How Apple’s iOS 7, OS X Mavericks, and iCloud change the game

Apple has taken a beating in the last year, with its stock price plummeting, commentary on the loss of its innovation edge, speculation that its Mac and iOS devices have both peaked, the Apple Maps snafu in iOS 6, and a seemingly unstoppable competitor (Samsung) that — according to popular wisdom — has learned Apple’s own tricks.

At the same time, Apple seemed spread too thin: It makes computers, mobile devices, operating systems, a productivity suite, media creation tools for video and e-books, a Web browser, an online entertainment store, a cloud syncing service, a streaming video TV box, and even a voice assistant for automobiles. Not all the pieces seemed to work together (no e-books on the Mac, no visual iOS integration with the car version of Siri), some pieces seemed abandoned (the iWork productivity suite), and some appeared dated (the iOS interface).

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The rocky road to iOS 7 and OS X Mavericks In January 2012, I wrote that Apple could afford to coast that year, given its huge lead over Android and Windows. Apple did so, with incremental upgrades in OS X Mountain Lion, iOS 6, the iPhone 5, the fourth-generation iPad, Safari 6, its Mac line, and the Apple TV. Meanwhile, Microsoft shipped Windows 8, an operating system so bad that PC sales have essentially stalled. But Google’s Android saw the 4.1/4.2 “Jelly Bean” versions finally make it a solid OS, the Nexus 7 launch the mini-tablet boom, Samsung deliver one smartphone hit and one tablet hit after another, and more recently HTC debut the HTC One smartphone that could reverse its decline. Apple seemed ever more doomed, judging by the emerging conventional wisdom.

Then a funny thing happened: Google announced not much at the endless Google I/O keynote a few weeks ago; there was no next leap for Android or Chrome OS, and Google’s big deal a year ago — its Apple TV rip-off, the Nexus Q — was completely forgotten. The product was killed before it shipped last summer, and Google said it would try again. Well, not this year. Furthermore, Samsung’s Galaxy S 4 wasn’t the advance everyone had expected; although it sported a nicer casing, most of its innovations were unfinished and only partially working.

That context may explain why yesterday’s announcements at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference seemed so exciting. But I believe that most were truly thrilling and show an Apple that has diligently worked to unify its Macs, iOS devices, and iCloud offerings in a way that makes them better, while casting Google’s and Microsoft’s competing efforts as dated and incomplete by comparison. Of course, demos don’t always reflect reality, but my initial hands-on testing of the iOS 7 and OS X 10.9 Mavericks betas show they work as well as Apple’s demos suggested.

Worse for Google and Microsoft, iOS 7 in particular lifts some of the better ideas from its competitors, such as the quick-access settings, universal multitasking, and mini app windows from Android and the ultrasimple typographical design and full-screen look from Windows Phone and Windows 8 Metro, all with Apple refinements that take them further. 

The Apple fabric everywhere If there’s one lesson from WWDC’s announcements, it’s that Apple is building a federated computing and content fabric intended to blanket you where you are. Former CEO Steve Jobs suggested as much in 2010, and each version of iOS and OS X has pushed the Mac, iPhone, and iPad closer together. This fall’s iOS 7 and OS X Mavericks (named after a California surfing beach) get even closer, with Apple Maps and iBooks jumping from iOS to OS X, iOS notifications now pushed to OS X, notifications states synchronized across all devices (if you dismiss one on one device, it’s dismissed on all), and iCloud syncing passwords and credit card information across Safari on all your devices (a major win for those of us who have to remember arcane passwords across multiple devices, and a real blow to third-party password managers like 1Password).

The federation works deeply in some cases, such as the ability to share a map from your Mac to your iPhone and have the iPhone begin navigation immediately. In other cases, it’s more subtle, such as having the Photos app in iOS adopt a more visually rich version of the Events approach to photo organization in Photos for OS X. The new MacBook Airs that boast 12 hours of battery life, using Intel’s new “Haswell” chip, also reflects that federation: A MacBook Air now can run as long as an iPad on a single charge, blurring the lines between tablet and laptop computing even more, in what I suspect Apple wants to become a greater “and” usage of the two, not an “or” choice between them.

In some cases, the federation is unclear: iOS gets OS X’s AirDrop feature, which allows drag-and-drop file sharing among recent Macs; in iOS, you use the Share sheet to send content to one or more friends on the same Wi-Fi or Bluetooth network (they have to explicitly accept the encrypted documents, and can hide themselves from sharing). It’s unclear whether AirDrop allows document sharing between Macs and iOS devices, which third-party utilities like GoodReader have done for years. Another case of potentially missing integration is Passbooks, Apple’s service for e-tickets, cards, and potentially mobile payments on the iPhone; it got no mention at WWDC.

The federation works in your car — or it will in most car makers’ models beginning in 2014, if Apple is to be believed. Last year, Apple announced Siri Eyes Free, essentially the integration of Siri with a car’s microphone and Bluetooth to control your iPhone and perhaps built-in car navigation. Of course, if you have to use your iPhone, it’s not really eyes-free and probably not hands-free.

Little has happened since, but Apple showed off at WWDC yesterday a car stereo that displayed the iPhone’s screen and used Siri. Details are scarce, but the notion is that the iPhone’s screen mirrors to the car’s built-in navigation system’s screen, à la AirPlay Mirroring. That’s not eyes-free, but it is as hands-free as a built-in nav system, with the advantage of using apps and gestures you already know from your iPhone and being Siri-controlled. “Car-safe” apps such as music and navigation will now work in your car as they do on your iPhone.

The federation extends to iWork, Apple’s suite of productivity apps (Pages, Keynote, and Numbers). Already, iOS devices and Macs can work on the same iWork (and Microsoft Office) documents via the automatic iCloud Documents syncing service. But you can’t create and edit documents in a Web browser from another device, such as a PC or Chromebook, or someone else’s Mac or iOS device. iWork in the Cloud changes that.

Expected by year’s end, iWork in the Cloud lets you go to your iCloud.com account from any PC running Safari, Chrome, or Internet Explorer — versions not noted, and apparently not in Firefox — and create and edit iWork documents with largely the same rich capabilities as you can natively in iOS or OS X. From what Apple demoed, it puts Google Drive and Office 365 for Web to shame. It also brings iWork to the PC without needing a native Windows version. There was no comment from Apple as to whether iWork in the Cloud will be supported in Chrome on Android or Chrome OS, or IE in Windows RT/Metro.

Finally, the integration continues at the user interface level. iOS 7 has a radically simplified, engaging UI, leveraging the gestures people already know but with a visual approach that focuses more on the content and less on the skin — Windows Phone’s notion but more sophisticated here. (iOS 7’s risk is it makes the classic hip-designer mistake of too-thin text or too-light text that may be visually elegant but hard to read.) OS X has been moving in that direction as well, and from what Apple showed at WWDC, both OS X Mavericks and Safari 7 advance along that road, adopting some of iOS 7’s “edge to edge” design where the skin disappears when unused and appears as translucent overlays when needed. iOS 7 is leading the charge, but it’s not on its own.

Because so many iOS apps are now in OS X — Safari, Calendar, Contacts, Mail, Maps, Siri, Notes, Reminders, iTunes, iWork, Game Center, iPhoto, iBooks, and App Store — and because iCloud, notifications, social media integration and other sharing services, and some settings work essentially the same way on both OSes and in Apple’s iCloud.com, the distinction among Mac, iOS device, and browser services will grow even fuzzier, working instead like a fabric of computing services on the one or more devices you have at hand. That’s the goal, and from what Apple has shown at WWDC this year, it’s made a huge leap toward that end.

Google lacks a real desktop presence outside of Chrome, and the Android and Chrome OS environments share little beyond Chrome and parts of the Google Play market. Microsoft’s PC (Windows 8), mobile (Windows RT/Metro and Windows Phone), and cloud services (Office 365) are the opposite of seamless, though they share some settings and data. All of a sudden, they look like they’ve fallen behind. Apple’s combination of greater federation and its new slick, compelling user experience will up-end the market again.

Apple certainly believes it has regained the upper hand with iOS 7, OS X Mavericks, and the updated iCloud — marketing VP Phl Schiller cracked at WWDC, “Apple can’t innovate any more, my ass.” I think he’s right. Apple is nowhere out of ideas or the ability to execute on them. I’m sure Google will continue to advance its platforms, though Microsoft is less certain to do so. We won’t see annual breakthroughs — that’s simply not possible — but I’m betting Apple has quite a many few years of innovation to deliver us. We’ll get the new wave of that this fall.

This article, “How Apple’s iOS 7, OS X Mavericks, and iCloud change the game,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Read more of Galen Gruman’s Smart User blog. For the latest business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter.