Intel’s Unison app aims to intertwine Windows, iPhone, and Android

Intel’s new Unison software is more than just an app to connect your phone, PC, and tablet together. By next year, it will be a platform for any developer to take advantage of, Intel executives said Tuesday.

As it is, the Unison app that Intel launched this week at its Intel Innovation conference is useful. Though it largely duplicates the capabilities of what the Windows Your Phone app can accomplish, there’s a key difference: Unison connects to iPhones, which Windows has pretty much given up on to focus on Android integration. Unison will launch by the holiday on key members of the company’s premium Evo platform, with PCs from HP, Lenovo, and Acer.

But Josh Newman, the interim general manager of Intel’s mobile division, says that the company has bigger plans, both to add additional PC makers in 2023 as well as to extend Unison into the developer space. Intel plans to release a software development kit (SDK) which will allow any software developers to create apps that will connect the three platforms together.

David Birnbaum, principal engineer and chief technical officer of Intel’s connected experiences said that device manufacturers — PCs, tablets, and phones, as well as cameras, smartwatches, and more — have had to navigate multiple wireless connection technologies as well as multiple operating systems to interconnect and talk to one another.

“We plan to transform this into an open device innovation,” Birnbaum said, taking the pain out of the development process. “Our vision is that you will get to expand your application with more than device experiences, without the need to go to the trouble of how to connect as well as how to maintain the links.”

According to Birnbaum, schools could quickly add tablets to the curriculum, or a manufacturer would be able to develop a multi-device gaming solution.

In any event, Newman said, the extensible SDK should come to market by early next year or perhaps sooner. Originally, Unison was pitched as a bonus of sorts for those who bought into its Evo platform. Now, it seems like substantially more.

While consumers won’t feel the benefits right away, better connections between wireless devices could be a relative godsend for those who hate being stuck in a “walled garden” of specific devices — a bane of modern consumer hardware.
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