Apple's annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC, for short) keynote today included a bunch of exciting announcements: a new M2 chipset and a redesigned MacBook Air to hold it, new features that help Apple devices work better together, and privacy and safety enhancements across Apple accounts. But from an Android enthusiast's perspective, a lot of Apple's announcements today seemed... familiar. Here are six things Apple announced today that Google's already done.

Lock screen widgets and customization

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This is a big one: iOS 16 will let users customize their lock screens, with multiple clock styles, typefaces, and accents to choose from. A lot of the customization options look striking, and Apple even gives the option to set different lock screens depending on what Focus mode you have set (which allows, for example, different lock screens while you're at home versus while you're at work). There are even widgets.

That last bit might sound familiar to longtime Android enthusiasts: Google introduced lock screen widgets in Android 4.2, nearly a decade ago. The feature was scrapped not long after, though, in Android 5.0 Lollipop. Samsung still offers similar functionality, but it's not a part of Android itself anymore. Assuming Apple doesn't lose interest in lock screen widgets, it's a good bet we'll see a similar feature make its way back to Android in the next couple of years — that's how these things often go.

Shared photo libraries

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Image: Apple

One of the best features of Google Photos is the ability to share albums with other people who can add their own pictures. There's even the option to automatically share photos containing certain faces to designated albums.

In conjunction with iOS 16, iCloud Photos is getting a similar feature — though one that's expanded upon in a number of interesting ways. Users will have the option of creating a separate, shared iCloud photo library for up to six users — ostensibly a family. Any photo added to the group library is fully available to everyone you're sharing the library with, including the ability to edit or delete it. Users will be able to manually import photos, but Apple will also serve suggestions to seamlessly add future photos containing the faces of group members. Interestingly, iOS 16's camera app will also feature a toggle that sends photos taken directly to this group library. That's handy.

It's clearly not a one-for-one feature copy of Photos' shared albums — Apple's solution seems simpler in some ways and more convoluted in others — but shared photo libraries that auto-add designated faces are Google Photos 101. It'll be interesting to see how Google Photos evolves over time as a result of this one.

A watch-free fitness experience

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Image: Apple

Considering the state of Google Fit, this might be a bit of a pot shot, but still: Starting with iOS 16, iPhone users will be able to track their physical activity using Apple's Fitness app without an Apple Watch. While Apple's Health app does contain some physical activity data, the Fitness app proper was previously only available for use by Apple Watch owners. Soon, anyone with an iPhone or an iPad will be able to take advantage of it. Revolutionary.

Kidding aside, opening up Fitness to more users is a smart move: Apple's subscription services have been an increasingly important stream of revenue for the company, and the more people who try Fitness, the more people will want to pay for Apple Fitness+ (and likely buy an Apple Watch).

Apple Mail enhancements

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Apple announced today that its Mail app is getting a number of enhancements across iPhone, iPad, and Mac. Users can cancel an email for a few moments after pressing send, giving precious time to correct errors. There are new reminders to follow up on your own emails that you never got a reply to, plus the option to hide an email and have it resurface at a later date. They're all great changes, really.

They're also all features currently available in Gmail. You've been able to "undo" sent emails on the web for the better part of a decade (the feature later came to mobile). Gmail rolled out both Nudges to remind users about idle emails and email snoozing as part of its big design overhaul in 2018, and got scheduled emails the following year, for its 15th birthday.

Apple Maps is getting multi-stop support

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Apple Maps is getting the option to add multiple stops to a single trip — which should be handy for planning any drive to more than one place. You've been able to do the same in Google Maps since 2016 — though Google Maps only lets you add nine stops to a given trip. Apple Maps will support up to 15.

Dictating punctuation and emojis on iOS

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Image: Apple

Apple is improving the dictation experience in iOS 16, letting users enter and edit text using the on-screen keyboard and voice input simultaneously. That's actually pretty cool in itself — on Android, if you touch the keyboard during voice input, your device assumes you're done talking and shuts off the mic. But iOS dictation is also getting a couple of tweaks Android first got a taste of on the Pixel 6: it'll add punctuation automatically (no more saying "comma") and let you dictate emojis — so saying "laughing emoji" will produce 😂 in your text.

Google credits its Tensor CPU's improvements to on-device language processing with the Pixel 6's enhanced voice-to-text capabilities, so it'll be interesting to see how far back Apple will be able to port its new, emoji-filled dictation experience.


Apple's new ideas

The WWDC keynote today was a lot of Apple copying Google's homework, but two of our favorite announcements from today are things Google didn't do first: iOS 16 will let you copy and paste things (and dogs!) straight out of photos, and Safari is getting a simple but potentially game-changing feature that we'd love to see Chrome copy.