Apple announced so much great new stuff today, and Tim Cook walked away looking too fine and fancy. But not everyone left in such good shape. Apple threw plenty of haymakers at its biggest competitors.
Google Maps
Not content to start today’s keynote by having Siri tell jokes at Android’s expense, Apple went on to unveil new in-house maps that really put the screws to Google. Features like local search, 3D city views and flyovers are all long-standing features of Google Maps. Everyone knew this was coming, to the point that Google tried to get out in front of it with its own hastily thrown press conference last week, to announce its 3D initiatives and a man-mounted Street View camera.
The one thing Apple didn’t mention was anything resembling Street View, which remains a killer feature and one Google has invested in heavily. But still, this is a tough loss for the big G. And that’s before we even mention the turn-by turn directions read to you by Siri.
Navigation Apps
Apple’s maps finally deliver audible turn-by-turn driving directions, with live updates should you go off track or a better route comes up along the way. It features estimated arrival times, traffic data, and it automatically changes camera angles to give you a view of upcoming turns and course changes. And Siri is going to read it all to you. Select automakers are even building Siri buttons into the dashboards of new vehicles.
Which is great for you, but really sucks for apps from Motion X GPS Drive, Garmin and the entire cottage industry of navigation apps. The biggest kick in the teeth probably went to Waze. Waze is a fantastic little app that uses crowdsourced traffic data with specific road hazard information to get you from point A to point Z as fast as possible. And it was just Sherlocked to shit by Apple’s own crowdsourced traffic data-driven app.
Read-Later Apps
This one, you could see coming. Apps like Instapaper, Pocket and Readability are popular because they let you bookmark a story in one place in time and read it later on another. Even better, they strip out all the extraneous distracting visuals so you can focus on the text of a story.
Now Safari does all that too. The new Reading List function saves web pages wholesale for reading later and syncs them across all of your devices. When you’re ready to read, you can use Safari’s Reader function to strip away all those extraneous elements too. Instapaper and Pocket have been increasingly focused on discovery recently, helping you find new material to read, which now seems really smart. Because when it comes to purely read it later — and read it prettier — there’s probably no use in fighting Apple.
Ultrabooks
You know how ultrabooks were finally starting to catch up to MacBooks? Yeah. So. Here’s the new MacBook Pro with retina display. Unless this thing turns out to have some major problem that isn’t immediately apparent, it’s pretty much the nicest portable machine anyone has ever built. It’s way more expensive than your average ultrabook, but it’s got way more horsepower too. Oh, and don’t forget those $1000 MacBook Airs that can go spec to spec with the best of the featherweights.
Your Existing Supply of MagSafe Power Cables
What? MagSafe2 electric boogaloo? Nooooooooo! I’ve been collecting these dudes! What will I do with all the other MagSafe power cables I’ve been stealing from journalists at every press conference I’ve gone to for the past six years? Now I guess I’m going to have to buy a bunch of tiny $12 magnets. I say “a bunch” because I’m going to lose approximately all of them too. Oh well, at least you can be sure that this adaptor is futureproof and Apple won’t roll out a new one in the next five years, right? Right?