• 18 hours ago
Transcript
00:00Hey, what's up, MKBHD here, and yesterday was Apple's WWDC, their worldwide developer
00:08conference event, their big software event every year where they go over a bunch of new
00:12features for all their OSs.
00:14We got new iOS 15 stuff, we got new iPadOS 15 stuff, and we got macOS Monterey, and a
00:21bunch of other stuff.
00:22Now, I do plan on making a separate video going over some stuff in more detail, especially
00:25I want to talk about iPadOS 15, because I think they made some interesting changes,
00:29some of which did what I wanted, but also some of which didn't.
00:34So make sure you're subscribed to see that when it does come out.
00:38But I couldn't help but notice yesterday, watching all these new features get unveiled
00:42for the iPhone, for iOS 15, that a lot of them were familiar, because we've seen them
00:47before in Android.
00:49Now this isn't new at all, like this literally happens basically every single developer event,
00:54like every WWDC we see features in the iPhone that we've already seen in Android, and every
00:59Google I.O. we also see some stuff that we've seen in previous iPhones.
01:03It's fine, I actually literally just made a video, my last one, about why companies
01:07should copy the good stuff from each other.
01:11But there is a trend that mainly Apple's features come later, and also arguably typically better.
01:21You probably all remember how widgets, literally widgets, and an app drawer, and picture-in-picture
01:26were all famously late to iOS 14 last year after being in Android for a while.
01:31Well there was a bunch of new iOS 15 features now that were just announced, many of which
01:36are really cool, also many of which have been in Android for a while, just slightly different.
01:42So I think iOS's new live text feature is like the perfect example of this.
01:47Okay, so live text takes any image in your gallery or in the camera, recognizes any text
01:52inside of it, and then just lets you long press to copy and paste that real life text
01:58anywhere else you want.
01:59It feels kind of like magic, if you can just lift handwritten text, or printed text, and
02:04labels, etc., and take them, put them anywhere else in any other app.
02:08If you took a picture of a business with a sign out front, you can long press the text
02:12on that sign, and look them up, or call their phone number.
02:16And it'll even do some more complex image recognition, where if you take a picture of
02:19a pet or something, it'll recognize that it's a dog, you can long press the dog, and it'll
02:23tell you what breed of dog it is.
02:25So that's pretty cool.
02:26Now, I don't know if you've ever used Google Lens on an Android phone, but it's basically
02:31the exact same thing as all the stuff we've just described, and it's been around for a
02:35while.
02:36You can point Google Lens at literally anything with text in it, give it a second, and it'll
02:40let you copy and paste that real life text, again, into whatever you want on your phone,
02:45translate it in Google Search, etc.
02:48That's built into the viewfinder of a lot of phones.
02:50And inside phones like the Pixel that use Google Photos as the default photos app, you
02:54can hit the Lens button at any point to find and copy and paste any text, or look up similar
03:01images with object recognition, and it isn't always perfect, but it is impressively accurate
03:06sometimes.
03:07It does way more than just pets, too.
03:08Now, on most Android phones, it isn't quite as seamless feeling as Apple's, where if I'm
03:14just looking at a photo in the gallery and I see a phone number on a sign, just long
03:19pressing that phone number and being able to call right away is a slight step faster
03:25than having to go through hitting the Google Lens button and copying and pasting.
03:30But I feel like you can almost guarantee that that will now be lifted into Google's next
03:34version.
03:35FaceTime.
03:36Got a bunch of neat little features like spatial audio and blurred background, portrait mode,
03:40and different microphone modes so you can choose standard or isolating voices or wide
03:44spectrum mode depending on background noise.
03:47But probably the biggest addition is called SharePlay, which lets you watch things and
03:51share things like your screen inside of FaceTime.
03:55Now, you've been able to screen share inside of Google Meet, Zoom, Teams, whatever else
04:01you use for forever.
04:03But FaceTime now, being able to do this, it's a little more well integrated than the others.
04:08Because here you're now listening to Apple Music with this nice UI and it's all synced
04:12up.
04:13Or you can watch TV shows or movies with synced playback controls.
04:17So if somebody pauses, it pauses for everyone.
04:20If somebody fast forwards to show you something, it fast forwards for both of you.
04:23So everyone can see the same thing at the same time.
04:26It's super easy to stay in sync.
04:28And of course, developer conference gold, SharePlay will have a new API.
04:31So any developer that makes a media app will be able to plug into this and make it work
04:35in FaceTime.
04:36You already have HBO, ESPN, Disney.
04:40And I imagine things like Netflix, Spotify in the future, YouTube, hopefully.
04:47But the point is, all this stuff is better than the typical screen sharing while you
04:51play a video where you're getting like five to 10 FPS and it depends on your internet
04:56connections.
04:57It's just not quite as good as it being built in the way it is here.
05:01Oh, also, by the way, small detail.
05:03You can now share FaceTime links to anyone.
05:08Just anyone who can click a link, which means you can join a FaceTime call from the web
05:12on an Android phone or a Windows desktop.
05:16I guess now we can officially say we have FaceTime on Android.
05:19Never thought I'd say that, but you can say it now.
05:22Apple also added on-device voice recognition so it works offline and much faster, which
05:27feels like a huge step up for Siri, which you guessed it, is catching up to what Google
05:32Assistant and Google Voice Recognition has been doing on pixels since 2019 that I've
05:37been absolutely loving.
05:39They also improved their photo memories feature, which strongly resembles Google Photos memory
05:43feature.
05:44And they added a lot of really cool street level features to Apple Maps that continue
05:48to make big strides actually towards catching up to and matching Google Maps.
05:53There's way more street view level information and there's an AR view.
05:56And if you select cities, get these really detailed maps where 3D models of landmarks
06:00are dropped in there.
06:01So yeah, clearly you can see the trend.
06:03A lot of these new features, new features that'll show up on the iPhone, have already
06:07been in Google's versions for a while.
06:09Seems like every time the iPhone gets new features, they've been somewhere in some Android
06:14phone before.
06:15So why?
06:16The question is why.
06:17It's not like Apple's just choosing to be later all the time.
06:20There's good reasons for it.
06:22And it turns out, of course, Google is an incredible software company and that's why
06:26they've been so innovative there for a long time.
06:29But also, Apple's teams have a distinct focus on this ecosystem thing that we've talked
06:36about.
06:37So I've made an entire video about the ecosystem.
06:38I'll link it below the like button if you want to watch it.
06:40But it's a huge focus for Apple, not just to make good new stuff, but to make everything
06:46plug into each other seamlessly.
06:49Because of course it makes the products better, but it also makes it harder to leave the ecosystem.
06:54They think about this constantly.
06:55People might like their iPhones, but really love their AirPods.
07:00So it's harder to leave the iPhone because of how well they work with the AirPods and
07:04how much they love them.
07:05Or maybe it's AirTags or iMessage or AirDrop with the Mac.
07:09There's tons of these.
07:10But it's not just devices.
07:12It's also the increasing number of services they make too.
07:15It's Apple News, it's Apple TV, it's iMessage, it's FaceTime.
07:21So while Google's teams can be ridiculously innovative because the teams are a little
07:26more siloed and they get to work sort of without the constraints of having to talk to each
07:31other all the time, they will often churn out amazing, incredible new features that
07:37just don't talk to anything else.
07:39Meanwhile, Apple's teams, even if they have the exact same idea at the exact same time
07:44as Google's teams, they will often have this constraint of having to work with the rest
07:49of the ecosystem and plug into as many different things as possible, which often multiplies
07:55the amount of time needed to make the thing work.
07:58But the end result is typically something that's got some functionality or some plugs
08:03that the other versions don't.
08:04So with notifications, for example, we've, I mean, Android notifications have just been
08:08better than iOS's since the beginning of time, just facts.
08:11But iOS 15 did get some new notification stuff.
08:15And one of the newest features I really liked is called focused modes.
08:19And this is sick.
08:20So as someone who likes customization, it kind of feels like multiple profiles on your
08:24iPhone or at least as close as they've ever gotten to it.
08:26So you can set your phone to do not disturb mode or sleeping mode or personal or work
08:32mode.
08:33And when your focus mode is set to work, for example, you only get notifications from your
08:38work apps and your work contacts.
08:41And when it's set to personal, it grays out all of your work apps and work contacts and
08:45has a separate set of things you can do.
08:47And you can even set a new home screen for your non-work focus mode.
08:51Now there have been some Android phones with like a work profile mode and that's not super
08:55new.
08:56But the cherry on top now is when you set that focus mode on your iPhone, all of the
09:01other iCloud devices also now will switch to that same work focus mode and have that
09:05same restriction.
09:06So you set it on your iPhone at some time, can be triggered by a time of day or location
09:10or whatever.
09:11So again, your iPad, your Mac, your watch, everything is now also locked to that same
09:16set of restrictions.
09:18And your iMessage status will also now show as in work focus mode to everyone that usually
09:23connects with you over iMessage.
09:25So that's a lot of extra work to make all of that work.
09:28But now, hey, everything's working together as you'd expect it to.
09:32You saw how they tied iMessage into Apple News, where if someone sends you an article
09:36and messages, it'll appear in the for you section of the Apple News app.
09:41I don't see Google adding seamless integration between Google Messages and Google News.
09:46I mean, maybe it will eventually, but those apps and those teams that make them don't
09:51really seem to work together at all.
09:53That continuity feature you saw of dragging your cursor from your Mac to your iPad back
09:59and forth seamlessly and literally dragging and dropping files between them.
10:05That is one of the coolest, slickest ecosystem flex features I think I've ever seen.
10:10And I don't know how many years we would have to wait to see Google doing that with
10:15a Chrome OS laptop and an Android tablet, but I wouldn't hold my breath.
10:21That's just one of the things that Apple does so well that they take extra time for.
10:24But that ends up being really great.
10:26Dieter from The Verge did a really great video recently you should watch on how Apple's sort
10:30of been laying the groundwork for stuff like that over the years.
10:34But the bottom line is, it's what we've come to expect.
10:37So yeah, we wait for it.
10:39So that's just a fun theme.
10:40I figured I would highlight.
10:41Also, if you've been hanging out in the official MKBHD Discord, you already know this, but
10:45we've been chatting over all the new stuff that Apple's announced at WWDC.
10:49If you haven't already joined over there, I'll leave a link below.
10:52And also, I'm going to host a Discord stage channel event in our Discord today, this afternoon.
10:59I'll put a time below and I'll have some YouTube friends in there and we'll talk about some
11:04of these WWDC announcements, but also the themes of like which features we saw in Android
11:09and places we've seen before versus what's new in iOS 15 and on the iPad.
11:14It'll be fun.
11:15We should hang out.
11:16We should chat over there.
11:17But also for those of you in the YouTube comments section, let me know this, do you have a preference
11:21between super innovative, new bleeding edge features versus a little bit later, but a
11:28little bit more well polished or plugged in features?
11:32Let me know what you think of that.
11:33Okay.
11:34Either way, that's been it.
11:35Thanks for watching.
11:36Catch you guys in the next one.
11:37Peace.