Apple obviously reads ll :-)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPhone_5s
I was going to post about the quirky fact that Apple had just launched an innovation in flash photography. It is more rudimentary, offering only one degree of freedom (color temperature?) but on the other hand, it does it with automatic color metering.
But maybe it is not so quirky: maybe we should get used to the fact that companies like Apple are selling more cameras, and generating far more profits on them, than any traditional camera maker, so at times, they will have the resources and profit potential to invest heavily, and drive innovations from the bottom up. Another thing to watch out for is that Apple has integrated the design of optical hardware, custom subprocessors within its ARM-based ”system on a chip", and software for that hardware, to support features like this flash system and the new version of "sweep panorama", which merges 60fps information, rather than just a few frames. Samsung, Sony, and Panasonic might have similar capabilities; Canon, Nikon, and Olympus not so much, at least so long as they each muddle along developing in-house proprietary microprocessor hardware (Digic, Expeed, BIONZ, TruePic, Venus Engine, etc., etc.) requiring an entirely in-house software effort to go with it.
High-end gear might not be directly affected by these mere conveniences and gimmics, but the makers of mainsteam cameras, up to the "non-pro" system cameras, might want to get more serious about the features that their signal processing and camera control software and hardware can support, and maybe drop their in-house "IT", which I doubt can match the pace of development of ARM SOC designs and software.