Today Apple released its latest app, Clips. It’s an answer to Snapchat and Instagram’s rapid and generally unimportant but absolutely modern systems for recording, editing, and sharing photo-video mashups.
Do you need it when you already have Instagram or Snapchat? No. Is it more understandable than those other apps? At this point, I think so.
The Verge sets Clips in the context of iMovie, Apple’s 18-year-old video editing software. That’s reasonable, but just so we’re clear, iMovie is also available on iOS, even if the app’s heritage is primarily on Mac OS X macOS. But when you open iMovie on iOS, well, it’s pretty heavy. It’s powerful.
Clips is not that. Clips is something that people of all ages can grasp if they spend, say, 10 minutes with it. No fade in from black. But if you want to add an emoji on top of it? Of course you can do that. Want to add a block of text using iOS’ native dictation feature? Sure, yeah. Want to stitch together stuff and add a style à la the 2016 breakout app Prisma? No problem.
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Obligatory Clip pic.twitter.com/LtIwAvzRVm
— Jordan Novet (@jordannovet) April 6, 2017
It’s a great follow-up to the Messages app that was updated for iOS 10, which lets you do whimsical things like make a really big emoji if you hold down on it, or send a disappearing message — those types of features exist in popular apps like Messenger. Similarly, Photos for iOS 10 got even with Google Photos with image recognition. The big picture: Apple is getting more competitive for some of the basic things that people do on their phones and tablets.
But there is no social network here in the way there is on Instagram or Snapchat. You can send your Clips one by one to one person at a time. It’s about creating stuff, rather than racking up all the comments and likes and exploring the vast pool of content from others.
For me, the most fascinating part about Clips is how Apple has expressly chosen not to monetize this app, and perhaps as a result of that, not to bring it cross platform to, say, Android (let alone macOS). Apple’s Services business aggregates revenue from services like Apple Music, Apple Pay, and iTunes (two out of three of those are available on non-Apple operating systems), and this is in fact the brightest spot in terms of growth for the company, even if it’s certainly not the biggest. The spirit behind Clips is about enhancing the core Apple smartphone and tablet experience, not about Services.
Probably many people with iPhones, iPads, and iPods will appreciate the lack of ads in Clips. But it’s still a surprising move, given investors’ interest in Services as a way for Apple to maintain healthy levels of growth over the next few years.
Ultimately, Clips’ restriction to iOS and its lack of ads is the latest reminder that at Apple, iOS still rules.
