Apple and Google have unveiled the features they're saving for phones designed for the era of remote work, blended work (remote and in-office work), and even in-person work.
The way we work and live has changed as the pandemic recedes around the world, with some of us now planning to go back to the office, others continuing to work from home but many of us will do both.
Brian Shen says in an article in the New York Times that this new reality was reflected in the software on our phones, which were our most important tools during the pandemic, as Apple and Google recently revealed their latest phone software designed for the post-epidemic era. Corona, which is characterized by remote work and mixed work.
At its recent conference, Apple showcased iOS 15, the updated operating system for iPhone devices, as the program gives device owners new tools to draw boundaries for promiscuity, such as a status message that lets others know you're busy. before they send you messages.
FaceTime, Apple's video conferencing program, will also get its biggest change since it debuted more than a decade ago, and the service will finally be available for non-Apple devices, including Android phones. The quality of the video sessions has improved.
And last month, Google introduced Android 12, the latest mobile operating system, as the company focused on simplifying the design of its software to help people get their work done more efficiently, including a list of shortcuts to access their favorite tools more quickly.
Carolina Milanesi, a consumer technology analyst at the consultancy Creative Strategies, says the changes in iOS and Android reflect the way our lives and work are changing again as we try to leave the pandemic behind.
"The little feature that tells you people don't want you to bother them at this time is going to be really important," Melancy said.
"Maybe you'll get your letter ready on the weekend but you won't hit the send button until Monday morning, that way you don't push others to work on the weekend, that takes the pressure off," she added.
Apple's camera software is far behind Google's AI software (Shutterstock)
Why do Apple and Google want you to be more productive?
For most of the past year, we've stayed at home, and many of us are glued to phone screens, chatting on video calls, and texting our loved ones amid sessions of different reactions, which is no longer possible for some to stay focused on a single task.
In response, Apple's new program provides iPhone owners with tools to reduce distraction, while Google has added buttons to help people perform tasks on the phone more quickly, according to the author.
Apple has created a new feature called "Focus", meaning the focus feature, which is used to set break times for different parts of your day (i.e. set break times or specific times of the day), and you can also divide your day into sections, such as personal life, work and sleep, and after Within each section, you can specify the people you want to receive notifications from, as well as activate notifications on specific applications on your phone.
Knowing that during work you can set the phone so that only your manager’s messages appear as notifications, where the rest of the notifications will be muted, while you can allow notifications for family and friends if you want to focus on your personal life only, and also you can set the phone to “Do Not Disturb” and get a status message like On deadline, or At the movies, people who try to message you will see this status, and may postpone their messages until a later time.
Shen believes that video conferencing has become the ubiquitous means of communication for office meetings, fun hours, and yoga sessions, as Apple's "Facetime" application is now undergoing a major update with more features, in addition to the ability to work with non-Apple devices so that these changes make it A competitor to Zoom, which is the number one video conferencing application.
FaceTime can also be accessed through an Internet browser, for the first time with the iOS 15 operating system, which means that Android and Windows users can use their browsers to video chat with iPhone users in a FaceTime session from By clicking on a link.
The most prominent new features of FaceTime remain exclusive to Apple users, as “SharePlay” will allow iPhone owners to make a “Facetime” call together using the same application. If you play a movie and press the “Share Play” button, the other person in the call will be able to Play the movie at the same time, but if an Android user is on a Facetime call, Share Play will not work at all.
The writer says that Google's changes are more cosmetic, as it redesigned the controls in Android to include large rectangular buttons, for easy access to functions such as the flashlight, Internet settings and the voice recorder.
Google does not want to follow Apple's steps in preventing tracking but provides data about tracking activities (Reuters)
Apple's camera software competes with Google
According to Brian Shen, Apple and Google competed head-on in the production and presentation of phone cameras that produce excellent quality images, but Apple's camera software lags behind Google's artificial intelligence programs, so Apple has taken steps to make its camera software smarter in The operating system is iOS 15.
Soon, iPhone users can do more with the camera's ability to act as a document scanner, with a feature that Apple calls the "Live Text" feature, so that, for example, if you take a picture of a restaurant receipt, you will be able to use the feature to click on the phone number in the picture to call. At the restaurant, or if you point the camera at a tracking code (a code assigned to a package or parcel) you can click on the tracking icon to track the package immediately, ie no typing is required.
Apple device owners will also be able to pull up these types of images later using keyword search, so if you take a picture of a handwritten recipe, you can open your photo album and type in the name of the recipe to search for the image. At this point, you can also convert written notes from the recipe. Handwritten to text and transferred to a digital notebook.
The technology that works in this way is known as optical image recognition (scanning of images) mixed with some artificial intelligence, and the Android Photos application has been enjoying this feature known as “Lens” for nearly 4 years.
The writer says that while Apple has gone after the features in Google, Google does not want to go after Apple in terms of privacy.
Apple has made changes over the past few years to its user privacy protection tools, and recently added a button that allows iPhone owners to ask apps not to track their activities and share it with third parties such as marketers.
Google - whose revenue depends mainly on serving digital ads - has not responded to the demands of its device users to allow them to easily opt out, but it will give users through “Android 12” more transparency about the data collected by applications, and will also provide new controls to restrict application access to data, according to the article.
One tool Google calls the Privacy Dashboard displays a timeline of apps that access different parts of the phone throughout the day, showing that a social media app clicked the camera at 1 p.m., and the weather app used your location at 3 p.m.
Google has also added some buttons, such as the "Kill Switch", to stop an application from accessing the phone's microphone and camera, which may be useful in awkward situations such as when you visit a doctor and want to make sure that the application does not listen to the conversation.
The article states that Apple also promised more privacy controls for iPhones soon, including a so-called app privacy report that works similarly to Google's privacy dashboard, as well as disclosing what data is consuming through each app. The web addresses that apps connect to, which can give insight into the companies the app shares data with while it's being used.