17 October, 2024
Without Apple Intelligence, iOS 18 beta feels like a TV show that’s waiting for the finale
At this year’s Worldwide Developers Conference, Apple divided the keynote into two parts: regular OS updates and an introduction to the company’s AI features. Apple is drawing a line between these two sections because Apple Intelligence features will become available this fall. It means that those features likely won’t be there with the 18.0 release; major iOS updates are usually timed with new iPhone releases in September.
Apple Intelligence features are also not available in the developer beta, which is available now. It might be a while until we get a taste of them. That’s why the current iOS 18 beta release feels like the first half of a two-part TV show: It’s pretty good, but we need to know more.
iOS 18 lets you move buttons
If you remove Apple Intelligence from iOS 18, customization is the marquee feature. Simply put, you can now move more buttons. First, you can arrange icons on your home screen in any way you want and even keep some icon slots empty. This allows you to create different patterns with icons on the screen.
You can customize icon colors to create a unified look. This way, you don’t need to rely on the tedious Siri Shortcuts workaround to do this. iOS 18 lets you switch to dark icons, give them a specific tint through a color palette and also make them larger (this will hide the app name). Given that it’s early days, the tinted apps don’t look great with some colors. Apple has already improved dark tint icon support for some third-party apps with the third developer beta.
The Control Center now has a paginated experience. The default four pages are standard controls page, media playback, home controls for smart devices and connectivity controls. You can add or remove controls to each page and also add new pages if you want. This makes it easier to perform quick actions without having to open certain apps.
There is a new controls gallery that lets you search for controls and easily add them. Apple has opened up the Control Center to third-party apps, so we will see more apps offering interactions with their service with an icon.
One of the best things to come out of this update is that you can replace the default icons for the flashlight and camera on the lock screen through the controls gallery. Plus, you can also choose a new action using the action button.
Privacy features in iOS 18
Apple has redesigned the privacy and security settings to show you what information different apps access at a glance. The menu is now divided into different data types: Calendars, Contacts, Files & Folders, Health, Media & Apple Music, Photos, Reminders and Wallet. You can tap each category and see which apps are accessing this information.
With iOS 18, Apple will allow you to lock or hide apps from the home screen. In both cases, you will require a Face ID, Touch ID, or passcode authentication to open the app. You can long-press on an app from the home screen to lock or hide the app. For hidden apps, you will see a new hidden apps folder in the App Library.
When you lock or hide an app, notifications for that app don’t appear on the system. Plus, the content from within the app doesn’t appear within the search.
Apple has also introduced a new dedicated Passwords app, moving the saved credentials from a tab in Settings to make this information easily accessible.
The new Passwords app has also learned a few new tricks. You can see all your passwords and passkeys, all websites and apps with Sign in with Apple credentials, and Wi-Fi passwords. You also can access two-factor verification codes from this app and create groups with friends or family members for shared credentials.
Apple said that all your synced data for this app is protected by end-to-end encryption across devices. At the moment, the app doesn’t allow you to store credit card information like 1Password.
The new software update adds better contact-sharing permission. Now you can share select contacts with an app rather than giving it access to all contacts. There is also a new menu for setting up Bluetooth Accessories, which also prevents these apps from accessing other devices on the network.
Photos app gets a redesign
Apple has gotten rid of the bottom bar with its major Photos redesign this year. The overall philosophy is that the company has decided to pack everything in a unified view. The top carousel shows your library, featured photos, featured memories, favorites and videos by default. You can add or remove different elements from this carousel.
You can directly access the library in the default view and scroll down to see the albums and other different collection folders such as Recent Days, People & Pets, Pinned Collections, Memories, Trips (a new feature), Utilities and Media type. You can customize the visibility and order of these items.
Apple noted in the keynote that it is using “intelligence” (not Apple Intelligence) in the Photos app to create new collections like a group of people and trips based on people appearing in photos and the time and location of images.
The library now has more filters such as all, favorites, edited photos, videos and screenshots to let you traverse a trove of images swiftly. The grid view offers bottom tabs of years and months (apart from all), and when you tap on them, you can see highlights from that timeline.
The company’s idea with this redesign is to resurface some old photos regularly through this interface without having to solely rely on the Memories feature.
iOS 18’s language and transcription tech
Apple introduced many language-related updates with iOS. There is a new multilingual and multiscript keyboard, support for Hindi in the translate app and support for Arabic in Live Text.
You can also customize your lock screen and contact cards with numerals and fonts in the non-Latin script. iOS 18 brings language search tuned for Assamese, Bangla, Devanagari and Gujarati scripts, allowing you to search for similar-sounding words with different spellings.
The transcription feature is now used across the system, including for call recording, notes, voice memos and a new way to add entries to the Journal app. Notes app allows you to add live transcriptions for events like lectures. It also stores transcripts for call recordings.
Calls and Messages in iOS 18
The phone app now gains a search function to let you look through call history and contacts. You can also use the keypad to type a name or a number to look for contacts (like on a basic feature phone). Apple is expanding Live Voicemail to more regions with support for Indian English, Mandarin and Cantonese.
The Control Center now has a new toggle that lets you easily switch SIM. During the call, the system has an automatic mic mode to switch between standard, voice isolation and wide spectrum modes.
Messages get new text effects and formatting along with support for tapbacks using any emoji or sticker. The app now lets you schedule messages for later, but the menu for that is hidden under the “+” sign. Apple should move that to a long-press of the send button like in other messaging apps.
Apple made a brief mention at the keynote that Messages app now supports RCS (Rich Communication Service). That means your friends on Android can send high-quality media files and also look at read receipts and typing indicators for a better group messaging experience. But this doesn’t take away their green bubbles. U.S.-based users can also connect to someone through the new Messages via the Satellite feature.
Other notable additions in iOS 18
The Notes app now supports audio recording, collapsible sections, solving math equations and a new way to highlight text.Apple had integrated mood and emotion logging directly in the Journal app. Plus, there is an option to add mindfulness minutes based on the amount of time you spent writing in the Journal app.Journal app also supports widgets with prompts to make it easier for you to get started. Plus, there is a new insights view to show you different stats like streaks.Apple TV app now has an Insights tab to show info like the music track that’s playing and actors on the screen currently. This is just like Amazon Prime Video’s X-ray feature.Apple has added new accessibility features like action triggers for different sounds and eye tracking to let you control your phone with your eyes.The Calendar app now shows reminders directly in the app. Plus, there is a new month view available for you to look at your schedule.
So what’s iOS without Apple Intelligence?
Apple is catching up with Android by offering features like icon customization and language support. But even if Android had those features a gazillion years ago, it’s good to see those features land on iOS. Some of these features will also require a few iterations to look better.
With iOS 18, Apple is also evolving its apps, such as Calculator, Notes, Journal and Password, to suit advanced usage.
Despite all these changes, everyone will be watching out for when the company releases Apple Intelligence features. But with varied and unspecified timelines of feature rollout, we don’t know how much Apple Intelligence we will get to experience in the next few months. It’s too early to declare this TV show a hit.
Microsoft's AI-powered, Canva-like Designer app lands on iOS and Android
Microsoft announced on Wednesday that its AI-powered Designer app is officially coming out of preview and is now available to all users on iOS and Android. The Canva-like app lets people generate images and designs with text prompts to create things like stickers, greeting cards, invitations, collages and more.
Designer is now accessible in more than 80 languages on the web, available as a free mobile app and as an app in Windows.
The app features “prompt templates” that are designed to help jumpstart the creative process. The templates include styles and descriptions that you can experiment with and customize, and you can share templates with others in order to build on each other’s ideas.
In addition to stickers, you can create emojis, clip art, wallpapers, monograms, avatars and more with text prompts.
You can also use Designer to edit and restyle images with AI. For instance, you can upload a selfie and then choose from a set of styles and write in any extra details you want to see to transform your photo.
Soon, Designer will include a “replace background” feature that will allow you to use text prompts to transform images.
With the launch of the standalone Designer app, Microsoft shared that it’s bringing the service to apps like Word and PowerPoint through Copilot. People who have a Copilot Pro subscription can create images and designs in their workflow. Soon, users will get the option to create a banner for their document in Word based on the content of their document.
As part of Wednesday’s announcement, Microsoft revealed that Microsoft Photos on Windows 11 is getting a deeper integration with Designer. Users can now use AI to edit photos without leaving the Photos app. You can now do things like erase objects, remove backgrounds and auto-crop images directly within the app.
Winning a gold medal is a lot like being a VC, according to Olympic champion Kristen Faulkner
Kristen Faulkner’s astonishing Olympic success of two gold medals stems from lessons learned from her former career as a venture capitalist.
Faulkner was an associate investor at Threshold Ventures, and at Bessemer Venture Partners before that, leaving the VC world in 2021 to pursue cycling. She wasn’t initially scheduled to ride in the 158-kilometer (98-mile) road cycling race but took her teammate Taylor Knibb’s spot at the last minute. Faulkner passed the favorites to win gold that day. She won a second medal as part of the gold-winning U.S. women’s velodrome track cycling team.
“As a VC, you sit down with entrepreneurs every single day who are going to do something they’re passionate about. They have these big ideas. They’re taking risks,” she told Fortune, add that such thinking helps her win races. “If a VC thinks there’s a 50% chance the company is going to be successful, that doesn’t mean they go 50% all-in for the company. When you invest, assess the risk and make your decision, but then you go all-in. You don’t look back. You have to commit. I think that’s something that shaped me.”
Trump campaign hack-and-leak appears like a rerun of 2016. This time, media outlets are responding differently
This weekend, Politico dropped a news bombshell: A person who only goes by “Robert” had shared with the news organization documents allegedly stolen from the Donald Trump presidential campaign.
Since then, we have learned that The New York Times and The Washington Post have also heard from the same person and received some stolen documents. The document dump has the hallmarks of a hack-and-leak operation, which typically involves malicious hackers stealing sensitive information and strategically leaking it with the goal of hurting the target of the hack. The FBI has said it is investigating the hack. Trump himself has accused the Iranian government of the breach. Longtime Trump confidante Roger Stone said his email account was compromised, which is likely where the whole operation began, according to anonymous people who spoke to The Washington Post.
If this all sounds familiar it’s because a near-identical hack-and-leak operation ahead of a U.S. election happened before and will inevitably happen again. It’s worth going back in time to a previous hack-and-leak operation to highlight what we learned then, and how those lessons apply now.
In the summer of 2016, a hacker who identified themselves by the moniker Guccifer 2.0 and described themselves as a Romanian “hacker, manager, philosopher [and] women lover,” claimed to be behind the hack of the Democratic National Committee. This came as a surprise because cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike had accused a Russian intelligence agency of being behind the hack. In what is now an ironic twist, Roger Stone at the time publicly revealed he was in touch with Guccifer 2.0 and piggybacked on the hacker’s claims to attack the Democrats.
But as it turned out, once I started asking Guccifer 2.0 some pointed questions back in 2016, their mask quickly started to fall off. Two years later, the FBI confirmed that Guccifer 2.0 was indeed no lone Romanian hacker, but a persona controlled by two agents working for Russia’s military intelligence unit, the Main Intelligence Directorate or GRU. While I pat myself on the back, I also want to be clear that, in a way, it was easy for me to focus on Guccifer 2.0 and their identity and motivations rather than the documents they were leaking, simply because I was (and still am) a cybersecurity reporter, not a political reporter.
At this point and in this recent case, it’s unclear who “Robert” really is. But early signs point to a repeat of the Guccifer 2.0 situation.
Just a day before Politico’s report on the Trump hack, Microsoft revealed that an Iranian government-backed hacking group “sent a spear phishing email in June to a high-ranking official on a presidential campaign from the compromised email account of a former senior advisor.” Microsoft did not say which campaign it was, nor did it name the “former senior advisor” who was targeted, but sources have since told The Washington Post and Politico that the FBI has been investigating the Trump campaign hack since June.
In a new report out Wednesday, Google’s Threat Analysis Group, which investigates government-backed hackers and threats, concurred with much of Microsoft’s assessment. Google said it has evidence that Iran-backed hackers were behind the targeting of personal email accounts of about a dozen individuals affiliated with President Biden and former President Trump as early as May.
To recap: It looks like Iranian government hackers may have compromised Stone, used his email account to then target and infiltrate the Trump campaign, stole some documents (for now we only know of files related to the vetting process of Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance) and, finally, used a persona — Robert — to contact journalists, hoping they would cover the leaked documents.
Contact Us
Do you have more information about the Trump campaign hack? Or other politically motivated hacks? From a non-work device, you can contact Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai securely on Signal at +1 917 257 1382, or via Telegram and Keybase @lorenzofb, or email. You also can contact TechCrunch via SecureDrop.
What is different from what happened in 2016 is how the media is covering this whole story.
At the time, countless media outlets took the Guccifer 2.0 documents — and later those stolen from Hillary Clinton’s then-campaign chairman John Podesta — and ran stories that essentially amplified the message that the Russian government wanted the American public to focus on, namely claims of corruption and malfeasance. Kathleen Hall Jamieson, a University of Pennsylvania professor who wrote a book about the 2016 hacking campaigns, told the Associated Press this week that in 2016 the media misrepresented some of the leaked material in a way that was more damaging to Clinton than it should have been.
This time, the early coverage of the Trump campaign hack-and-leak has focused on the hack-and-leak operation itself, and not so much on what was leaked, something that disinformation experts have praised.
“Politico and [its journalist] Alex Isenstadt deserve significant credit for turning this story into a story about a (poor, it appears) foreign disinformation attempt, instead of covering the leaked Trump campaign documents as such,” said Thomas Rid, a professor at Johns Hopkins and someone who closely followed the 2016 Russian hacking and disinformation campaign.
It’s important to note that this all might change, perhaps if or when “Robert” decides to leak something that the media considers more newsworthy. It’s also important to remember that, as my former colleague Joseph Cox wrote a few years ago, there have been many cases of hackers leaking information that was in the public interest. The data in those hacks and leaks deserved to be covered and reported on. That may still prove to be the case this time, too.
Regardless, it’s important that journalists give the whole context behind hack-and-leak operations, no matter if they are launched by hackers working for governments trying to undermine elections or certain presidential candidates, or hacktivists with good intentions.
When Politico asked the hacker about how they got the documents, Robert reportedly said: “I suggest you don’t be curious about where I got them from. Any answer to this question, will compromise me and also legally restricts you from publishing them.”
Perhaps Robert himself knows that, this time, journalists have learned the lessons.
Trump campaign hack-and-leak appears like a rerun of 2016. This time, media outlets are responding differently
This weekend, Politico dropped a news bombshell: A person who only goes by “Robert” had shared with the news organization documents allegedly stolen from the Donald Trump presidential campaign.
Since then, we have learned that The New York Times and The Washington Post have also heard from the same person and received some stolen documents. The document dump has the hallmarks of a hack-and-leak operation, which typically involves malicious hackers stealing sensitive information and strategically leaking it with the goal of hurting the target of the hack. The FBI has said it is investigating the hack. Trump himself has accused the Iranian government of the breach. Longtime Trump confidante Roger Stone said his email account was compromised, which is likely where the whole operation began, according to anonymous people who spoke to The Washington Post.
If this all sounds familiar it’s because a near-identical hack-and-leak operation ahead of a U.S. election happened before and will inevitably happen again. It’s worth going back in time to a previous hack-and-leak operation to highlight what we learned then, and how those lessons apply now.
In the summer of 2016, a hacker who identified themselves by the moniker Guccifer 2.0 and described themselves as a Romanian “hacker, manager, philosopher [and] women lover,” claimed to be behind the hack of the Democratic National Committee. This came as a surprise because cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike had accused a Russian intelligence agency of being behind the hack. In what is now an ironic twist, Roger Stone at the time publicly revealed he was in touch with Guccifer 2.0 and piggybacked on the hacker’s claims to attack the Democrats.
But as it turned out, once I started asking Guccifer 2.0 some pointed questions back in 2016, their mask quickly started to fall off. Two years later, the FBI confirmed that Guccifer 2.0 was indeed no lone Romanian hacker, but a persona controlled by two agents working for Russia’s military intelligence unit, the Main Intelligence Directorate or GRU. While I pat myself on the back, I also want to be clear that, in a way, it was easy for me to focus on Guccifer 2.0 and their identity and motivations rather than the documents they were leaking, simply because I was (and still am) a cybersecurity reporter, not a political reporter.
At this point and in this recent case, it’s unclear who “Robert” really is. But early signs point to a repeat of the Guccifer 2.0 situation.
Just a day before Politico’s report on the Trump hack, Microsoft revealed that an Iranian government-backed hacking group “sent a spear phishing email in June to a high-ranking official on a presidential campaign from the compromised email account of a former senior advisor.” Microsoft did not say which campaign it was, nor did it name the “former senior advisor” who was targeted, but sources have since told The Washington Post and Politico that the FBI has been investigating the Trump campaign hack since June.
In a new report out Wednesday, Google’s Threat Analysis Group, which investigates government-backed hackers and threats, concurred with much of Microsoft’s assessment. Google said it has evidence that Iran-backed hackers were behind the targeting of personal email accounts of about a dozen individuals affiliated with President Biden and former President Trump as early as May.
To recap: It looks like Iranian government hackers may have compromised Stone, used his email account to then target and infiltrate the Trump campaign, stole some documents (for now we only know of files related to the vetting process of Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance) and, finally, used a persona — Robert — to contact journalists, hoping they would cover the leaked documents.
Contact Us
Do you have more information about the Trump campaign hack? Or other politically motivated hacks? From a non-work device, you can contact Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai securely on Signal at +1 917 257 1382, or via Telegram and Keybase @lorenzofb, or email. You also can contact TechCrunch via SecureDrop.
What is different from what happened in 2016 is how the media is covering this whole story.
At the time, countless media outlets took the Guccifer 2.0 documents — and later those stolen from Hillary Clinton’s then-campaign chairman John Podesta — and ran stories that essentially amplified the message that the Russian government wanted the American public to focus on, namely claims of corruption and malfeasance. Kathleen Hall Jamieson, a University of Pennsylvania professor who wrote a book about the 2016 hacking campaigns, told the Associated Press this week that in 2016 the media misrepresented some of the leaked material in a way that was more damaging to Clinton than it should have been.
This time, the early coverage of the Trump campaign hack-and-leak has focused on the hack-and-leak operation itself, and not so much on what was leaked, something that disinformation experts have praised.
“Politico and [its journalist] Alex Isenstadt deserve significant credit for turning this story into a story about a (poor, it appears) foreign disinformation attempt, instead of covering the leaked Trump campaign documents as such,” said Thomas Rid, a professor at Johns Hopkins and someone who closely followed the 2016 Russian hacking and disinformation campaign.
It’s important to note that this all might change, perhaps if or when “Robert” decides to leak something that the media considers more newsworthy. It’s also important to remember that, as my former colleague Joseph Cox wrote a few years ago, there have been many cases of hackers leaking information that was in the public interest. The data in those hacks and leaks deserved to be covered and reported on. That may still prove to be the case this time, too.
Regardless, it’s important that journalists give the whole context behind hack-and-leak operations, no matter if they are launched by hackers working for governments trying to undermine elections or certain presidential candidates, or hacktivists with good intentions.
When Politico asked the hacker about how they got the documents, Robert reportedly said: “I suggest you don’t be curious about where I got them from. Any answer to this question, will compromise me and also legally restricts you from publishing them.”
Perhaps Robert himself knows that, this time, journalists have learned the lessons.
Winning a Gold medal is a lot like being a VC, according to Olympic champion Kristen Faulkner
Kristen Faulkner’s astonishing Olympic success of two gold medals stems from lessons learned from her former career as a venture capitalist.
Faulkner was an associate investor at Threshold Ventures, and at Bessemer Venture Partners before that, leaving the VC world in 2021 to pursuing cycling. She wasn’t initially scheduled to ride in the 158-kilometer (98-mile) road cycling race but took her teammate Taylor Knibb’s spot at the last minute. Faulkner passed the favorites to win gold that day. She won a second medal as part of the gold-winning US women’s velodrome track cycling team.
“As a VC, you sit down with entrepreneurs every single day who are going to do something they’re passionate about. They have these big ideas. They’re taking risks,” she told Fortune, add that such thinking helps her win races. “If a VC thinks there’s a 50% chance the company is going to be successful, that doesn’t mean they go 50% all-in for the company. When you invest, assess the risk and make your decision, but then you go all-in. You don’t look back. You have to commit. I think that’s something that shaped me.”
Without Apple Intelligence, iOS 18 beta feels like a TV show that’s waiting for the finale
At this year’s Worldwide Developers Conference, Apple divided the keynote into two parts: regular OS updates and an introduction to the company’s AI features. Apple is drawing a line between these two sections because Apple Intelligence features will become available this fall. It means that those features likely won’t be there with the 18.0 release; major iOS updates are usually timed with new iPhone releases in September.
Apple Intelligence features are also not available in the developer beta, which is available now. It might be a while until we get a taste of them. That’s why the current iOS 18 beta release feels like the first half of a two-part TV show: It’s pretty good, but we need to know more.
iOS 18 lets you move buttons
If you remove Apple Intelligence from iOS 18, customization is the marquee feature. Simply put, you can now move more buttons. First, you can arrange icons on your home screen in any way you want and even keep some icon slots empty. This allows you to create different patterns with icons on the screen.
You can customize icon colors to create a unified look. This way, you don’t need to rely on the tedious Siri Shortcuts workaround to do this. iOS 18 lets you switch to dark icons, give them a specific tint through a color palette and also make them larger (this will hide the app name). Given that it’s early days, the tinted apps don’t look great with some colors. Apple has already improved dark tint icon support for some third-party apps with the third developer beta.
The Control Center now has a paginated experience. The default four pages are standard controls page, media playback, home controls for smart devices and connectivity controls. You can add or remove controls to each page and also add new pages if you want. This makes it easier to perform quick actions without having to open certain apps.
There is a new controls gallery that lets you search for controls and easily add them. Apple has opened up the Control Center to third-party apps, so we will see more apps offering interactions with their service with an icon.
One of the best things to come out of this update is that you can replace the default icons for the flashlight and camera on the lock screen through the controls gallery. Plus, you can also choose a new action using the action button.
Privacy features in iOS 18
Apple has redesigned the privacy and security settings to show you what information different apps access at a glance. The menu is now divided into different data types: Calendars, Contacts, Files & Folders, Health, Media & Apple Music, Photos, Reminders and Wallet. You can tap each category and see which apps are accessing this information.
With iOS 18, Apple will allow you to lock or hide apps from the home screen. In both cases, you will require a Face ID, Touch ID, or passcode authentication to open the app. You can long-press on an app from the home screen to lock or hide the app. For hidden apps, you will see a new hidden apps folder in the App Library.
When you lock or hide an app, notifications for that app don’t appear on the system. Plus, the content from within the app doesn’t appear within the search.
Apple has also introduced a new dedicated Passwords app, moving the saved credentials from a tab in Settings to make this information easily accessible.
The new Passwords app has also learned a few new tricks. You can see all your passwords and passkeys, all websites and apps with Sign in with Apple credentials, and Wi-Fi passwords. You also can access two-factor verification codes from this app and create groups with friends or family members for shared credentials.
Apple said that all your synced data for this app is protected by end-to-end encryption across devices. At the moment, the app doesn’t allow you to store credit card information like 1Password.
The new software update adds better contact-sharing permission. Now you can share select contacts with an app rather than giving it access to all contacts. There is also a new menu for setting up Bluetooth Accessories, which also prevents these apps from accessing other devices on the network.
Photos app gets a redesign
Apple has gotten rid of the bottom bar with its major Photos redesign this year. The overall philosophy is that the company has decided to pack everything in a unified view. The top carousel shows your library, featured photos, featured memories, favorites and videos by default. You can add or remove different elements from this carousel.
You can directly access the library in the default view and scroll down to see the albums and other different collection folders such as Recent Days, People & Pets, Pinned Collections, Memories, Trips (a new feature), Utilities and Media type. You can customize the visibility and order of these items.
Apple noted in the keynote that it is using “intelligence” (not Apple Intelligence) in the Photos app to create new collections like a group of people and trips based on people appearing in photos and the time and location of images.
The library now has more filters such as all, favorites, edited photos, videos and screenshots to let you traverse a trove of images swiftly. The grid view offers bottom tabs of years and months (apart from all), and when you tap on them, you can see highlights from that timeline.
The company’s idea with this redesign is to resurface some old photos regularly through this interface without having to solely rely on the Memories feature.
iOS 18’s language and transcription tech
Apple introduced many language-related updates with iOS. There is a new multilingual and multiscript keyboard, support for Hindi in the translate app and support for Arabic in Live Text.
You can also customize your lock screen and contact cards with numerals and fonts in the non-Latin script. iOS 18 brings language search tuned for Assamese, Bangla, Devanagari and Gujarati scripts, allowing you to search for similar-sounding words with different spellings.
The transcription feature is now used across the system, including for call recording, notes, voice memos and a new way to add entries to the Journal app. Notes app allows you to add live transcriptions for events like lectures. It also stores transcripts for call recordings.
Calls and Messages in iOS 18
The phone app now gains a search function to let you look through call history and contacts. You can also use the keypad to type a name or a number to look for contacts (like on a basic feature phone). Apple is expanding Live Voicemail to more regions with support for Indian English, Mandarin and Cantonese.
The Control Center now has a new toggle that lets you easily switch SIM. During the call, the system has an automatic mic mode to switch between standard, voice isolation and wide spectrum modes.
Messages get new text effects and formatting along with support for tapbacks using any emoji or sticker. The app now lets you schedule messages for later, but the menu for that is hidden under the “+” sign. Apple should move that to a long-press of the send button like in other messaging apps.
Apple made a brief mention at the keynote that Messages app now supports RCS (Rich Communication Service). That means your friends on Android can send high-quality media files and also look at read receipts and typing indicators for a better group messaging experience. But this doesn’t take away their green bubbles. U.S.-based users can also connect to someone through the new Messages via the Satellite feature.
Other notable additions in iOS 18
The Notes app now supports audio recording, collapsible sections, solving math equations and a new way to highlight text.Apple had integrated mood and emotion logging directly in the Journal app. Plus, there is an option to add mindfulness minutes based on the amount of time you spent writing in the Journal app.Journal app also supports widgets with prompts to make it easier for you to get started. Plus, there is a new insights view to show you different stats like streaks.Apple TV app now has an Insights tab to show info like the music track that’s playing and actors on the screen currently. This is just like Amazon Prime Video’s X-ray feature.Apple has added new accessibility features like action triggers for different sounds and eye tracking to let you control your phone with your eyes.The Calendar app now shows reminders directly in the app. Plus, there is a new month view available for you to look at your schedule.
So what’s iOS without Apple Intelligence?
Apple is catching up with Android by offering features like icon customization and language support. But even if Android had those features a gazillion years ago, it’s good to see those features land on iOS. Some of these features will also require a few iterations to look better.
With iOS 18, Apple is also evolving its apps, such as Calculator, Notes, Journal and Password, to suit advanced usage.
Despite all these changes, everyone will be watching out for when the company releases Apple Intelligence features. But with varied and unspecified timelines of feature rollout, we don’t know how much Apple Intelligence we will get to experience in the next few months. It’s too early to declare this TV show a hit.
Microsoft's AI-powered, Canva-like Designer app lands on iOS and Android
Microsoft announced on Wednesday that its AI-powered Designer app is officially coming out of preview and is now available to all users on iOS and Android. The Canva-like app lets people generate images and designs with text prompts to create things like stickers, greeting cards, invitations, collages and more.
Designer is now accessible in more than 80 languages on the web, available as a free mobile app and as an app in Windows.
The app features “prompt templates” that are designed to help jumpstart the creative process. The templates include styles and descriptions that you can experiment with and customize, and you can share templates with others in order to build on each other’s ideas.
In addition to stickers, you can create emojis, clip art, wallpapers, monograms, avatars and more with text prompts.
You can also use Designer to edit and restyle images with AI. For instance, you can upload a selfie and then choose from a set of styles and write in any extra details you want to see to transform your photo.
Soon, Designer will include a “replace background” feature that will allow you to use text prompts to transform images.
With the launch of the standalone Designer app, Microsoft shared that it’s bringing the service to apps like Word and PowerPoint through Copilot. People who have a Copilot Pro subscription can create images and designs in their workflow. Soon, users will get the option to create a banner for their document in Word based on the content of their document.
As part of Wednesday’s announcement, Microsoft revealed that Microsoft Photos on Windows 11 is getting a deeper integration with Designer. Users can now use AI to edit photos without leaving the Photos app. You can now do things like erase objects, remove backgrounds and auto-crop images directly within the app.
This startup bets that looking like Bane is the future of gaming
We previewed Skyted’s voice-capturing mask last week, but when I came across the startup at CES 2024, I had to check it out for myself in person. You can read all about the tech in our previous article, but what is it actually like in person?
“We launched a mobile application that will give you information about how big your ‘sound bubble’ is. If, for example, you’re sitting in an airplane, you don’t want the person next to you to hear what you’re saying,” says Gauthier Daridon, connectivity engineer at Skyted, in an interview with TechCrunch at CES in Las Vegas. “So our application will explain that you are ‘perceptible’ and ‘intelligible’ at certain distances.”
Daridon demonstrated the mask and talked in a normal voice. Through a set of headphones, I was able to hear him relatively clearly. Without the headphones, I could hear a slight mumbling — I was standing around three feet away — but I wasn’t able to discern the individual words. At a couple of steps away, the mumbling disappeared into the general hubbub of the noisy show floor.
The company was founded in 2021, currently has around 20 staff and raised $1 million of funding; about half from angels and other smaller investors, and the other half from the French government. This week, the company launched a Kickstarter campaign, which has, so far, sold just short of 300 masks for a total of around $64,000 worth of pledges.
Personally, I’m still a little puzzled for the use cases for this device, and I’m struggling to think of that many situations where you absolutely have to talk, where you can’t be overheard, and where wearing something like this would be socially acceptable. The team has some ideas:
“We’re looking at various customer segments; mostly businesses, open spaces, like offices where this would be huge. In places like call centers, this would be a huge business. We also looking at B2C, for use cases such as gaming,” explains Daridon. “Special Forces came to us because they wanted us to design a mask for them so that they can be completely quiet for events where voice cannot be emitted.”
So far, it seems to be a solution in search of a problem — but that’s one of the exciting things about cutting-edge tech: Occasionally, you have no idea where the opportunities lie, and you have to plod through a Kickstarter campaign to figure it out. I look forward to keeping an eye on the company and its products as it works toward shipping the first batch of products by the end of this year.
