Imagine that a camera crew followed you around all day. Each time you expended energy through exercising (you might be an athlete) and your daily routine, running to work, climbing the stairs, kick boxing after work, or dancing in the evening, the crew shot a flattering moment of you in the middle of it all.
Or, better yet, say you are at the end of a long, active day. Ever since you’ve been “closing rings” on your apple watch, you know just what kinds of activities, and for how long, it will take to get them all closed. You watch, in your mind’s eye, an imaginary external montage of each step, each jump, each time your foot presses the pedal on your bike, all the various ways you express physicality and, this being a daydream (at night) you run the sequence in your mind over and over.
Each time you view the day’s movements and activities you choose just a snippet, a tiny captured slice, of every peak action revelation that, by the end of the long day, combine together to close your rings. By the time you’ve compressed it into the ultimate montage, it is not more than fifteen seconds of fleeting, flashing, images. And it is good.
Now you can doze off knowing that, tomorrow, you will live your life in motion, and, with your partner on your wrist, your rings will close again. And once more you will doze off watching your personal highlight reel of action, health and satisfaction.
Below are a few special Apple Watch owners who really did have that camera crew (graciously supplied by Apple, for commercial purposes) and we’ve attached the videos to prove it:
I’m a pretty competitive person. So it’s always a good feeling when I close my rings.
“Haley competes for the U.S. National Team as an elite open water swimmer. She uses the Pool Swim workout to track her yardage in the pool, where she closes her Exercise ring in training sessions every morning. Because she’s highly competitive, Haley tries to double her Move and Exercise rings every day.”
APPLE / HALEY A.
Haley’s swimming metrics are duration, active calories, laps, and distance.
The rings turn it into a game. Even if you’re not trying to hit a target, you close them just for fun.
“Jessica is the founder and lead instructor of Fat Buddha Yoga. She’s also a surfer and regularly DJs at clubs around the world. Being active in so many different ways can make it hard to track her fitness. But with Apple Watch, it’s simple. And whether she’s powering through a plank or dancing behind the turntables, everything counts”
APPLE / JESSICA S.
Jessica can see her progress with a lift of the wrist.
If you’re bored, just move. Jump around. Pick something up and throw it. Enjoy yourself.
“Cory believes in closing his rings every day, no matter where he is in the world. As a captain of the Track Mafia running club and fitness instructor, he’s led people in sprints up mall escalators, jogs through the Wembley Stadium parking lot, and marathon runs that stretch all the way from Santa Monica to Las Vegas. He also frequently cycles or runs to whatever’s next on his busy schedule.”
APPLE / CORY W-M.
Cory inspires people to go the distance as a Nike Run Club coach.
I believe in exercising the mind, the body, and the heart.
“In addition to the strenuous workout he gets on the podium, Jason likes to close his rings using the Workout app to track swimming, cycling, and weight lifting. When it comes to staying mentally fit, reminders from the Breathe app nudge Jason during his busy day, helping him to recenter.”
APPLE / JASON L.
The Heart Rate app lets Jason quickly check his pulse during performance breaks.
Apple Watch helps me be a better instructor. It also shows me how to live a healthier life.
“Natsumi is a yoga instructor and model living in Tokyo. She uses the Yoga workout to close her Exercise ring while she’s teaching a class. On occasion, Natsumi likes to surprise her students by taking them on hiking expeditions, where the Hiking workout tracks her distance and calorie burn. If Natsumi’s rings aren’t closed by the afternoon, she walks to her modeling gigs.”
APPLE / NATSUMI Y.
Natsumi uses the Breathe watch face to begin yoga classes.
I love to work out with Apple Watch. It doesn’t have stuff that gets in the way. It just has what I need.
Couch potato turned avid marathon runner, cyclist, and swimmer, Atilla credits his transformation to Apple Watch. To close his rings, he makes sure to schedule two workouts every day. On his 12-mile runs, Atilla streams Apple Music for motivation. If he hasn’t closed his rings (which he admits being addicted to), an Outdoor Cycle or Open Water Swim workout gets the job done in the evening.
APPLE / ATILLA K.
Rolling Pace lets Atilla see a mile split at any point on his run.
We sometimes forget we are flesh and bone. Apple Watch comes in handy keeping you aware of that fact.
“At 65, Eric prides himself on being in great shape. He closes his rings five times a week, walking everywhere throughout his city to visit clients, friends, and neighborhood shops. Along the way, Eric loves to watch his rings close and see the miles, calories, and flights of stairs stack up in the Outdoor Walk workout and the Activity app. Eric finds himself moving just as much on the weekends, dancing, playing volleyball, and riding his bike.”
APPLE / ERIC G.
Eric uses turn-by-turn directions in the Maps app to find his way around the city.
I love the fact that I have all my information on my wrist. And that I don’t have to carry my phone.
“As a busy student and point guard on her college basketball team, Yocelin doesn’t know what it means to sit still. She closes her rings virtually every day, running and lifting weights to stay in competitive shape. When she’s not on the court or in the classroom, Yocelin racks up even more Move calories and Exercise minutes taking care of her three younger brothers. If it weren’t for bedtime reminders from her Apple Watch, she might never rest.”
APPLE / YOCELIN S.
Yocelin stays motivated during workouts and before each game using AirPods to listen to her favorite songs.
The list is long and the potential is deep: learning the most useful tricks that can help clarify the options
Above: Photo by Apple
At the bottom of this post is a list of just some of the new features, as compiled by Apple. These are the ones that they deem important enough to be considered “Key Features and Enhancements” for iOS 15.
Just to scroll through hundreds of entries and even just casually browsing the features and enhancements would be a lengthy endeavor, but to exhaustively learn to use even the top 10 or 15 most interesting features would require a real investment of time and energy.
Fortunately we have begun the process of converting the best tips and new software capabilities into how-to videos has yielded a batch of simple, quick and easy explanations to make it easier to get an iPhone iOS 15 diploma cum laude. See videos and features list below:
Lynxotic may receive a small commission based on any purchases made by following links from this page
New features available with iOS 15.
iOS 15 brings amazing new features that help you connect, focus, explore, and do even more with iPhone.
Key Features and Enhancements
FaceTime
SharePlay: Watch together
Bring movies and TV shows into your FaceTime calls and enjoy a rich, real-time connection with your friends while watching the same content.
SharePlay: Listen together
Share music with your friends right in your FaceTime calls.
SharePlay: Share your screen
Share your screen to bring web pages, apps, and more into your conversation on FaceTime.
SharePlay: Synced playback
Pause, rewind, fast-forward, or jump to a different scene — everyone’s playback remains in perfect sync.
SharePlay: Shared music queue
When listening together, anyone in the call can add songs to the shared queue.
SharePlay: Smart volume
Dynamically responsive volume controls automatically adjust audio so you can hear your friends even during a loud scene or climactic chorus.
SharePlay: Multiple device support
Connect over FaceTime on your iPhone while watching video on your Apple TV or listening to music on your HomePod.
SharePlay: Connect through audio, video, and text
Access your group’s Messages thread right from the FaceTime controls and choose the mode of communication that matches the moment.
Portrait mode
Inspired by the portraits you take in the Camera app, Portrait mode in FaceTime blurs your background and puts the focus on you.1
Grid view
Lets you see people in your Group FaceTime calls in the same-size tiles, and highlights the current speaker so it’s easy to know who’s talking. You’ll see up to six faces in the grid at a time.
Spatial audio
Creates a sound field that helps conversations flow as easily as they do face to face. Your friends’ voices are spread out to sound like they’re coming from the direction in which they’re positioned on the call.1
Voice Isolation mode
This microphone mode spotlights your voice by using machine learning to identify ambient noises and block them out. So a leaf blower outside or a dog barking in the next room won’t interrupt your call.1
Wide Spectrum mode
This microphone mode brings every single sound into your call. It’s ideal for when you’re taking music lessons or want your friend to hear everything that’s happening in the space you’re in.1
FaceTime links
Invite your friends into a FaceTime call using a web link you can share anywhere.
Join FaceTime on the web
Invite anyone to join you in a FaceTime call, even friends who don’t have an Apple device.2 They can join you for one-on-one and Group FaceTime calls right from their browser instantly — no login necessary.
Calendar integration
Generate a web link for a FaceTime call while creating an event in Calendar, so everyone knows exactly where to meet and when.
Mute alerts
Lets you know when you’re talking while muted. Tap the alert to quickly unmute and make sure your voice is heard.
Zoom
An optical zoom control for your back camera helps you zero in on what matters when you’re on a FaceTime call.
Messages
Shared with You
Content sent to you over Messages automatically appears in a new Shared with You section in the corresponding app, so you can enjoy it when it’s convenient for you. Shared with You will be featured in Photos, Safari, Apple News, Apple Music, Apple Podcasts, and the Apple TV app.
Shared with You: Pins
For content that’s especially interesting to you, you can quickly pin it in Messages, and it will be elevated in Shared with You, Messages search, and the Details view of the conversation.
Shared with You: Continue the conversation
Alongside shared content in the corresponding apps, you can see who sent it and tap the sender to view the associated messages and continue the conversation — right from the app — without going to Messages.
Shared with You: Photos
Photos sent to you over Messages automatically appear in your Photos app. Your library includes the photos you care about most — like the ones you were there for. And in For You, the broader set of shared photos will be featured in a new Shared with You section, your Memories, and your Featured Photos.
Shared with You: Safari
Interesting articles, recipes, and other links sent over Messages automatically appear in the new Shared with You section on the Safari start page. Articles that can be found in Safari and Apple News conveniently appear in Shared with You in both apps — so you can enjoy them in either place.
Shared with You: Apple News
Interesting stories sent over Messages automatically appear in the new Shared with You section in the Today and Following tabs in Apple News. Stories found in News and Safari appear in Shared with You in both apps — so you can enjoy them in either place.
Shared with You: Apple Music
Music sent over Messages automatically appears in the new Shared with You section of Listen Now in Apple Music.
Shared with You: Apple Podcasts
Podcast shows and episodes sent over Messages automatically appear in the new Shared with You section of Listen Now in Apple Podcasts.
Shared with You: Apple TV app
Movies and shows sent over Messages automatically appear in the new Shared with You section of Watch Now in the Apple TV app.
Photo collections
Enjoy multiple photos as beautiful collections in your Messages conversations. A handful of images appears as a glanceable collage and a larger set as an elegant stack that you can swipe through. Tap to view them as a grid and easily add a Tapback or inline reply.
Easily save photos
You can quickly save photos sent to you by tapping a new save button right in the Messages conversation.
SMS filtering for Brazil
Messages features on-device intelligence that filters unwanted SMS messages, organizing them into Promotional, Transactional, and Junk folders so your inbox can stay clutter‑free.
Notification options in Messages for India and China
Turn notifications on or off for unknown senders, transactions, and promotions to determine which types of messages you want to receive notifications for.
Switch phone numbers in Messages
Switch between phone numbers in the middle of a conversation on an iPhone with Dual SIM.
Memoji
Clothing
Customize your Memoji with over 40 outfit choices to reflect your style, mood, or the season — and choose up to three different colors. Show it off using Memoji stickers with expressive body language that include the upper body.
Two different eye colors
Now you can select a different color for your left eye and your right eye.
New glasses
Customize your Memoji with three new glasses options, including heart, star, and retro shapes. Select the color of your frame and lenses.
New Memoji stickers
Nine new Memoji stickers let you send a shaka, a hand wave, a lightbulb moment, and more.
Multicolored headwear
Represent your favorite sports team or university by choosing up to three colors for headwear.
New accessibility options
Three new accessibility options let you represent yourself with cochlear implants, oxygen tubes, or a soft helmet.
Focus
Focus
Match your devices to your mindset with Focus. Automatically filter notifications based on what you’re currently doing. Turn on Do Not Disturb to switch everything off, or choose from a provided Focus for work, personal time, sleep, fitness, mindfulness, gaming, reading, or driving.
Focus setup suggestions
When you’re setting up a Focus, on‑device intelligence about your past activity suggests apps and people you want to allow notifications from.
Focus contextual suggestions
Get intelligent suggestions about selecting a Focus based on your context, using different signals like location or time of day.
Focus customization
Create a custom Focus to filter notifications based on what you’re currently doing. Choose an icon for your custom Focus and name it whatever you like.
Focus across your devices
When you use a Focus on one device, it’s automatically set on your other devices.
Matching Home Screen pages with Focus
Dedicate a page on your Home Screen to a specific Focus and organize your apps and widgets in a way that reduces temptation by making only related apps visible. The page appears when you’re in a Focus and hides everything else.
Allowed notifications
Select the notifications you want from people and apps so that they get through to you while you’re focusing.
Status
Contacts outside the notifications you allow for a Focus will be told that your notifications are silenced. Your status appears the moment someone tries to contact you in Messages, so they know not to interrupt.
Driving auto-reply
Turn on an auto-reply for your contacts when they message you while you’re using the Focus for driving. You can customize your auto-reply to say whatever you like.
Urgent messages
If someone’s status is turned on, signaling that they have notifications silenced with Focus, you can break through with an urgent message. If you’re on the receiving end, you can prevent an app or person from breaking through.
Status API
For conversations in third-party messaging apps, developers can use your status to reflect that you’ve stepped away.
Notifications
New look for notifications
Notifications have a fresh new look, with contact photos for people and larger icons for apps.
Notification summary
Receive a helpful collection of your notifications delivered daily, in the morning and evening, or scheduled at a time you choose. The summary is intelligently ordered by priority, with the most relevant notifications at the top, so you can quickly catch up.
Mute notifications
Mute any app or messaging thread temporarily, for the next hour, or for the day.
Muting suggestions
If a thread is really active and you aren’t engaging with it, you’ll get a suggestion to mute it.
Communication notifications
Notifications from people across your communication apps now feature contact photos to make them easier to identify.
Time Sensitive notifications
Time Sensitive notifications from apps are always delivered immediately, so you won’t miss out on timely alerts like a fraud alert, car waiting outside, or reminder to go pick up your kids.
Notification APIs
New notification APIs for developers allow them to automatically send Time Sensitive notifications and adopt the new look for notifications coming from people.
Maps
Interactive globe
Discover the natural beauty of Earth with a rich and interactive 3D globe, including significantly enhanced details for mountain ranges, deserts, forests, oceans, and more.1
Detailed new city experience
Explore cities like San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, and London with unprecedented detail for elevation, roads, trees, buildings, landmarks, and more. Road details like turn lanes and crosswalks and 3D views for complex interchanges help you navigate.3
New driving features
A new dedicated driving map highlights details like traffic and incidents, and a route planner lets you view your upcoming journey by choosing a future departure or arrival time.
Immersive walking directions
Get where you’re going with step-by-step directions shown in augmented reality.1
Redesigned transit
The transit map has been redesigned for the new city experience and now shows key bus routes. While you’re riding transit, a new user interface makes it easy to see and interact with your route with one hand. And when you’re approaching your stop, Maps notifies you that it’s almost time to disembark.
Nearby transit
Frequent transit riders can now get one-tap access to all departures that are near them. They can even pin their favorite lines so that they always show up at the top if they are nearby.
All-new place cards
Completely redesigned place cards make it easy to find and interact with important information for businesses, explore details about cities, and learn about physical features like mountain ranges.
Editorially curated Guides Home
It’s now easier to discover great places with the all-new Guides Home, an editorially curated destination where you can find Guides for places you’ll love.
Improved search
When looking for places like restaurants, you can filter your search results by cuisine or whether they offer takeout. Or you can choose to see only places that are open right now. When you move the map while searching, Maps automatically updates your search results.
User account
Maps users can now find their most used settings all in one place, including their preferred mode of transit, reported issues, favorites, and more.
Redesigned Maps contributions
With an all-new design, it’s faster and easier to report an issue in Maps.
Safari
Bottom tab bar
The bottom tab bar puts controls right at your fingertips. Swipe left or right on the address bar to move between tabs. Or swipe up to see all your open tabs.
Tab Groups
Save and organize your tabs in the way that works best for you. Switch between Tab Groups in the tab overview.
Tab Group syncing
Tab Groups sync across devices so you have access to your tabs from anywhere.
Customizable start page
Customize the start page to make it your own. You can set a background image and select new sections to display, like Privacy Report, Siri Suggestions, and Shared with You. Customizations sync across devices, so you can have the same Safari everywhere.
New privacy protections
Intelligent Tracking Prevention now also prevents trackers from profiling you using your IP address.
Refresh a web page by pulling down from the top of the page.
Web extensions on iOS
Personalize Safari on iOS with web extensions. Web extensions can add functionality and features to Safari. You can install extensions through the App Store.
Voice search
Search the web using your voice. Tap the microphone in the search field and speak your search to see suggestions or be taken directly to the page you’re looking for.
Tab overview grid view
The tab overview now displays your open tabs in a grid, making it easier to see the tabs you have open and switch between them. Tap the Tab Overview button or swipe up on the tab bar to see all your tabs.
Wallet
Home keys
Add home keys to Wallet on iPhone and Apple Watch, then simply tap to unlock a compatible HomeKit door lock for seamless access to your home. Home keys live in the Wallet app with other important items like your car keys and credit cards.4
Hotel key
Hotel keys can be added to Wallet from the participating hotel provider’s app. Add your hotel key in Wallet after making a reservation, use it to check in so you can skip the lobby, and use your iPhone and Apple Watch to tap to unlock and access your room. Wallet automatically archives your pass after you check out to keep passes organized as you travel.4
Office key
For supported corporate offices, add your corporate access badge to Wallet and then use your iPhone and Apple Watch to access locations where your corporate badge is accepted. Tap to unlock your office doors and use your corporate badge in Wallet.4
Car keys
Unlock, lock, and start your car without having to take your iPhone out of your bag or pocket. Ultra Wideband provides precise spatial awareness, ensuring that you won’t be able to lock your iPhone in your car or start your vehicle when iPhone isn’t inside. Even honk your horn, preheat your car, or open your trunk using controls in Wallet when you’re a short distance from your vehicle.4
ID in Wallet
You can add your driver’s license and state ID to Wallet on your iPhone and a paired Apple Watch and present them securely at TSA checkpoints.5
Archived passes
Your expired boarding passes and event tickets will be automatically moved to a separate list so you can easily access your relevant cards and passes without having to deal with the clutter of old passes.
Multiple-pass downloads
Using Safari, you can now add multiple passes to Wallet in one action instead of manually adding one pass at a time.
Live Text6
Live Text in photos
Text is now completely interactive in all your photos, so you can use functions like copy and paste, lookup, and translate. Live Text works in Photos, Screenshot, Quick Look, and Safari and in live previews with Camera.
Visual Look Up
Swipe up or tap the information button on any photo to highlight recognized objects and scenes. Learn more about popular art and landmarks around the world, plants and flowers out in nature, books, and breeds of pets.
Spotlight
Rich results
Brings together all the information you’re looking for in one rich result. Available for contacts, actors, musicians, movies, and TV shows.
Photos search
Spotlight uses information from Photos to enable searching your full photo library by locations, people, scenes, or even things in the photos, like a dog or a car. Find images shared through Messages by including a contact name in your search.
Web images search
Spotlight allows you to search for images of people, animals, monuments, and more from the web.
Lock Screen access
Pull down from the Lock Screen or Notification Center to open Spotlight.
App Clips in Maps results
For businesses that support App Clips, you’ll see an action button on the Maps result in Spotlight. Action buttons include Menu, Tickets, Reservations, Appointments, Takeout, Order, Delivery, Waitlist, Showtimes, Parking, Availability, and Pricing.
Improved App Store search
Quickly install apps from the App Store without leaving Spotlight.
Photos
Memories: Apple Music
In addition to the hundreds of newly included songs, Apple Music subscribers can add any of the tens of millions of songs from the Apple Music library to enjoy on their devices.
Memories: Song suggestions
Apple Music song suggestions are personalized just for you, combining expert recommendations with your music tastes and what’s in your photos and videos. Song suggestions can even recommend songs that were popular at the time and location of the memory, songs you listened to while traveling, or a song from the artist you saw for a concert memory.
Memories: Memory mixes
Customize your memory by swiping through Memory mixes, which let you audition different songs with pacing and a Memory look to match.
Memories: Fresh new look
Memories has a fresh new look including animated cards with smart, adaptive titles, new animation and transition styles, and multiple image collages for a cinematic feel.
Memories: Memory looks
Inspired by the art of cinematography, 12 Memory looks add mood by analyzing each photo and video and applying the right contrast and color adjustment to give them a consistent look — just as the colorists at film studios do.
Memories: Interactive interface
Tap to pause, replay the last photo, skip to the next, or jump ahead, and the music keeps playing and the timing adjusts to keep the transitions on the beat. Change the song or Memory look or add or remove photos, and the adjustment happens in real time, without the need for the movie to recompile.
Memories: Browse view
View all the content from your memory in a bird’s-eye view where you can add, remove, or change the memory duration or jump ahead to another part of the memory.
Memories: New memory types
New memory types include additional international holidays, child-focused memories, trends over time, and improved pet memories, including recognizing individual dogs and cats.
Memories: Watch next
Memories suggests related memories to watch next after your memory finishes playing.
Memories: On-device song suggestions
Song suggestions are determined on device to protect your privacy.
Shared with You
The Shared with You section in the For You tab allows you to view photos and videos that have been shared with you in Messages. Photos taken when you were present also appear in All Photos and in Days, Months, and Years views and can appear in your Featured Photos and Memories, including the Photos widget. Save a photo to your library or respond to the sender in Messages.
Richer Info pane
Swipe up on a photo or tap the new info button to view information about the photo, such as the camera, lens, and shutter speed, the file size, or who sent a Shared with You photo in Messages. You can also edit the date taken or location, add a caption, and learn about items detected by Visual Look Up.
Faster iCloud Photos library initial sync
When you upgrade to a new device, iCloud Photos syncs more quickly, so you can get to your photo library faster.
Limited Photos Library improvements in third-party apps
Third-party apps can offer simpler selection workflows when you grant access to specific content in the Photos library.
People identification improvements
The People album has improved recognition for individuals.
People naming workflow
Correct naming mistakes more easily in the People album.
Selection order in the Photos image picker
The Photos image picker, including in the Messages app, now allows you to select photos in a specific order for sharing.
Suggest less often
Tap Feature Less to let Photos know you prefer to see less of a specific date, place, holiday, or person across Featured Photos, in the Photos widget, in Memories, or highlighted in the Library tab.
Health
Share health data with others
Share your health data with people important to you or those who are caring for you. Choose which data and trends to share, including heart health, activity, labs, vitals, Medical ID, cycle tracking, and more.
Share notifications with others
People you share health data with can view health alerts you receive, including high heart rate and irregular rhythm notifications. You can also share notifications for significant changes that are identified in the shared data categories, such as a steep decline in activity.
Share health trends with Messages
View trend analysis of someone’s health data that’s been shared with you and easily start a conversation with them about changes in their health by sharing a view of trend data through Messages.
Share health data with your doctor
Securely share the health data you store in the Health app with your healthcare provider. Your doctor will be able to view the data you share in a dashboard in the provider’s health records system.7
Trends
Trend analysis in the Health app lets you see at a glance how a given health metric is progressing, whether it’s increasing or decreasing over time. You can choose to receive a notification when a new trend has been detected in your health data.
Walking Steadiness
Walking Steadiness on iPhone is a first-of-its-kind health metric that can give you insight into your risk of falling. It uses custom algorithms that assess your balance, strength, and gait. Choose to receive a notification when your walking steadiness is low or very low. You can also learn how to improve your walking steadiness with curated exercises.8
Lab results enhancements
When you view your lab results through Health Records on iPhone, you can now see a description of the lab to help you understand what it means. You’ll also receive lab highlights in your health summary, including whether they are in range. You can pin labs that are most important to you for quick access.7
COVID-19 immunizations and test results
Scan a QR code from your healthcare provider and store your COVID-19 immunizations and test results securely in the Health app.
Blood glucose highlights
Receive highlights that show your blood glucose levels from a connected blood glucose monitor during sleep as well as during exercise. Interactive charts make it even easier for you to review your blood glucose data.7
Mail
Mail Privacy Protection
Mail Privacy Protection helps protect your privacy by preventing email senders from learning information about your Mail activity. If you choose to turn it on, it hides your IP address so senders can’t link it to your other online activity or determine your location. And it prevents senders from seeing if you’ve opened their email.
Privacy
App Privacy Report
A section in Settings lets you see how often apps have accessed your location, photos, camera, microphone, and contacts during the last seven days. It also shows you which apps have contacted other domains and how recently they have contacted them. This is a good complement to an app’s privacy label, so you can be sure you’re comfortable with how it’s treating your privacy.9
Secure paste
Developers can allow you to paste content from another app without having access to what you’ve copied until you want them to have access.
Share current location
Developers can let you share your current location with a customizable button in their apps. It’s an easy way for them to help you share your location just once, without further access after that session.
Limited Photos Library improvements in third‑party apps
If you’ve granted limited access to your Photos library, third‑party apps can offer simpler selection workflows when you allow access to specific content in the library.
Siri
On-device speech processing
The audio of your requests is now processed entirely on your iPhone unless you choose to share it. The power of the Apple Neural Engine enables speech recognition models with the same high quality as server-based speech recognition.10
On-device personalization
Siri speech recognition and understanding improve as you use your device. Siri learns the contacts you interact with most, new words you type, and topics you read about — all privately on your device.11
Offline support
Siri can now process many types of requests offline without an internet connection, including Timers & Alarms, Phone, Messaging, Sharing, App Launch, Control Audio Playback, and Settings.10
Fast on-device processing
Processing on device means that Siri is incredibly fast.10
Sharing
Share items onscreen like photos, web pages, content from Apple Music or Apple Podcasts, Apple News stories, Maps locations, and more. For example, just say “Send this to Vivek” and Siri will send it. If the item cannot be shared, Siri will offer to send a screenshot instead.
Refer to contacts onscreen
Siri can now use onscreen context to send a message or place a call. For example, if you’re looking at a contact in the Contacts app, a conversation with someone in Messages, or a notification of a message or missed call from someone, you can say “Message them I’m on my way” and Siri will send it to the appropriate contact.
Maintaining context
Siri is even better at maintaining context between requests, so you can conversationally refer to what you just asked. For example, after asking “Is Glacier National Park still open?” you could ask “How long does it take to get there?” and Siri will make the connection.
Announce Notifications
Siri automatically announces Time Sensitive incoming notifications on AirPods. You can also have notifications that are not Time Sensitive enabled for any app through Settings.12
Announce Messages in CarPlay
Siri can announce incoming messages in CarPlay. You can turn announcements on or off when a message is read and Siri will remember your preference. Or you can set announcements off or always on through Settings.
Control smart home accessories at a specific time
You can ask Siri to control a HomeKit accessory at a specific time. For example, say “Hey Siri, turn off my bedroom lights at 7 p.m.” or “Hey Siri, turn off all the lights when I leave.”
Neural text-to-speech voice in more languages
The latest neural text-to-speech voices are now available in more languages: Swedish (Sweden), Danish (Denmark), Norwegian (Norway), and Finnish (Finland).
Mixed English and Indic language support in Siri
Ask Siri to play your favorite song, call a friend, and more using a mix of Indian English and your native language. Nine languages are supported: Hindi, Telugu, Kannada, Marathi, Tamil, Bengali, Gujarati, Malayalam, and Punjabi.
Apple ID
Account Recovery Contacts
Choose one or more people you trust to become an Account Recovery Contact to help you reset your password and regain access to your account.
Digital Legacy program
The Digital Legacy program allows you to designate people as Legacy Contacts so they can access your account and personal information in the event of your death.9
iCloud+
Beta
iCloud Private Relay
iCloud Private Relay is a service that lets you connect to virtually any network and browse with Safari in an even more secure and private way. It ensures that the traffic leaving your device is encrypted so no one can intercept and read it. Then all your requests are sent through two separate internet relays. It’s designed so that no one — including Apple — can use your IP address, location, and browsing activity to create a detailed profile about you.13
Hide My Email
Hide My Email allows you to create unique, random email addresses that forward to your personal inbox so you can send and receive email without having to share your real email address.
HomeKit Secure Video
Connect more security cameras than ever to record, analyze, and view your footage in the Home app. iCloud will store your recordings in an end-to-end encrypted format automatically, so that only you and people you choose can view it. None of the video footage counts against your iCloud storage — it’s part of your subscription.14
Custom email domain
Personalize your iCloud Mail address with a custom domain name, and invite family members to use the same domain with their iCloud Mail accounts.
Even More
Accessibility
Explore images with VoiceOver
Explore people, objects, text, and tables within images in more detail with VoiceOver. Navigate receipts and nutrition label values intelligently in logical order. And move your finger over a photo to discover a person’s position relative to other objects within images.
VoiceOver image descriptions in Markup
Markup lets you add image descriptions that can be read by VoiceOver. Image descriptions persist even when shared and can be read in a range of supported apps on iPhone, iPad, and Mac.
Sound actions for Switch Control
Sound actions for Switch Control let you control iPhone with simple mouth sounds — such as a click, pop, or “ee” sound — without the need for physical buttons, switches, or complex verbal commands.
Background sounds
Background sounds play balanced, bright, or dark noise, ocean, rain, and stream sounds continuously in the background to mask unwanted environmental or external noise and help you focus, stay calm, or rest. The sounds mix into or duck under other audio and system sounds as you use your device.
Per-app settings
Customize display and text size settings on an app-by-app basis. Bold or enlarge text, increase contrast, invert colors, add color filters, and more for only the apps you want.
Import audiograms
Import paper or PDF audiograms in Settings and quickly customize Headphone Accommodations to amplify soft sounds and adjust certain frequencies based on your hearing test results.
Magnifier app
Magnifier becomes a default app on iOS, so you can use your iPhone as a magnifying glass to zoom in on objects near you.
Accessibility Memoji
Memoji represent more of your look and style with new customizations, including oxygen tubes, cochlear implants, and a soft helmet for headwear.
New Voice Control languages
Voice Control adds new language options including Mandarin Chinese (China mainland), Cantonese (Hong Kong), Japanese (Japan), French (France), and German (Germany). These languages use Siri speech recognition technology for incredible accuracy as you dictate your commands.
App Library
Reorder Home Screen pages
Personalize your Home Screen by reordering pages.
App Store
In-app events
Discover timely events within apps and games — such as a game competition, a new movie premiere, or a livestreamed experience — right on the App Store. Events are discoverable in editorial curation and personalized recommendations on the Today, Games, and Apps tabs, in search results, and on the app product page.
App Store widget
See the stories, collections, and in-app events from your Today tab right on your Home Screen.
Apple Card
Advanced Fraud Protection
With Advanced Fraud Protection, Apple Card users can have a security code that changes regularly to make online Card Number transactions even more secure.
Improved card number discoverability
Now quickly view your card number by opening Apple Card in Wallet and tapping the card icon.
Apple Pay
Apple Pay new payment sheet design
A redesigned Apple Pay payment sheet lets you add new cards inline, without ever leaving the Apple Pay experience. You can now enter coupon codes into the payment sheet, helping you save more whenever you use Apple Pay. And the enhanced summary view lets you see more detailed information, such as payment items, discounts, and subtotals, giving you the confidence to shop with Apple Pay.
Augmented Reality
RealityKit 2
Apply custom shaders, add post rendering effects, and build more immersive AR experiences with RealityKit 2 — Apple’s 3D rendering, physics, and spatial audio engine built from the ground up for AR.15
Books
Search redesign
Search results come up as soon as you start typing and will correct spelling mistakes. Enjoy personalized showcases of top books, audiobooks, and genre collections within your results. Buy directly from the Search tab to get started on your book faster.
Camera
Improved Panorama captures
Panorama mode in iPhone 12 models and later has improved geometric distortion and better captures moving subjects while also reducing image noise and banding.
Zoom in QuickTake video
Swipe up or down while taking a QuickTake video to zoom in or out.16
Select from UPI payment apps in India
Choose from up to 10 of your most recently used UPI payment apps when you scan UPI QR codes using the Camera app for merchant payments.
Car Keys
Ultra Wideband support for car keys
Unlock, lock, and start your car without having to take your iPhone out of your bag or pocket. Ultra Wideband provides precise spatial awareness, ensuring that you won’t be able to lock your iPhone in your car or start your vehicle when iPhone isn’t inside.4
Remote keyless entry controls
Lock or unlock your car, honk your horn, preheat your car, or open your trunk using controls in Wallet when you’re a short distance away from your vehicle.4
CarPlay
Announce Messages in CarPlay
Siri can announce incoming messages in CarPlay. You can turn announcements on or off when a message is read and Siri will remember your preference. Or you can set announcements off or always on through Settings.
Control Center
Shazam
Shazam music recognition in Control Center now automatically saves songs you’ve recently discovered. Touch and hold the control to open your history view.
Dictionary
New dictionaries for India
Bilingual dictionaries for India include Urdu–English, Tamil–English, Telugu–English, and Gujarati–English.
New thesaurus and idiom dictionary for China mainland
There’s a new Simplified Chinese thesaurus with synonyms and antonyms as well as a dictionary of idioms.
New dictionaries for Hong Kong
Dictionaries now include a Traditional Chinese–English dictionary of Cantonese colloquialisms and a Traditional Chinese dictionary of Standard Mandarin with Cantonese pronunciations.
Find My
Live locations for family and friends
See your family and friends’ locations with continuous streaming updates. This provides an immediate sense of direction, speed, and progress when viewing people’s locations.
Locate when powered off
Locate your devices using the Find My network for up to 24 hours even after they have been turned off. This can help you locate a missing device that may have been turned off by a thief.
Locate after erase
The Find My network and Activation Lock can locate your device even after it has been erased. To help ensure that nobody is tricked into purchasing your device, the Hello screen will clearly show that your device is locked, locatable, and still yours.
Separation alerts
Enable separation alerts, and if you leave a device, AirTag, or compatible third-party item behind, your iPhone will alert you with notifications and Find My will give you directions to your item.
Find My network support for AirPods
Use the Find My network to get an approximate location of your missing AirPods Pro or AirPods Max. This will help you get within Bluetooth range so you can play a sound and locate them.*
Find My widget
Keep track of your friends and personal items right from the Home Screen with the Find My widget.
5G
Enhanced connectivity on 5G
More app and system experiences are enhanced by faster 5G connectivity, including support to back up to iCloud and restore from an iCloud backup, stream audio and video on Apple and third‑party apps, download higher‑quality Apple TV+ content, sync photos to iCloud Photos, download Apple News+ magazine issues for offline reading, and download machine learning models.17
5G preferred over Wi-Fi
iPhone 12 models and later now automatically prioritize 5G when Wi‑Fi connectivity on networks you visit occasionally is slow, or when you are connected to captive or insecure networks, so you can enjoy faster, safer connections.
Gaming
Game Center recents and groups invitations
Bring your most recent Messages friends and groups into Game Center–enabled games with the new multiplayer friend selector.
Game Center friend requests
See incoming requests in the Game Center friend request inbox. Navigate to the App Store or within your Game Center profile in a game.
Game highlights
With a press of the share button, save a video clip of up to the last 15 seconds of gameplay using game controllers like the Xbox Series X|S Wireless Controller or Sony PS5 DualSense™ Wireless Controller.
Game Center widgets
The Continue Playing widget displays your recently played Game Center–enabled games across devices. The Friends Are Playing widget helps you discover the games your friends play.
Focus for gaming
Choosing the Focus for gaming lets you stay fully immersed in your game by filtering out unwanted notifications.
Home
Home keys
Using iPhone, simply tap to unlock a compatible HomeKit door lock for seamless access to your home. Home keys live in the Wallet app with other important items like your car keys and credit cards.4
Siri-enabled accessories
HomeKit developers will be able to enable Siri in their products through HomePod. You can easily and securely ask Siri to send a message, set a reminder, or broadcast an Intercom message to the family from more devices in your home.18
Package detection
Using HomeKit Secure Video, your security cameras and video doorbells can now detect and notify you when a package has arrived.14
Inclusive Language
Choose your term of address
Choose your term of address for Spanish to make your device feel more personal. In Language & Region settings you can choose how you would like to be addressed throughout the system: feminine, masculine, or neuter.
Keyboard
Magnification loupe for text cursor and selection
Select exactly the text you want with an improved cursor that magnifies the text you’re looking at.
QuickPath language expansion
New keyboard layouts
Enhanced 10-key layout includes improvements that let you quickly switch to QWERTY, access symbols more easily, and type words that share the same keys with greater accuracy by allowing you to select the exact Pinyin for more than just the first syllable in the phrase.
Keyboard Dictation
Continuous dictation
With on-device dictation, you can dictate text of any length without a timeout (previously limited to 60 seconds).20
Lock Screen
Media playback controls
Media playback controls automatically appear on the Lock Screen of your iPhone when a HomePod mini playing music is nearby.
Music21
Spatial audio with dynamic head tracking
Listeners with AirPods Pro and AirPods Max can now get an even more immersive experience of Dolby Atmos music with Apple’s dynamic head tracking.22
Shared with You
See all the music your friends have shared with you in one place, right in the Music app. And when browsing music, quickly jump back to Messages to keep the conversation going.
Photo Memories
Bring memories to life with Apple Music. Select tracks from your library or from the catalog to create the perfect soundtrack to accompany your memory and share it with your friends.
SharePlay
Use SharePlay in FaceTime to listen to music together in real time. You can pick out songs with your friends, and everyone can pause, rearrange, or skip tracks in the SharePlay queue.
News
Redesigned News feed
A new design makes it easier to browse and interact with your News feed. Information like publication dates and bylines are more prominent, and you can save and share stories right from the feed.
Shared with You
Interesting stories sent over Messages automatically appear in the Shared with You section in the Today and Following tabs in Apple News. Stories found in News and Safari appear in Shared with You in both apps.
Notes
Tags
Tags are a fast and flexible way to categorize and organize your notes. Add one or more tags by typing them directly in the note — like #activities or #cooking.
Tag Browser
The Tag Browser lets you tap any tag or combination of tags to quickly view tagged notes.
Custom Smart Folders
Custom Smart Folders automatically collect notes in one place based on tags.
Activity view
See what others have added to your shared note while you were away. The new Activity view gives a summary of updates since the last time you viewed the note and a day-to-day list of activity from each collaborator.
Highlights
Swipe right anywhere in your note to reveal details of who made changes in a shared note. View edit times and dates with highlighted text color-coded to match collaborators in the note.
Mentions
Mentions make collaboration in shared notes or folders more social, direct, and contextual. Type or handwrite an @ sign and the name of a collaborator anywhere in your note to notify them of important updates and link them back to the note.
Quick Note: Easy to access
Find and edit the Quick Notes you created on Mac and iPad in Notes.
Other
Drag and drop
With support for drag and drop across apps, you can pick up images, documents, and files from one app and drag them into another.
Passwords
Built-in authenticator
Generate verification codes needed for additional sign-in security. If a site offers two-factor authentication, you can set up verification codes under Passwords in Settings — no need to download an additional app. Once set up, verification codes autofill when you sign in to the site.
Podcasts
Personalized recommendations
Discover new podcasts about topics you’re passionate about. The best podcasts, personalized for you, grouped by topics you care about.
Shared with You
Share your favorite podcast episodes in the Messages app and find all the episodes shared with you in Listen Now.
Reminders
Tags
Tags are a fast and flexible way to organize your reminders. Add one or more tags, like #errands, to your reminders to make them easy to search and filter for across your Reminders lists.
Tag Browser
The Tag Browser lets you tap any tag or combination of tags to quickly view tagged reminders.
Custom Smart Lists
Create your own Smart Lists to automatically include reminders that matter most to you by selecting for tags, dates, times, locations, flags, and priority. Choose more than one tag (such as #gardening and #errands) and combine them with other setting filters for more specific lists.
Delete completed reminders
Access quick options to easily delete your completed reminders.
Improved natural language support
Type more advanced phrases to create reminder settings. Try something like “Jog every other morning” for a specific, recurring reminder.
Expanded suggested attributes
Choose tags, flags, priority, and people you message with a quick tap when creating a reminder.
Announce Reminders with Siri on AirPods
Siri can announce your reminders when you’re wearing AirPods or compatible Beats headphones.
Screen Time
Screen Time API
Developers can use the Screen Time API in parental controls apps to support an even wider range of tools for parents. The API provides developers with key features like core restrictions and device activity monitoring, all in a way that puts privacy first.
Downtime on demand
Turn on downtime on demand. During downtime, only phone calls and apps you choose to allow will be available. A five‑minute downtime reminder will be sent and downtime will be turned on until the end of the day.
Settings
Software Updates
iOS may now offer a choice between two software update versions in the Settings app. You can update to the latest version of iOS 15 as soon as it’s released for the latest features and most complete set of security updates. Or continue on iOS 14 and still get important security updates.
Setup Experience
Temporary iCloud storage to transfer your data
Now when you buy a new device you can use iCloud Backup to move your data to your new device, even if you’re low on storage. iCloud will grant you as much storage as you need to complete a temporary backup, free of charge, for up to three weeks. This allows you to get all your apps, data, and settings onto your device automatically.
More content transferred from Android
Move to iOS can now also move your photo albums, files and folders, and Accessibility settings so your new iPhone feels even more like your own.
App discoverability
It’s easier than ever to get the Move to iOS app. Simply scan the QR code, and you’ll be taken to the Google Play Store where you can download the app.
Shortcuts
Cross-device management
Build and manage shortcuts on iPhone, iPad, or Mac for any of your devices — shortcuts automatically sync across all of them.
Improved sharing
Share shortcuts as easily as sharing a link and download them for your own use without managing complicated security settings. If you’re the recipient, smart prompts allow you to share only the data you want.
Smarter Shortcuts editor
Next Action Suggestions help you complete the shortcut you’re building.
System Font
SF Arabic system font
The new SF Arabic system font features a refined, contemporary design that is integrated with the SF font, providing a clear, cohesive reading experience.
Translate
System‑wide translation
Translate text by selecting it and tapping Translate. Then copy, save, replace selected text, or open the translation in the Translate app. You can also translate selected text in photos.
Auto Translate
Translate speech without tapping the microphone button in a conversation. Auto Translate automatically detects when you start speaking and when you stop, so the other person can just respond.
Face to face view
Change the conversation view when chatting face to face so that each person can see the conversation from their own side.
Redesigned conversations
Start a conversation using the Conversation tab in landscape or portrait view. The redesigned conversation view has chat bubbles so you can follow along more easily.
Easier language selection
Selecting languages is now easier with convenient drop‑down menus.
TV
Shared with You
The Apple TV app now helps you see all the shows and movies your friends and family have shared with you in Messages. See them in a new dedicated section called Shared with You on Watch Now and easily keep the conversation going directly from the Apple TV app.
SharePlay
The Apple TV app works seamlessly with Messages and FaceTime so you can watch your favorite shows and movies together with friends and communicate using text, voice, or video while you watch. SharePlay lets your friends join in from their iPhone, iPad, Mac, or Apple TV — so everyone can watch together wherever and however they want.
Now works with streaming apps in Japan
The Apple TV app now works with popular streaming apps in Japan. Connect your favorite apps and use Up Next to continue where you left off from all your favorite shows and movies all in one place. Browse each service through the Apple TV app to easily discover and watch the best of what’s on TV.
Voice Memos
Playback speed
Speed up or slow down playback of Voice Memos recordings.
Skip silence
Voice Memos analyzes your recordings and automatically skips over gaps in your audio with a single tap.
Improved sharing
Share multiple Voice Memos recordings at once.
Weather
Weather maps
View full-screen weather maps showing precipitation, air quality, and temperature. Animated precipitation maps show the path of a storm and intensity of upcoming rain and snow. And air quality and temperature maps make it easy to see different conditions near you.23
Next-hour precipitation notifications
Get a notification when rain, snow, hail, or sleet is about to start or stop.24
New design
The layout adjusts to show the most important weather information for that location and includes new maps modules, an updated 10‑day forecast, and new graphical weather data.
New animated backgrounds
There are now thousands of variations of animated backgrounds that more accurately represent the sun position, clouds, and precipitation.1
Widgets
Find My widget
Keep track of your friends and personal items right from the Home Screen with the Find My widget.
Contacts widget
Stay connected to family and friends from your Home Screen with the Contacts widget. Reach them via Phone, Messages, FaceTime, Mail, or Find My. With Family Sharing, you can take additional actions, like approving purchases or Screen Time requests from your kids.
Game Center widgets
The Continue Playing widget displays your recently played Game Center–enabled games across devices. The Friends Are Playing widget helps you discover the games your friends play.
App Store widget
See the stories, collections, and in‑app events from your Today tab right on your Home Screen.
Sleep widget
See data about how you slept and review your sleep schedule with the Sleep widget.
Mail widget
Glance at your latest email and get quick access to one of your mailboxes with the Mail widget.
Default widgets
When you upgrade, you’ll see a new default layout, with widgets from the apps you use most arranged in Smart Stacks.
Intelligent widget suggestions
Suggested widgets for apps you already use can automatically appear in your Smart Stack at the right time based on your past activity. An option lets you add the widget to your stack so it’s always there when you need it.
Reorder Smart Stacks
Easily reorder the widgets in your Smart Stacks right from the Home Screen with new controls.
We’ve all been there. In a dark room or other less than ideal faceID environment and trying unsuccessfully to open an iPhone just by swiping up and looking. It can be frustrating, especially if it takes multiple tries and then you still have to type in a passcode. Which is not always possible if your hands are not free etc.
If I’m wearing a mask or it’s too dark in my bedroom and iPhone doesn’t recognize my Face, and won’t unlock right away, there is now an easy alternate option to open it with Apple Watch. Rather than having to type in my passcode, the watch will “magically” open unlock the phone!
In the video above you can see how you can save time and hassle when you need to unlock your phone (if FaceID doesn’t work for any reason). Apple first introduced this feature back with the iOS 14.5 and WatchOS 7.4 update earlier in 2021.
The great news is you don’t have to have the latest iPhone 13 or Apple Watch 7 to use this feature – all you need to have is the iPhone 6s or Apple Watch Series 3 or newer.
On your iPhone: Open up Settings, Scroll down until you see FaceID & Passcodes, You will be promoted to enter your passcode (or not!).
Scroll down to “Unlock with Apple Watch” and tap on the toggle to turn it on (will be green if on). Then a pop up will appear for you tp confirm you want to unlock your iPhone with your Apple Watch. Click Turn on.
If you have not yet set a passcode for your Apple Watch you will be required to create a simple 4 digit pin.
When you need to unlock your iPhone without your face (due to mask, low light etc) just swipe up.
If the passcode screen shows up or the phone doesn’t immediately open you can hold your Apple Watch near your iPhone to unlock.
You should get both haptic vibration on your wrist along with a prompt alerting you that your Apple Watch has unlocked your iPhone.
In multiple tests with various iPhone models / watches, we saw various results, sometimes the iPhone would just open by itself, other times it was necessary to swipe and then, in the rarest cases, we had to hold the watch near the phone.
It appears that the phone was “learning” to use the watch to open whenever needed. That is all you have to do, in the future when you go through the process of unlocking your phone and Face ID isn’t working.
Finally: the whole package – and a convenient way to prove vaccination status
Now that the iOS 15.1 update is available for the general public featuring the ability to add your proof of vaccination status to the Health app and then create a vaccination ID card in Apple Wallet, it’s time to jump right in and make it happen
Many businesses, venues, restaurants, and more are requiring proof of vaccination for entry. For example California is the first state where proof of COVID vaccination or negative test is mandatory for indoor events over 1,000 people.
The new feature in iOS 15.1 is made possible by the support Smart Health Cards which are valid for California, Louisiana, New York, Virginia, Hawaii, and some Maryland counties, as do Walmart, Sam’s Club, and CVS Health.
Above: ID in iPhone Wallet
Therefore, using this system you would be able to to look up the information in state databases, if you are in any of the states listed above, but if you were vaccinated through at Walmart or CVS it will also be feasible retrieve your data from them to add your information to the Health and Wallet.
Once you have gone to the web site for your state, for example in California it would be found at https://myvaccinerecord.cdph.ca.gov where you can type in personal information such as name and date of birth to get access to your records and status.
Though iOS 15 already had the ability to download the information to your Health app, and you could do that since the official launch of iOS 15, the last step, adding an ID to your wallet from the health app has not been possible until the new upgrade to iOS 15.1.
The record is locked to your name and can only be used by you. There will be a QR code that you will first download to your health app on the iPhone, then, once it is in the health app there will be a prompt to allow you to “add to wallet”. By clicking that link, a vaccination ID card, with the QR code will be generated and added to your wallet. See video above for more detailed, step-by-step explanation.
iOS 15.1 is available under > General > software update in your phone’s Settings app starting today.
Tap the download link on your iPhone or iPod touch.
Tap Add to Health to add the record to the Health app.
Tap Done.
Once the ID is in the health app a button / prompt appears “add to wallet”.
The huge iOS and iPad OS 15 update keeps yielding more tips and tricks to learn
We’ve all gotten so used to a slew of system software updates from Apple each year that we kind of just sleepwalk into them, it seems. With so many new features and new ways to use them, it would take an encyclopedia to catalog them all.
Live text is one of the best liked and most useful of this year’s mountain of changes. The ability to extract test from a photo or from the live camera feed – that can be accessed from an assortment of built-in apps, is something that may seem like a nifty trick, perhaps, at first, but when mastered in a deeper way, is something that will, one day, be hard to imagine having lived without. Like having a camera in your pocket at all times.
The interdependence and interaction between built in apps is key
In this how-to video, the second from Madison on Live Text so far, a business card is used as an example. This is a great choice as it contains a web address, a phone number, a street address and an email address, as most business cards do.
This allows the Live Text feature to get busy – and the video shows how you can, just from the camera app, extract the text from the card (or text on any visible object) and then “route” the information in the text to the best app to do what you want with it.
The, at times dramatic, examples include taking the address and sending it with a click to the maps app where a route can be generated to drive or walk there, immediately. Naturally, once the address is ingested into the maps app there are additional things that can be accessed, like the satellite view, or the 360 degrees look around feature. If it’s a business in a shopping center there is also a new “look inside” feature where hours of operation, photos and more can also be accessed.
The phone number on the card can be extracted and made “click-able” to call, copy, use to initiate a FaceTime session, add to contacts, and so forth.
Email addresses and web addresses can be instantly used to compose and send an email message or open a web page in Safari. These example only give one short peek into a single layer of what you might use LiveText for, in this case with a single business card.
While, like any high tech magic, there are times when LiveText seems like a million dollar way to avoid using a pen and paper, at other times it is, well, magical, when large amounts of inaccessible text can be instantly accessed, for example.
I have taken to using to extract text from a screen shot, one that I take when a week site has text that is not clickable and can’t be copied directly (so annoying!) and that alone is a life saver when dealing with data for life’s everyday chores and information gathering.
All in all the new iOS 15 update is one that we will all have to grow with and adapt to – and while that won’t always be smooth and bug-free, the ways that life’s little tasks are made just a tiny bit easier is what will make the extra effort ultimately worthwhile.
Master the ways you can use it and information gathering on iPhone will never be the same
We are all cyborgs now, to paraphrase Elon Musk when speaking about his neural network project, neuralink. The implication is that we rely so heavily on the iphone in our pocket that it has been come a literal extension on our minds and bodies, like a bionic arm.
With live text features and functions using iPhone (or iPad) in iOS 15 and 15.1 there is a new and very powerful addition to our already amazing arsenal of sensory extension. But the use of these new powers is not always obvious, and since the iPhone comes without a user manual, or rather an infinite number of them via YouTube and the web, learning just how far this feature can take you is a journey in itself.
In typical Apple fashion, if there are 10 ways to use live text then there are 100
The first thing that is not immediately apparent but becomes clearer on repeated use is that you can extract text, including most handwriting, from any existing photo. It can be a photo you took to store some text (like a menu posted behind the deli counter or a for sale sign in front of the house you might want to bid on).
Less obvious is that you do not need to take a photo at all to activate the live text recognition options. You can just point the camera at the “thing” that has text on it that you want to extract. But taking this to it’s most extreme logical conclusion Apple has made it possible to access the camera from within various apps specifically to make it less of a hassle to get the text directly from that app you plan to store it in or send it from.
Examples in the video below include the Notes app, the Messages app (formerly iMessage) and the mail app.
It will also allow you to go directly to the phone app or Apple Maps to “act” on information that you gather, from any camera access node or from the camera app – such as extracting a phone number from a business card or a billboard and then just clicking call, or sending an address from either of those examples into Apple Maps and immediate get directions.
These are just a few of the “live” uses of the feature that come up amazingly often in real life. More detailed use cases will be in both the video below and in subsequent videos on this feature, already in the works.
iOS 15.1 is filled with features that have a myriad of use cases, almost too many to list or describe
Every year when a major upgrade is sent down from on high, there is adapting to do and bugs to avoid. Sometimes it seems like the effort to learn how to use the new features is nearly on par with the gains in productivity from the better performing software. Three steps forward and two steps back, as it were.
This is not the case with iOS 15 – it’s more like 10 steps forward and only four steps back! Seriously, there are so many new features that it is completely reasonable to want to slowly adapt to the improvements, no matter how exciting they may be.
But in the case of live text, as well as the extensive upgrades to nearly all the built in apps for iPhone, iPad and Macs, the future will reward those of us that proactively evolve with the software’s upgraded abilities.
For those that use iPhones and iPads with a mac laptop or desktop, the changes coming with iOS 15.1 and macOS 12 Monterey (scheduled to go public next week) are just the beginning of an intense evolution toward what we have been calling the “Apple OS ecosystem singularity”.
The added power from improved hardware in all Apple devices, along with the ever converging and evolving ability to interact with one another via software upgrades, is going to make the world feel like a very different (better?) place a year or two from now.
It’s only a question of if we, with our non-bionic brains and bodies, can adapt to the new powers that come our way fast enough to gain from them before the next wave of changes hits us with new challenges of adaptation.
Eagerly awaited M1x chip expected to star and be unleashed in new Macs
For the second time in October Apple is hosting a virtual event to reveal new products and software. On October 18, 2021 at 10 the show will start, streamed as usual, from Apple Park.
Virtual events have become the norm since the pandemic restricted the possibility for live audiences. A bright side for this is that the production values for the virtual event have improved drastically in the last year and that makes for great streaming and online consumption after the fact in various forms of edited clips and screen shots.
Coming hot on the heels of the big iPhone 13 extravaganza earlier this month, this is turning out to be a big year for long awaited new products, and the M1x will potentially be the crowning achievement of the year.
Already a hit in the initial release the M series was received with a near ecstatic reaction with many in a state of awe when the upgraded capabilities were tested and measured in the wild.
As is widely known, the Intel i-7 chip was the workhorse for many years, with added cores and clock speeds helping somewhat, but with the M1 there was finally something that could usher in a new era of processors, particularly when used with optimized software from Apple and others.
With the M1x (with being the projected moniker with the actual designation to be confirmed on the 18th) there could be an even larger leap into faster, more efficient processor performance.
Gear lined up according to rumors and best intel on the street
Highly anticipated are MacBook Pros, with various larger screens and possible other hardware upgrades in addition to the new M1x, a mac mini with updated specs would be huge and many have pointed to an AirPod 3rd generation with unknown improvements.
As is often the case, if there are additional announcements they are likely to be big surprises and very interesting, the consensus is so all pervasive that is there is any deviation (like the absence of any of the above) it is going to be a shock.
The tweet from Apple Mktng SVP Greg Joswiak has a fun video that sets the tone for the virtual presentation and is likely to be followed with great content live streamed on Oct. 18th, with the option to tune in later for replays.
Even without surprises this will be a very important event with immense repercussions for all mac users. We will be covering the action live with additional details so please stay tuned.
The new Os’s are free and will be adopted fast if recent past is a guide
Apple has had a fairly predictable cycle for new iPhone releases and the yearly, free, software upgrades. If you use your apple devices for business or WFH like many, this ritual can be excruciating since you already know you will have to get your hands on the best new gadgets.
Nevertheless, with sky high prices for the best devices not going away, choosing when exactly to upgrade which devices can be a tricky process requiring skill, cunning and some serious bucks.
A lot of us see the iphone top-of-the-line product as a must upgrade either every cycle or every-other year if budgets are tight (and some years do seem like “off” years).
For iPads, various mac machines, Apple Watch, Apple TV and so on, there is more leeway and potential confusion. And for mac, there are times (like now!) when we all know the next iteration of various models (macbook Pro, mac mini, mac pro, iMac 27” +) are on the way but there is the unknown factor of what to pick and when-the-heck it can be ordered and shipped.
We all know there is a chip shortage, and with the Apple Silicon M1 potentially being upgraded for a slew of machines to the M1X, M2 or M2X as various rumors have discussed, the timeline is very uncertain.
The best things in life are free, software edition
All this leads us to the good, even very good, if obvious, news. iOS 15, iPadOS 15 and macOS Monterey have been in public beta for some time now and, if history is a guide in this case, should be released publicly soon after the Apple Fall Event announcements on September 14th, regardless of what hardware is coming down the pike, or in what particular order.
Generally the hard date for the new OS systems to be public available is the date that any new hardware, always optimized for the new OS, hits the street and becomes deliverable.
Sometimes certain iPhone models, such as the very high end Pro Max, etc., are delayed, but whichever model ships first that device should also be shipped with the Golden Master of the new operating system, iOS 15 in this case.
This is not 100% guaranteed, as nothing in like and Apple releases is 100%, but this looks extremely likely. Therefore we could and should see the new iOS and macOS going live publicly soon, possibly this week.
What to watch our for and expect, besides great new features and work-flows
Often in the past, a “Golden Master” release has been followed within a day or two with an update patching issues that arise once a mass “test” has revealed flaws and weaknesses in the initial public version.
This is nothing to worry about, as per past experiences, but if you are someone that gets easily annoyed by constantly updating, you could wait a week or so to bypass these intermediate “patch fix” versions.
Also, since with Apple, as opposed to Android, the adoption rate for people to upgrade quickly to the newest versions of the OS is extremely high there will be a sea change in the air. That means that within a few weeks up to a billion devices, or more, could be running the newest OS systems across all the various devices in the wild.
This is great news, because some of the best features in all the new software upgrades function best with various devices within an iCloud account or family group and, in some cases, between two devices anywhere interacting, as long as they both have the newest systems.
The best new features are only going to get better after the launch, more so even than usual; here’s why
During our tests of the various systems, first in the developer-only phase and then in the more recent public beta, one thing was a small annoyance that, after the full launch, will instead become a huge plus.
When operating within a company, for example, and in some cases with multiple devices on the same iCloud account, there have been a lot of glitches related to how the Big Sur devices interact with the macOS Monterey devices, or an iPhone with iOS 14 and one with iOS 15 function in tandem.
This is because, more so than in any previous upgrade cycle, this system focuses on virtually every built in app that is bundled with the OS, like photos, mail, messages, notes, FaceTime, reminders, calendar, contacts, voice memos, etc, etc, etc.
There are so many, with so many upgrades it is hard to make a list, as above, of what they are all called and what they do. In the best Apple fashion, they “just work” and we tend to take them for granted.
In case you ever wanted to know the complete list (for iOS 15) we have added it at the bottom of this post.
These apps are pretty much all getting big upgrades in iOS 15, along with a similar situation happening for iPadOS 15 and macOS Monterey, TVOS, WatchOS etc. The difference this time is that they are being actively designed to become more and more interoperable and interactive between devices and system software types.
The big picture is extreme big, much wild, and will be quite a ride…
This is a huge push that will go on for years. We call it the Apple System Singularity. And it is a big deal!
It will, ultimately, create a kind of seamless clarity of function between your devices, particularly the mobile or semi-mobil variety, such as iPhones and iPads, and the slightly less mobile (laptops, desktops) of the macOS variety.
Meaning that the ultimate transition that is being made possible through the switch to Apple Silicon and that a whole new concept philosophy and structure of the device hardware and software. And it’s all being created via the interaction and potential synergies coming available and these are being maximized during the process.
All of this is not to mention machine learning, neural networks, A.I. and all the interactive hardware and software upgrades that are now nearly continuous and happening without a user to intervene.
An example of this is in the photos app where various library functions, a.i. object and facial recognition, search cataloguing, etc. are continuous while you sleep. Another example is how iCloud manages data and storage across your devices regardless of geography or proximity 24/7/365.
Welcome to the first phase of this with the first devices incorporating Apple Silicon across all product lines being harmonized more and more via, guess what, the free system upgrades.
These upgrades will yield maximum fruit in the short term after the world wide population of devices adopts the new systems, and longer term, as more and more devices out of the total are already using and maximizing performance and features by having Apple Silicon and other associated hardware & software upgrades under the hood.
Rest assured, while this sounds complicated, and there will be glitches, the transition starting this fall, and over the life of iOS15, iPadOS15 and macOS Monterey (around a year as usual!) will be one of continuous change, improvement and discovery, unlike any you have seen in the history of Apple.
Version rapidly approaches Golden Master ahead of possible September iPhone 13 release event
Today those participating in the iOS 15 public beta program are able to update (again), this time to beta 8. This beta process is a “live” test of all the new features, indeed when participating in the program many features change and evolve and, of course, bugs are not infrequent.
As we get nearer and nearer to the launch of this year’s iPhone model, apparently to be dubbed “iPhone 13” the iOS 15 beta versions become more stable and eventually, usually coinciding with the event where the new iPhone model is announced, the Golden Master is reached – which becomes the first public release version.
The first iteration of the public release is often short lived, as the beta test phase almost never gets rid of all the bugs and various features and security patches and other urgent updates are often needed.
For this reason the 2nd or third public release is often the one many experts recommend for those upgrading.
Naturally, though the new phone models will be shipped with iOS 15 already installed, once the phones actually ship of course, which can vary in delay from the launch / announcement at the upcoming September event.
Nevertheless, most older iPhones will benefit from this upgrade, more than a little, and once the release is public a free upgrade will be available to the more than 1 billion users already in possession of an iPhone from previous releases.
Version rapidly approaches Golden Master ahead of possible September iPhone 13 release event
Today those participating in the iOS 15 public beta program are able to update (again), this time to beta 7. This beta process is a “live” test of all the new features, indeed when participating in the program many features change and evolve and, of course, bugs are not infrequent.
As we get nearer and nearer to the launch of this year’s iPhone model, apparently to be dubbed “iPhone 13” the iOS 15 beta versions become more stable and eventually, usually coinciding with the event where the new iPhone model is announced, the Golden Master is reached – which becomes the first public release version.
The first iteration of the public release is often short lived, as the beta test phase almost never gets rid of all the bugs and various features and security patches and other urgent updates are often needed.
For this reason the 2nd or third public release is often the one many experts recommend for those upgrading.
Naturally, though the new phone models will be shipped with iOS 15 already installed, once the phones actually ship of course, which can vary in delay from the launch / announcement at the upcoming September event.
Nevertheless, most older iPhones will benefit from this upgrade, more than a little, and once the release is public a free upgrade will be available to the more than 1 billion users already in possession of an iPhone from previous releases.
Boring? Are you kidding me? Time to look under the hood…
Somewhere in the land of media herding there was a familiar refrain. iOS 15 and iPadOS 15 are “boring”. Apparently the idea behind this is that there is no single feature that changes the entire experience of the iPhone or iPad – no “killer app” or killer upgrade.
The “boring” crowd have focused on things like “you can banish your ex from memories in iOS 15”. I saw a slew of articles with a variation on that title.
The biggest problem with the attitude, which must have been initiated by someone that has not really been hands on with any of the new iOS software (which is still in non-public beta only) is that it’s not true. (A public beta is expected in July but it is not recommended unless you are a developer testing on “non-critical” devices).)
Why? Because there are so many killer upgrades that it’s overwhelming, basically due to the avalanche of amazing new features and improvements. This article will attempt to give an illustration of that by focusing on only one feature inside one built-in app: Memories inside of the Photos app.
First a short digression. We have been testing on several devices including a MacBook Pro 15” from 2017, an original 1st generation iPad Pro (2015) and an iPhone XS Max from 2018. None of these machines have the new Apple Silicon chips and for that reason they are only able to produce the upgraded features that don’t require it.
That makes the improvements that are possible without buying any new hardware even more amazing. Stunningly, of the three devices we upgraded the MacBook Pro was the most stable right out of the gate. Any beta software will have bugs, glitches and sometimes crash but that does not prevent one from testing out features that are new.
The iPad pro, in a non-technical observation almost appears as if the screen resolution has been increased, obviously not possible but, as you will read below, could be part of a stunning emphasis on increased beauty, sensuality and luxurious feel in the new suite of OSs.
Memory movies on iPad OS15 are an amazing example of how AI and machine learning are evolving
For those not familiar with “Memories” they are auto-generated film clips that can be found in the “For You” tab in your photos app on iPhone and iPad. While you are sleeping this feature scans everything in your photos library and uses artificial intelligence, machine learning and neural networks to choose and edit the clips, as the name says, for you.
One not confirmed but almost certain technical backdrop to this is that the learning is improving even between updates to the OS. Not only that but all Apple devices on earth are “cooperating” to help each other learn. That’s a powerful force that spreads across over 1.65 billion devices.
This feature was added in iOS 12 but started to function in iOS 14 on a much higher level. If you had tested and used the feature over the last few years as we have you’d have noticed that the ability of the AI to “see” and select photos and videos to include was limited and, at times, comical. Not any more.
Much of the data that clues the software in as to what photos belong together is from the embedded meta data. The date, time and location information helps to tell the AI that you took a group of images or videos on a day in a particular location.
The difference in iPad OS15 (iPhone too, of course) is that the more difficult to accomplish tasks, such as recognizing the subjective quality of one photo verses another (humans often take several photos of the same scene to try to capture the best out of a bunch). Or, more importantly, who and what are the subject of a photo.
All of this began to get interesting in iPad OS 14 and many groups of photos and videos were already being chosen, edited and enhanced by the software to a level that was fairly impressive.
AI and aesthetics collide and the result is a Joy to witness
Something that is starting to become a thread and a definitive direction that Apple is taking, particularly with the iPad Pro series, is, true to the name, a Pro level of visual production and manipulation throughout the OS.
Center Stage, for example and many other video and photo related upgrades were some of the big features in the newest generation of iPad Pro. Those are great, but require a new iPad along with the OS upgrade.
When it comes to the memory movie clips what we found is that even on the oldest iPad Pro from 2015 the evolution of the software due to the constant learning by the AI is already taking a huge step forward doing all the things that it was already doing only much better.
Apple’s upgrade took that and give it an additional kick up a notch with somewhat that the company is known for: good taste.
What has changed specifically?
In iPad and iPhone OS 14 there were a few things that felt awkward in the way movies were created. The biggest shortfall was in the softwares ability to deal with various aspect ratios.
These days when we shoot photos and videos with an iPhone it is tempting and, at times, wonderful to use the vertical orientation. Other times, for landscapes and other scenes we might prefer a traditional film aspect or even use the panorama feature to get an ultra-wide screen “cinema-scope” style.
Until now this was dealt with very poorly by the software. Mostly the photos would constantly zoom in (the so called “Ken Burns” effect) and if shown without zooming in a vertical portrait shot would have ugly side bars (like a vertical letterbox effect).
The zooming and most of the effects in general destroyed the resolution and therefore the quality of many photos by enlarging them and adding the effects.
Additionally the effects that were added, while cute and fun, were not much more than a way to add fun and not what would likely be used by a human editor. All of this and more made for a kind of novelty feel to the whole process that was nice to have, but many never even bothered to look at the movies that software created for them.
That’s about to be over.
A whole new array of options for the AI to use while trying to entertain
In iPad OS 15, as can be seen on the photos and videos in this article, the ways that the software solves the aspect ratio issue as described above is genius and, dare I say it, beautiful.
In a collaboration between the AI and the software itself it now has a new bag of tricks to use and, boy, does it work. One feature that is fantastic is the letterbox generator for any wide screen photos in any aspect ratio.
How this works is that it takes the iPad aspect ratio and then uses the photo in it original at 100% full resolution and then adds a letterbox. But this is not the usual plain black bars we are all familiar with – the software and AI are able to see and analyze the photo and create a custom gradient letterbox that can be any shade or color.
The effect is often astoundingly tasteful and often makes the original photo look even better. We tested it on award winning photos (video above) and the result is, basically art. Also on our own “nice” photos, chosen 100% by the AI and software, look amazing also.
Actually, all the photos and videos in the clips generated from the library look much better than I had remembered. That turns out to be because the software and AI now do automated color grading on all the photos and videos in all the generated memories !
Color grading also known as color correction, especially for video, has traditionally required an expensive expert and high end software (and hardware) to enhance and color match various photos and clips, that have often been taken at different times and places, where lighting conditions vary and sometimes were shot with different camera.
AI and machine learning software on iPad OS15 (and iOS 15) now has a virtual colorist actively adjusting your shots and enhancing and color matching them while you sleep. That is basically insane. That’s probably why it appeared that the photos and even the iPad itself had been upgraded.
Ok, I could go on and on about that one feature, but let’s move to some more features. There are also new effects that are added that vary with each memory (there are a lot more clips being generated, including various versions of the same idea to choose from).
In the experiments so far the effects are clearly better and more subtle than in iOS 14. Again in many cases I found myself saying the word “beautiful” when I tried find an adjective to describe the results.
For shots that have a vertical bias there’s a vertical geometric split screen effect, often with a thin black border, and it has a kind of 60’s on steroids feel with the bars sliding in and out and resizing into place.
Another effect not seen in iOS 14 is a kind of circular rotation – great for landscapes – it’s not a common effect probably because it is computationally complex, but for the AI, it’s a snap. Sometimes this effect has a kind of blur-dissolve added which makes it fun and, again, still tasteful.
It appears that the effects are not only better and there’s a larger bag of them, but they appear to evolve and adapt to the content, that is to say that the speed and depth of each changes with the music combined with the photo and video content.
Oh, and the music. OMG. Each clip has 6 songs pre-selected and the entire clip adapts, in real time (!), when you change the song, showing you various styles and looks that match. Apparently Apple Music is also connected if you have a subscription.
As a mater of fact, it is hard to be certain, as we have not had more than a few hours to test this, but nearly everything appears to be “live” and constantly evolving in real time. In order to “freeze” a version of a memory you have to “favorite” it (with the typical heart symbol) and then “add to memories” in order to edit (change the names or choose more images – or remove anything if it is not to your liking).
There is so much more not yet mentioned here: this article could probably be a book
The AI is also getting creative with names and “concepts” for the clips. For example, if you had lunch (or took photos) over the years in the same city (for me it was Knoxville, TN) it might look at the coincidence that you tended to take photos around midday in that town and then create a memory clip called “Lunch in Knoxville over the Years”. Or for example the clip at the head of this article: “Golden Hour Over The Years”.
This is an early and primitive foretaste of the literary ambitions of AI. In the new Photos App in iOS 15 it is beginning to “think” about when, where and why humans take photos and videos and then conceiving a story that fits the behavior it is witnessing.
Other titles go beyond the basic “Amsterdam in 2016” and start to use the understanding and visual ability to “see” what is in the photo to create a clip like : “Playing in the Snow at Christmas”. Snow? Does it know it’s cold? Maybe just that it’s white and happens in the northern hemisphere in December. This is just the very beginning of something that will evolve, hourly, from now on. I can’t wait.
Sci-fi sounding, inevitable upgrade for today’s online communications
You might have heard lately about the “metaverse” and yet that can mean a variety of different things to different people. Often, it’s a term that relates back to gaming and 3D augmented reality enhancements of networked communications.
There are even crypto and blockchain related projects using this term and concept. While all of these various factors are welcome, and potentially part of this next phase of convergence of communication via networked technology, there’s something else happening under the surface.
”The pandemic, with its requirements of physical distancing, has brought people into online digital environments for a growing range of shared human experiences.” — Wired UK from “The Metaverse is coming” by David Baszucki
The acceleration in AI application, machine learning, and converging use cases for all communications tech has created a situation where the entry-portal to the emerging metaverse is already here.
One often overlooked aspect of a transition to a more complete digital life is the need for humans to have adapted to the need and potential benefits of the idea. This is what is happening via many routes, including Apple and the constant synergistic upgrade cycles that have just gone into a new, bigger phase with the migration to a unified OS structure built around Apple Silicon.
The gradual increases in iOS functionality and user sophistication are changing how we interact
iOS15, previewed this week at the WWDC2021 is rolling out literally dozens of new features, many based on machine learning, neural networks and AI that propose a new level of highly sophisticated options to communicate with video, photos and text.
While this mixture of “basic” media has been the staple of our current modes of online communication, particularly via social media, the incredibly increased depth of new options and functionality of iOS15 and iPadOS15 and MacOS Monterey will make all modes of communication feel completely new.
In the evolution of online media and enriched communication (OMEC to coin an 80s sounding acronym) the slow and uneven progress is based on many factors. #1 is always user adoption and sophistication.
Second is the quality of the hardware devices and software upgrades each user around the world has access to. In the case of iOS (iPad, iPhone & macOS) the immediate adoption of upgrades is a large factor on the plus side, helping new innovation to arrive in general use more quickly.
The last factor, a huge one, is access to fast ubiquitous internet data connections, and, in the US at least, this is less consistent than ever (or our expectations are rising faster than the build out).
However, particularly in Asia, 5g is beginning to make a dent. Satellite broadband, like Starlink, should also start to be a factor as early as 2022. Government infrastructure build-out funding and subsidies in the US is on the way in 2021.
Augmented 3D features are still growing but will merge with 2D
The upshot of this topic is that “2D” factors and increasingly sophisticated manipulation and interactive features that are already coming in iOS15 will bring us all closer the entry-portal stone-age version of the metaverse.
We all depend more and more on communications and using our devices – work from home, personal, business and hybrid activities (such as the emerging content creator class). Often, as a result, we have fewer options to go offline for “organic” RL (real life) interactions.
The increasingly sophisticated capabilities available are beginning to make even face to face communications, particularly in work situations, feel “un-enhanced” as we become accustomed to and dependent on the digital enhancements and potential of a full media rich interaction.
This is an example, one could say, of the subtle encroachment of the emerging metaverse onto the “real world” and how the boundaries are blurring and even beginning to disappear.
Rather than a sudden “jump” into a metaverse, similar to the cliché sci-fi plots from films like “Ready Player 1”, what is happening is a nearly imperceptible transition to metaverse-like experiences that will become commonplace, initially in a primitive form, and then eventually become the norm. Similar to the proverbial Frog in pot, with warm water temperatures that increase so slowly that the Frog doesn’t even notice, until it finds that it is swimming in pot that is already boiling.
The misconception that a “killer app” or sudden shift into an online, virtual reality world, is the future, and that a big leap will happen nearly all at once, is harmlessly superimposed on the real transition that has already begun.
When Apple’s 2007 launch of the iPhone changed communication forever: the journey began
The new “Digital Legacy Program”, also announced at WWDC2021, is another hint that we are already living in an extremely primitive version of the metaverse. Our online identity, data, and even behaviors and experiences are so essential and all pervasive that it has become necessary to keep a digital key to access the huge trove of personal data we will leave behind to pass on to our living loved ones, after we are gone.
The metaverse, that means, is not only creating a parallel digital universe for us to live in, in an ever more complete and sophisticated way, but we are also already setting up the eternal storage of our virtual life experiences to be passed down to future generations.
Though nearly invisible while in such a relatively primitive iteration, the concept, an example of overlapping advancements in innovation, is a tiny step towards digital immortality.
The metaverse could help to save us all
It’s not just professional and work related communication that relates to the gradual increase in the depth of networked communication options, but, even more so, casual and leisure communication and interaction is key.
TikTok and other video communication trends are at the forefront of of user evolution and metaverse activity expansion. When people feel motivated to find new and better ways to communicate using richer media and augmented techniques for fun, and to gain more recognition in online societies, that advances digital sophistication.
This process of the evolution of user comfort and sophistication, while existing and interacting in the metaverse, is the fastest way for the augmentation to become more effective.
There’s a mostly unseen benefit and need for this, otherwise seemingly pointless, global development
The challenges that the world faces, encroaching, devastating fallout from global warming and excess carbon in the atmosphere, political corruption and inequality, disinformation and cybercrime, and so on.
Ultimately, unlike at any time in human history, we are facing a challenge. The survival of our species and even the planet are at stake.
In the years and decades to come it will become more and more obvious that there are only two paths possible. One path toward a kind of Utopia, or another one that will lead, inexorably to Oblivion.
Though the metaverse is scary in many ways, and does not always appear as a way to a better life, augmented and enhanced communication is one of the most desperately needed ways that solutions could eventually be discovered and implemented.
And that would put this progression and evolution of tech more in service of Utopia, and could be at the heart of a rescue plan to prevent Oblivion, before it’s too late.
For what seems like a long time many of us have been living inside our iPhone, immersed in a metaverse of our digital lives.
And the deeper into Apple’s walled garden we are submerged, the more monumental the yearly OS upgrades become. That’s because, when you are in a digital life, we’ll, lots of things are worse than the “real” world. The sensual experience is built of fractions of the full sensory bandwidth of life.
But there’s one thing about the metaverse, the fact that, since it’s artificial and human engineered, it can, and does, improve.
In the case of Apple’s universe, the yearly upgrades and constant, sometimes nearly imperceptible changes in a thousand different parameters add together, over time, and suddenly, the world comes alive with vibrant, super sensual satisfaction …
Sure, the weather animations just got sent to a 3rd convolution level of better-ness, that’s true. But add this to all the thousands of better feelings and deeper interactions with yourself and the spirit of ourselves, and you will find: the future
Photo credit: Apple
WWDC 2021 was a pure upgrade fest with a lot of detail to sift through
We are in the middle of our ongoing coverage of the Apple event and all that was revealed. There are so many features and so many important details and interdependent uses for this features that it can be more easily digested in bites.
What we are witnessing is the growing interdependence and interoperability of iOS 15, iPad OS 15 and macOS 12 Monterey, particularly with the built in apple apps they all have built in.
Safari, though still with slight variations between the three OSs, is becoming more powerful everywhere, FaceTime got a huge upgrade in the new systems, and utilities connected to iCloud such as the Find My network are also extensively revamped.
While some find the sheer width and breath of Apple’s hardware, software and services conceptually off-putting, it is, at this early stage of the monumental changes that are being wrought by Apple Silicon, a wonder to behold how all the various products and underlying software for those products is evolving in a way that is constant and deep.
As put forth in articles published by Lynxotic years ago the changes that are underway are vast and were conceived and put into motion based on Steve Jobs’ core concepts for the future of Apple many years ago. And Tim Cook and the rest of Apple have not deviated from that vision, in fact are reaping benefits on behalf of users that could barely be imagined a decade ago.
One bite we’ve started to delve into is the dual and interdependent features from macOS Monterey; Airplay to Mac and Universal control. It turns out that compete interoperability for Airplay to Mac is still in the future, the list of the various models and vintages that it functions on is as follows:
2018 or later MacBook Pro or MacBook Air
a 2019 or later iMac or Mac Pro
an iMac Pro
the 2020 Mac mini
As you can see this is a fairly exclusive list. What is most conspicuously missing is the possibility to use and older mac, such as a 2018 27” 5k iMac to take advantage of the beautiful screen.
Universal Control, meanwhile appears to work with most devices that run on iPadOS 15 and macOS Monterey. It allows you to a single mouse and keyboard and flow from iPad to Mac and back, pretty much as you would imagine using the cursor and keyboard for either, and, thankfully there is no setup required.
FaceTime just got a Facelift
FaceTime’s big jump ahead is somewhat more complex since the iPhone, iPad (various models of both) and the mac each have a UX and screen size that varies, as well as different computing advantages. One interesting note on the various technical enhancements, pretty much across the board from what was announced at WWDC 2021, M1 chips and Apple Silicon based devices get the biggest boost from all the new capabilities.
Rather than being a marketing ploy, at least so far there’s no evidence of that kind of approach, this is an organic by product of the underlying “big picture” goal – to unify the experience and potential of the three device categories even as they cross pollinate one-another.
All the various, and gradually hard to list, OS flavors, macOS 12 Monterey, iOS 15, iPadOS 15, tvOS 15, watchOS 8 and all the various accessories that benefit from the upgrades such as AirPods pro spatial audio, HomePod mini liaison with Apple TV 4k and tvOS 15, as well as SharePlay where FaceTime can allow multiple users to share streaming audio or video content for a synchronized experience.
Please stay tuned for the many articles to come that will further dive into the changes and improvements that are on the way, free of charge, for Apple users with this massive roll-out that will culminate in fall 2021.
As per Apple:
Redesigned Weather and Notes Apps
Weather includes more graphical displays of weather data, full-screen maps, and dynamic layouts that change based on conditions. Beautifully redesigned animated backgrounds more accurately reflect the sun’s position and precipitation, and notifications highlight when rain or snow starts and stops. Video animation below:
Notes adds user-created tags that make it easy to quickly categorize notes, and mentions allow members of shared notes to notify one another of important updates. An all-new Activity view shows the recent history of a shared note.
Notes adds user-created tags that make it easy to quickly categorize notes in line with relevant content:
This is a feel-good story if it works and then it’s Hallelujah!
Ok, other than to be a benign stalker or to monitor your girlfriends actual ETA, do you even use the Apple “Find My” network? Were you aware that it applies to people, devices and now “items” using air tags? And that you can also find yourself, in case you don’t know where you are?
Well, all that has been expanded into a new realm, at least for those that want to hang onto expensive audio gadgets as long as possible. You guessed it, Apple has now added AirPods Pro and AirPods Max to the devices list.
This was announced at WWDC2021 but it is not, I repeat, not, something that you need to wait for a software upgrade to make use of. It’s live now if you have iOS 14.
Above: Photo Credit / Apple
Why the jubilation? I think because so many of us suffer from extended anxiety, even early symptoms of PTSD from the thought of losing those $250 or yikes(!) $549 babies.
Losing both or even one of these could be a life changing event, triggering depression and doubt and sadness. And Apple appears to understand this, indeed, they assure us that, not only is the Find My network supposed to geolocate your AirPods, they even have a new feature called “Separation Alerts”.
They specifically describe this feature thusly: “Separation Alerts notify a user if they leave an AirTag, Apple device, or Find My network accessory behind in an unfamiliar location…”
“Separation Alerts”, admittedly, sounds like a term for childhood trauma but, again, if you walk out of a Starbucks on 5th Ave. in NYC and you get a notification that you are sans your AirPod Pros, hallelujah, all is not lost, instead, you are running back in to grab those babies, STAT! (From the Latin word statim, meaning “immediately.”)
These subtle, free and unheralded improvements are seemingly the wave of the future, if you are an inhabitant of the Apple ecosystem, which is on the verge of turning into a kind of pre-metaverse training ground for future digital life pioneers.
Hardware Schwardware updates, who needs ’em?
WWDC2021 was, perhaps cleverly, devoid of hardware news or release announcements. This trick worked like a charm. Various top and sub-top media outlets spent the weeks ahead of the show and keynote, touting leaks, speculation and sources regarding, mostly, what turned out to be non-existent hardware updates.
Those will no doubt still be forthcoming, just not at the WWDC2021 keynote, as that ship has sailed.
Instead, and this is a good thing, we can all begin the journey to learn more about what is in store for the annual pilgrimage to the next generation of software enhancements for the Apple ecosystem, meaning macOS 12 Monterey, iOS 15, iPadOS 15 and all the rest too numerous to name here.
See our latest posts from the show for more details.
As per Apple release:
”Find My introduces new capabilities to help locate a device that has been turned off or erased, as well as live-streaming locations for family and friends who choose to share their location. Separation Alerts notify a user if they leave an AirTag, Apple device, or Find My network accessory behind in an unfamiliar location, and the Find My network now supports AirPods Pro and AirPods Max. A new Find My widget offers an at-a-glance view directly from the Home Screen.”
Among the avalanche of new features and upgrades to iOS, iPadOS and most of all macOS 12 Monterey, there were two that were like a dream come true for anyone who has used AirPlay with AppleTv or “SideCar”, which originally came to the mac with macOS Catalina, and wished for one bold step further.
In an office environment, like our newsroom, being able to beam an iPad or mac on to a large conference style TV is great, but springing for the $ it takes to get a high resolution computer monitor large enough for group viewing is not such a great treat.
A fantastic compromise, one that many have wished for but never seen is the new option cogently called “AirPlay to Mac” which, just as the name implies, allows you to bean your phone or iPad (or I presume one mac to another) for paired or group viewing. (there were times when I, for one, forgot that this feature did not yet exist and tried to connect a mac screen using airPlay, to no avail).
AirPlay brings the Mac to life in all-new ways.
Even with tiny bugs that might arise at first when trying to get multiple macs to act as screens for a single source, once this is mature it should revolutionize meeting of small groups of colleagues all armed with trusty macs but wanting to do a group think and discussion session. (At a digital publisher meeting, like at Lynxotic, we might be looking at analytics data for the past week and all want to see the same data across all screens, for example.
Oh, and did I forget to mention that sound, just as in “regular” AirPlay, is included in the bargain. So even if it’s audio only that you want to share (like force feeding colleagues your favorite song) that is going to sound great on built in iMac speakers etc.
This seems instantly like something that is so obvious and intuitive that it could be one of those things, like AirPlay itself, that once entrenched and bug free, would be hard to live without.
Apple’s marketing copy:
“With AirPlay to Mac, users can play, present, and share just about anything — from the latest movies and games to vacation photos and presentations — from their iPhone or iPad right to their Mac’s stunning Retina display. The Mac’s high-fidelity sound system can also be used as an AirPlay speaker, so users can play music or podcasts on their Mac, or use their Mac as a secondary speaker for multi-room audio.”
Universal control, which sounds somehow ominous is, hopefully, just a simple way to more easily migrate live from device to device (of the same owner)
Though the mechanics of this feature were not explained in detail at the Keynote for WWDC2021, this is another feature that seems mind-bendingly obvious as a boon for any Apple device power user, it also seems strange that it did’t exist all along.
As shown with one example in the video below, it involves having a single mouse or trackpad control multiple devices. Or the same set up for a keyboard, or both. While there are some unanswered questions – such as would the keyboard designated as being the one to “universally control” another device automatically turn off the control on the remote devices native keyboard?
Perhaps this is a naive question since it appears that it is presumed that any device being universally controlled is owned and being used by a single human.
In one way this seems to have the best use when using, say, an iPad pro for a drawing task and then moving across to the mac to process the drawing in photoshop, illustrator etc. Honestly, sometimes it’s interesting to see each device as connected to a “chair mode” – iPad for a chaise lounge, iMac or MacMini for an office chair, iPhone or iPad mini for freedom from any chair, and switching from the more human-centric modes (chaise lounge) to get down to serious business on the biggest baddest screen and most powerful CPU seems like a utopian dream, with this feature activated and working without a glitch.
The ways this could be integrated into a workflow, and the permutations of how this could be useful, seem infinite, assuming it operates anywhere near as seamlessly as in the demonstration by Craig Federighi in the video. Being able to drag and drop, as he did, across three (3!) separate devices at will is pretty incredible, if not only for its simplicity and elegance.
As per Apple: “Universal Control lets users work more seamlessly across their Mac and iPad. Working across Apple devices is now better than ever with new Continuity features:
Universal Control lets users work with a single mouse and keyboard and move between Mac and iPad for a seamless experience, with no setup required. Users can even drag and drop content back and forth between devices — great for sketching a drawing with Apple Pencil on iPad and placing it into a Keynote slide on the Mac.
New Braided Solo Loop & Pride Edition Nike Sport Loop announced via Apple Newsroom
Apple first launched the Apple Watch Pride Edition in 2016. The company’s unique bands have been a visible illustration of the ways in which Apple supports, and is proudly made up of members of the LGBTQ+ community. On on May 17th, 2021, the New Braided Solo Loop and announced with the subheading that it “represents the breadth of LGBTQ+ communities and experiences”.
The reactions on twitter were all over the map, to say the least. Many were sniping about the high price of the special band. Others seems to just be sniping as anti-Apple folks will do, but there were also plenty of defenders of the empire and Tim Cook himself.
Some of the criticism, sad and hilarious at the same time, was from people knocking Tim Cook as a presumably “straight-white-male” and defenders felt the need to remind them in a reply that he himself, is in fact publicly gay, giving him a different perspective on the LGBTQ+ movement and it’s importance overall.
“Apple's commitment to support the ongoing work toward equality.” More like, “ Apple's commitment to support the ongoing work toward fill up our pockets” Give the money made to a charity, then we talk.
There also seemed to be a lot of confusion over finances. The fact that there were associated donations to charities and pro-LGBTQ+ orgs seemed to be widely misunderstood or not recognized by would-be detractors. Again there were defenders who came to the aid of the reading-impaired:
There are obviously further questions people can ask about how much of the money goes to LGBT+ supporting organizations, or whether the organizations are the correct ones to support or whether there are better ways to support people.
Another aspect of the special product launch was the timing: “On International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia, and Biphobia (IDAHOBIT), Apple debuts the new Apple Watch Pride Edition band and dynamic watch face, both of which incorporate a broader set of colors inspired by multiple Pride flags that have represented the diverse LGBTQ+ community throughout its rich history.”
In case the explanatory text above was not 100% clear the following is also spelled out in the Apple press release:
Apple donates all the proceeds to International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association (IGLA), The Trevor Project, and LGBT+ youth charity GLSEN.
The 2021 edition of the Apple Watch Pride Edition Braided Solo Loop includes black and brown strips that symbolize Black and Latinx communities, in addition to those who have passed away from or are living with HIV/AIDS.
The light blue, pink, and white stripes represent transgender and nonbinary individuals.
Cook, who in 2014 became the first chief executive of a Fortune 500 company to publicly come out as gay, also added the following:
Black, Brown and transgender activists have always been at the heart of the LGBTQ+ movement. The new Apple Watch Pride Edition Braided Solo Loop honors their legacy and reaffirms Apple’s commitment to support the ongoing work toward equality.
Tim Cook / Twitter
Thanks for the visibility and for taking actions, so proud to have you on the LGBTTTQIA+ community 🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️
As big a splash as last year? Predictions are affirmative
Apple revealed its schedule for this year’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC). To take place in an all online format on June 7th through 11th there will be a large audience due to the unlimited size of the venue (virtual) and, as was the case last year, the software and app developers event will also be an opportunity for Apple to highlight plans for new hardware designs.
As is customary, of course, the keynote address will thoroughly update the progress on the upcoming OS versions; iOS 15, iPadOS 15, macOS 12, watchOS 8 and tvOS 15. Rumored expectations of hardware such as the highly anticipated iPad Pro, possibly a new MacBook Pro, new iMacs and the new Apple TV that is overdue and oft talked about.
Any or all of these, as yet unconfirmed, predictions could be upended by a prior release date, the iPad Pro for one, is rumored to be likely to get an announcement before June.
Above: Photo / Apple
The bulk of the conference is devoted to the software and if the upgrades are anywhere near as substantive as they were in 2020 that will be a lot to dive into.
Hints and Leaks are becoming commonplace – this time it’s the features that wow
Rumor Reports have surfaced that Apple is planning a hardware reveal event for December 8th, 2020, likely at the usual 11am PT time slot. The leak was said to some from an internal memo, and Service providers have been told to expect changes on Tuesday. MacRumors reports that this type of prior warning to suppliers has coincided historically with new products being launched.
What product(s) might be launched?
It’s not likely that a major product will be launched (so no new MacBook or iPhone, for example), but some possibilities that have been mentioned are an AppleTV update or the ever elusive AirTags.
AirTags have been in development for months now. However, Apple has kept most details on the elusive product under wraps. We expected to hear some specifics on the AirTags at the company’s September and October press events, but although those occasions offered lots of other exciting launches, they remained silent on the Tags.
Only now have two new Apple patents come out for AirTags, featuring illustrations and suggestions about how the devices might work and where they could be useful— The answers might be more expansive than we thought.
In essence, AirTags are exactly what we expected them to be: Apple products akin to a Tiles, which can be placed on any object and thus track it. Intuitively, their primary function is to help users find lost items such as keys, wallets, or phones by sending out a locational signal to Apple devices. Reportedly, these signals will be more precise than any GPS, directing people to within feet of the Tag.
The new patents, however, suggest that the AirTags’ tracking abilities could be useful beyond just recovering everyday items. They could, for example, be attached to emergency equipment like fire extinguishers or defibrillators, helping people find such crucial tools in unfamiliar environments. They could also be used to track people via Apple Watches or the wristbands featured in the patent illustrations. While tracking human beings raises major ethical questions, it could also save lives in the events of kidnappings or missing people.
Beyond such grave alternatives, the patents also suggest more leisurely uses for the AirTags. By attaching them to one’s body, they could serve as advanced gears in augmented reality gaming platforms, or play a role in the new Apple Fitness+ app by monitoring posture and other health matters.
Tags could also be placed in public areas to send signals directly to other Apple devices with useful information such as maps and guides. The patent offers the example of a business placing a Tag at its entrance, ensuring that everyone who enters receives a map of the building.
When Apple delays (as with the MagSafe surprise just announced) good things happen…
As of right now, rumor has it that the AirTags will launch in March 2021, but given their perpetual delays so far and the precarious state of the world during the COVID-19 pandemic, it is hard to say for sure when these devices will really become available. Nevertheless, the latest patents suggest that AirTags are going to be much more than mere Tile replicas. With that in mind, perhaps they will also be more worth the wait.
Use this powerful setting for Screen-shot Back-Tap or many other actions
As many of you out there have undoubtedly realized, iOS 14 is a huge and powerful upgrade with layers of new features and options. Some can be learned by just getting used to the “lay of the land” and intuitively adapting.
Others are “secret” or at least hidden to an extent, and require a road map to find. For this reason we have begun a YouTube series we call “iOS 14 Quick & Easy” to give you a quick, easy road map to learning and using all the best tips and tricks.
This installment shows the easy way to set your iPhone to initiate an action when you tap the back of the iPhone itself – either twice (double-tap) or three times (triple-tap).
There is actually a very long list of possible actions that can be triggered, but we chose screen-shot for this tutorial since it is really useful, fun and the steps would be the same for any action.
Infinite Flexibility is built-in to iOS14, you just need to choose your custom settings
The many other actions can be seen in the photo or just by scrolling to the “double-tap” menu as per the video and checking them out yourself.
Additionally there’s a shortcut section where ANY action that you set up as a shortcut can be accessed as a double-tap or triple-tap (meaning up to two actions dependent on 2 or 3 taps).
This illustrates the vast, basically limitless, ways that the new operating system and your phone can be customized and configured for fun, power and pure creative joy.
All-in-one subscription bundle for Music, TV Plus, and more
In a press release on Tuesday, September 15th, Apple Inc. announced the creation of a new single-plan platform for consumers to access all of their services via one subscription. Appropriately, it is titled Apple One.
Amidst the present age of competitive streaming services and warring tech conglomerates, such a service from Apple is rather expected. Apple One is the company’s own version of Amazon Prime— a single monthly fee for all of its music, video, gaming services, and more bundled into one. For Apple, that means offering Apple Music, Apple TV+, Apple Arcade, Apple News+, Apple Fitness+, and 50GB of iCloud storage all at once.
Each of these apps are available for separate costs on all Apple devices, but with Apple One, users will get them all for the lower monthly total of $14.95. Apple One will also offer a Family Plan at $19.95 per month—allowing six members on the plan with 200GB of iCloud storage altogether. Additionally, a Premium Plan will be available for $25.95. This will accommodate six family members as well, but comes with 2TB of iCloud storage.
Although Apple One is not yet available—the press release only states “Coming This Fall”—the plan has already garnered some criticism. For starters, some features of the bundle are far more desirable than others. Apple Music and iCloud, for example, are big hits with consumers and bode well against the competition. Apple TV+, on the other hand, is still developing, and is not as praised of a video streaming platform as Netflix, Amazon, or Disney+. Some are concerned that Apple One is a cheap way to get consumers paying for unwanted apps and becoming tethered.
On that same token, Apple Fitness+ is an entirely new feature, designed for Apple Watches to give users workouts and fitness routines throughout the day. This is a new and creative endeavor for Apple, but there is no guarantee that it will be worth the additional expense of Apple One. After all, many of the people who prefer spending copious time binging Apple TV+ might not care for this new exercise-focused development.
Many competitors— most notably Spotify in the music streaming world and Peloton in the fitness world—also fear that Apple One demonstrates the company’s ultimate leap towards social and corporate hegemony. Like Amazon, Apple has grown into much more than a one-purpose business over the years. It now offers something for everything and everyone around the globe. If it continues down this path, it will brutally outrun the competition. Already, some are starting to whisper the dreaded A-word that these conglomerates have been evading for decades—“Antitrust.”
For now, though, Apple One is yet to come out, and once available, users will have a thirty-day free trial to figure out weather or not the bundle is worth the price. According to an article from Fast Company.com, Apple One’s Individual Plan can save users up to $5 per month, while the Family Plan can save one $8 per month, and Premiere, $25. This is compared to the total cost of paying for each app or feature individually.
Still, it is unclear how likely users would be buying everything featured in this bundle to begin with. Also, Apple One’s $14.95 per month cost comes out to nearly $180 for the year. This is much steeper than Amazon’s $119 annual cost for Prime, and its features are not as reliable in this early stage.
At the same time, though, bundling is probably the future for many companies focused on tech and entertainment. If Apple wants to compete with Amazon and others, they need to mix their resources together or consumers will turn away. Why pay for everything separately when the best deals come in packages? Even if those packages sometimes arrive with superfluous materials that keep us chained.
The writing is on the wall – but it’s about to collapse: privacy wars 2021
While Apple apparently agreed to delay the surveillance-blocking privacy tools for iOS 14 and iPadOS 14 until 2021, not so apparently for Safari and Big Sur. The tracker is amazing. The system is fully automated at launch of the browser and immediately blocking tons of nasty data thieves from the jump.
I surfed about 10 minutes and it blocked 69 trackers. It has a button to allow you to check each web site and see what it is doing with your data and also a continuously updated full report screen where you can see who they all are. Surprise ! They are mainly Facebook, Google, Amazon and companies that are affiliated with or in competition against these big three.
Safari Privacy Screen from the Privacy Report Pop-up window
Although income for News Orgs like Lynxotic might be negatively affected initially the adjustment is history in the making and there will be no going back. The old way was wrong. Your data belongs to you. Period. You shouldn’t have to mess around with external ad-blocking software and plug-ins.
Why there was never any privacy protection built into the internet before now, one day will be seen as a mystery
The future is that you will be automatically protected (within the Apple ecosystem, at least), and, in you choose to be tracked and surveilled so that Mark Z. can get richer, you can opt in. (Wanted by nobody, ever).
We have been warning about this for months – here are a few articles with some more in depth information about the situation:
Apple’s billion users would need to allow their data and browsing habits to be monetized by those massive ad built eco-system killers. A lot has also been discussed about how this new regime change by Apple could negatively affect publishers, like Lynxotic, but this is a case of seeing the big, long term benefits, such as an internet where the users and netizens, and not Zuckerberg, are finally in charge. This goal is lofty and honorable and long overdue. Therefore, any adjustments needed to be made by publishers business models is well worth it.
That’s not all, in iOS 14 and iPad OS14 searches will default for “best for user” rather than automatically being diverted to google or any other “search engine”. If you are searching for a news article or information about an apple product, for example, the search will offer you results, within the global search on your device rather than in a browser, and this will direct you to your Apple News App or to Safari, landing directly on a web site, as appropriate. https://www.youtube.com/embed/2e2iZa3G9_0?feature=oembed
Along with watchOS7 it’s all new with 100s of features to learn
2020 has been one hellava year so far. The fires, political chaos, pandemic lockdowns, economic depressions are all still evolving. Finally, some better news. Over the last several months the stability of the beta versions of the new operating systems became far better. In order to stay ahead of the curve we tested some of the most interesting new features including these 5.
iOS 14 and iPad OS 14 will be available on September 16th to download on your iPhone and iPad. This is a major update and includes a lot of changes to your world.Now you will be able to add widgets to your home screen, find apps easier with the App Library and there are many new features in iMessage.
There are also, digging a little deeper, hidden gems like the Apple Translate App. in the video above we demonstrated an interesting difference between the Apple software and the well known Google Translate. This feature, called “Conversation Mode” foreshadows what we believe is going to be the hallmark of all Apple Software upgrades going forward: machine learning and built in AI for the OS and apps.
In conversation mode the voice recognition engine is able to recognize what language it is “hearing” and then translate into the other language, based on the selected pair, in this case English and German. It can also recognize slang and alternate vocabularies and even some dialects and accents, such as UK vs American English.
At first blush this may seem like it is too deep into the detailed function of the app to be significant, after all for the most part we just need to know what a phrase means in an alternate language. But, in typical spectacular fashion, this feature is an example of something you don’t realize you need until you have it – then you can’t imagine you ever lived without it. Ultimately a conversation could be translated “live” without having to stop each time to let the app know who is speaking which language – making the flow of the conversation remain intact while the app “just works”.
Also in typical Apple fashion, it will probably take an iPhone 12 Pro, a 5G connection and a few months of machine learning to make that scenario a reality, but it would be an interesting experience nonetheless, when it is finally a reality.
Apple News goes Audio: Built in articles out loud
Apple News + might get a boost with the new Apple One bundle, also revealed in the Apple September 2020 keynote event. Those who opt for “Premier” will get Apple News+ access bundled in. Even without the News+ upgrade all users get access to audio stories released periodically “Apple News Today”, somewhat like a teaser sample pack to let you try out with your AirPods and see if the additional audio, including sync with text version and Apple Car Play might entice you to become a News+ subscriber ($5 per month without the bundle).
Privacy features delayed due to Facebook being terrified but coming soon
Although delayed, these features are some of the most important in the new OS versions. Just ask Mark Zuckerberg. The gist of the situation is that Apple is finally asserting it’s rightful place in the internet ecosystem: users should be allowed to opt in to surveillance by advertisers and predatory juggernauts like Facebook and Amazon, rather than be surveilled automatically and then have to jump through hoops (and potentially add blockers and plug-ins to escape).
Apple’s billion users would need to allow their data and browsing habits to be monetized by those massive ad built eco-system killers. A lot has also been discussed about how this new regime change by Apple could negatively affect publishers, like Lynxotic, but this is a case of seeing the big, long term benefits, such as an internet where the users and netizens, and not Zuckerberg, are finally in charge. This goal is lofty and honorable and long overdue. Therefore, any adjustments needed to be made by publishers business models is well worth it.
That’s not all, in iOS 14 and iPad OS14 searches will default for “best for user” rather than automatically being diverted to google or any other “search engine”. If you are searching for a news article or information about an apple product, for example, the search will offer you results, within the global search on your device rather than in a browser, and this will direct you to your Apple News App or to Safari, landing directly on a web site, as appropriate.
Searches might finally find what you want, coming soon
As many have noticed Google has been diverting searches to Google hosted pages rather than offering results that take you directly to the web site that published the information. This practice is the reverse of what Apple is trying to do. Google want to “hold” you in Google “territory”, just as Facebook tries to block you from leaving its ecosystem that you are logged in to. Apple, on the other hand, is set up to send people directly to the source of the information, such as news web sites, etc., albeit via Safari or the Apple News App.
This will all continue to be a contentious issue going forward as it is akin to a war between Apple, Google, Amazon and Facebook (!), so we will be following this closely and will continue to report, ahead of the fact in many cases, in an ongoing fashion.
![iPadOS 15 Preview: [Part 2] Deep Dive - AI and Machine Learning that will Blow You Away](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/XrU6cNxC1rM/hqdefault.jpg)
