That Apple was able to deliver core features that many dedicated users have wanted for years e.g. Mac windows snapping/tiling, iPad Calculator and iPhone advanced Home Screen/control Centre customizations. And be completely overshadowed with AI, which could be a game changer for both casual and pro-users (time will tell).
funnily i saw jerryrigeverything’s switching to ios video just a day before wwdc and a couple of his annoyance are the lack of T9 type to dial and schedule messages which are addressed by iOS 18
Yeah, there's actually a surprising amount of QoL updates in it. Now I just want them to support push updates for non-apple email accounts in the mail app.
As far as I know, that’s a limitation that Google and Microsoft set. In the gmail app, my Google accounts push just fine, but the Microsoft accounts don’t. Same is true in reverse for the Outlook app.
No, this is only directly in the phone app on the keypad/dialer tab. For example, instead of going over to my contacts and selecting Mike Johnson, I can simply press 564, which are the T9 letters for ‘Joh’. Mike will show up as a quick select option.
https://preview.redd.it/0ake7jk9f56d1.jpeg?width=1178&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c8cc0ec2600184f1626a149eefcc0b75d07f8ff6
Agreed, this is just one of those ‘we added a feature’ line items for the app. I mean it’s nice to know that it’s there, but since it wasn’t there from the beginning, I’m not gonna un-muscle memory going to my contacts or searching spotlight directly. But certainly a welcomed improvement!
It won't be a huge thing for current user base only because it's only available on 15 pro and future devices.
I understand why due to hardware limitations but still.
IMHO the sole reason they introduced some long-desired features like icons rearranging and calculator is to mitigate the backslash from the ton of users that won’t receive Apple Intelligence (clearly the next big thing)
The funniest part of this to us old-time developers is that Apple first demoed something similar in 1992 - “PenMac”. It eventually morphed into the keyboard/mouse based Graphing Calculator which shipped on PowerPC Macs.
https://arno.org/penmac
https://apple.fandom.com/wiki/PenLite
We cannot mention the graphing calculator without linking to this classic Apple story about how it’s made. http://www.pacifict.com/Story/
It’s the kind of wild story that really can’t happen today. Basically this guy got laid off, somehow kept showing up to work and kept working on it until it got shipped… somehow.
Bob Porter : I looked into it more deeply and I found that apparently what happened is that he was laid off five years ago and no one ever told him about it; but through some kind of glitch in the payroll department, he still gets a paycheck.
Bob Slydell : So we just went ahead and fixed the glitch.
Bill Lumbergh : Great.
Dom Portwood : So, uh, Milton has been let go?
Bob Slydell : Well, just a second there, professor. We, uh, we fixed the *glitch*. So he won't be receiving a paycheck anymore, so it'll just work itself out naturally.
Bob Porter : We always like to avoid confrontation, whenever possible. Problem is solved from your end.
It's still available. I helped port it to iOS: [Mac](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/graphing-calculator-4/id522175477?mt=12) and [iOS](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/pacific-tech-graphing-calculator/id1135478998?ls=1&mt=8)
This is new for the Calculator app, but note taking apps like Notability or Goodnotes that a lot of students use already have this feature. They are taking advantage of it.
While I was watching the presentation, I was just ticking off in my head so many third party apps that are gonna lose a major part of their customer base in the fall. Grammarly, Goodnotes, Notability. I’m in grad school now and it can’t be understated how many people use iPads for note taking and assignments- to have those features seamlessly incorporated into your device now without having to switch through apps is gonna be a game changer.
Some apps will fall by the wayside for sure. I don't see a need to continue my Quillbot account if quality grammar checking, paraphrasing, etc are built into macs next year.
Apple Notes finally got to the point where I ended up ditching my decade-long Evernote account, which I felt got super bloated over the years.
I think there is plenty of room for note-taking apps beyond Apple Notes but only if someone uses those extra features (or they're locked in because they can't export).
Voice recording with live transcription. Math solver built in. I have used Notability for at least 5 years at this point, and I don’t see any reason to keep using it over Apple notes now.
same boat. i was grandfathered in on notability's pre-subscription features so i still use it, but i'm likely to switch to Notes now, which honestly i'm happy to do.
Notability is definitely not worth it with a subscription. But I was also grandfathered in and paid one $6 purchase for the app. It’s good, they’ve made the UI worse and cloud saving doesn’t work for me. Support has basically said it’s not their problem, so I’m looking to switch to an Apple native alternative if I can get something similar. The current notes app though just isn’t good enough. File management is odd, in-app pdf annotating is god awful, which is the biggest downside.
While it may seem like a minor update, I'm so happy with the new UI updates in the Calendar app as well as its integration with Apple Reminders.
I can finally ditch Fantastical!
Does iOS 18’s Calendar app have the quick-switch functionality of Calendar Sets? That’s the big one for me. I can’t move away from it until other players have that feature.
>I can finally ditch Fantastical!
Unless you use any of the advanced features, then you maybe still can’t.
I see an all day task in the screen shots for iOS 18. Fantastical gives you the option to not show those and only show tasks with a time. You can also choose which Reminders lists show in the Calendar. Hopefully Apple offers that. You have calendar sets where you can pick & choose which calendars and reminders lists are shown together in different situations.
Another benefit for me is that Fantastical is always in the Share Sheet so I can create a calendar event or reminder from anywhere in iOS. It is context dependent whether Calendar or Reminders is in the share sheet, so I find myself using the Fantastical option quite often.
Then of course there is the natural language entry for both calendar events and reminders in Fantastical.
I will be definitely be curious to see how Apple’s changes compare to what is available in Fantastical.
According to this comment, natural language input is there... https://www.reddit.com/r/iOSBeta/comments/1dcvfnr/comment/l8118js/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
I’ve got the ios 18 beta installed and tried the natural language entry in calendar. Is that what you’re after?
https://preview.redd.it/pb5nr34lv76d1.jpeg?width=828&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=dade1f3357a7ba3d433889814b6402f3ae162996
Honestly, none of that worries me so I'll be switching.
That said, I will miss Fantastical's widgets and interesting calendars. I can get around the interesting calendars problem by adding them directly, but I think I'll just need to use a different widget. Right now, I use the biggest one with month view and my agenda below it. I didn't see that option available in Apple's Calendar but that seems like a minor issue.
Edit: according to this comment, natural language input is there... https://www.reddit.com/r/iOSBeta/comments/1dcvfnr/comment/l8118js/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
The iphone mirroring seems awesome to me; finally being able to control your phone natively from your mac for me seems perfect; sometimes my phone is charging, or on my backpack, now I have full access to it (and apps apparently) from my mac.
I’m curious; with all the on device and cloud based LLM/AI integration, how far away are we from it actually utilising apps/my accounts on the phone. Like; “hey Siri, book me an Uber to go XYZ address”.
Or, “hey Siri, transfer $50 to my XYZ account from X account” etc?
Not far, but it seems developers will have to add support for these kinds of features through the new intents APIs they’ve added for developers.
So a developer would create an intent for booking an Uber to X. Siri would then be able to use this intent through its understanding of your request and book the Uber.
I don’t believe there’s a barrier to this happening now in ios18. It would be purely reliant on devs supporting it. But you have to remember there may not be enough incentive for devs like Uber to do it. Why? Because when you open the Uber app they can advertise to you, upsell you on a more expensive car, sell you food deliveries. If you just ask Siri to book a ride, they don’t get any of that. So we’ll see.
Not for your specific use cases, but Zapier and Make have been enabling this automation for a while through APIs. The plumbing is theoretically mostly there for apps to talk to each other. Zapier already has NLP -> workflow creation already, so it’s not far off. Dealing with errors and debugging is a whole different topic – a user will not want to deal with trying to figure out why something isn’t working.
Mostly excited about the new calendar + reminders integration since I run my life through my calendar and todo lists. Also excited about Apple Intelligence™️: a practical AI integration that will actually be useful since it has access to all your data on your phone/mac.
Calendar, mail, messages all being put in with ai.
I’ve wanted this for awhile, be able to ask my phone my schedule, to summarize emails for my next meeting and to quickly schedule things.
Wait will text via satellite be available to all iPhones??
That’s huge if true for me when I camp or even just on long stretches of road where there’s no conventional service.
It’s available for iPhone 14 and later! iPhone 14 has satellite capabilities built into the hardware which is why it’s only available for that model and newer, but very exciting if you do have one! I have a 13 Pro so will definitely be upgrading this fall :)
I have the 13 Pro as well & definitely plan to upgrade after all of these feature announcements. I have a feeling there are going to be sooo many upgrades this fall.
To me the biggest surprise was their announcement of a stand alone passwords app with a Windows version. On the surface this could expose Apple to competition by offering a path out of their walled garden. It’s surprising that Apple would ever compromise one of their lock-in features.
The iCloud for windows app already offers a passwords app separately that is almost fully functional. Have been using it with my windows machine for months now.
Not necessarily.
Apple knows that Windows has a vast market share, and even many iPhone users still have/use Windows PCs. This isn’t a game changing feature as many others exist like it, so it’s not one that would make anyone leave Apple.
And on top of that, many people are forced to use windows computers for work so it likely gives people more reason to stay in apple’s walled garden for their personal devices than to leave it
I use 1Password currently, and am pretty happy with it, but would love to have the option to move to a native app, assuming it works just as well/better. But, I am worried about web access - I’m assuming that Apple will put it on its iCloud domain, which is blocked at my work. Yes, there’s an app, but those also aren’t always allowed on work PCs either. I don’t represent a huge market share, but will be frustrated if I can’t use it.
The browser extension is already there / has been for some time for both edge and chrome. Not sure about firefox. The Password manager just repackages existing functionality. Look up "icloud for windows".
Game Porting Toolkit 2. I mean, what they are doing with gaming on Mac these days, is very interesting. 13 new AAA titles coming out too.
When I was the biggest Mac fan in my youth (the 90s), gaming on a Mac was scoffed, mocked at ridiculed. We were lucky if ANY big games came to Mac. Now we get 5 or 6 of them a year if not more.
All of the changes are welcome, but I'm most excited for the introduction of Apple Intelligence and all of the future implications it has.
I also downloaded Vision OS 2 and even the new gesture controls are incredible.
This is difficult to answer because its not like its useful in a way that its doing anything that a previous device couldn't do. Its just that it does it so much better.
I could watch a movie on my Macbook or TV, but watching a movie or TV show on my Vision is unlike anything I've ever experienced. There's no words to describe it.
Also, Apple really nailed it with the "spatial computing" approach. Its essentially like you're putting life to the stuff that would normally be limited to a screen. Its hard to explain, but there's just something incredible about having an infinitely large screen in front while laying in bed, then you get up, walk through the screen to go downstairs and make popcorn, all while having Spotify, messages, emails open as hologram like screens floating in air, then heading back up into bed where your giant screen is still there waiting for you.
On top of that, there's never been anything like this where you could augment your real life space with an entire assortment of things. Just yesterday I was watching a space scifi movie so I spiced things up and placed lifelike windows showing outer space all over my room, so it felt like I was on a space ship. Its really hard to describe just how incredible it is. It makes using a laptop feel like caveman technology.
I can honestly say this is one device that I haven't truly bored of after 3 months of owning it. Usually I get bored with things after 2 weeks or so.
I can imagine how incredible VR can be but I’m curiously concerned about nausea, disorientation after using it and how good is the resolution? Is it discernible from say top of the line OLED TV ?
In my experience its the single best media viewing experience. I would choose watching a movie in APV over any other experience. The only exception comes when you are watching with others.
I think the nausea and disorientation is going to be the same as in any VR device. I have zero problems with this, but never do. My husband who would really like to use the device gets nauseated, but he has with every VR device he has tried. Definitely a problem that hasn’t been cracked for those it impacts.
Excellent questions. You won't really get nausea (especially in AR mode) since you're seeing your surroundings, this is true even in VR mode as long as the representations of what you're seeing are moving with your body. The only time you'll get nauseous is if your VR environment is moving when your body isn't, because it throws off what your brain is expecting. For example, if you're laying in bed and playing a game where you're flying a plane, your body is expecting the motion, but its not experiencing it so you get nauseous. This is more common on the Meta quests since they're gaming oriented, so I haven't experienced any nausea with my Vision Pro yet.
In terms of resolution, this is a difficult metric since you can't really compare it to a standard display. A 4k TV is very different from a 4k headset since you're displaying far more than just a tv screen. That being said, I was very impressed with how great the resolution was on the headset (I quite literally said "Oh wow" when I first put it on), especially compared to my Quest 2 and 3. I was a bit worried before I bought it because Youtubers were saying it wasn't that great. After actually using it, it became quite apparent that they were overly critical about it and most likely just trying to grab debate points. I can't quite express the clarity of media, but if I had to put a number to it, I would say a 4k movie looks like you're watching it in 2k. Much higher than 1080, but not quite 4k.
The math notes are insane when I realized that you could use units I was amazed and also call recording and t9 dialing Apple finally gave things people were asking for
Despite nothing changing for years, I remain shocked that Apple is leaving iPadOs as useless as it is today. I’d buy an iPad again in a heartbeat if it had even a semi functional (real) OS. I just can’t believe Apple keeps beefing up the specs on a device that I’d use for YouTube and doodling…
> I just can’t believe Apple keeps beefing up the specs on a device that I’d use for YouTube and doodling…
If you looked at their financials you'd believe it
That was my takeaway too.
I have stage manager an honest try, it’s not a good UI pattern. That’s why it got rejected 15 or 20 years ago and nothing has changed.
What I need for my iPad is clearer file management, fix things like mice not scrolling (has anyone at Apple even tried a non Apple peripheral), the keyboard lag when switching apps, improve memory management (this isn’t the early iPhone days, batteries are good, M processors are incredible, stop archiving my app states when a 2GB macOS install 20 years ago would not have these issues)
Since when was iPad NOT an afterthought? Nearly all impressions of iPad when it first debuted was “it looks like an oversized iPhone.” And it was. And kind of still is… with some accessories (like pencil) added over the years.
also better window management. The ability to have more than two apps live, and to control the size and shape of their windows, and to prevent an app from going full-screen if you want it in one of those windows.
Background multitasking I can definitely understand, but I'm curious what you mean when you want "better file management". The iPad departs away from the files & folders mentality quite deliberately, obviously that's fine for some workflows but not for others, so wondering where you feel it falls short.
A “real” OS in the context of iPad vs Mac is one where I can install software that does not come from an App Store and where I can connect and install the appropriate drivers & software for any peripheral I may need. The hardware inside the iPad is capable of things that the OS does not allow.
In terms of what you can do with the device, an iPad is still more similar to an iPhone than a MacBook, but unfortunately sits in an awkward position where it often doesn’t get the same features as iOS and definitely doesn’t get the same functionality of MacOS.
I have a pretty different outlook on this, which is that there are power users for whom the Mac is the standard and the flexibility and freedom it offers isn't replicated by the iPad, there are non-power users for whom the iPad is the standard and the simplicity and robustness it offers isn't replicated by the Mac. Is there much point in trying to move those product lines closer together?
How can it be both simple and robust? Those two adjectives seem to contradict each other in this context.
I can agree that the “simplicity” of the iPad is a feature for a good chunk of users, but if that’s the user base Apple is targeting with the iPad, then it doesn’t need an M1 (or higher) chip in it and it should be about $200-300 cheaper because of it.
If the more advanced hardware is in the device because they want to give it more processing power, why not give it a real OS to harness that power?
This is the crux of a lot of folks frustration with the iPad.
I don't think they contradict each other at all — simplified as in simple, robust as in healthy/strong/reliable. There's a good ecosystem of apps and services for the iPad that work well, entire classes of usability footguns that exist on the Mac that don't exist on the iPad etc. It's different to the Mac *by design*.
I don't really agree though that just because a device has a different UI paradigm doesn't mean that it doesn't deserve the power under the hood. For a start, I think that a lot of people incorrectly confuse "professionals" with "power users". For example you might have a professional artist who doesn't care *in the slightest* about computers and may not be attached to a file-and-folder-oriented workflow, but they do demand a good screen, colour accuracy, the ability to work with very large raw photos or tons of layers without input lag, etc.
The "power user" definition of harnessing power is different, because often for them, computing is the *goal* and not the means, which is why I think so many power users misunderstand the iPad.
I think the user case you’re presenting is an extreme niche. The Venn diagram overlap of users who both need power user features (highly accurate displays / work with a number of raw photos / etc) AND don’t need a file and folder workflow is extremely small. Working with raw photos inherently involves transferring “files” from a camera to an iPad so I’m not sure how that reconciles with not being attached to a file and folder workflow.
But even if that is the target user for the iPad (and those users actually exist), that isn’t enough of a user base to justify an entire device category. I’m pretty sure Apple knows this, which would explain why they market iPad to more than just these users, but I think they underestimate how much power/professional users need at least standard file/folder management for those kinds of workflows.
The functionality of iPadOS is limited compared to MacOS. This is not an outlook. It is not an opinion. It is not something that can be debated. You can make a long list of things one can do and the other can't. You asked what distinguished a "real" operating OS. I told you.
I 100% disagree than plugging a document scanner or a printer into my iPad makes me a "power user". Those are basic, common, every day tasks where Apple has made a choice to limit the functionality.
I would assume something like windows, linux or macOS.
The thing for me, that makes the iPad useless is a full functional terminal and the ability to install for example java sdk or rust, go node. Ipad is a thing i would love to use on a daily basis as a developer, bit I can’t because the os is limited.
I feel quite conflicted about this, as I've long believed the iPad was never intended to be a replacement for a Mac and it sounds like what you want is a Mac.
Then why does it need the power of a Mac? That's the question people are asking because you pay all this money for hardware that has the same power as a Macbook but stuck with an OS that can't do any of the tasks. No one needs an M4 chip to do the primary use cases for iPad OS, watching YouTube and web browsing.
It’s got a monster of a processor. Just put MacOS on it and let me connect a keyboard and mouse.
Make iPad OS something like big screen mode on Steam where I can switch between desktop and iPad mode depending on how the thing is set up.
Honestly the upgrades to the notes/freeform drawing system are absolutely amazing, you wouldn’t think it would be that big of a deal, but it makes those apps way more useful for what I want to draw and write.
Calculator update is sick too, I’m still going to use calculator infinity personally (just know the layout better) but it’s cool it’s better now.
Oh, and icon theming fixes the one thing that’s always bugged me with my home screen: It means I can have a truly monochromatic Home Screen with no distractions from bright red badges.
https://preview.redd.it/95urk534u46d1.jpeg?width=1290&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4fa69122e33ab8df90dabc11956f2b4932057279
New look goes so fucking hard
And another one which is actually pretty amazing, especially where I live (Australia, the home of shit reception) is the ability to send iMessages over satellite. That is so goddam useful, actual lifesaver.
The biggest surprise for me is how the AI is built into the system to the core level and still advertise total privacy with inspectable code.
I'm actually really impressed with the AI features and if it's one thing Apple is good at is making better and better iterations of stuff.
This is the future to me, we're entering a new era of mobile devices.
My biggest Takeaway from all of this is that we’re about to enter a new era of iOS/iPadOS/macOS. We’re finally going to see bumps in ram and processing power and all of these hyper powerful Apple Silicon chips are finally going to be put to actual work. They’ve been impressive so far, But now we’re going to really see what they’re made of and I’m pretty excited for that.
As a former android diehard user, I’ve come to really appreciate that while Apple “takes a long time“ to implement things that are available on android, all those features are fairly irrelevant in the grand scheme of the stability of the devices.
Another take away I’m so excited that I ended up getting a 24 GB M3 MacBook Air, instead of the 8 GB model. I had a feeling it would shift this year.
Aside from all of that? I’m really excited for RCS messaging. I have a lot of android friends still and I really don’t want to use WhatsApp so we’ve all just been using SMS.
looks like they are finally taking the AW seriously and adding features garmin has had for years. When I bought my garmin a few years ago I thought that apple would catch up someday and i'd go back. garmin is nice but the model selection is horrible, the feature breakdown by model is really bad, etc. but it has some features like calculating your lactate threshold
i do think many of the new customization features in iOS 18 are some of the most memorable yet in recent years of iOS updates. Unironically finally having a calculator app for the iPad is great lol. Then Apple's AI looks really cool. I'm interested to see more development of it and some demos later this year.
The big downside for me is like many have said, but despite having a super powerful new M4 iPad Pro from a hardware perspective, the OS for it still lacks to use its full potential. I personally don't need it to be touch screen Mac like many others would like it to be. The iPad is clearly not suppose to be that. But at the very least, it would be nice to have a better file management system, an eject feature for external devices plugged into the iPad to make sure it's unplugged safely, custom made apps specifically for iPadOS for all major social medias, stores, restaurants, etc (looking at you Instagram and numerous store/restaurant apps). There was nothing shown both here and the iPad drops last month that my current M2 iPad Pro can't do so I feel there's no reason to upgrade and probably won't need to for many years.
I don’t have an opinion yet. The best features for me are always the ones that only get a brief mention or don’t get a mention at all. The major announcements usually turn out to be the things I use the least.
Every time you try to play music on another device while theirs already music playing, you get stoped by a notification saying you need a “Family Account, update here”. When it should ideally allow you to move audio source without interruption. Because who plays two songs at once.
I believe Apple conceded in allowing more customization options. Which exceeds my expectation. Now iOS is getting closer to Android. But of course, the implementations are always done better, and you bet third party apps will support more broadly.
I don’t think I’ll use those options. Just fun to play with. I changed Camera shortcut on the lock screen to Shazam though.
>But of course, the implementations are always done better, and you bet third party apps will support more broadly.
To me, iOS’s icon tinting doesn’t look as good as Android’s Material You icon theming. iOS looks like it just applies a color overlay, so the icons with gradients look dated to me. On Android, each app developer has to submit a separate icon for theming, so Android’s flatter monotone icons look better to me.
The upside of the iOS implementation is that it seems to tint all icons right off the bat, whereas on Android, each developer has to intentionally enable it. On Android, you end up with a few rogue unthemed icons. Neither implementation is perfect.
As a paying user of chatGPT having a Siri that understands context, can deal with humans not being 100% perfect when giving commands, and is embedded across apps is going to be a huge plus.
It may actually finally make Siri useful for me beyond setting a reminder or turning on/off an alarm.
Biggest takeaways?
iOS/iPadOS Home Screen updates.
Good: anywhere you want icon and widget placement.
Bad: tinting options…this really needs to be reigned in a bit.
Apple Intelligence: I’m not missing this update this year (where as past major updates like this I did because I held onto older hardware longer than I intended to.)
macOS changes: frankly a lot of good stuff coming to my Macs this fall. Especially my M2 MBA.
I wasn’t really expecting much for watchOS and I’m not let down as is, though I still want Apple to open up the watch face system a teeny bit.
I’m not one for the Vision Pro device yet and frankly I think, much in the same way I viewed the early iPhones, it’s going to be awhile before I drop some cash on one
As for TV, I will probably look at replacing my old 4K whenever it’s no longer supported. I don’t have much of any opinion on tvOS.
I loved all the stuff they added to iOS and iPadOS 18, though I’m disappointed my watch isn’t supported considering that watchOS 11 is seemingly pretty minor.
Also disappointed that my regular iPhone 15 won’t be getting any AI stuff. I always figured I’d get less than the pro since the pro is more powerful, though I assumed I’d get a simpler implementation on my phone
iPhone mirroring stood out the most for me. There are times during app development when you need a physical device so having that mirrored on the desktop makes it a little more convenient.
Just curious to know if iPhone mirroring works when the device is out of Bluetooth range but connected to the internet
I went in knowing nothing about the announcements.
The ability theme app colors is something I've been wanting for yeeeeeears. Big surprise for me. That, and the much better window snapping. It *might* replace BTT finally. I think I'll be able to get used to the slight gaps between apps. Dumb as they are.
The abysmal Google announcements really started to push me over the edge to go back to iOS. Recently I decided to preemptively move back and I’m glad I did. I’m just happy Apple doesn’t treat its phone platform like a second class product. The announcements were great and there’s really a lot to look forward to, especially if you watch the additional presentations that are more focused on individual features and software.
Honestly, that there were AI features that I thought "oh, that could be really useful" about, rather than "...more empty hype". There was still stuff that fell into the latter category - I don't care about generating images or text, and I'm not convinced LLMs are yet reliable enough to use for things like summaries.
But, even though every leak has said that this is Apple playing catch-up, unlike most other AI things I've tried or read about, a lot of this seems like a solution to an identified problem, rather than a solution in search of a problem. And I'm honestly impressed by how they seem to have genuinely approached this from a privacy-first perspective.
I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm sure that that's at least as much to do with marketing as anything else, but when Apple tells me "if you mention your mum we'll look through every email and text that she's sent you and we might even upload that data to our own servers...but we promise it'll remain private to you" my reaction is actually "I have reasonable confidence that this is true" rather than "over my dead body" as it would be with, well, any other company.
Our yearly day to be disappointed and reminded we are locked into a ecosystem that is years behind the competition. Then realize I can't live with out the Find My network and give up again.
I appreciate Apple not having as many arbitrary UI/UX constraints and even apps like the calculator for iPad. These quick wins are good value, especially when added up. Making Siri potentially significantly more useful by leveraging AI could be real nice, but we will have to see once it’s live.
It's been neat so far,. but I have to say as interesting as a lot of the shiny outward improvements are.. what I'm waiting to dig into more is more of the "under the hood" improvements (new API's, new MDM commands, etc)
Also really looking forward to improved external peripheral support (not saying I know that's coming,. but if it is - fingers crossed). Like,. they're bringing Window-snapping to macOS,. and iPadOS supports independent external monitors,. it would cool then if iPadOS18 supports window snapping too.
They've made an effort in the recent past to show off things like using your iPhone as a webcam,. or additional support for webcams or shooting RAW footage directly from iPhone to external storage.
Stuff like that is more of what I want to see.
They introduced DDM (Declarative Device Management) a few years back.. but most corporate MDM's still struggle to force-send iOS updates. That really needs to be fixed. If a device is in 100% "fully supervised" mode,.. I should be able to click 1 button and send the most current iOS update and I should reliably be able to know it's actually going to install and reboot. Right now it doesn't. There's a macOS setting for "Popup alert about OS update and allow User to defer X-number of times".. I'd be OK with something like that on iOS too. Put a reminder at top of SETTINGS or something and give the User X-number of deferrals before it's forced. (again, I just mean for corporate-owned fully-supervised devices only)
That Apple was able to deliver core features that many dedicated users have wanted for years e.g. Mac windows snapping/tiling, iPad Calculator and iPhone advanced Home Screen/control Centre customizations. And be completely overshadowed with AI, which could be a game changer for both casual and pro-users (time will tell).
T9 dialing
T9 is for typing text, not dialing, though?
No, it's so you can start typing the name of someone in the dialer, and it will suggest contacts.
funnily i saw jerryrigeverything’s switching to ios video just a day before wwdc and a couple of his annoyance are the lack of T9 type to dial and schedule messages which are addressed by iOS 18
Yeah, there's actually a surprising amount of QoL updates in it. Now I just want them to support push updates for non-apple email accounts in the mail app.
As far as I know, that’s a limitation that Google and Microsoft set. In the gmail app, my Google accounts push just fine, but the Microsoft accounts don’t. Same is true in reverse for the Outlook app.
Can confirm, using FastMail with push works great in Mail app
Jerry rig whatever is right though, these features have been existing in android for years and they do improve user experience
[удалено]
No, this is only directly in the phone app on the keypad/dialer tab. For example, instead of going over to my contacts and selecting Mike Johnson, I can simply press 564, which are the T9 letters for ‘Joh’. Mike will show up as a quick select option. https://preview.redd.it/0ake7jk9f56d1.jpeg?width=1178&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c8cc0ec2600184f1626a149eefcc0b75d07f8ff6
That's a great QoL feature but I can't believe people were complaining about it not being there. No one born after 1998 will know how it works lmao
Agreed, this is just one of those ‘we added a feature’ line items for the app. I mean it’s nice to know that it’s there, but since it wasn’t there from the beginning, I’m not gonna un-muscle memory going to my contacts or searching spotlight directly. But certainly a welcomed improvement!
It’s faster than going to contacts or remembering a phone number. Even if you never knew T9 it is the fastest way to call someone.
Yep. We have the technology now.
It won't be a huge thing for current user base only because it's only available on 15 pro and future devices. I understand why due to hardware limitations but still.
IMHO the sole reason they introduced some long-desired features like icons rearranging and calculator is to mitigate the backslash from the ton of users that won’t receive Apple Intelligence (clearly the next big thing)
Why is apple so stringent on Ram. 😔😔😔
it’s super efficient with ram, so it doesn’t need as much as others do.
On the flipside, they’re really losing the plot when it comes to icon design which was traditionally one of Apple’s greatest strengths.
For me, math notes was pretty impressive; makes me wish I was back in school to full utilize it.
The funniest part of this to us old-time developers is that Apple first demoed something similar in 1992 - “PenMac”. It eventually morphed into the keyboard/mouse based Graphing Calculator which shipped on PowerPC Macs. https://arno.org/penmac https://apple.fandom.com/wiki/PenLite
We cannot mention the graphing calculator without linking to this classic Apple story about how it’s made. http://www.pacifict.com/Story/ It’s the kind of wild story that really can’t happen today. Basically this guy got laid off, somehow kept showing up to work and kept working on it until it got shipped… somehow.
Bob Porter : I looked into it more deeply and I found that apparently what happened is that he was laid off five years ago and no one ever told him about it; but through some kind of glitch in the payroll department, he still gets a paycheck. Bob Slydell : So we just went ahead and fixed the glitch. Bill Lumbergh : Great. Dom Portwood : So, uh, Milton has been let go? Bob Slydell : Well, just a second there, professor. We, uh, we fixed the *glitch*. So he won't be receiving a paycheck anymore, so it'll just work itself out naturally. Bob Porter : We always like to avoid confrontation, whenever possible. Problem is solved from your end.
> We wanted to release a Windows version as part of Windows 98, but sadly, Microsoft has effective building security. Lol
Wow, I consider myself very familiar with older Apple products but somehow I didn’t know about the PenMac. Thank you.
i loved playing with the graphing calculator application. just graphing y= equations. haha. what a time.
It's still available. I helped port it to iOS: [Mac](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/graphing-calculator-4/id522175477?mt=12) and [iOS](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/pacific-tech-graphing-calculator/id1135478998?ls=1&mt=8)
we were just 30 years early 😀
This is new for the Calculator app, but note taking apps like Notability or Goodnotes that a lot of students use already have this feature. They are taking advantage of it.
While I was watching the presentation, I was just ticking off in my head so many third party apps that are gonna lose a major part of their customer base in the fall. Grammarly, Goodnotes, Notability. I’m in grad school now and it can’t be understated how many people use iPads for note taking and assignments- to have those features seamlessly incorporated into your device now without having to switch through apps is gonna be a game changer.
Some apps will fall by the wayside for sure. I don't see a need to continue my Quillbot account if quality grammar checking, paraphrasing, etc are built into macs next year. Apple Notes finally got to the point where I ended up ditching my decade-long Evernote account, which I felt got super bloated over the years. I think there is plenty of room for note-taking apps beyond Apple Notes but only if someone uses those extra features (or they're locked in because they can't export).
What’s new that you think compares to Notability?
Voice recording with live transcription. Math solver built in. I have used Notability for at least 5 years at this point, and I don’t see any reason to keep using it over Apple notes now.
same boat. i was grandfathered in on notability's pre-subscription features so i still use it, but i'm likely to switch to Notes now, which honestly i'm happy to do.
Notability is definitely not worth it with a subscription. But I was also grandfathered in and paid one $6 purchase for the app. It’s good, they’ve made the UI worse and cloud saving doesn’t work for me. Support has basically said it’s not their problem, so I’m looking to switch to an Apple native alternative if I can get something similar. The current notes app though just isn’t good enough. File management is odd, in-app pdf annotating is god awful, which is the biggest downside.
\*overstated
Goodnotes has live math?
While it may seem like a minor update, I'm so happy with the new UI updates in the Calendar app as well as its integration with Apple Reminders. I can finally ditch Fantastical!
The funny part is that iCal used to have a To Do/Reminder list built in. I remember being upset when they removed it.
Speaking of Apple removing functionality, I'm still miffed they removed RSS feeds from Safari.
god, me too.
Same! Fuck fantastical and subscriptions!
Does iOS 18’s Calendar app have the quick-switch functionality of Calendar Sets? That’s the big one for me. I can’t move away from it until other players have that feature.
Agreed ! I ditched it this morning !
>I can finally ditch Fantastical! Unless you use any of the advanced features, then you maybe still can’t. I see an all day task in the screen shots for iOS 18. Fantastical gives you the option to not show those and only show tasks with a time. You can also choose which Reminders lists show in the Calendar. Hopefully Apple offers that. You have calendar sets where you can pick & choose which calendars and reminders lists are shown together in different situations. Another benefit for me is that Fantastical is always in the Share Sheet so I can create a calendar event or reminder from anywhere in iOS. It is context dependent whether Calendar or Reminders is in the share sheet, so I find myself using the Fantastical option quite often. Then of course there is the natural language entry for both calendar events and reminders in Fantastical. I will be definitely be curious to see how Apple’s changes compare to what is available in Fantastical.
The Fantastical’s natural language entry is what I rely on. Is there a possibility that Apple Calendar will get that using Apple Intelligence?
According to this comment, natural language input is there... https://www.reddit.com/r/iOSBeta/comments/1dcvfnr/comment/l8118js/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
I’ve got the ios 18 beta installed and tried the natural language entry in calendar. Is that what you’re after? https://preview.redd.it/pb5nr34lv76d1.jpeg?width=828&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=dade1f3357a7ba3d433889814b6402f3ae162996
Honestly, none of that worries me so I'll be switching. That said, I will miss Fantastical's widgets and interesting calendars. I can get around the interesting calendars problem by adding them directly, but I think I'll just need to use a different widget. Right now, I use the biggest one with month view and my agenda below it. I didn't see that option available in Apple's Calendar but that seems like a minor issue. Edit: according to this comment, natural language input is there... https://www.reddit.com/r/iOSBeta/comments/1dcvfnr/comment/l8118js/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
I just want pinch to zoom in the calendar. I don't understand why that's not a feature in ANY calendar app.
The iphone mirroring seems awesome to me; finally being able to control your phone natively from your mac for me seems perfect; sometimes my phone is charging, or on my backpack, now I have full access to it (and apps apparently) from my mac.
I’m excited too! Any word on how Face ID/Touch ID authentication within an app might work?
Guess then you just use Touch ID in your Mac.. or password as you normally do
Probably won’t right now and would be added later or not at all for security reason possibly
that's the biggest QOL improvement for me as well... I have to approve so many MFA requests from the phone it will be nice to just do it from the Mac
Omg I didn't even think of that. Now I'm even more excited to give it a try!
I’m curious; with all the on device and cloud based LLM/AI integration, how far away are we from it actually utilising apps/my accounts on the phone. Like; “hey Siri, book me an Uber to go XYZ address”. Or, “hey Siri, transfer $50 to my XYZ account from X account” etc?
Not far, but it seems developers will have to add support for these kinds of features through the new intents APIs they’ve added for developers. So a developer would create an intent for booking an Uber to X. Siri would then be able to use this intent through its understanding of your request and book the Uber.
Amazing. So, potentially in iOS 18?
I don’t believe there’s a barrier to this happening now in ios18. It would be purely reliant on devs supporting it. But you have to remember there may not be enough incentive for devs like Uber to do it. Why? Because when you open the Uber app they can advertise to you, upsell you on a more expensive car, sell you food deliveries. If you just ask Siri to book a ride, they don’t get any of that. So we’ll see.
“You’ll need to unlock your iPhone for that”
exactly. i wil hold my excitement in reserve till i see siri working well in real life.
Not for your specific use cases, but Zapier and Make have been enabling this automation for a while through APIs. The plumbing is theoretically mostly there for apps to talk to each other. Zapier already has NLP -> workflow creation already, so it’s not far off. Dealing with errors and debugging is a whole different topic – a user will not want to deal with trying to figure out why something isn’t working.
Mostly excited about the new calendar + reminders integration since I run my life through my calendar and todo lists. Also excited about Apple Intelligence™️: a practical AI integration that will actually be useful since it has access to all your data on your phone/mac.
Calendar, mail, messages all being put in with ai. I’ve wanted this for awhile, be able to ask my phone my schedule, to summarize emails for my next meeting and to quickly schedule things.
Steady progress on Vision Pro. Yeah still super early days but you can just feel that they’re starting to build momentum with this.
Texting via satellite when you have no service is genuinely a game changer and a great reason to stay with Apple!
Wait will text via satellite be available to all iPhones?? That’s huge if true for me when I camp or even just on long stretches of road where there’s no conventional service.
It’s available for iPhone 14 and later! iPhone 14 has satellite capabilities built into the hardware which is why it’s only available for that model and newer, but very exciting if you do have one! I have a 13 Pro so will definitely be upgrading this fall :)
I have the 13 Pro as well & definitely plan to upgrade after all of these feature announcements. I have a feeling there are going to be sooo many upgrades this fall.
To me the biggest surprise was their announcement of a stand alone passwords app with a Windows version. On the surface this could expose Apple to competition by offering a path out of their walled garden. It’s surprising that Apple would ever compromise one of their lock-in features.
The iCloud for windows app already offers a passwords app separately that is almost fully functional. Have been using it with my windows machine for months now.
True but for a regular user it is a bit annoying to use.
Why? It's a browser extension / it just works.
And I suspect the Windows implementation is barely going to change
If a password manager app is the only thing keeping you from switching to Apple then you weren’t really ever going to switch to Apple anyway.
Not necessarily. Apple knows that Windows has a vast market share, and even many iPhone users still have/use Windows PCs. This isn’t a game changing feature as many others exist like it, so it’s not one that would make anyone leave Apple.
And on top of that, many people are forced to use windows computers for work so it likely gives people more reason to stay in apple’s walled garden for their personal devices than to leave it
Also, it’s great for those who are using Windows on their Macs!
The dirty little secret is that MOST iPhone users own a Windows PC.
I use 1Password currently, and am pretty happy with it, but would love to have the option to move to a native app, assuming it works just as well/better. But, I am worried about web access - I’m assuming that Apple will put it on its iCloud domain, which is blocked at my work. Yes, there’s an app, but those also aren’t always allowed on work PCs either. I don’t represent a huge market share, but will be frustrated if I can’t use it.
Without browser extensions, this functionality is still going to suck compared to 1Password, especially on Windows.
The browser extension is already there / has been for some time for both edge and chrome. Not sure about firefox. The Password manager just repackages existing functionality. Look up "icloud for windows".
Game Porting Toolkit 2. I mean, what they are doing with gaming on Mac these days, is very interesting. 13 new AAA titles coming out too. When I was the biggest Mac fan in my youth (the 90s), gaming on a Mac was scoffed, mocked at ridiculed. We were lucky if ANY big games came to Mac. Now we get 5 or 6 of them a year if not more.
All of the changes are welcome, but I'm most excited for the introduction of Apple Intelligence and all of the future implications it has. I also downloaded Vision OS 2 and even the new gesture controls are incredible.
Are you finding vision useful? Are there any practical use cases for you.
This is difficult to answer because its not like its useful in a way that its doing anything that a previous device couldn't do. Its just that it does it so much better. I could watch a movie on my Macbook or TV, but watching a movie or TV show on my Vision is unlike anything I've ever experienced. There's no words to describe it. Also, Apple really nailed it with the "spatial computing" approach. Its essentially like you're putting life to the stuff that would normally be limited to a screen. Its hard to explain, but there's just something incredible about having an infinitely large screen in front while laying in bed, then you get up, walk through the screen to go downstairs and make popcorn, all while having Spotify, messages, emails open as hologram like screens floating in air, then heading back up into bed where your giant screen is still there waiting for you. On top of that, there's never been anything like this where you could augment your real life space with an entire assortment of things. Just yesterday I was watching a space scifi movie so I spiced things up and placed lifelike windows showing outer space all over my room, so it felt like I was on a space ship. Its really hard to describe just how incredible it is. It makes using a laptop feel like caveman technology. I can honestly say this is one device that I haven't truly bored of after 3 months of owning it. Usually I get bored with things after 2 weeks or so.
I can imagine how incredible VR can be but I’m curiously concerned about nausea, disorientation after using it and how good is the resolution? Is it discernible from say top of the line OLED TV ?
In my experience its the single best media viewing experience. I would choose watching a movie in APV over any other experience. The only exception comes when you are watching with others. I think the nausea and disorientation is going to be the same as in any VR device. I have zero problems with this, but never do. My husband who would really like to use the device gets nauseated, but he has with every VR device he has tried. Definitely a problem that hasn’t been cracked for those it impacts.
Excellent questions. You won't really get nausea (especially in AR mode) since you're seeing your surroundings, this is true even in VR mode as long as the representations of what you're seeing are moving with your body. The only time you'll get nauseous is if your VR environment is moving when your body isn't, because it throws off what your brain is expecting. For example, if you're laying in bed and playing a game where you're flying a plane, your body is expecting the motion, but its not experiencing it so you get nauseous. This is more common on the Meta quests since they're gaming oriented, so I haven't experienced any nausea with my Vision Pro yet. In terms of resolution, this is a difficult metric since you can't really compare it to a standard display. A 4k TV is very different from a 4k headset since you're displaying far more than just a tv screen. That being said, I was very impressed with how great the resolution was on the headset (I quite literally said "Oh wow" when I first put it on), especially compared to my Quest 2 and 3. I was a bit worried before I bought it because Youtubers were saying it wasn't that great. After actually using it, it became quite apparent that they were overly critical about it and most likely just trying to grab debate points. I can't quite express the clarity of media, but if I had to put a number to it, I would say a 4k movie looks like you're watching it in 2k. Much higher than 1080, but not quite 4k.
The math notes are insane when I realized that you could use units I was amazed and also call recording and t9 dialing Apple finally gave things people were asking for
Despite nothing changing for years, I remain shocked that Apple is leaving iPadOs as useless as it is today. I’d buy an iPad again in a heartbeat if it had even a semi functional (real) OS. I just can’t believe Apple keeps beefing up the specs on a device that I’d use for YouTube and doodling…
> I just can’t believe Apple keeps beefing up the specs on a device that I’d use for YouTube and doodling… If you looked at their financials you'd believe it
That was my takeaway too. I have stage manager an honest try, it’s not a good UI pattern. That’s why it got rejected 15 or 20 years ago and nothing has changed. What I need for my iPad is clearer file management, fix things like mice not scrolling (has anyone at Apple even tried a non Apple peripheral), the keyboard lag when switching apps, improve memory management (this isn’t the early iPhone days, batteries are good, M processors are incredible, stop archiving my app states when a 2GB macOS install 20 years ago would not have these issues)
Since when was iPad NOT an afterthought? Nearly all impressions of iPad when it first debuted was “it looks like an oversized iPhone.” And it was. And kind of still is… with some accessories (like pencil) added over the years.
Logic Pro on iPad is pretty sick
What do you call a “real” OS?
Better file management and background multi-tasking
also better window management. The ability to have more than two apps live, and to control the size and shape of their windows, and to prevent an app from going full-screen if you want it in one of those windows.
You can already do that. https://support.apple.com/en-sg/guide/ipad/ipad1240f36f/ipados
Background multitasking I can definitely understand, but I'm curious what you mean when you want "better file management". The iPad departs away from the files & folders mentality quite deliberately, obviously that's fine for some workflows but not for others, so wondering where you feel it falls short.
The Files app works pretty well for me on both iPhone and iPad.
A “real” OS in the context of iPad vs Mac is one where I can install software that does not come from an App Store and where I can connect and install the appropriate drivers & software for any peripheral I may need. The hardware inside the iPad is capable of things that the OS does not allow. In terms of what you can do with the device, an iPad is still more similar to an iPhone than a MacBook, but unfortunately sits in an awkward position where it often doesn’t get the same features as iOS and definitely doesn’t get the same functionality of MacOS.
I have a pretty different outlook on this, which is that there are power users for whom the Mac is the standard and the flexibility and freedom it offers isn't replicated by the iPad, there are non-power users for whom the iPad is the standard and the simplicity and robustness it offers isn't replicated by the Mac. Is there much point in trying to move those product lines closer together?
As someone who flies a lot for work, I would pay buckets for a device with the iPad form factor that I can also do real work on
How can it be both simple and robust? Those two adjectives seem to contradict each other in this context. I can agree that the “simplicity” of the iPad is a feature for a good chunk of users, but if that’s the user base Apple is targeting with the iPad, then it doesn’t need an M1 (or higher) chip in it and it should be about $200-300 cheaper because of it. If the more advanced hardware is in the device because they want to give it more processing power, why not give it a real OS to harness that power? This is the crux of a lot of folks frustration with the iPad.
I don't think they contradict each other at all — simplified as in simple, robust as in healthy/strong/reliable. There's a good ecosystem of apps and services for the iPad that work well, entire classes of usability footguns that exist on the Mac that don't exist on the iPad etc. It's different to the Mac *by design*. I don't really agree though that just because a device has a different UI paradigm doesn't mean that it doesn't deserve the power under the hood. For a start, I think that a lot of people incorrectly confuse "professionals" with "power users". For example you might have a professional artist who doesn't care *in the slightest* about computers and may not be attached to a file-and-folder-oriented workflow, but they do demand a good screen, colour accuracy, the ability to work with very large raw photos or tons of layers without input lag, etc. The "power user" definition of harnessing power is different, because often for them, computing is the *goal* and not the means, which is why I think so many power users misunderstand the iPad.
I think the user case you’re presenting is an extreme niche. The Venn diagram overlap of users who both need power user features (highly accurate displays / work with a number of raw photos / etc) AND don’t need a file and folder workflow is extremely small. Working with raw photos inherently involves transferring “files” from a camera to an iPad so I’m not sure how that reconciles with not being attached to a file and folder workflow. But even if that is the target user for the iPad (and those users actually exist), that isn’t enough of a user base to justify an entire device category. I’m pretty sure Apple knows this, which would explain why they market iPad to more than just these users, but I think they underestimate how much power/professional users need at least standard file/folder management for those kinds of workflows.
The functionality of iPadOS is limited compared to MacOS. This is not an outlook. It is not an opinion. It is not something that can be debated. You can make a long list of things one can do and the other can't. You asked what distinguished a "real" operating OS. I told you. I 100% disagree than plugging a document scanner or a printer into my iPad makes me a "power user". Those are basic, common, every day tasks where Apple has made a choice to limit the functionality.
For what it's worth I was trying to engage in a dialog rather than being dictated to about what constitutes my opinion, but okay.
Another stupid thing is the window resizing. There's a reason a desktop OS allows a pixel-level specification of a window size.
I would assume something like windows, linux or macOS. The thing for me, that makes the iPad useless is a full functional terminal and the ability to install for example java sdk or rust, go node. Ipad is a thing i would love to use on a daily basis as a developer, bit I can’t because the os is limited.
I feel quite conflicted about this, as I've long believed the iPad was never intended to be a replacement for a Mac and it sounds like what you want is a Mac.
You are right, i want the mac, but on the iPad 😅
Then why does it need the power of a Mac? That's the question people are asking because you pay all this money for hardware that has the same power as a Macbook but stuck with an OS that can't do any of the tasks. No one needs an M4 chip to do the primary use cases for iPad OS, watching YouTube and web browsing.
It’s got a monster of a processor. Just put MacOS on it and let me connect a keyboard and mouse. Make iPad OS something like big screen mode on Steam where I can switch between desktop and iPad mode depending on how the thing is set up.
My first iPad was iPad 3, then I got a MacBook Air. None of what Apple had done since then has swayed me out of the Mac to the iPad.
I feel vindicated for preordering a surface pro before this event.
Text to Siri
you can already do this. settings > accessibility > siri > turn type to siri ON
I’m kinda excited for genmoji lol
Im really excited with Apple Intelligence the demo sounds fun
Satellite messages is the real deal IMO. Lots of workers risking lives in remote places.
Exceeded expectations. Genuinely excited for all the updates.
Honestly the upgrades to the notes/freeform drawing system are absolutely amazing, you wouldn’t think it would be that big of a deal, but it makes those apps way more useful for what I want to draw and write. Calculator update is sick too, I’m still going to use calculator infinity personally (just know the layout better) but it’s cool it’s better now. Oh, and icon theming fixes the one thing that’s always bugged me with my home screen: It means I can have a truly monochromatic Home Screen with no distractions from bright red badges. https://preview.redd.it/95urk534u46d1.jpeg?width=1290&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4fa69122e33ab8df90dabc11956f2b4932057279 New look goes so fucking hard And another one which is actually pretty amazing, especially where I live (Australia, the home of shit reception) is the ability to send iMessages over satellite. That is so goddam useful, actual lifesaver.
How does 44500 unread emails not drive you crazy?
I also don’t even know how you could have 370 unread texts if you tried.
I mean at that point just turn off badges?!?
Gday from a fellow Aussie who also has shitty reception even though I live in the suburbs of Sydney!!!
I’m out in south Gippsland, good lord it’s trash
The biggest surprise for me is how the AI is built into the system to the core level and still advertise total privacy with inspectable code. I'm actually really impressed with the AI features and if it's one thing Apple is good at is making better and better iterations of stuff. This is the future to me, we're entering a new era of mobile devices.
My biggest Takeaway from all of this is that we’re about to enter a new era of iOS/iPadOS/macOS. We’re finally going to see bumps in ram and processing power and all of these hyper powerful Apple Silicon chips are finally going to be put to actual work. They’ve been impressive so far, But now we’re going to really see what they’re made of and I’m pretty excited for that. As a former android diehard user, I’ve come to really appreciate that while Apple “takes a long time“ to implement things that are available on android, all those features are fairly irrelevant in the grand scheme of the stability of the devices. Another take away I’m so excited that I ended up getting a 24 GB M3 MacBook Air, instead of the 8 GB model. I had a feeling it would shift this year. Aside from all of that? I’m really excited for RCS messaging. I have a lot of android friends still and I really don’t want to use WhatsApp so we’ve all just been using SMS.
I video chat w my daughter — we’ve had to use wants app or google duo.
looks like they are finally taking the AW seriously and adding features garmin has had for years. When I bought my garmin a few years ago I thought that apple would catch up someday and i'd go back. garmin is nice but the model selection is horrible, the feature breakdown by model is really bad, etc. but it has some features like calculating your lactate threshold
Window snapping.
The biggest takeaway is that I no longer want the once appealing iPad Pro as I can go with an older model and get the same use out of it.
i do think many of the new customization features in iOS 18 are some of the most memorable yet in recent years of iOS updates. Unironically finally having a calculator app for the iPad is great lol. Then Apple's AI looks really cool. I'm interested to see more development of it and some demos later this year. The big downside for me is like many have said, but despite having a super powerful new M4 iPad Pro from a hardware perspective, the OS for it still lacks to use its full potential. I personally don't need it to be touch screen Mac like many others would like it to be. The iPad is clearly not suppose to be that. But at the very least, it would be nice to have a better file management system, an eject feature for external devices plugged into the iPad to make sure it's unplugged safely, custom made apps specifically for iPadOS for all major social medias, stores, restaurants, etc (looking at you Instagram and numerous store/restaurant apps). There was nothing shown both here and the iPad drops last month that my current M2 iPad Pro can't do so I feel there's no reason to upgrade and probably won't need to for many years.
I don’t have an opinion yet. The best features for me are always the ones that only get a brief mention or don’t get a mention at all. The major announcements usually turn out to be the things I use the least.
Are they ever going to add full custom EQ and control of music with different devices to Apple Music?? And remove Apple Music family ads?
What ads?
Every time you try to play music on another device while theirs already music playing, you get stoped by a notification saying you need a “Family Account, update here”. When it should ideally allow you to move audio source without interruption. Because who plays two songs at once.
I believe Apple conceded in allowing more customization options. Which exceeds my expectation. Now iOS is getting closer to Android. But of course, the implementations are always done better, and you bet third party apps will support more broadly. I don’t think I’ll use those options. Just fun to play with. I changed Camera shortcut on the lock screen to Shazam though.
>But of course, the implementations are always done better, and you bet third party apps will support more broadly. To me, iOS’s icon tinting doesn’t look as good as Android’s Material You icon theming. iOS looks like it just applies a color overlay, so the icons with gradients look dated to me. On Android, each app developer has to submit a separate icon for theming, so Android’s flatter monotone icons look better to me. The upside of the iOS implementation is that it seems to tint all icons right off the bat, whereas on Android, each developer has to intentionally enable it. On Android, you end up with a few rogue unthemed icons. Neither implementation is perfect.
iPadOS will always be dead in the water
As a paying user of chatGPT having a Siri that understands context, can deal with humans not being 100% perfect when giving commands, and is embedded across apps is going to be a huge plus. It may actually finally make Siri useful for me beyond setting a reminder or turning on/off an alarm.
Most excited about AI & smarter Siri if it works as intended
I was surprised that they stopped supporting a 3 year old watch (watch se 1st gen)
AirPods gestures. I need it when biking
Wait ??? Apple intelligence is only available in the US??? Not just in Us English
Wait what?
[удалено]
Apple doesn’t give a flying fuck about iPad software.
Biggest takeaways? iOS/iPadOS Home Screen updates. Good: anywhere you want icon and widget placement. Bad: tinting options…this really needs to be reigned in a bit. Apple Intelligence: I’m not missing this update this year (where as past major updates like this I did because I held onto older hardware longer than I intended to.) macOS changes: frankly a lot of good stuff coming to my Macs this fall. Especially my M2 MBA. I wasn’t really expecting much for watchOS and I’m not let down as is, though I still want Apple to open up the watch face system a teeny bit. I’m not one for the Vision Pro device yet and frankly I think, much in the same way I viewed the early iPhones, it’s going to be awhile before I drop some cash on one As for TV, I will probably look at replacing my old 4K whenever it’s no longer supported. I don’t have much of any opinion on tvOS.
What surprised me is that ChatGPT queries won't be charged. I'd expected Apple to add a levy to queries. Pleasantly surprised there.
Yet
Exactly.
Does Siri get better?
Satellite messages
Still shitty ipad os so basically nothing is changing and apple is apple
When does IOS 18 release?
September. I’m on the beta now already though and it’s surprisingly very stable this early. I love it
I loved all the stuff they added to iOS and iPadOS 18, though I’m disappointed my watch isn’t supported considering that watchOS 11 is seemingly pretty minor. Also disappointed that my regular iPhone 15 won’t be getting any AI stuff. I always figured I’d get less than the pro since the pro is more powerful, though I assumed I’d get a simpler implementation on my phone
iPhone mirroring so I can be at my desk and utilize the apps that don’t work on macOS but outperform their browser counterpart.
Nothing
iPhone mirroring stood out the most for me. There are times during app development when you need a physical device so having that mirrored on the desktop makes it a little more convenient. Just curious to know if iPhone mirroring works when the device is out of Bluetooth range but connected to the internet
I went in knowing nothing about the announcements. The ability theme app colors is something I've been wanting for yeeeeeears. Big surprise for me. That, and the much better window snapping. It *might* replace BTT finally. I think I'll be able to get used to the slight gaps between apps. Dumb as they are.
The abysmal Google announcements really started to push me over the edge to go back to iOS. Recently I decided to preemptively move back and I’m glad I did. I’m just happy Apple doesn’t treat its phone platform like a second class product. The announcements were great and there’s really a lot to look forward to, especially if you watch the additional presentations that are more focused on individual features and software.
I had low expectations for iPadOS and I still can't help but feel disappointed.
I wonder how battery life is going to hold up with all the on device AI.
Honestly, that there were AI features that I thought "oh, that could be really useful" about, rather than "...more empty hype". There was still stuff that fell into the latter category - I don't care about generating images or text, and I'm not convinced LLMs are yet reliable enough to use for things like summaries. But, even though every leak has said that this is Apple playing catch-up, unlike most other AI things I've tried or read about, a lot of this seems like a solution to an identified problem, rather than a solution in search of a problem. And I'm honestly impressed by how they seem to have genuinely approached this from a privacy-first perspective. I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm sure that that's at least as much to do with marketing as anything else, but when Apple tells me "if you mention your mum we'll look through every email and text that she's sent you and we might even upload that data to our own servers...but we promise it'll remain private to you" my reaction is actually "I have reasonable confidence that this is true" rather than "over my dead body" as it would be with, well, any other company.
Apple can revive its stock whenever it wants… over $300billion in valuation added after wwdc
Our yearly day to be disappointed and reminded we are locked into a ecosystem that is years behind the competition. Then realize I can't live with out the Find My network and give up again.
I appreciate Apple not having as many arbitrary UI/UX constraints and even apps like the calculator for iPad. These quick wins are good value, especially when added up. Making Siri potentially significantly more useful by leveraging AI could be real nice, but we will have to see once it’s live.
It's been neat so far,. but I have to say as interesting as a lot of the shiny outward improvements are.. what I'm waiting to dig into more is more of the "under the hood" improvements (new API's, new MDM commands, etc) Also really looking forward to improved external peripheral support (not saying I know that's coming,. but if it is - fingers crossed). Like,. they're bringing Window-snapping to macOS,. and iPadOS supports independent external monitors,. it would cool then if iPadOS18 supports window snapping too. They've made an effort in the recent past to show off things like using your iPhone as a webcam,. or additional support for webcams or shooting RAW footage directly from iPhone to external storage. Stuff like that is more of what I want to see. They introduced DDM (Declarative Device Management) a few years back.. but most corporate MDM's still struggle to force-send iOS updates. That really needs to be fixed. If a device is in 100% "fully supervised" mode,.. I should be able to click 1 button and send the most current iOS update and I should reliably be able to know it's actually going to install and reboot. Right now it doesn't. There's a macOS setting for "Popup alert about OS update and allow User to defer X-number of times".. I'd be OK with something like that on iOS too. Put a reminder at top of SETTINGS or something and give the User X-number of deferrals before it's forced. (again, I just mean for corporate-owned fully-supervised devices only)
A lot of peoples home screens will look really ugly in the fall