Apple Announces iOS 18 With New Customization Features, Redesigned Photos App, and More

[d686546s]

Calendar will finally get a monthly view, I can't believe it! Apple is implementing a whole host of features that should have been there for years.

It's a good update overall. Sure, Android's had some of these for years and not everything will be groundbreaking, but iOS 18 will bring a lot of quality of life improvements and that's great.

The AI stuff will have to prove itself, but I'm keeping an open mind.

 

[MNWildFan]

Where is AI ?

It's there, provided you have a device that can support it

On the iPhone side, many like me with a non-Pro 15 are just shunned though as to use any of those Apple Intelligence features, as you'll need a 15 Pro/Pro Max to be able to use them

 

[xaanaax]

iOS 18 is probably the most useless release ever in iOS history...

All these new features like customizations etc. are not necessary. Why on earth I would waste my time on customizing the ****ing App icons?!

You wouldn’t but teens and girls will love to do that 😅

 

[MNWildFan]

Only on iPhone 15 Pro and newer also...right?

Yup, only 15 Pro/Pro Max and newer

And for Macs for macOS Sequoia, it's a little more expansive as AI will run on anything from an M1 onwards (and heck, even if you have an Intel one that has the T2 security chip, you still will get it as well)

 

[MNWildFan]

Supported devices?

iOS 18 itself will be supported all the way down to the 2nd gen SE, but to use those new Apple Intelligence features, you will need an iPhone 15 Pro/Pro Max (so us non-Pro 15 folk and even 14 Pro folk are in the dark for them )

 

[dampfnudel]

The changes, at least visually, are not as big as I was expecting based on some of the rumors. A little tweaking here, a little tweaking there, nothing groundbreaking. Maybe we’ll see something more impressive for iOS 19?

 

[redheeler]

The color tinting will be DOA because it will be opt-in for devs and big brands won't allow their logos to have non-standard colors.

Still better than not having it.

 

[GSWForever8]

Just downloaded the developer beta! So far it’s not too bad, control center looking pretty nice now!

 

[ApAx]

Ha, Ha, Ha! iPhone mirroring to Mac. Many wanted iPads to run Mac OS. Well instead you can run iOS via your phone on your Mac. I guess that is what they call "reverse engineering" at Apple!

When Apple Silicon was first announced, a key feature was the ability to run iOS and iPadOS apps from Mac. Then Apple unpublished/blocked App Store downloads on Mac unless the app was specifically developed to be supported on Mac. Seems like this reduces the developer barrier here. I use apps that are iOS only throughout the day while using my MBP and would prefer to stay on one device throughout the day.

 

[Zc456]

So much of these features screams Android, but whatever. Better late then never!

 

[johna1234]

Is anyone else having issues with messages? I’m not getting any texts pop up on the lock screen after the update. Tried a restart and still the same issue

 

[TinyMito]

iPhone Mirroring is all I wanted.

 

[applepotato666]

I can not for the life of me figure out how to do the multi select in the chaotic new Photos. On iOS 17 there used to be a button at the top that says “Select” or something of the sort and now it’s a search and my Apple ID profile pic. Holding down and dragging across does not work either.

 

[applepotato666]

The changes, at least visually, are not as big as I was expecting based on some of the rumors. A little tweaking here, a little tweaking there, nothing groundbreaking. Maybe we’ll see something more impressive for iOS 19?

The way the designers dropped the ball this time, I’d rather they just don’t touch anything to be honest

 

[profdraper]

1) I don’t care and only want to be able to turn that AI OFF, and 2) zero updates to iPadOS usability, pathetic. All that money for an M4 iPad & keyboard & we get nothing.

 

[Ansath]

iOS 18 itself will be supported all the way down to the 2nd gen SE, but to use those new Apple Intelligence features, you will need an iPhone 15 Pro/Pro Max (so us non-Pro 15 folk and even 14 Pro folk are in the dark for them )

It’s down to hardware. Needs 8GB RAM to handle the LLM, and the non pro 15 has 6GB.

 

[ssawczyn]

I think the feature I'm most excited about is RCS messaging because finally, group threads that include folks on Android shouldn't suck any more. Some of the other things are admittedly cool, but in my day-to-day life, there is nothing more frustrating than being in a group convo and having it be completely unreliable based on which OS participants are using. Not ground-breaking, not innovative, and yet it's still the thing I'm most excited about at this point.

 

[Johnny London]

Tons of new features. Why is everyone complaining?

 

[satchmo]

It’s down to hardware. Needs 8GB RAM to handle the LLM, and the non pro 15 has 6GB.

So Craig said they’ve been working on this for a long time. This would mean they knew it requires 8gb of RAM and still gave the current iPhone 15 only 6gb?

So their either lying about their timeline, or knowingly screwing iPhone 15 users.

 

[muzzy996]

Photos redesign looks bleah. I like having the tabs on the bottom to switch between views. I hope the final version is better than what we saw.

Yeah, I thought the changes to Photos were alright but I couldn't help but wonder if we will ever see the ability to do albums within albums or share folders that contain albums. Unless I'm missing something I still can't figure out a way to organize photos into a series of subgroups and share them such that the subgroup structure remains intact - say for example sharing a portion of one's library of photos for a family vacation but having things segregated into sub-albums for different places that are visited to at least give structure to the presentation of the photographs.

 

[cheekyjeremy]

So far I’m a little disappointed with what has actually been activated. Usually I put up with a slightly diminished performance in order to enjoy some of the new features. A lot of the relevant feature (AI, mail grouping etc etc) are not yet activated in beta one

 

[Ansath]

So Craig said they’ve been working on this for a long time. This would mean they knew it requires 8gb of RAM and still gave the current iPhone 15 only 6gb?

So their either lying about their timeline, or knowingly screwing iPhone 15 users.

Things evolve, it could be that when they were finalising iPhone 15 (which would have been early 2023) they believed it would work on them, but then as they got the Apple Intelligence closer to being ready for release (within last few months or so), they established it didn’t run as well as what they want the minimum standard to be.

If you use your brain and think about it (also helps if you’ve got any background in software & hardware development), this is obvious.

I’m not saying that Apple have t arbitrarily held back features from older devices in the past, as they have. Just that this one, clearly can be relatively evidenced.

I suspect my rational, logical post won’t satiate you, as you probably just wanna go on to keep complaining, so go for it. I’ve wasted enough time trying to share some logic and rationale thoughts on the situation, now got better things to do with my night.

 

[Ansath]

So far I’m a little disappointed with what has actually been activated. Usually I put up with a slightly diminished performance in order to enjoy some of the new features. A lot of the relevant feature (AI, mail grouping etc etc) are not yet activated in beta one

They said AI was coming later in the Summer and the new Mail app later in the year (their iOS 18 preview site clearly also states the Mail app is coming later in the year). So, if you watched the keynote, there was no reason to expect either of those in B1…….

 

[djgamble]

looks like every other ios for the last 15 years.

Gone are the days of whole number releases being reserved for systems that look and feel significantly different now hey?

I'm torn. The good news is that iOS 18 will still work on my iPhone 12 Mini (which is terrific support from Apple - good luck finding an Android with that kinda lifespan).

That said... I don't want these 'AI' features, particularly when they're gonna take up memory and CPU cycles. Sigh. I miss the days when such features came in the form of optional apps that you could choose to install if you wanted them (rather than being bundled with a stack of incremental bug fixes / security patches that are considered a minor point release, such as 'MacOS 7.5.5' or something).

 

[satchmo]

Things evolve, it could be that when they were finalising iPhone 15 (which would have been early 2023) they believed it would work on them, but then as they got the Apple Intelligence closer to being ready for release (within last few months or so), they established it didn’t run as well as what they want the minimum standard to be.

If you use your brain and think about it (also helps if you’ve got any background in software & hardware development), this is obvious.

I’m not saying that Apple have t arbitrarily held back features from older devices in the past, as they have. Just that this one, clearly can be relatively evidenced.

I suspect my rational, logical post won’t satiate you, as you probably just wanna go on to keep complaining, so go for it. I’ve wasted enough time trying to share some logic and rationale thoughts on the situation, now got better things to do with my night.

What a rude response. An easy ignore.