Digital news 2017 September

Autumn is here and the media is going crazy with digital news after the Summer holidays, which is why I’ve decided to share this letter earlier than usual.

As a complement to my last newsletter, focus is mainly on mobile and the new Apple launch as well as some trends me and my colleagues picked up during The Conference in Malmö last week.

Apple 2017 launch event

I’m sure that some of you, like me, watched the live stream on Tuesday with slightly higher expectations than before. Digital media has hyped the release and some convenient leaks were in place to raise the expectations of the launch where Tim Cook, Apple CEO, announced the latest Apple releases. And few were disappointed, three phones, a new Apple TV and Apple Watch 3 were presented that I’m about to summarize here:

iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus

• iPhone 8 comes with a slightly new design including a new glass and aluminum surface, available in three new colors, even if it’s still recognizable (read more).
• The key new features, as I see it, are the following:
• New retina HD display to improve the colour accuracy further and includes what they call “True Tone” to adjust the display to the surrounding light. This will enable a more natural viewing experience, closer to when reading a paper.
• A new chip named A11 Bionic that is a lot faster than the previous A10 Fusion, enabling up to 70% better performance of multi-threaded workloads.
• Augmented Reality optimised. The cameras are optimised for AR experiences with new gyroscopes and accelerometer to improve motion tracking.
• New 12MP Camera provides better photos and videos. 12 megapixels and a larger and faster sensor is making it questionable whether you would need a stand-alone camera at all..
• Wireless charging is enabled via the new glass design. Even if Apple is lagging behind in this area it’s good that it is finally here. IKEA has already offered affordable solutions for Android phones for quite a while.

iPhone X

• This is the new flagship mobile from Apple. iPhone 8 will only be the middle child and an improved version of iPhone 7 will be the “cheap” option. In addition to the features already described for iPhone 8, iPhone X includes the following key features:
• Super retina display. Gone is the home button and the display is now all the way out to the curves of the phone. It is an OLED panel, HDR display supporting Dolby Vision and HDR10. 
• Face ID. No need for fingerprint identification anymore, Apple is introducing Face ID that map and recognise your face.
• Improved front-camera. Partly to enable above but also to improve the quality of your selfies. A new portrait mode enables some useful features with portrait studio lighting effects that separates you from the background and exchange it for one of five different lighting styles.
• Animoji’s. The front camera also enables a completely new kind of emoji’s, called animoji’s. The AR feature track your facial movements so that the emoji comes to life, doing and saying whatever you are saying.

Apple TV

• The new Apple TV is now supporting 4K and HDR which makes it better equipped to match newer smart TVs and improved streaming services (read more).
• Other minor improvements include a slightly new design of the remote and an automatic detection of a 4K TV’s capabilities to optimize the picture.

Apple Watch series 3

• The major change here is that the Apple Watch 3 will include a built-in cellular, meaning that you can leave your phone at home, or forget it, and still receive/make phone calls (read more). It shares the same number as the iPhone and is using a new built-in eSIM card that is over one-hundredth the size of a traditional SIM card.
• It is also fully waterproof (up to 50 meters) so you can bring it with you when surfing. Together with the new wireless AirPods and a new barometric altimeter that assists with tracking activity, elevation gains etc., it’s a good leap forward in becoming the most convenient fitness gadget.
• Other minor improvements include a new dual-core processer that enables quicker app launch times and smoother graphics, Siri is enabled via the built-in speaker and Wi-Fi is 85% faster

The Conference

The Conference is a conference arranged non-profit by Media Evolution in Malmö every year. It has, at least for me, unexpectedly gotten world-wide attention for bringing celebrities from widespread fields such as brain scientists, psychologists, activists to design experts and other digital gurus. Me and my colleagues were there and got inspired and I was thinking to share our top 3 reflections:

• Your digital identity is today an important component of how you are perceived, so it’s becoming more and more important to have control over your digital footprint. In addition, it is used by companies to segment, influence and manipulate you. Do you know your digital footprint? If not, find out today! There’s a free tool developed by Cambridge university you can use that is called applymagicsauce.com.
• Whom to trust? This is a hot discussion topic today.. “Fake news” is here to stay and it will become even more difficult to determine truth versus false. Very soon almost everyone will be able to fake videos of others as the technique is improving (check out a video of how easy it is to fake an Obama speech). Important questions to consider is how we can design experiences and user flows that demand consensus as well as a decentralised internet where we have the unique rights to our own content. It is critical to have a diversified group of people involved in the development of new technology as well as in the adoption/absorption process in the society.
• ”Don’t fear the impending AI revolution. Get involved!”. Artificial intelligence will revolutionise even more jobs and probably within only a few years. However, it will complement our human skills. As of today, the only existing AI is “narrow AI” that is perfect for repetitive and predictable work tasks. However, AI today is not good at handling “edge cases” for which horizontal thinking is required. For example, a self-driving car is programmed not to cross a solid line and can therefore easily be trapped by a simple painted lined circle on the ground. This is why we humans will need to work in close cooperation to AI and our most important tasks will be to think interdisciplinary, with enough deep knowledge to identify new opportunities to leverage AI.

Many of the speaker sessions are accessible for free online and here comes our most appreciated ones:

• INCLUSIVE ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: Dr Rand Hindi, Stephanie Dinkins
• MACHINE LEARNING FOR CREATIVES: Gene Kogan
• UN-UNDERSTANDING IDENTITY: Mari Magnus, Vesselin Popov, Yousef Tuqan
• TRUST IN A POST-TRUTH WORLD: Muneeb Ali
• DISRUPTING STATUS QUO BY DESIGN: Leyla Acaroglu