At Worldwide Developers Conference 2013 Apple designs the future, yet again

At its Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco on Monday, Apple proved that it was as much a design company as a hardware or software one. The venue roared with laughter as senior vice-president Phil Schiller stood in front of what looked like a canister of petrol or the cores from a nuclear reactor, to proclaim: "Cannot innovate anymore, my a**." Apple had just shown the world, what its next Mac Pro would look like.

For over a decade, often inspired by Apple, companies have been trying to make a smaller CPU. The form factor could be as small as the Apple Mini, which is the size of a box of chocolates, or even just a CPU. But Apple is changing all that by thinking out-of-the-box, quite literally. The new Mac Pro , slated to start selling later this year, has a cylindrical body that none of the manufacturers have dabbled with until now. It also has motion sensing, so the CPU will know if it is being moved.

And you wouldn't have expected anyone to think of the next big thing in computer design with the Mac Pro, a beast used by graphic designers, video editors and photographers. It now comes in a chassis that wouldn't look out of place in a Ferrari. The new version will have even better specs-- Intel Xeon E5 processors, AMD FirePro workstation-class GPUs and super fast PCIe-based flash storage. But it will always be known for its radical design. Most probably one that will change the way we look at computers.

The other significant design change was the iOS 7 , the new mobile operating system from Apple. But there isn't any out-of-the-box, or shall we say out-of-the-grid, thinking here. While we would have loved to see Apple become the first to break the grid and think of a "radical" user interface, the company from Palo Alto instead chose to flatten its icon and add layers. It also introduced white into its mobile operating systems. Along with the clean, clear type face, the white will add to the minimalist design ethos of this new operating system.

There is an added layer of intelligence in its systems. For instance, the calendar will tell you how long it will take from your first appointment to the second and even suggest a route on the map. It will even factor in the travel time between the two venues and adjust the schedule accordingly. Plus, most frequently-used apps will update themselves and more regularly. Similarly, new versions of apps will update themselves. The iPhone will now do a lot of its work without intervention.

Its functionality is very similar to that of Google Now, an intelligent software assistant. This means that these new additions are testament to the fact that smartphones of the future will do a lot of stuff without you actually asking it to do anything.  

This comes at a time when the world started getting sneak peeks into Google's next big thing, the Moto X phone. This intelligent phone will know what its owner is up to. So as you pick the camera up, it will have the camera open, knowing beforehand that you are about to click a picture. This is because this phone will be "contextually aware" knowing exactly where it is - in your pocket or inside a car glove compartment.  And it will feed on the exabytes of data created by android phones around to world to glean user behavior and find the best solutions. The future of the smart phones is closer than we thought it would be.