This is Technology Bytes, episode 15 for June 18th, 2023.
Technology Bytes is a microcast where I share my brief insights on an interesting technology.
My name is Joel.
Enjoy.
And here we go.
As I mentioned last week, that when I was covering WWDC 2023 as an overview, that I would be stuck on this topic for a number of weeks.
And so this week is no exception, obviously.
And today I want to talk about some of the commonality updates that we get in our operating systems when the next ones are released.
iOS 17, iPadOS 17, and macOS Sonoma.
The watch has some of these things, but they’re kind of on the fringe.
I’ll talk about that in its own microcast later in the coming weeks.
So I was looking at things that are coming out, and these are in no particular order, but things that are common between all of the operating systems.
And some of them are pretty cool, some I really don’t have any experience with.
I have been running all of the operating systems now for just over a week.
Things are going fairly well on a developer beta.
First time I’ve ever done this kind of fear and trepidation as I put all of my devices on the latest developer betas from Apple, which everyone tells you, and rightly so, that you should not do.
But do I listen?
No.
And so I want to talk about those common aspects between the operating systems that are really shared across the Apple ecosystem.
One of the things that I think is pretty cool is the password ability of keychain.
I’ve tried and no reason to not use, but password managers, I don’t know, I guess paying additional fees for things like that just doesn’t fit with what I’d like to do.
I really like that Apple has built that into their operating system so that I can just use it.
And it really works well for me and keeps me from saving the same password over and over again or using the same one.
And the thing that’s really cool in the next release coming in the fall is they have implemented kind of a family aspect of it, but we can share passwords in the keychain.
And so that way on common sites that my wife and I visit, we are empty nesters at this point, we can share those passwords for different sites or apps that we use in common.
And we share the password anyway.
We just have to type it into our own devices.
So that way when one of us changes a password, because that happens and probably should be done every so often anyway, the other person doesn’t have to know what they did.
We don’t have to remember to send them a note and then text a password across the, yeah, you know what I’m going, where I’m going with that information.
And so I think it’s going to be really cool when that operating system is available in the fall.
My wife has an iPhone 10 and it looks like from all accounts that phone is going to be left behind when it comes to iOS 17.
So I’m debating whether she wants a new phone.
She really likes the phone she has.
The battery is not super, but she does like it and trying to get into a new one.
I’m not sure she likes the super-sized ones like I use.
So that’s something we’ll have to deal with when the time comes.
Another aspect of things that have changed across the ecosystem is grocery lists in notes and or in reminders, I should say.
And my wife and I use a shared note, okay, get it straight, Joel, my wife and I use a shared reminder list as our grocery shopping list.
It helps us to remember to get cheese, milk, whatever, really often the fringe stuff.
And we now joke about, hey, it wasn’t on the list, so we didn’t buy it.
That doesn’t mean we don’t buy things that aren’t on the list, but that means we get home and think, oh, why wasn’t that on the list?
And because it wasn’t there, it didn’t remind us to buy it.
But one of the things that Apple has implemented in the coming operating systems upgrade is a filter on the grocery list.
It puts it in location of where you’re at in the store.
So if you remember on Monday to add onions and then in the middle you put milk and then you need oatmeal and then you need raisins and then you need carrots, then it will sort that so that when you are in the produce section, you’re picking up all your produce.
When you’re in the dairy section, you’re picking up all your dairy.
Again, a really neat feature that my wife and I will use once she has a phone that will run the operating system on a regular basis, I think.
The other things that jumped out at me that I think are common between maybe my wife and I, and I think of her as more of a normal user, myself as a little more power user, but leaving FaceTime messages, I think is going to be great and be able to see those on your phone and even on your watch.
And then also to be able to use reactions and FaceTime calls with thumbs up and a little heart with your hands that actually do something on the screen.
So I think those are all pretty cool things that are coming to the next version of the operating systems.
There are a couple of things that I don’t use very much.
One is stickers, and that’s really coming everywhere and you’re being able to use stickers not just in messages, but all kinds of places through the operating system.
You have the ability to create your own stickers.
You can create them from live images that you’ve taken.
So you end up with what is a live sticker, almost like an animated GIF.
And those kind of things, I don’t use those much.
I need to play with them just to see if I like them or would like to use them and see how the people in my life would react to them.
Another is pets as people in your photos album, basically recognizing your pets so it can have its own album like you have with your children or grandchildren.
We don’t have any pets at this point, so that won’t be something that we use.
The other thing is looking at active widgets.
So that’s pretty nice because now you don’t have to open the app to react to a widget.
So if you have a reminder list or if you have things on the widgets that are on your home screen, you can actually interact with those widgets without opening the app itself.
Check things off a list, do those kinds of things.
That actually is something that we will probably use and is a neat thing to look forward to in the coming months.
Another big thing that Apple is changing or adding to is your AirTags.
Because at the moment you have an AirTag, it’s tied to your Apple ID and that’s it.
So if my son and his wife want to track one of their kids in an event, maybe at a big park or something like that, that a bunch of people are at.
I know they say not to use it to track your kids, but I don’t know.
Seems like a pretty good idea to me.
But right now the only person who knows where my granddaughter is, is my son because no one else can access that AirTag to see where it’s at.
But now with the shared AirTags, then that can be controlled and viewed from whoever you share it with.
So he and his wife can have that AirTag on their dog, can have that AirTag in their car when they go somewhere, and they both have access to where that AirTag is.
I think that is actually a pretty big deal.
The other thing that I saw had to do with notes.
So you can actually put active links and notes to other notes on your devices.
And so that’s a pretty cool thing that will be useful.
I use notes quite a bit.
It will be interesting to see if I use that function.
At the moment, there are some things that I do in my Bible study work where I have my written notes, I have notes that I share with maybe the group that I’m in.
And so being able to link those together so that I can jump back and forth easily is probably going to be something that’s useful to me.
The other thing that they talked about a bit is autocorrect improvements.
I don’t know if I just don’t use that much, but in the last week and a half, so it’s really autocorrect and predictive text.
And it’s been pretty neat because there’s actually been times where with the tap on the spacebar, you actually fill in a couple of words as it figures out what your sentences are.
And so I think that is good and needed and will be an improvement that I think people will actually like.
I think the last thing on my list, and this isn’t an all-inclusive list, these are just the ones that stuck out to me, is the S-Lady, which many people don’t like and she frustrates me as well.
But what Apple has done is taken out the hey word before reacting with Siri.
And that is good, I guess.
They say it’s a more natural language thing.
You don’t have to wake the person up.
You don’t generally use that word when talking to people normally.
But at this point, I’ve tried it a few times, mostly using my AirPods when I’m on a walk and listening to a podcast and want to fast forward.
And it has not worked.
I still have to say the hey word or I don’t get any reaction from the S-Lady.
So maybe that is something that needs to be improved.
I’ll work a little bit more with it over the coming days and see if it does something different.
But at the moment, I still feel like I have to say the hey and also there are many things in my house, HomePods, HomePod Minis, other devices that my wife has that don’t react to just saying the word Siri.
So those are just some of the items that I saw as common between all the operating systems.
Over the coming weeks, I will break down each operating system and the individual things that are coming and look forward to doing that for you.
And hopefully you will enjoy that.
I’m sure there are other things that are common that maybe I’ve missed.
If you listen to this podcast, you can always reach out at technologybytesatmergfamily.com and that’s technologybytes and Merg is M-E-A-R-I-G family.com.
And send any notes or anything that you would like me to talk about or things that I said wrong can be sent to that email address.
Next week I’ll probably talk about iOS so you can look forward to that.
You have been listening to the Technology Bytes Microcast.
Until next time, continue enjoying your technology.
