Apple announces its Google Now competitor Proactive Assistant

Apple today announced a new feature called ‘Proactive’ at the WWDC event which, according to rumors, works in the same way as Google Now. The new assistant feature is an update to Siri, Apple’s voice assistant in iOS and it will be available in the next iOS 9.

Apple’s Proactive assistant has similar features like Google Now and other tools that work the same way. These tools are build to offer optimized decision making for the users about what they might want to do or like to do at a specific time by suggesting various events based on the liking and disliking of the user. All of this is done using the user’s historical data and then making decisions based on that to provide suitable options to a user about what they would like to do.

Google Now has been at it for years. Google has carefully developed its system called Google Now that analyzes users data (with user’s permission) and then suggest them different things based on the situation. If a user has a flight booked, it will tell the user when it is time to leave for airport. Similarly, if there’s traffic or the road used by the user for going to office is blocked due to any reason, it will give suggestions about re routs or detours. Google Now also keeps track of important events in which a user is interested in – like football matches, concerts, important seminars etc.

Apple doesn’t have that kind of data structure to fuel its Proactive assistant to make such decisions or suggests things based on user’s interest but Apple is working on gathering as much user data as possible while ensuring user’s privacy.