WWDC was this week, and at the developer conference, Apple showed off an enormous number of new features coming to the iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, Apple TV, Apple Vision Pro, Mac, HomePod, CarPlay, iPod ... OK, maybe not the iPod, but the iPod did actually make an appearance during the first few minutes of the Keynote address. (And those first few minutes are fun, so if you didn't watch the Keynote, I recommend you at least check out the beginning.) These new features will be beta-tested and improved over the next few months, and by this Fall, we will start to be able to use them on our devices in a shipping version of the operating systems. So in today's post, let's start to dig into the firehose of new announcements that are the news of note from the past week:
- William Gallagher of AppleInsider says that the new Control Center in iOS 18 is faster to use and easier to customize. I can actually see this turning out to be one of the most useful features in iOS 18.
- The Settings app is different in iOS 18, as noted by Malcolm Owen of AppleInsider.
- Here is something small and interesting in iOS 18. When you press a button on the side of the iPhone, the black portion of the display bezel goes in slightly, as if you are physically squeezing the side of the iPhone. Juli Clover of MacRumors shows off how this looks.
- Michael Potuck of 9to5Mac explains how to adjust the flashlight beam thickness on the iPhone in iOS 18.
- Ryan Christoffel of 9to5Mac notes that you can have collapsible sections in Notes in iOS 18. That looks very useful, especially on the smaller iPhone screen.
- Earlier this week, when I wrote about the features in iPadOS 18 that look promising to me, one feature that I did not mention is Smart Script. The idea is that AI looks at your handwriting to understand your own personal style, and if something that you are writing using a stylus starts to get too messy, Smart Script will clean up your handwriting—not to look like the handwriting of someone else with great penmanship, but to look more like your handwriting on a good day. It is an interesting idea, but I've seen other companies try similar things in the past and I have never been impressed. Ed Hardy of Cult of Mac has tried out Smart Script in the beta version of iPadOS 18, and he found that sometimes it works but other times it does not. If Apple figures out how to make this work so that it works well and consistently, this might become a feature that interests me, but at this point, it isn't something that I'm expecting to use much or at all.
- Ryan Christoffel of 9to5Mac notes that in iPadOS 18, you can designate an iCloud folder so that it is always downloaded to your device, making the contents accessible even if you don't have Internet access.
- Christoffel also wrote a good overview of Apple Intelligence, which is coming to iOS 18 and iPadOS 18 later this year.
- Jonny Evans of Computerworld explains why Apple is doing a good thing with its new Private Cloud Compute feature for AI.
- Because you need the most advanced processors to take advantage of Apple Intelligence, Lauren Goode of Wired says that AI may cause many people to upgrade their iPhones.
- Jonathan Reed provides an overview of the new features in watchOS 11 for MacStories.
- Here's some Apple Watch news that we can all use: David Schloss of Apple Insider reports that you can monitor the heart rate of a lion by putting an Apple Watch around its tongue.
- Joe Rossignol of MacRumors notes five new CarPlay features in iOS 18.
- Jason Snell of Six Colors describes what is new in visionOS 2.
- Macolm Owen of AppleInsider also describes new features in visionOS 2. He notes new support for trains in Travel Mode, which is interesting to me because I've used an Apple Vision Pro on a train and it works fine. You simply need to turn on Airplane Mode first so that your windows don't get left behind as the train moves. I'm curious what the new train support in Travel Mode adds.
- One interesting new feature in visionOS 2 discovered by Tim Hardwick of MacRumors: if multiple people are using Spatial Personas, you can touch fingers, high five, and fist bump with visual and audio feedback.
- In an article for MacStories, Sigmund Judge explains what is new in tvOS 18. One feature I'm looking forward to is InSight, which gives you information about the actors on-screen and the soundtrack in a scene. It sounds similar to the X-Ray feature on Amazon Prime Video, but if you don't want this info to cover up the screen you can also use InSight in the Remote app on your iPhone.
- Will we get more Ted Lasso? Peter White of Deadline reports that this week at the Banff World Media Festival, Channing Dungey, chairman and CEO of Warner Bros Television Group, said that Apple definitely wants more Ted Lasso for Apple TV+, and that Jason Sudeikis and people at Warner have talked about a potential fourth season or a spin-off show, but nothing has been decided yet.
- To use some features in HomeKit, you need a hub. An Apple TV can serve as a hub, and Felipe Espósito of 9to5Mac reports that in iOS 18, you can also designate a HomePod to serve as your home hub.
- Taylor Ardrey and Nathan Hart of USA Today share the story, and stunning video, of an Apple Watch delivery being stolen from a front porch by a "porch pirate" so quickly that the FedEx driver was still on the porch.
- There have been several recent stories of a person finding a stolen car that had an AirTag hidden in it. Harry Howard of WWL, the local CBS affiliate in New Orleans, shares the story of a man who tracked his stolen car because his AirPods were in the car. Unfortunately, he tried to confront the thieves on his own, without involving the police, and one of the suspects tried to shoot him.
- And finally, here is a fun but also informative video from Apple that shows off 18 things announced by Apple during WWDC24: