It’s Apple operating system release day, so if you’re in the Apple ecosystem, it’s like Christmas morning, but for your devices. The two major platforms are, of course, iOS/iPadOS 18:
iOS 18 adds new customization options for the Home Screen, with the option to arrange apps and widgets with open spaces and add new tints to app icons. Control Center has been entirely overhauled with support for multiple pages, third-party controls, and the option to put controls on the Lock Screen and activate them with the Action Button.
↫ Juli Clover at MacRumors
macOS Sequoia features iPhone Mirroring, which allows you to control and monitor your iPhone right from your Mac. You can use your iPhone’s apps and get your iPhone’s notifications all while your iPhone is tucked away and locked.
Window tiling has been improved to make it easier to arrange multiple windows on your Mac’s display, and there are new keyboard and menu shortcuts for organizing your windows. In Safari, Highlights will now show you the information you want most from websites, and there’s a new Viewer mode for watching videos without distractions.
↫ Juli Clover at MacRumors
It doesn’t stop there, though, as Apple also released watchOS 11, visionOS 2, tvOS 18, and the most import ant most hotly anticipated out of all of Apple’s platforms, HomePod Software 18. It’s genuinely kind of staggering how Apple manages to update all of these various platforms at the same time, each coming with a ton of new features and bugfixes, and ship them out to consumers – generally without any major issues or showstoppers. Especially in the case of iOS and macOS, that’s definitely a major difference with the Windows and Android worlds, where users are confronted with strict hardware requirements, lack of update availability altogether, or just stick with previous versions because the new versions contain tons of privacy or feature regressions.
Do note that Apple’s AI/ML features announced during WWDC aren’t shipping yet, and that iPhone Mirroring is not available in the EU because someone told Tim Cook “no” and he threw a hissy fit.