Thoughts on WWDC 2016

Here I want to jot down some of my key thoughts after viewing Apple’s WWDC 2016 keynote.

Core Apps as platforms

We saw a lot of the core apps being opened up to developers. We saw this for Siri, Maps, Messages and even the regular Phone app. Developers can now write code that directly extends the functionality of these core apps. This makes each app its own platform.

1. This provides a path through which Apple Maps may become much better than Google Maps for many parts of the world. Third parties can innovate on how to provide better shop recommendations/information, transit information, rather then replicating core functionality.
2. The same can be said of VoIP apps. I have never had a VoIP app that had nearly as nice a UI as the iOS default Phone app. Now VoIP apps can simply focus on providing good connection and voice quality.
3. Ditto for Siri and Messages.
4. This approach is only possible in some cases because Apple’s business model does not rely on advertising. For example, Google Maps could have trouble integrating information from Yelp, because this would conflict with their business model of profiting from the recommendations.

Differential Privacy

This is still a bold experiment. It has not yet been proved that this will allow sufficiently advanced artificial intelligence. In the following months, this will be put to the test. Differential privacy may prove to be just as useful as the lax privacy that companies like Google employ.

More importantly in my view though, is that differential privacy will allow Apple to get the most valuable data.

Privacy of health data is considered to be very important, especially genomic data. In genomic experiments using human-derived samples, great care is often demanded to defend the privacy of the donor. Google’s approach would probably be considered too relaxed to entrust such data, whereas Apple’s differential privacy may be sufficient. As a result, people might be very hesitant to give Google their DNA sequence information but not so for Apple (it might even be an FDA recommendation).

If this becomes the case, then Apple will have a huge advantage, not because it has better AI algorithms or more data, but because it has the most valuable data.

The same may occur with many other types of data. If this becomes that case, then Apple may gain preferential access to the more valuable and important data (that is not readily available by spying on your interactions with your phone). This will benefit Apple in the kind of conclusions that its AI will be able to make.