Apple is back to setting the tech agenda, and this time, it’s private!
So, another Apple WWDC is over and done, and the rest of us can start dissecting it bit by bit, like fanboys and -girls going to town over a Star Wars or Marvel teaser trailer. And what did we learn?
Sure, there were quite a few nifty new things (more than usual, if you ask me). iOS 13 looks great, Apple Watch is finally going to sport features geared towards womens health, and the iPADOS is a bold new move, that really shows that the iPad doesn’t have one foot in the grave, as some have predicted. Head over to CNET for a complete rundown of the announcements. I’ll wait.
Back again? Good. Let’s continue,
But for me, the biggest announcement of the night was definitely the privacy initiative. Sign in With Apple is the first truly private third part sign on feature, and it has the potential to be a game changer. Yes, you’ve been able to sign in using Facebook and Google for years now, but 1) both companies share most of your date with the site you’re signing in to, and 2) they’re grabbing most if not all of your usage data on that site for their own data vaults. Want convenience? Let us snoop!
Apple takes a different approach, keeping all data not strictly required to use the service private from the service, and even allowing you to sign up with a service-specific “burner e-mail” that will forward correspondence to your Apple ID e-mail, and be disposed of if and when you’re no longer using the e-mail. I also noted how many times Apple used the term “on-device AI”. One of the privacy challenges of AI is that many solutions will grab you data and send it to a cloud computing service for analyzing. Apple is going the other way, keeping your data on your own devices as much as possible.
Shots are fired, they’re private, and now everyone’s looking to the rest of Silicon Valley to follow suit. Yes, the future is private, as Zuckerberg said. And now it’s his move.
Thomas Grønfeldt Senger 