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iOS 18 Speculation Thread

So my question is this: will Apple offer any kind of “how to” on how to use the stuff rumored to be coming in 18.4? This could be the biggest UI paradigm change since the original iPhone. I just can’t imagine they’ll leave it to users to “just figure it out”.
 
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gwhizkids said:
So my question is this: will Apple offer any kind of “how to” on how to use the stuff rumored to be coming in 18.4? This could be the biggest UI paradigm change since the original iPhone. I just can’t imagine they’ll leave it to users to “just figure it out”.
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Biggest UI paradigm change? In what way? Yes, it should be a big update, and yes, there will likely be some very useful groundbreaking new Apple Intelligence features, but how would any of that change the core UI?
 
Do you think, the new languages (German f.e.) that are announced for 18.4 are present in the first beat?
 
DerMario said:
Do you think, the new languages (German f.e.) that are announced for 18.4 are present in the first beat?
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The exact wording suggests that not all languages will launch in April, but throughout the year. Meaning Apple Intelligence might launch in April for the EU, but still English-only until later. So it might be the case that 18.4 will not include German at all.

  • This April, Apple Intelligence features will start to roll out to iPhone and iPad users in the EU. This will include many of the core features of Apple Intelligence, including Writing Tools, Genmoji, a redesigned Siri with richer language understanding, ChatGPT integration, and more.
  • Apple Intelligence is quickly adding support for more languages. In December, Apple Intelligence will be available for localized English in Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa, and the U.K., and in April, a software update will deliver expanded language support, with more coming throughout the year. Chinese, English (India), English (Singapore), French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Spanish, Vietnamese, and other languages will be supported.
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Kal Madda said:
Biggest UI paradigm change? In what way? Yes, it should be a big update, and yes, there will likely be some very useful groundbreaking new Apple Intelligence features, but how would any of that change the core UI?
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It’s a UI paradigm addition. People can and will still use their phones as they do now but - assuming Apple can pull it off - there will be so many new ways to use your phone. Multiple app interactions with one command. Reading what’s on the screen. Contextual awareness.

People aren’t going to figure all that out from a Tv commercial or two.
 
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gwhizkids said:
It’s a UI paradigm addition. People can and will still use their phones as they do now but - assuming Apple can pull it off - there will be so many new ways to use your phone. Multiple app interactions with one command. Reading what’s on the screen. Contextual awareness.

People aren’t going to figure all that out from a Tv commercial or two.
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Ok, that makes a bit more sense, I’m guessing that a lot of us tech writers will also be doing our part in sharing how these new features work, so I don’t know that it all will rest on Apple. Perhaps they’ll add some demos in the Tips app. 👍🏻
 
Kal Madda said:
Ok, that makes a bit more sense, I’m guessing that a lot of us tech writers will also be doing our part in sharing how these new features work, so I don’t know that it all will rest on Apple. Perhaps they’ll add some demos in the Tips app.
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My personal feeling is they need to do more. But I’m not sure what “more” looks like tbh.

Getting regular users to use these features is key to Apple going forward. They can’t afford to have these go the way of orphaned or underutilized features like Animoji, App Clips and even to some extent Shortcuts. To do that, they need to raise awareness of the features and provide easily found, easy to follow instructions. They can’t rely on a 30 second commercial to do that for them.
 
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I take the the new AirPods beta firmware (7.5 up from 7.2) as complementing the iOS 18.4 / macOS 15.4 beta experience (I assume the firmware will be out publicly around the time 18.4/15.4 are out). 😎
 
Kal Madda said:
Ok, that makes a bit more sense, I’m guessing that a lot of us tech writers will also be doing our part in sharing how these new features work, so I don’t know that it all will rest on Apple. Perhaps they’ll add some demos in the Tips app. 👍🏻
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gwhizkids said:
My personal feeling is they need to do more. But I’m not sure what “more” looks like tbh.

Getting regular users to use these features is key to Apple going forward. They can’t afford to have these go the way of orphaned or underutilized features like Animoji, App Clips and even to some extent Shortcuts. To do that, they need to raise awareness of the features and provide easily found, easy to follow instructions. They can’t rely on a 30 second commercial to do that for them.
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They already really do the maximum that they can without forcing users to pay attention. They have loads of resources available to users about all the different features they offer - iPhone User Manual, all the support documentation, explanations on the website, video series that explain new features or the support videos that explain how to do something.

All you could really do at this point is put an unskippable tutorial video that explains every new functionality of an update, and you can't even make a call until you finish the video, which they don't do for obvious reasons. Even if they did that, half the people who watched it would forget it.

This isn't unique to Apple too. This is pretty much every piece of technology. I taught my coworkers some features of Windows and some keyboard shortcuts that have existed since XP and Vista. These are people younger than me but also people older, and we've been using computers for decades.

At a certain point, the user has to be interested to actually learn about the feature too, and if they are, they'll likely have the agency to find the necessary resources.
 
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MegaBlue said:
They already really do the maximum that they can without forcing users to pay attention. They have loads of resources available to users about all the different features they offer - iPhone User Manual, all the support documentation, explanations on the website, video series that explain new features or the support videos that explain how to do something.

All you could really do at this point is put an unskippable tutorial video that explains every new functionality of an update, and you can't even make a call until you finish the video, which they don't do for obvious reasons. Even if they did that, half the people who watched it would forget it.

This isn't unique to Apple too. This is pretty much every piece of technology. I taught my coworkers some features of Windows and some keyboard shortcuts that have existed since XP and Vista. These are people younger than me but also people older, and we've been using computers for decades.

At a certain point, the user has to be interested to actually learn about the feature too, and if they are, they'll likely have the agency to find the necessary resources.
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Yeah, agreed. 👍🏻. I think most of even the people who are interested in learning the new features tend to learn a lot of these new features from tech writers because we automatically pop up in their email, social media feed, etc. Apple can explain these features until they’re blue in the face, but unless people actually follow their page, or check out their resources like the built-in Tips app, it won’t make much difference in my opinion.
 
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Kal Madda said:
Yeah, agreed. 👍🏻. I think most of even the people who are interested in learning the new features tend to learn a lot of these new features from tech writers because we automatically pop up in their email, social media feed, etc. Apple can explain these features until they’re blue in the face, but unless people actually follow their page, or check out their resources like the built-in Tips app, it won’t make much difference in my opinion.
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But most ordinary iPhone users don't read tech writers (sorry, no offense @Kal Madda ).

Maybe a good way to do this is for the phone to pop up a notification when you do something "manually" that could have been done using the new services.

So, let's say you go to your email, download mom's flight itinerary and then text it to your sister, along with a message to pick mom up at the airport (to use roughly the info from the demo Apple gave at WWDC), a notification would appear and say "You could have done that by simply saying something like "Send mom's itinerary to Christine and ask her if she can pick Mom up when she arrives."

Text Expander does something like this. If I type out something for which I have a snippet saved, it will alert me. It's mildly annoying but very effective!
 
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Kal Madda said:
Yeah, agreed. 👍🏻. I think most of even the people who are interested in learning the new features tend to learn a lot of these new features from tech writers because we automatically pop up in their email, social media feed, etc. Apple can explain these features until they’re blue in the face, but unless people actually follow their page, or check out their resources like the built-in Tips app, it won’t make much difference in my opinion.
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I think the vast majority of users don't want to "learn" anything. They just want it to work and will never peek under the hood. And majority of them will not use AI past a "smarter" siri or phrase suggestions in messages.
 
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gwhizkids said:
But most ordinary iPhone users don't read tech writers (sorry, no offense @Kal Madda ).

Maybe a good way to do this is for the phone to pop up a notification when you do something "manually" that could have been done using the new services.

So, let's say you go to your email, download mom's flight itinerary and then text it to your sister, along with a message to pick mom up at the airport (to use roughly the info from the demo Apple gave at WWDC), a notification would appear and say "You could have done that by simply saying something like "Send mom's itinerary to Christine and ask her if she can pick Mom up when she arrives."

Text Expander does something like this. If I type out something for which I have a snippet saved, it will alert me. It's mildly annoying but very effective!
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Oh yeah, I completely agree with you, no offense taken. 👍🏻. Definitely the average iPhone user isn’t the kind who will follow tech writers. I was talking about the non-average users who are interested in learning the new features and how they work. 👍🏻. Sorry I didn’t clarify that well enough.

I can see the plus side to a notification system, though I’m not sure how it would go over with the user base. I could see people being very frustrated with that, myself possibly included, lol! 😂👍🏻. Maybe they could make it opt-in? I don’t know. Maybe have the Tips app open up automatically after updating, with a few handy tutorials? Honestly, I’m not sure how any of these would play with users, though I imagine any kind of automatic system like that could draw a lot of criticism. 👍🏻
 
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