Recently, according to a number of foreign media reports, Apple has eyeed two new trends in the field of mobile software: First, use artificial intelligence to create applications, upgrade the quality of cloud services, and second, through the application of information in social content sharing to take the initiative .
However, Apple's idea is always different. It will not intrude upon the interests of existing industry giants while catching up with these two new trends, thus avoiding unnecessary frontal conflicts.
Lonely artificial intelligence
Apple's steady advancement in the AI ​​space is also obvious to all. After WWDC announced that iOS 10 will enable AI technology in June this year, they also acquired machine learning startup Turi.
At the same time, Backchannel also regards Siri as Apple's typical work in the AI ​​field. This personal voice assistant used AI technology in 2014 to understand the needs of users through dialogue. During the growth of Siri, it also learned machine learning Dafa and became smarter by consuming more data.
Although Siri now has a lot of difference with the ideal voice assistant in science fiction movies, it has made significant progress. It can already guess the application that you want to open according to user preferences. It can identify the caller information that is not in the address book by analyzing the email data. It can also screen new stories, identify people and locations in photos, and judge whether Apple Watch users are work out.
These details let people once again find confidence in Apple, which was not left behind by Google in the AI ​​era.
Google has long been immersed in machine learning for many years, and they have invested huge human and material resources. At the latest earnings conference, the company said that Google has more than 100 teams using machine learning technology. On this long list, there are star mobile apps such as Google Search, Google Now, Gmail, Google Photos, and Allo.
However, as Backchannel mentioned, Apple and Google have completely different points in the AI ​​field. For the privacy-first user of Apple, all AI-related applications and services on the iOS platform require the device to complete the calculation and processing of the entire process locally. Apple does not want to handle any user data and habits. Apple does have a good starting point for doing so, but the limitations of device performance greatly reduce the processing power of machine learning algorithms, limiting the throughput of user data and slowing the evolution of Apple's AI algorithm.
For the user data problem, Apple is preparing to handle it using Differential Privacy. Through this technology, the system can help discover high-volume user usage patterns without affecting personal privacy. To conceal personal identities, differential privacy adds mathematical noise to small samples of personal use patterns.
According to Apple, differential privacy is a statistical concept. When you try to analyze more about the overall trend of a group's information, you can learn as little as possible about the individual details of the group. Using differential privacy, Apple can collect and store its user data, and summarize what users are doing, like, and what they want, but at the same time it does not extract any personal information that may infringe privacy in the group. . And in theory, it is impossible for hackers or intelligence agencies to extract these individual information.
| The reinforcement of iOS social attributes
In social content sharing, Apple also accelerated its pace. According to Bloomberg News, Apple is testing a new class of Snapchat apps in an attempt to compete with the fast-growing Snapchat and Facebook Instagram. This application can "record video, add filters and graffiti, users can share it to friends or social networking sites", and the whole process can be done in 1 minute.
In addition, the new iOS will also add more social features, such as a new version of iMessage, graffiti tools, and a built-in app store that support a variety of emoticons.
However, according to Apple's usual style, these new features are still exclusive to iOS devices, and this is not good news for the social game. After all, the user base of the social platform is an important indicator of its success. The popular Facebook, Instagram, WeChat and other applications are all cross-platform super beasts. At the moment, iPhone sales have just exceeded 1 billion units, relying solely on its own single platform, and it is harder to push iMessage into the 500 million user club quickly.
However, Apple's move can also be understood, after all, iPhone and iPad hardware sales revenue is the real pillar of Apple.
In view of this, Apple's new strategy is really a good match, so on the way of its strategic expansion, there are fewer rivals such as Google, Facebook, and Snapchat, and Cook is really a strategic master.
Via the street
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