Looking at all the new features Apple announced for iOS and MacOS during the WWDC keynote I had a strange feeling of deja vu.
Microsoft has been known and accused of copying successfull 3rd party applications from the Windows ecosystem and making them part of the operating system.
Now Apple feels a little bit the same, if you consider:
- Reminders: much like Things and similar apps
- Reading List: Instapaper
- Camera features: much like Camera+ and other apps (e.g. grid, zoom, AF/AE)
- iMessaging: a lot like Skype IM/chat
- Documents in Cloud: like Evernote
Not that this is necessarily bad and in many cases they added a special touch to it, e.g. Location triggers for reminders. But still it feels a little like the past Microsoft.
The major difference is probably that Phil Schiller called the Safari Browser a system component of the operating system, something that Microsoft has fought hard to avoid.
Apple, the new / old Microsoft