iOS 17: Unusual review

iOS 17: Unusual review

So, Apple just dropped iOS 17 at the WWDC23 conference. The latest update promises to be faster, more intuitive, and packed with features that'll make your life easier. In this article, we're gonna take a closer look at iOS 17 and give it an unusual review.

What's so unusual? Well, I'm not gonna talk in that "blogger" style. I'm gonna add my own opinion about each feature, using my own experience and observations. I will try to be not too toxic, but I expected a bit more updates. My opinion might differ from yours, so feel free to drop a comment.

Communication

Apple has introduced several updates to their communication app Phone, FaceTime, and Messages.

Phone

In iOS 17, you can make your contacts feel more personal with Contact Posters. This new feature lets you customize the look of each contact's card with different text styles, even directions like Chinese and even Memoji. It's will work like customizing your lock screen, but for your contacts.

These posters will show up on the contact card and during incoming and outgoing calls, so you can keep things fresh and exciting. Even better, Contact Posters is integrated with CallKit, so your custom posters will show up no matter which app the call is coming from.

For me it’s just a feature for feature. Yes, better UI and your calls will look better. But it won’t be something that will be very popular, because you will need to spend a lot of time to setup this for your contacts, so I'll just stick with the regular contact pics.

Live Voicemail

So, Apple is taking a pretty logical next step after introducing text recognition in the last update. With Live Voicemail, you get a real-time transcription of the message someone is leaving you as they're speaking, which really helps you contextualize the call. If it's something you want to handle right then and there, you can pick up the call whenever you want while they're still on the line.

It looks like this feature is only available in English (Canada, U.S.), but I'm guessing they'll add more languages soon. And, if you're worried about your privacy, Tim says that text recognition happens locally on your device, so it's not like someone else can steal your message.

Despite how awesome this feature looks, I don't really use it that much. Most of my friends just send me messages in other ways. I'm not sure how many people use it in other countries, but I'd say it's a nice-to-have, but nothing too special. From the other side it’s good case to use voice-to-text recognition what may bring more cool ML features. Let’s give them a time.

FaceTime

This is extremely new and incredibly feature we haven't seen before… Just kidding. I haven't even added image for this section. Now if you can't FaceTime someone, you can leave a video message.

If your friends aren't too happy with your voice messages and you don't feel like writing several sentences, now you can make them even more unhappy with your video messages. What the difference between regular video? I have no idea. In my own opinion Telegram made it much better with video circles.

Messages

There are a bunch of new features included, some of which are quite interesting. We've got new search filters, a catch up icon to jump to the latest message you haven't seen, swipe to reply (really?), transcription for audio messages, location sharing directly in conversations, and Check In to notify close people that you've arrived home (in case it's too late and they're worried). And of course, there are more stickers and a new look for iMessage apps.

Now, as someone who uses other messengers, these features aren't all that new to me. But for iMessage users, this update is going to be a real treat.

Stickers

As to the stickers, there are more stickers now, with a new UI for them. But what's really interesting is that you can make a Sticker from your photo (just like with object selection in Photos) or use your Live Photo to make a Live Sticker. And you can access these stickers everywhere, like Notes or Markup, including other messengers. So get ready to receive a ton of these from your friends in the next few months.

Stickers are usually not my thing, but I'm totally into custom stickers on my messenger. They're super useful and hilarious, especially since anyone can create their own sticker pack with just a bot. iMessage could step up its game with Custom stickers, but it's not like it's gonna be a game changer.

Check In

The?Check In?feature is the one I'm most excited about. Here's how it works: you send a message to a close person using the Check In iMessage app and specify the time and place.

As soon as you arrive, the app will automatically send a notification to that person (hey, Siri Shortcuts?). Sure, you could do this manually, but let's dive deeper. If something unexpected happens and you're not moving towards your destination, the app will recognise this and send you a notification.

And if you don't respond, the app will send useful information to your friend or family member so they can start helping you. Even better, it'll share your battery status, cellular connection, and location, and they'll use all of this data to make decisions that could save your life. All of this information is end-to-end encrypted, so it's not going to be easy for anyone to steal it.

Google already has a similar app called Personal Safety for Pixel devices, and it has even more functionality as a standalone app, including Check In. But it would be super cool to have Check In on iOS, you just need to convince your person to do this.

AirDrop

It looks like AirDrop got some pretty awesome updates in the new iOS 17. These updates are definitely going to be useful, so let's take a closer look.

First off, AirDrop has new feature called NameDrop, which is pretty cool. If you need to share your number with someone new, just bring your phones close together and the device will use NFC to share contacts automatically. And guess what? You can use the same approach with your Apple Watch too!

But wait, there's more! When you're trying to share something, you can just bring your phones together and start sharing. And the best part? If you're sending a lot of data and you can't wait for it to finish, when your phones aren't in range of AirDrop, the content will be sent over the internet. Pretty neat, huh?

And check this out - something that finally became possible after COVID19: you can also bring your devices to share SharePlay activities! It can be music, jumping into the same game session, sharing the same video stream, and much more just by bringing phones closer. It's going to be available for developers via SharePlay API, so keep an eye out for updates!

All in all, this update is going to make things a lot simpler. Can't wait to try new API.

Intelligent input

So basically, Autocorrect now uses this fancy-sounding Transformer language model, which is probably the same tech that was introduced back in 2017 by some folks over at Google Brain. This thing is super cool and seems to be the new go-to for NLP problems, replacing those RNN models. Anyways, we're gonna see some sweet UI updates, better autocorrection and autocompletion, and now it'll even suggest whole phrases for you. Plus, Dictation got an upgrade with a Transformer-based speech recognition model, which should make it way more accurate. I'm hoping Siri gets in on this action too, she still doesn’t understand me sometimes and does what she wants. I would better integrate ChatGPT into Siri, but do not forget to say “Please” each time…just for case.

Journal

Just a new application with plenty of Journal features. What is interesting here it will use AI to analyse your music, activities, location, etc and will propose you topics to write about. Based on this model the app will suggest you topics and content to write about. Developers will receive new Suggestion API what means that we can create more personalised application if user will allow access to this information. And if as the user I’m not very exited about the app itself, as an architect I’m pretty interest in the new possibilities that we have with Suggestions API.

Presenting just the new app during OS major update became normal practice in Apple and it present stagnation in the technologies(or maybe we have everyting we need? Share you thoughts).

Stand By

This new feature on the Apple Watch is basically the same as what's already there, but with extra swag in terms of clock styles. And I heard through the grapevine that it's gonna be a part of the new WatchOS. Plus, Stand By mode is gonna have a bunch of other options, like showing off your pics, calendar, weather, tunes, workouts, or even 3rd party widgets. And get this, it'll remember which screen you used on different MagSafe chargers. I hope it won’t be killing the battery to much, looks they made some charging optimisation previously. Batteries are currently a major obstacle for all technologies. Our devices can only operate for up to two days in the best cases, cars cannot travel long distances, and smart glasses are not very useful with a large battery. Therefore, we hope that new technology will be developed soon, which could potentially revolutionize the world.

Moving back to the topic of Stand By, even though iPhones now charge much faster, I still think this feature is pretty cool and could come in handy for home control, among other things. Additionally, I predict that we will see even more widgets, since they are gaining more support. Furthermore, Widgets are now interactive, which is a great update that could make them much more popular. Let's be honest, they are not used all that often right now.

Other features

There are plenty of smaller update, like saying “Siri” to wake it up instead of “Hey, Siri”, Profiles in Safari, autofill verification codes received in Mail, passwords sharing, collaborate on playlists, Offline Maps, Visual Look Up of the objects on your photo or even video in the internet without leaving the app, and a lot of other updates which can be discovered on iOS 17 Beta.

Conclusion

So, Apple's iOS 17 update is here and it has some cool new features and updates across the apple devices. Yes, I was writing iOS in the text, but Apple Watch and iPadOS will also get these. And hey, developers get new APIs, which means we might get some new killer apps. But let's be real, we're gonna have to wait for the WWDC for Developers to get all the technical deets on iOS 17.

Now, don't get me wrong, this update is pretty legit, but it didn't quite give me the "wow" factor I was hoping for. And where are all the AI features? I was expecting more, but I guess Apple's gonna do things their own way. Hopefully, they'll come out with more AI features soon and hope they will be amazing. I’m still amazed with Cinematic mode which does incredible job.

What about you guys? Did you find any "wow" features in iOS 17? Are we just getting too hyped up for these updates or are we expecting too much?