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Comment by 1cvmask | Hacker News Reader

It felt like a big Sherlock keynote as Apple seems to be expanding into our homes, cars, access systems, cross-platform video, identity verification, ad publishing, email sanctity, internet anonymity and so much more. Maybe their developers were actually more efficient being WFH.

Most of us will embrace these changes but it will leave a bunch of point-solution vendors in the dust eventually. Or they will adapt.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherlock_(software)

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> It felt like a big Sherlock keynote…

I just watched the 24m Verge edit, and I didn't notice any instances of this.* Are there, say, 3 examples of single-feature companies who will be "Sherlocked"?

(*If I had to stretch, iCloud+ Private Relay could take the place of a VPN for some people.)

I could name a few:

- 3rd party AirPlay receiver apps (you can stream to Macs with new macOS)

- Universal Control looks very Synergy-like (I don't know of an iOS alternative, but surely nobody is going to try compete with Apple now)

- Xcode Cloud - arguably competition to rent-a-mac services like MacStadium

- SharePlay probably will replace SyncTube for a lot of folks

Xcode Cloud is the result of Apple's purchase of BuddyBuild from a few years ago. It's more competition to CI services like Circle and Travis (and any others that support Mac builds) than straight up Mac hosting like MacStadium.

To be fair, it's both because you can't really run a CI for Xcode builds on anything besides Mac hardware.

> arguably competition to rent-a-mac services like MacStadium

More like Corellium since Apple tried to buy them, failed, then tried to lawyer them to death, with the DMCA claim afaik still undecided:

https://twitter.com/mdowd/status/1193299900408090624

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/08/apple-sues-virtu...

And I just bought a license for AirServer last week

if FaceTime really does land on Android and Web I would say it’d be possible that Zoom got Sherlocked today too. given their black eyes around privacy Apple’s offering seems a lot more appealing than Zoom’s imho

Zoom has a few features that are incredibly useful/needed for some people (e.g. breakout rooms) and afaik FaceTime doesn't have them.

It will require some major effort from apple to overtake it, it's not just being cross platform

i feel like making breakout rooms at this point is not as hard as making FaceTime for web/Android. they can basically pick and chose the features they like at this point.

sure, but there's plenty of videoconferencing software who still don't support it.

And there's more! Dial-in, guest access, persistent rooms with/without password, organization-level restrictions, automatic recording, cloud upload of videos etc..

It's not a technical problem for Apple to do everything Zoom does, but it'd be a massive product shift to try to it.

It looks like Apple will have a native package tracking widget (at least for iPad), which will kill likely other package tracking apps.

I think my own app, Unreplied, just got Sherlocked actually. It never had a huge user base but it would let you view unreplied iMessages (as the name implied). On to greener pastures I guess!

> Most of us will embrace these changes but it will leave a bunch of point-solution vendors in the dust eventually.

They fired a lot of shots at a lot of people tonight. I, for one, am very excited.

> Maybe their developers were actually more efficient being WFH

Definitely! You can't come up with something like that in the office, literally impossible.

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