s presentation has only made it clear that the names by which we call the things we use are objectively old and unsuitable. IPhones, Apple Watches, iPads, even Macs, are “personal tools” in the full sense of the term, devices that adapt to us, not in form but in content, precisely because operating systems are capable of doing things. unimaginable even just a couple of years ago and are integrated not with an unidentified “virtual” life, but with real life, with our homes, with our health, with our physical daily actions, which dematerializes but does not it’s less real.
We spent a couple of hours watching the future take shape before our eyes, with a thousand different solutions for everyday problems, or with many ideas for sharing and entertainment. The software, indeed the apps (these have a new name, suitable for new functions), are children of creativity not only of technique, they are the result of ideas, inventions, hypotheses, often adventurous, often incredible and it is this wealth that makes the machines we use are really useful and in some cases even necessary. Attending the presentation of Apple, therefore, is like playing with a kaleidoscope, which combines the elements available in an ever new and surprising way and makes us see reality in a new way. A reality that, in any case, sooner or later, will be ours, because the engineers of Cupertino trace the path that all the others will sooner or later follow, and when they do not and are overcome by those who have made faster choices or found better solutions , wisely adapt their reality taking inspiration from the intuitions of others, as happened for example with the alternative to Zoom (and the others) videoconferencing that was presented by Federighi.
The presentation of WWDC 2021 proposed such a cascade of novelties that it is difficult to understand their scope in a short time, it will take a few weeks to understand exactly what direction the company wants to take and how the devices they will bring will be in the autumn. in our pockets the news announced today with the arrival of the new operating systems and in particular with the iOS 15, which will once again transform the iPhone into something different and new.
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