Tim Bajarin:

This younger generation does use PCs. However, they actually spend the most time on their iPhones and iPads and Macs are mostly relegated to serious productivity projects. More importantly, they know iOS inside and out as they spend much more of their day in this operating system then they do on any computer they have. I believe Apple understands this better than anyone and their most recent iPad Pro is a nod to this trend. More importantly, I see Apple using this to drive millennials towards making iOS their OS of choice as they move into their careers and new jobs. In fact, within 5-7 years, I suspect Windows will not even be of interest to this younger set, as iOS will be the device operating system that dominates their work and personal lifestyles.

Apple playing the long game.

Charlie Warzel:

Most importantly, Apple has the massive user base to push its vision of the future into reality. The App Stores and Apple Pay sit on top of more than 800 million iTunes accounts with credit information. Put simply: Apple is adding features — its vision of the future — to devices you already use. That’s a great way to ensure that the future you are building works, instead of promising something world-changing you can’t deliver on.

While the tech media and everyone else argues over which company copied which, this is the one thing that no other company in the world can duplicate.

So every time Apple decides to launch a new paradigm — whether Apple does it first or not doesn't matter — the sheer number of Apple customers instantly makes it the gold standard for the rest of the industry to beat.

Jan Dawson:

So why is this a big deal? Well, the reasons are fairly simple: it allows Apple to take over the primary relationship with the customer, relegating the carrier to a secondary role in relation to their device purchase. Yes, you’ll absolutely still have a direct relationship with the carrier, but it will now be exclusively around the service plan and you’ll no longer be dependent on the carrier for upgrading your device. You’ll now be able to put your carrier on autopilot while you have a much more active relationship with Apple, upgrading annually on a set schedule.

My favorite part about this is how it forces the carriers to compete. Looking forward to better reliability, customer service, and more competitively-priced service plans as the carriers bend over backwards to retain customers.

Benedict Evans:

For as long as the idea of the 'mobile internet' has been around, we've thought of it a cut-down subset of the 'real' Internet. I'd suggest it's time to invert that - to think about mobile as the real internet and the desktop as the limited, cut-down version. […]

Mobile is not a subset of the internet anymore, that you use only if you're waiting for a coffee or don't have a PC in front of you - it's becoming the main way that people use the internet. It's not mobile that's limited to a certain set of locations and use cases - it's the PC, that can only do the web (and yes, legacy desktop apps, if you care, and consumers don't) and only be used sitting down. It's time to invert that mental model - there is not the 'mobile internet' and the internet. Rather, if anything, it's the internet and the 'desktop internet'

Another great argument by Benedict, with several solid charts to boot.

Ethan Smith:

These changes mean that users can now search for app content directly from Google search and even have app content pushed to them within the Android operating system. Apple recently announced its own search engine, launching with iOS 9 and El Capitan this fall. Users will be able to search for content directly from their devices via Spotlight and Safari search.

All these changes signal that Google and Apple are actively working to move search from the web directly to your device and to make app content as easy to discover as a web page. […]

In the new world of SEO, those who own the operating system own the search experience. Google’s Android operating system will give Google further leverage to increase its share of search. And with 43 percent of mobile users powered by iOS, Apple will immediately become a major player in search. The biggest losers will be companies like Microsoft, which has struggled to gain traction with Windows mobile devices, and Yahoo, Ask, and AOL, which have no mobile operating system strategy.

As an Apple enthusiast, this excites me.

As a web developer, this terrifies me.

As a person UX designer, I know that people will always naturally take the path of least resistance, which means this could very well become a reality.

Jonathan Matus:

We stand on the threshold of what can realistically be described as the largest and most important shift in transportation in a century. The benefits will be enormous: An 80+ percent reduction in the cost of transportation. Reduced pollution. Reduced stress and road rage. A dramatic decrease in accidents and traffic deaths. Gaining back time lost to commuting — and the associated increase in productivity. Freeing up two lanes on many urban roads by eliminating parked cars. Even the reclaiming of the space allocated to home garages.

Driverless, Uber-style fleets of electric cars will change the way we live. The same way the steam engine created cities and the automobile created suburbs.

Suddenly, all these reports/rumors of Google and Apple researching and developing driverless cars seems much more than just a cool side project.

Lukas Mathis:

...the fact that three different companies are giving each other a run for their money on OS design is pretty amazingly great, and fantastic for people who actually use these devices. I’m growing more and more tired of the partisan reporting that happens in the tech industry, where people pledge allegiance to one or the other multinational corporation and support everything that corporation does, while dismissing and belittling everything everybody else does, particularly if other companies copy features from the one company they like.

This is such a misguided approach.

People who buy Apple products should be ecstatic that Microsoft and Google are competing with Apple, and vice-versa. Everybody should be happy if each company takes each other company’s greatest ideas, and improves upon them. The last thing we want is another 90s-type situation, where one company controls 95% of the market, and as a direct result, progress just halts for a decade.

Great ideas get copied and evolve. Consumers win.

Gigaom:

One of the arguably best features of Android is getting friendly with third-party apps. Simply by adding a few lines of code, Android apps can take advantage of the “OK Google” voice command that’s become prevalent on Android devices and Android Wear smartwatches. Once apps are updated, users can use specific apps in their voice commands. For example, you could speak “Ok Google, search for hotels in Maui on TripAdvisor” to have the voice search use the TripAdvisor app instead of returning a generic Google search, boosting app engagement. Google says the new support is only available on English locale devices running Android Jelly Bean or higher.

This is a big deal for the future of mobile, wearable devices, and any non-traditional computing device that will be connected to the internet.

I've been hoping Apple would offer this with Siri 2.0 but Google is the only company in the world that can truly pioneer this right now.

Bloomberg:

Under deals reached with banks individually, Cupertino, California-based Apple will collect a fee for each transaction, said one of the people, who requested anonymity because terms aren’t public. While that gives the tech company a share of the more than $40 billion that banks generate annually from so-called swipe fees, lenders expect to benefit as consumers spend more of their money via mobile phones and other digital devices, the person said.

This week's court ruling was a HUGE blow to the internet as we know it. The common consumer has no idea what this means but they will when they start to see things like this.

You don't think this is a big deal? Just look at how US news networks deemphasize news that they don't care about. Just look at how much carriers overcharge for texting.

Information is power and now internet providers have the ability to control the flow of information as they say fit.