iOS Today 707 Transcript
Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show.
00:00 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Coming up on iOS Today, rosemary Orchard and I, micah Sargent, talk about the core features coming to iOS and iPadOS 18. Stay tuned Podcasts you love From people you trust. This is Twit. This is iOS Today with Rosemary Orchard and Micah Sargent, episode 707, recorded Tuesday June 11th 2024, for Thursday June 13th 2024. Ios 18 core features. Hello and welcome to iOS Today, the show where we talk all things iOS, ipados, tvos, watchos, visionos, home and audio, which is a category that Apple has, and all of the other OSs that Apple puts out to the world. This is a very special time of the year for us here on iOS Today, where we give you the information you need to know to make the most of your devices. I am one of your hosts, micah Sargent.
01:11 - Rosemary Orchard (Host)
And I am Rosemary Orchard, who got a very exciting new gadget in the post yesterday, immediately messaged Micah about it and went. We're not going to be able to talk about this for ages because, there's so much other stuff to talk about, so we've got some good things lined up in the future for everybody, and Apple has lined some good things up for us for September.
01:31 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Indeed, indeed. So for folks who don't know, apple just had, or actually is undergoing, the WWDC Worldwide Developer Conference. This is an event that takes place every year where Apple shows its developers all of the new stuff that's coming in the next iteration of its various platforms. So what's coming to iOS, what's coming to iPadOS, what's coming to watchOS, etc. Etc. The idea is that developers will see this new stuff and they will leverage the new stuff to do cool stuff in their stuff, and by their stuff I mean their apps. So a developer sees that they can, for example, improve upon their watch app because of the addition of live activities to the Apple Watch Spoiler.
02:26
Apple Watch Spoiler that is what WWDC is typically about.
02:28
It's a time for developers to be able to actually talk to the folks at Apple, have different labs and consultations, and all of it is meant to kind of improve upon or, in some cases, spark the creation of apps for the App Store.
02:42
But it always kicks off or has for many years now with a keynote, and at that keynote, apple takes most of the time just talking about new features coming to its platforms not necessarily those that developers are going to be able to leverage, and I think particularly this year, it was heavy, heavy on the new features and not as heavy on hey developers. This is what you're going to be able to do Luckily there's plenty of time throughout this week, as people are at WWDC, to do that part of it. But here on this show we're talking about those new features and, look, there's so much to talk about that we're actually kind of breaking this up into two episodes. So this is kind of part one that we're covering today, and then we will get to part two in the next episode with some of the other kind of sprinkles throughout. So, without further ado, let's kick it off for us, mary.
03:42 - Rosemary Orchard (Host)
Yeah, mike, it's kind of difficult to know where to start because because, as you mentioned, apple talked about a whole bunch of new features and, while they didn't necessarily specifically call out all the new developer things, you know, they did mention a whole bunch of developer things sort of in passing. One of the things they were talking about the whole time was app intents, which is the underlying framework in shortcuts, but that's tying into everything in the operating system to bring it all together, and the fact that they're putting all of that in there is incredibly exciting for me, but also for everybody who wants to use Siri. But what Apple were really talking about yesterday is making your phone even more personalized to you and using all of that data on it. So some of the things you know we're not going to see necessarily straight away, but where we could get started maybe is another kind of communication with messages, because I don't know if you noticed yesterday, but I sent you a message, but I sent it five minutes before I sent it, because there's send later now in messages.
04:47 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Yes, I was very pleased to see the addition of this feature to messages. I was excited. There were a few new changes to messages, including, yes, the ability to schedule a message to send later. So if you had a message that you knew you wanted to send, but you know that the person is asleep, or maybe, as they show on the website, you want to make sure that you wish your friend happy birthday and that you don't forget, so you can schedule it, hey, send this message tomorrow at 10 am and put in happy birthday, which is great.
05:24
There are also some changes to actually multiple parts of the messages app and some that I'm very excited about, including the addition of text formatting, so you get your basic kind of text formatting that you would expect, including bold italics, underlining and strikethrough, which I'm very excited about.
05:46
Strikethrough, because there are a number of times where I want to make some stupid pun and then have the pun part crossed out and the real word is afterward. That I'm pumped about. But also, rosemary and I, I believe, both sent each other because I have it installed on my iPad I know you have it installed on your iPad we both sent each other some moving text because there are some animated effects that you can do to any letter, word or phrase, or also emoji that will change, make some slight impact on your letters. You can make something kind of grow large and then small. You can make something sort of bounce up and down. You can make something slide in. Many of those animations will be familiar to you because they do remind me at least of the different kind of pop up effects and animation animate in effects in Keynote.
06:54 - Rosemary Orchard (Host)
Yes, yeah, they are very cool and it's surprisingly simple to use them. I say surprisingly. Apple has thought about this. They've made it simple. So I've written a message to myself, to my test account, and I've just said hey, there, I've selected there and I've got the options here for bold italic underline, strike through. But there's also things like shake, nod, ripple, small jitter and so on. So if I select the ripple, then I can use that.
07:18
I've also used the send later feature here, which is a little hidden.
07:22
It's in the app drawer, so you tap on the plus next to the message window and then you go down and there's send later. So I can use that and if I decide actually no, I do want to just send that right now. It's as simple as just removing that and then I can send the message and then it will send it off with the effects as necessary or appropriate, which is pretty cool and very exciting, because there's a little bit more on the tap back options as well now, with way more emoji appearing up here. And, yeah, so I can send back a little cross because that one didn't get delivered, because I've turned the other side of that off, and I can do whatever I want with those little tap. They've got a little bit shinier, they're more colorful. Instead of just being, you know, the blue with the white in it or the white with the blue, they've got blue ha-ha and red exclamation mark, purple question mark my favorite a little pink heart, a yellow thumbs up, orange thumbs down and then some other emojis as well.
08:26 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Another important feature that is coming to the messages app is something that Apple didn't much talk about on stage Quickly briefly mentioned that RCS messaging is coming to iOS. That is, rich communication services, basically for folks who are going. What does that even mean? You will be able to see delivery and read receipts or read receipts, depending on how you choose to pronounce that, whenever you are doing messages with a green bubble, and then you can also count on being able to send audio and video and photos and have that deliver properly. So I have a few friends who are on the Android side of things.
09:08
I'm very happy to see this feature being added. So I know at least that the messages have made their way to the person with whom I'm communicating, and so, even though I didn't get a huge announcement on stage, I thought that was great. Get a huge announcement on stage, I thought that was great. Lastly, is the ability to use messages even if you're in a place without Wi-Fi or cellular connection by way of satellite. I thought that was a cool addition. There was talk of that being a feature that would be added, and there are some places here in California that I find myself in where I have no service otherwise, so being able to have access via satellite is a pretty cool addition, all right.
09:53 - Rosemary Orchard (Host)
Yeah.
09:55 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
We've got to keep moving along as we continue to talk about the core features for iOS 18 and, of course, iPad 18, because they're kind of stuck together Very few features that are independent to each platform. What's next?
10:16 - Rosemary Orchard (Host)
Well, this is a little one that I feel goes hand in hand with messages, micah phone, as getting a little bit of an update, in fact it's getting a couple of little updates. So it's getting T9 search for the folks who know what that is and want that so you can use the you know pressing the seven key three times to get an R and things like that to search through your contacts, if that's something you want. But something that's more interesting for everybody is the ability to record and transcribe a phone call so you'll be able to turn on a recording. It will announce so that everybody on the lines is clear that the call is being recorded and then it will go ahead and it will record the phone call and also transcribe the call, which I think is a really nice addition to, you know, ios.
11:06
I know that there are some other apps that do it, but they do it by you basically calling a third party and adding them to your call and it's a little bit of a hack. This is going to be a nice first party way, and the addition of the transcription as well I think is really nice. I have had the odd phone call recently where I've gone. I really wish I could record this so that I can definitely remember what was said. And if I missed something in my notes then that's OK, because I can just listen back and fix it. So yeah, this is going to be a nice addition to that.
11:37 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Yeah, I am looking forward to this feature there. I usually end up using if I know that I'm going to be placing a call that I need to have recorded. I end up using something else, typically my Mac with some program, maybe even just Google Voice, and then setting it up all on my Mac where I've got Audio Hijack, an application that records audio running, and it's this very complicated process. So to be able to do it all on my iPhone and not only just record it but, as you said, have it automatically transcribed, I think is fantastic, and I think there are many reasons why anybody might want this feature. But I think that it can be helpful in certain instances of people who maybe their memory is not as great or they are hard of hearing or you know, recording so that all of the necessary laws are met as well is pretty clever and well done, all right. So when it comes to core features which it's not a pun, I know this is Apple, but it's not a pun there are there's, there's kind of an overarching change. We talked about the customization for your messages, but there's also a change to the customization of the look and feel of your device, right? So up to this point, it has not been possible on an iPhone or an iPad to take your apps and put them wherever you want them. They've always been in a grid-like layout and of course, widgets got added, so it kind of changed the way that the grid is displayed. Changed the way that the grid is displayed, but for the most part apps are in a four by some amount grid on an iPhone.
13:38
A couple of things have changed on your iPhone and your iPad. One is the addition of a feature that I believe is called large icons, and what this does is it takes your app icons and there's built-in padding for every app icon, such that the app icon appears and then right below it is the text that says what that app is. When you choose the large option for app icons, it removes the text beneath it and then kind of rearranges things by making the app icon bigger and removing the text. I turned this on on my iPad. I quite like it. I'm used to the app icons Plus. I typically just launch apps by using Spotlight Search anyway, so it's just kind of nice seeing the apps there without the text underneath. It looks cleaner, clearer and I quite enjoy it. On top of that, now, again, outside of being able to make the apps larger, you can put them anywhere on the screen so they don't have to be in that grid shape and you can tint them. So there are some options which I and Rosemary is going to be able to show this in a moment.
14:51
But here's yeah, here's a. If you're watching, here is an example from Apple, where've got a wallpaper that has this person in a beautiful red dress. So the app icons are showing on the screen in this red tinted look, and what's cool about it is the apps are near the bottom of the screen, so you can still see the top, where the wallpaper kind of shines through. I'm glad to see this make its way to iPhone. It's something that's been on Android for a millennia, it feels like at this point, so pretty cool to see it come over, including dark mode icons as well. I'm sure third-party developers will introduce their own special dark mode icons, but until that happens, the tinting option is something that you can use. So, yeah, you want to tell us, or maybe even show us have you done any editing of your home screen?
15:50 - Rosemary Orchard (Host)
Yeah, so I have been playing with my home screen a bit and it's a little difficult to see right now because I've made the icons larger. But there's actually a row gap between this large widget that I've got at the top of my iPhone screen. There's a row gap and then there's four app icons and they're large and if I tap and hold on the home screen, jiggle mode folks has not gone away, it's still here, but there's an edit button in the top left and I can tap that and I can use that to add a widget or customize. And if I customize then you can see, if you're watching the video, that there's a slider between small and large, and I'm currently on large and if I put that back to small the app icons get smaller, the titles come back in and then underneath that that there are four options. So there's automatic.
16:36
There's dark, light and tinted, so if I switch this over to dark, then folks will see if they're watching the video. The messages icon, for example, went from a green background with a white bubble to a black background with a green bubble. The health app changed from a white to a black, the fitness app stayed the same and journal stayed more or less the same as well. If I switch it to light then it goes back, and then if I change it to tinted, everything gets a little bit purple, because of course I've selected purple because that is the color of the background on my phone and it takes a little while for some of the icons to update a little bit, but you can then see how it looks in light and dark mode. There's a little sun in the top left corner that allows you to see that.
17:23
And there's another little feature that's available now, which is when I tap and hold and go into that jiggle, I can resize widgets, and this is something that previously you kind of just had to remove your widget and then add a new widget. So the fact that you can resize your widgets, you are limited to what sizes of widget that app has available, but this is a really nice little feature and now I've done it like this, it's a little easier to see perhaps that I have that big space in the middle of my home screen here, and I personally think this is a really nice feature. The tinting is being done automatically by Apple right now, but app developers are going to be able to add their own app icons, which will support better tinting their own app icons which will support better tinting so that things don't kind of go all blurry and like a little bit, you know, weird with the coloring.
18:20
But yeah, yeah, it's definitely going to be something that's a little bit in progress. But the fact that they're just forcing it onto every app developer means even my bank is going to have to live with it.
18:30 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Yeah, when I first did the tinting thing, I said, ok, turning this off Because, yes, some of the third party apps do not currently look good with tinting.
18:41
But, yeah, apple has made it possible so that a developer can kind of say this is the part of the app that you should tint, leave the rest of it alone for it to look good, for it to look as it should.
18:55
So there will be some kind of adjustments that can be made to improve upon that customization, which I'm excited about. There is also updates to Control Center. Now it's kind of like Control Center is becoming its own widget area where you have your basic controls but you can kind of add categories of controls and then, just like Rosemary was showing, with the widget sizing, you can do the same thing in Control Center there as well, and I think that people are going to be very excited about and this was a feature that I completely forgot to. Well, I guess it only really matters on iPhone, or it matters more on iPhone, which is the ability camera and the flashlight icons on the lock screen as it currently is, but that you can change them to maybe pop up a quick note or whatever you want to have there Some people will probably use it. They showed, for example, using Snapchat, so it could go from the lock screen to your Snapchat app to immediately take a photo from there.
20:25 - Rosemary Orchard (Host)
I think this is a really good change that people I remember people complaining about it from the moment that Apple introduced those two lock screen controls in the first place yeah, yeah, I also love the fact that the lock screen now it has pages, but it's very easy to get to them.
20:34
So if you just swipe down from the top right, then you jump into control center, the same as you always have, um, but instead you can also swipe down and just sort of hold your finger on the side of the screen and jump to a particular page, which I think is a nice addition.
20:48
And then you know, once you're on a page, you can tap and hold and, just like you do on the home screen, you can edit this, and I feel like that is something that's going to be a little easier for most folks than remembering to go into the control center and, uh, you know, add all these things. And yet there is even the option to add a shortcut, or more than one shortcut if you wanted to. There's lots of options here, and app developers are going to be able to add all of their own as well. So you know, if you want tap to cache or ping your watch, that's there. Translate is there. The remote is there, notes is there, but there's also other options like full keyboard access and assistive touch options. All of that good stuff.
21:34 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
All right, we've got about 20 minutes to get through the rest of the core feature updates, so let us move on to talk about and, of course, as you all know, being big fans of the show, I hope, as you're listening to this or watching this, you know that Rosemary and I will continue to cover this as things change over the summer and as the official versions of the app launch later this year. It tends to be that when the public beta is released, which happens in July this year, we'll do even more coverage and kind of more in-depth things as we kind of show people how to use it, leading into the fall but keeping kind of high level understanding of what all was announced. We've got to talk about photos because photos got a huge redesign. I'm still getting used to it. It's different, but it is for the most part, I think, a nice change in the fact that it helps to surface photos that I might not otherwise come across.
22:33
When I was thinking about the redesign of Photos, it made me realize how often I open Photos, and by that I mean I don't open it all that often. That is an app that I don't go into to just kind of look back at photos. It's more like a utility place. It's a file storage location where I access things from it. So this change to photos I think is cool because it might encourage me to hop into photos more often. There's at the top this carousel that shows you your photo library, but it can also show you things like your recent memories. It's going to have easy time kind of searching through different topics. So these are collections that will organize your library in topics like recent days, trips, people and pets, and then you can also pin collections so that you have those albums and the collections that are most important to you that you can get back to. So the grid is the main view and then it has things that show your stuff in these kind of poster-like views and it will always display new photos. I am very excited about that.
23:55
I am most excited about something that I think we'll be talking about in the next episode, where we're kind of getting into the additional features, which has to do with Apple Intelligence, given that Apple intelligence isn't even available to us in developer beta yet.
24:14
But I do want to briefly mention a neat feature where you can create memories by giving a prompt to the system. So I could say, for example, create an exciting memory when Rosemary came to visit back in and I you know. Or I could just say, when Rosemary came to visit and then it knows Rosemary's face, in the photos app it could find the photos of when you came and you were on iOS today and ask the tech guys and then it would put together a little thing and it would go to Apple Music and find some exciting music to play underneath it. That, I think, is going to be very exciting and I have a feeling I'm going to annoy a lot of people sending them little videos with all these photos in them, because I think that's going to be a really neat feature. Anything else with photos, you know, you of course have it there and I'm kind of curious your first take on it because I did find it a little overwhelming at first, but I think it did feel like I would get used to it pretty quick.
25:20 - Rosemary Orchard (Host)
Yeah, I mean, for me, one of the things I really love is the fact that we now have groups of people in People and Pets. So, for example, here it's got Steve, manny and Rosemary, and that's my dad, my mum and me, and you know we're a group of people that are often photographed together because we're a family. It's already pulled in some memories from my trip last week to Taiwan, and down at the bottom there's also this wallpaper suggestions, including this great one of my dad where it's, you know, really pulled him forward in the picture and made everything else you know completely into a gradient backdrop, which is very cool, and you know this is more like the original of it. There's a seamless background option, there's seamless mono, and I really love the fact that they're just surfacing this inside of the Photos app now because, yeah, I feel like it was always a little tricky to work with that. So, yeah, it's really nice and I think it's going to be very good with the addition of the Apple Intelligence stuff as well, which is going to be primarily on device, unless it really can't handle it on device, in which case it will talk to a secure cloud to deal with this stuff. But yeah, the fact that it can just do this, uh, you know, and and pull it together, the new ui is quite nice.
26:36
Um, you know it is. Uh, if you are, say, looking at a picture, um, you know there that that bottom toolbar has gone away, um, that we previously had where we could use that to jump straight from albums to photos and things like that. Uh, but I have to say I found it pretty intuitive. So I had a picture open and I just grabbed my finger and I just swiped down on the screen to get rid of it. You know, there's also a close button and so on. I feel like this is going to be relatively intuitive for people to use once you know they've spent a minute or two playing with it. And, of course, we're going to see how it changes over the summer as well, because just because something comes out like this at the beginning of the developer beta does not mean it's set in stone that way for the entire time. It may mean that when a lot of people get their hands on it, if it's problematic to use, then they may make some changes. But I guess we will see.
27:26 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
All right. The next thing that we'll mention is an app that I know a lot of people use. I don't use, and nothing yet has convinced me to use, and that is the Mail app. Look, the Mail app. Again, a lot of people use it, but I just have always been happy with my third-party Mail apps and even though that's the case for me, I am happy that a lot of stuff is coming to the mail app.
27:55
Unfortunately, most of the new additions to the mail app have to do with Apple Intelligence, so there aren't a whole lot of features that we will be able to test just yet, but, much like Gmail, it can do categorization just yet, but much like Gmail, it can do categorization. It also has the ability to kind of give you a rundown of what a specific subject has sent you. So, for example, if you get as often happens when you're booking a flight United Airlines sends you like 15 different emails, you can easily see the emails all together in one grouping, which is very nice, and yeah, and that design part is coming later this year as well.
28:39 - Rosemary Orchard (Host)
That's not in the first round of the betas, so that'll be coming later this year. So it looks very nice, but I do use mail, so I'm very excited for it, but I can't use it just yet because it's not in the current beta.
28:52 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Anything else you want to mention as part of the core OS, Rosemary?
28:56 - Rosemary Orchard (Host)
Well, I mean, there is going to be an enhancement to Siri which I think is going to be a very nice addition when we get it, which is, at the moment, you can choose to type to Siri, or you can talk to Siri, and this is a setting that you go into the settings app and you turn on and that's it the. The feature that is coming is basically you're always going to be able to talk to Siri, but then you can tap on that Siri bubble and then type to it instead. So if you've triggered Siri, then you can type to it at any point instead of talking to it, and I think that this is a really good thing to to be getting. I'm very excited for it because I like type to Siri. I also like talk to Siri, and I want to be able to do both. So the fact that I'm going to be able to flip back and forth between the two, as is appropriate for me, is going to be very nice, and it's also just going to have the ability to handle things like you tripping over your words a little bit.
29:48
So if I said, oh hey, micah, so were you in San Francisco yesterday? Wait, sorry, I mean San Jose. It can understand that, just like Micah would. If you try and make it a calendar event and set it for San Francisco oh no, I meant San Jose then it can fix that. It will understand that and the improvements to Siri through the new AI integrations, which is Apple intelligence as well as artificial intelligence, it's going to be very exciting.
30:20 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Agreed Mention. One other thing, which are some new additions to privacy and security. Very excited to see the addition of a feature that we're used to in photos come to contacts. So right now, if you are within an app and an app asks for permission to access your photos, you have the ability to say I give you permission to access my photos, but I only want you to access these photos and you can choose a specific set of photos. So for an app that, for example, wants to have a profile photo for you, there's no reason for that app to have access to your entire photo library. It only needs to have access to that single photo. So up to this point, we've been able to do that.
31:06
But think about contacts. There are lots of apps that will ask you for your contacts. Many of them are asking for the contacts in order to show you which of your friends are in the app. But unfortunately, when you do that, then you're sort of granting a license to your contacts from that point forward and it can pull on that whenever it wants to. Apple is letting you choose when, or how many, rather, contacts you share, so you don't have to give access to all of them. So you can think about. You know, if you were using an app where you are planning on, let's say, your friends are all on I don't know Telegram, and when I say all, let's say your best group of friends is all on Telegram, you could get the Telegram app. Telegram asks you for your contacts and you say, yes, but I'm only giving you access to the contacts that I know, that group of friends that are on Telegram. You don't need to have access to my mom, my grandma, my sister, my brother, my uncle, everybody else, just those contacts and that's the only set that it will have access to my mom, my grandma, my sister, my brother, my uncle, everybody else, just those contacts and that's the only set that it will have access to. I think that's very important. There's also kind of a redesigned privacy and security settings page so it just gets a little bit easier to grok and so you know what and how and when and where things are accessing your contacts.
32:29
And then, last but not least, two changes, including updates to apps that are asking for access to your local area network to see what devices are on your network, and Bluetooth devices.
32:53
And Bluetooth devices there's a new means of connecting a Bluetooth device, without needing to give the app permission, to see every Bluetooth device that you have around you. So let's say you have an app for a camera gimbal and you download the app and it says, hey, I need access to Bluetooth so that I can pair with the gimbal itself. When you give it access to Bluetooth, it's suddenly able to scan and search for every single Bluetooth device that is around you and that is connected or not connected and that could be used for profiling to figure out which person is using that device. This new means of connecting is limiting the connection between the two, so the app is only going to see that one Bluetooth device that it's meant to be pairing with. So it's just a little bit more about privacy and security, which I think is fantastic. Yeah, I have anything else that you want to mention in terms of the core OS before we do a little PSA and then move into shortcuts corner.
33:59 - Rosemary Orchard (Host)
Uh, yeah, I mean there's some other things, you know, coming inside of the health app and the fitness app where you're going to be able to, you know, just rearrange the view. But I think one thing that's very important that a lot of people will be very excited by is you're now going to be able to review your reminders in Calendar. So if you create reminders, you are going to be able to view your reminders in your calendar. So if you look at your calendar view and you've got a reminder scheduled for, say, 4 pm and you've got a meeting at 5 pm, you'll see at 4 pm the reminder and your calendar event at 5 pm and you'll be able to see those two together. And I think that this is a really nice feature that people are really going to like. It seems like something very small that maybe should have been there all along. Going to like it seems like something very small that maybe should have been there all along.
34:50 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
It's there on the Mac, but now it's coming to iOS tier. Yay, all right, here's our PSA. It is important to understand that beta software is called beta software because it is still in testing, it is not ready for public use and public access and, in fact, the public beta is still not ready for prime time. And, in fact, sometimes you get software that does make it to prime time that still has bugs in it. This is one of the biggest redesigns, or perhaps I should say augmentations, of the operating system in quite a while, and that means that it is going to be rife with bugs. In fact, one thing I noticed was because there's a new tap to pay feature where you and another person can tap your devices together to do a quick payment together. To do a quick payment. Apple is limiting the amount of money that can be tapped to pay in those transactions and the number of times that you can do one of those, because this stuff is rife with bugs and there could be an issue where, when money is being exchanged, something doesn't work. If you were to go in and look at the release notes for this, you would see. Here are the known issues, and there are just known issue after known issue under every category, and there are all these workarounds that you have to do. What I'm saying is there's a lot of stuff that is wrong with the system still, and that's the point. This isn't supposed to ship to people until September, and that's, of course, not an official date, but that is the date that we all just know and we just don't say that part out loud because that has always been, or almost always been, when an iPhone is released, and so when the new iPhone is released, that ships with Apple's new iOS operating system. So we can pretty much count on September being when that happens. But between now and September, the developers at Apple get to see what's wrong with the system still and fix all of that. So if you are not a developer, if you do not have an extra device, if you have a faint heart, this is not for you. The public beta may be a place, particularly if you're someone who wants to make change in the world. The public beta may be a place, particularly if you're someone who wants to make change in the world. The public beta that comes out next month, in July, could be something for you to check out, where you would be able to help test and respond, and I think in July we'll go over how you would. You know, we might even do like a full tutorial on what good feedback looks like. Write that down brain. Looks like, write that down brain. So that is a kind of just an understanding that installing this you do at your own risk.
37:31
I do not have it installed on my main iPhone. I'm, frankly, still waiting to install it on the secondary iPhone that I have. I just have it installed on an iPad. I don't think I'll install it on a watch at all, at least until the public beta, if not until even later. It's not on my Mac. I am doing as much of this as I can without installing the betas, because the betas cause issues and I have to use these machines regularly. You have to use your machines regularly, have to use these machines regularly. You have to use your machines regularly. So it's not a great idea to install this, even though I know there's some FOMO about getting to try out this new stuff.
38:12 - Rosemary Orchard (Host)
Yeah, I'm just going to give an example here. My phone ran out of battery this morning because apparently I didn't put it on charge right last night. I plugged it in and it didn't power back on. It wasn't until I unplugged my phone and then plugged it into a different charger that my phone powered back on.
38:31
If you are not able to take your device and just live without it until you can take it to the Apple store and get it fixed, which is going to be a long process, because what you'll have to do if you're restoring a backup of this is you will have to get the new device, upgrade the new device to the beta and then restore the uh the old one that you had onto it then you are going to be in a lot of trouble. So, basically, you have to be prepared for your device to just not work for a very long period of time. You're going to have very poor battery life and so on. So, yeah, if you are not a developer or not somebody that needs to be investigating this stuff for a living, like Micah and I do, I strongly recommend that you don't do this Now. I have installed datas on AirPods and Apple Watch and iPhone and an iPad, but I haven't done it on a Mac because I don't have a spare Mac that I can do this on right now.
39:26
And guess what? If I couldn't record iOS today, micah might get a little bit cranky with me. So you know you have to you know be careful with these things and also, you know it's a great opportunity to let everybody else find all the problems in the system and then you can come along in July and join in and at that point hopefully it will be a little less buggy and if any features turn out to be more problematic than anticipated, apple will and they have done this before pull them from the system until they're ready to put them back. And you don't want to be the person who started using that new feature and then it goes away and all that data just gets locked behind a door until Apple brings it back, or maybe it gets lost forever. You don't want to lose that data.
40:13 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Very true, all right, I can hear the music. It's time for Shortcuts Corner Corner. This is Shortcuts Corner, the part of the show where you write in with your Shortcuts Corner requests and Rosemary Orchard will respond. That is normally what happens Today. Rosemary Orchard will not be responding to your Shortcuts Requests because Rosemary is going to tell us a little bit about some changes in shortcuts that people can expect in iOS and iPadOS 18.
40:51 - Rosemary Orchard (Host)
Well, micah, it is very exciting. As I mentioned at the top of the show, apple talked a lot about app intents, which are the magic behind shortcuts, but shortcuts itself has had some very awesome new features, and it starts actually in the app with the UI. So I'm just going to pop up my iPad here and go straight into creating a new shortcut and so over. On the left things look about the same, but on the right it's a little different. We used to have a menu with scripting and media and sharing, all sort of bundled together, and then Apple's native shortcuts actions underneath that, and then Apple's you know native shortcuts actions underneath that, and then there was a separate pane, as in pane of glass, that had all of the apps in, but that was also a pane as in out, because every time I switched over to that I've got a lot of apps with shortcut support. Okay, folks, I'm aware I'm a little bit of an outlier, but oh my gosh, that was so slow to load. Now a lot of folks have been reporting, as they've installed the early betas, that, like all of their apps, have disappeared. A lot of the actions aren't available. I had exactly the same problem yesterday evening. I left it overnight plugged in and it did a backup and everything and it's clearly gone off and re-indexed all the things it needed, which is great because it's back off and re-indexed all the things it needed, which is great because it's back. And that means that I can show folks some exciting things with the scripting action if, because one of the things that people have struggled with before is they've wanted to check, for example, type is an iPhone or if their device type is an iPad, and now you can do that. So once you've added something to your if, a plus comes up at the end and then you can go back in and add another condition and so now you have multiple conditions inside of your if, which is great. And so now you have multiple conditions inside of your if, which is great, and you can do an any are true or all are true option, and that is just a very nice bonus to have there, so you don't have to do if this and then put another if inside of the if to check for two things. It's just one if to check for all of the things, which is pretty exciting.
43:02
Shortcuts is also in a few more places. So in our control centers, if we tap and hold to a jiggle or enter that mode, then I'm going to go ahead and add a new page in the end of my control center and I'm going to add a control. And if I search in these controls, then if I type in short, then I can see shortcuts, and there are two options here. There's either shortcuts as in run a shortcut, or there's open an app. So I'm going to add shortcuts, I'm going to make this one a little bit bigger and, ta-da, it's popped in my latest shortcut, which is a watch journal history. But if I tap on that then this may look familiar for folks watching the video. It's like a widget in that I can then go through and select. You know, one of my shortcuts that I want to, you know, put here, so I could put my birthday's shortcut there, for example, and that is very nice. It's also available on the lock screen, so where you have the camera and the flashlight. Currently, you can replace those two controls with short, those same shortcuts.
44:06
Actions, which you know are all, uh, very good things. Um, and uh, yeah, there's a couple of other things as well. So, uh, for example, in the home app, uh, some folks uh may remember that you had. Uh, if you have more than one home, then everything seemed a little bit duplicated, which was a little weird. So there was get state of my homes and there was like control my home, and now you can find your homes in here, and then you can just toggle accessory states as well, and so that'll, you know, turn things on and off as necessary. So they've just simplified that a little bit, which is nice.
44:50
But there are some other things as well. I know, micah, everybody loves a good reminders list, don't they? And reminders already had great shortcut support. It did, and not all the actions are showing up here right now, because guess what? My iPad is still indexing things. There's a lot of data for it to go through.
45:11
The other new, or one of the other new things that has to reminders is the ability to open lists. So you can open smart lists specifically, and any of your regular lists from shortcuts. So if you know, you add something to the assigned list, so you create a new reminder, you assign it to somebody, then you can use the action open smart list. You tap on that little arrow and then you select from today, scheduled, assigned, flagged, all completed, and so on, and so you can jump straight into those. There's also the ability to pin and unpin lists, which can be really nice.
45:48
So I don't know, say, for example, you have your work reminders in reminders as well and you usually keep those pinned. Maybe what you would do now is prepare a little shortcut for when you take a vacation or your weekends and you run it, and it unpins those work reminders lists and repins the lists that are important to you personally, and then when you come back, it does the inverse and things like that, all of which are very cool actions which are just nice to have. And there's also some new books, actions for the books apps. So there's navigating pages, opening a specific view and turning page, scrolling on and off all of which are very nice, especially if you tie that into, say, for example, a shortcut on your home screen that opens books and jumps straight into the mode that you would like.
46:41 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
All righty, Is that the? Is that the last one?
46:47 - Rosemary Orchard (Host)
I think that's yeah, that's everything we should talk about for now, with shortcuts. There's going to be new stuff when developers get their hands on all of the APIs, but you know, the first sessions aren't until this evening, so people aren't going to have a chance to actually create any of the cool new things just yet. And, of course, once they do, apple still won't let them put it anywhere for a couple of months, because they need time to get everything working.
47:14 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
All righty Well, folks. That is going to bring us to the end of this episode of iOS Today. We will be back with an episode covering the rest of the stuff announced, or much of the rest of the stuff announced at WWDC. If you want to get in touch with us, you can email us. Ios today at twittv is how you get in touch.
47:33
Of course, I should mention Club Twit For those of you who are watching. Well, actually, I should say, if you are not watching this show and you'd like to be watching this show, you should join Club Twit at twittv. Slash club twit For $7 a month. You out there can join the club and have all the fun of being a member of the club. You get every single Twit show without any ads. You gain access to the Club Twit bonus episodes, or rather the Club Twit plus bonus feed that has extra content you won't find anywhere else behind the scenes scenes before the show, after the show, special club to events, access to the club twit discord, access to the video versions of all of the club twit shows, including this.
48:12
Ios today uh, hands on Mac, hands on windows, home theater geeks. So much more. And all of that is only available to you as a member of the club. So if you're just listening to the audio in the public feed, that is where you can join in on the fun. Thank you, and Rosemary Orchard. If folks want to follow you online and check out all the great work you're doing, where should they go to do so?
48:37 - Rosemary Orchard (Host)
Well, the best place is rosemaryorchardcom, which has links to all the social media sites books, podcasts, apps, etc. But the other place folks can find me is in the Club Twitch Discord. There's an iOS Today forum channel in there where people can post suggestions for future show topics and ask questions as well, and there's also a lovely live chat during the show every time we record, which is great. What about you?
49:01 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Micah. You can find me online at Micah Sargent, or you can head to chihuahuacoffee I almost forgot my own URL, chihuahuacoffee, where I've got links to the places I'm most active online. Check out my other shows, including Tech News Weekly on Thursdays, Ask the Tech Guys on Sundays, and also Hands on Mac, which publishes on Thursdays as well. Thank you so much for tuning in and we will see you again for another episode of iOS Today. Bye-bye.
