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iOS 17 Rumored to Have 'Fewer Major Changes Than Originally Planned' as Apple Shifts Focus to AR/VR Headset

I'm OK with this. The big headline features of iOS16 haven't been amazing - for me, the customisable lockscreen was far less exciting than I thought and its implementation felt a bit scrappy.

I'd rather them focus on fixing what's there and on lot of the innumerable small features that aren't talked about.

At any rate, it would seem that a huge amount of iOS and iPadOS engineering resource for this year is going to have to go on implementing the App Store EU-rules.
 
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Read My Lips: No New Features.

If they just spent this year really refining the features that exist in 16, the way Apple used to refine everything, I would be so happy.

There is absolutely no need for another boatload of niche features they can’t even ship on time.
 
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If this is true this is pretty disappointing...No one specifically asks for big headlining features that takes months to get sometimes and riddled with bugs which takes various time to correct. Unless this is a switch to a slower rollout of complex features so that bugs are less and corrected quicker I am for that.
 
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krspkbl said:
there was this guy who said something like people don't know what they want until you show them it. can't remember his name...

there is huge potential for AR/VR headsets which is why the metaverse is being pushed as the next big thing. it excites companies like Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, etc because they'd love nothing more than having a smartphone strapped to your face so they can see exactly what you see and beam ads right into your eyeballs. smartphones can track you enough right now but imagine having multiple cameras on your head that are always on and scanning everything around you in real time. that's valuable data to be harvested!

i don't know how they'll market it but we'll have the virtual world, the augmented world, and the real world (as a whole they are the "metaverse"). in the augmented world it could display information at the corner of your eyes. the weather, directions, notifications for emails/calls/messages etc and you could face time people while walking about. they would appear in a little box at the side of your view. also based on the rumors all iOS apps will work on it so you could have facebook, instagram, tiktok, etc right infront of you.

i must admit i am a bit skeptical. i find it hard to imagine everyone walking around with headsets on in public but then 15-20 years ago i never imagined everyone walking about staring down at phones. times change.

if anyone can sell this to the masses then it's apple. need to wait and see what they do but i don't underestimate them.
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To be fair his contribution was closer to Tim Cook than to Steve Jobs. It was already clear that cars were going to be the next big thing, he just found an efficient way to make and market them.

I do agree with your point, I just wonder if there’s enough Steve Jobs left to make this work.
 
SmugMaverick said:
It NEEDS a UI design change, new icons, new layout because its stale AF.

Widgets NEED TO BE INTERACTIVE as well.
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Change for the sake of change is rarely a good idea. And given that Apple just updated macOS to match iOS and iPadOS’s UI styling with Big Sur two years ago it’s unlikely they have any significant UI changes on deck for iOS.

100% agree that interactive widgets can and should be brought back though.
 
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Red Oak said:
An enormous number of new software features were launched in the last two years. It’s okay to slow the pace, focus on fixing bugs, and give the average consumer time to digest all the features
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The last few years have been absolutely underwhelming and uninspired. I am not sure where you saw ‘enormous’ features but most people doesn’t even notice any difference from one version to the next, unless it’s because something broke due to apple’s poor QA (see for example HomeKit )
 
Apple has become so boring recently in sick of small changes and nothing major can’t they hire a bigger team, most people won’t get the vr headset, iOS 15 and iOS 16 are minor updates we need a big change
 
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How about not releasing new OSes every single year then? It might have made sense in the early days of the iPhone and iPad when the hardware power increased substantially every year and there were missing necessary features that could be added because of better hardware (like copy/paste). I feel like this is a trend across all software/tech companies, this incessant need to constantly push out new releases, code and features. I wish tech companies would take a more humanistic approach to software and more generally product level design. Someone trying to check their bank balance in the morning doesn't need to login and have the whole experience changed for no good reason and no ability to go back to the way things used to look and function, for example.
 
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12643 said:
So a 2 Trillion Dollar company can't focus on two major products at the same time?
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Yes, this 'piece of news' sounds very disappointing. Don't drop focus from your main product just to work on something new. Not everyone wants ar/vr or a foldable phone headset...
 
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So iPadOS is still gonna be a mess and let down for another year
 
Gurman typically gets high level stuff right, but doesn’t always land the minutia of the releases. As always, I’m reserving judgement until I actually see what the story is.

Is he assuming that there are fewer major features because of the headset? Is Apple focusing on refinement? Is it a little bit of both?
 
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iOS 17 Rumored to Have 'Fewer Major Changes Than Originally Planned' as Apple Shifts Focus to AR/VR Headset

I say, iOS 17 will have fewer features because they are more likely shifting focus to implement side loading, opening up iOS/ipadOS for alternative AppStores with alternative payment methods to avoid an EU hit by at least 10% of their worldwide annual turnover.
 
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At this point, other than more customization and camera controls, I don’t care anymore. Just bring back stability and reliability. Stability wise, iOS 16 is the worst ever and every major iOS launch for the past 5 or so years has been worse than the last. If I didn’t upgrade to the Apple Watch Ultra, I might still be trying to resist the temptation to upgrade from iOS 15 to 16
 
Apple should go back to quality control and just make iOS stable to correct many ongoing issues like wifi/network issues and battery issues. Too many iOS updates with incremental changes with stability issues.
Fix the current iOS before creating another version.
 
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Marswarrior462 said:
At this point, other than more customization and camera controls, I don’t care anymore. Just bring back stability and reliability. Stability wise, iOS 16 is the worst ever and every major iOS launch for the past 5 or so years has been worse than the last. If I didn’t upgrade to the Apple Watch Ultra, I might still be trying to resist the temptation to upgrade from iOS 15 to 16
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iOS 16 hasn’t been that buggy, it’s barely had any changes apart from silly Lock Screen, we need a major ui change a fresh look and interactive widgets and split screen something exciting iOS has become boring as hell year after year, they can’t even hide the home bar
 
I suggest spend iOS 17 on sqhashing bugs throughout the system, improving speed and battery life all across the board, especially making old phones that are about to become obsolete (iPhone 8 and X) feel more stable to give them a good note to end on when they do get dropped. Maybe continue refining notifications, Siri, and better customization. Like a refined iOS 16 version 2.0
 
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