Being concrete and open to so-called third parties. During the recent WWDC 2014 conference, Apple renounced presentations of new devices for the “wow” effect and, instead, concentrated on its software, aimed at an increasingly edgy convergence and committing itself to new markets with the likes of Health and home automation system HomeKit.
This is an important turning point for the company’s post-Jobs period, which counts a base of 800 million devices (500 million iPhones, 200 million iPads, and 100 million iPod Touch). It also had Android as its central target, noting that half of those who buy iPhones in China have crossed over. The presentation of the QuickType keyboard was also put on the plate.
With these novelties that were presented, Apple wanted to create a general acceleration, each topic, in fact, was touched on rapidly in order to restrain the pushiest competition. And over the next few months it will launch a definitive attack with iPhone 6 and iWatch. And the same goes for payments, which was touched on during the WWDC and is now ready to explode with this latest phone model and eventually even with the smartwatch. No specific mention was made of NFC and the iWallet (destined, however, to come to light with this new hardware), but there are (at least) 4 novelties that are worth noting.
1. Payment with TouchID Apple has opened the doors wide to the API for its TouchID with the new iOs 8 operating system. This means that the developers can work at accepting payments with the fastest authentication system present on iPhone 5S. They have already gotten a tasty bite from Paypal and Samsung, with transactions unblocked with digital recognition by readers of the Galaxy S5. Apple already has something ready as well: while vice president of Software Craig Federighi presented the novelty, CardFlight announced the integration with the technology in its payment applications SwipeSimple.
2. Credit Card Sharing With the iOs 8 Family sharing function, with which it is possible to share the internal operations of the Apple ecosystem with 6 members of one’s family, it is possible to access a single iTunes account, and a single credit card. The parent, however, will have the possibility of intervening on each transaction made by children before they are finalized.
3. Vocal Acquisitions with Siri Among the many novelties that were announced yesterday, there was also that of the integration with Shazam. Through Siri, the popular platform will recognize songs that are playing nearby. And with the vocal assistant, one can proceed with the acquisition of songs on iTunes.
4. Opening up to Bitcoin The real bomb was not declared clearly but inserted into the regulations of the App store. That is, the authorization of “virtual currencies provided that they do so in compliance with all the state and federal laws for the territories in which the app functions”. More than a change in act it is a potential mutation: Apple is not opening up to Bitcoin, binding the use to specific norms that still do not exist, but it effectively offers willingness to support the development. Or, at least, not hinder it.
