New social features will compete more with Facebook
Apple Share Play
Source: Apple
Starting this fall, the decade-long feud between Apple and Facebook will open a new chapter. And that part of the story is making Apple encroach on Facebook territory like never before.
On Monday, Apple unveiled several new social features that will come to iPhones and iPads with the launch of iOS 15 this fall.
Soon, iPhone users will be able to organize FaceTime video calls with Android and Windows users for the first time. They’ll also be able to use a new feature called SharePlay, which lets you make a FaceTime call and stream a movie, listen to music, or share your screen with your contacts. IMessage is also getting a boost, with new features that make it easier to share web links, photos, Apple Music songs, and Apple News articles with your contacts.
In short, Apple is setting the stage for a suite of social features designed to let you do a lot of what you normally would on Instagram and Facebook, with more emphasis on privacy. Think of it as a watered-down social network without all the boring and boring stuff you find in other apps.
These are the kinds of things that will drive Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg crazy.
Zuckerberg has previously said he sees Apple as a major competitor, in large part because of apps like FaceTime and iMessage that come preinstalled on more than a billion Apple gadgets in use around the world.
On top of that, Facebook launched an anti-Apple advertising blitz late last year on a new iOS privacy feature that limits how businesses like Facebook can use your personal data to send you targeted ads. (Facebook makes most of its money from ads and needs this targeting data for its ads to be effective.)
It’s no coincidence that Zuckerberg took a hit at the 30% fee that Apple collects from many iPhone app makers just hours before Apple’s big event on Monday.
Apple’s new social features in iOS 15 are also coming long before Zuckerberg could complete Facebook’s pivot to privacy, which he announced over two years ago. According to Zuckerberg, there will be two types of social sharing on the Internet in the future: private communication, such as messaging in Facebook applications like WhatsApp and Messenger, and public communication, such as posts on Instagram or the main Facebook service. .
Apple’s Monday announcements proved that you don’t need Facebook for a lot of the things you already do on Facebook. Why log into Facebook or Instagram and give up personal data when you can just as easily share photos, messages and videos right in iOS 15?
If Zuckerberg was right and there will be much of the communication taking place on a âprivacy-focusedâ version of the Internet, Apple has largely beaten Facebook in that future.