Outline with Hyperlinks

Here are the TOP 10 things between the two major OS updates of the fall. This list has been compiled after my personal experience with both, and a studious overview of several reviews. I believe these 10 are the MOST helpful features, and may save you precious time throughout your weeks.

Your email client may not be able to leverage the newsletter header-hyperlinks, but the web-version will (you can access from the top)!

iOS

• 📱 Visual Customization

• 🎛️ Control Center Customization

• 📒 Notes App - New Features & “Math Notes”

• 🗓️ Calendar - New Visual Overview

• 💬 iMessage - New Features

MacOS

• 🗓️ Calendar & Reminder Integration

• 📲 iPhone Mirroring

• 🖥️ Magnet Tile Windows

• 🧭 Safari - Remove Items & Summarize

• 🧠 Apple Intelligence - Updated Siri

Visual Customization 📱

When you edit your home screen you now have on option to ✨ Customize ✨

• Bigger App Icons - You can choose to get rid of the App Names, and instead the Icon will grow to fill the space (Looks cleaner!)

• Move Apps Anywhere - When you only have a few apps on a screen, it’s nice to move them to the bottom, this way everything is in range of your thumb.

• Color Customization - Personally, I think giving your apps a single color tone is ugly (I prefer the standard icon coloring).

  • However, I did find a good use case! I have a Focus Mode called “Deep Work” - It darkens everything, removes the notification icons and acts as a “Super Do Not Disturb.” It’s great for getting a lot of work done. You can set a customization for each Focus Mode, so I’ve customized a non-distracting monochrome screen specifically for that particular mode. Allow me to show you…

Control Center Customization 🎛️

This is when you drag from the top-right corner of your screen and get the normal brightness adjuster, volume adjuster, wifi toggle, etc. Now Apple has changed it to include…

• More “Controls” - Both for native Apple Apps and 3rd Party Apps.

• Multiple Screens - These can act as folders. I have the primary controls on one screen, Smart Home controls on another, and then Audio Content Controls on the 3rd.

  • I’ve noticed the Audio Content Control also detects other audio applications, like Audible.

• Swap Lock Screen Controls - You can swap any controls where the flashlight and camera normally are at the bottom of your lock screen.

  • Pro Tip - Your camera is always accessible by swiping on the lock screen. So the control button so many use is actually redundant. Remove that control and put something useful there instead!

  • By using the “Open App” Control you can then select any application on your phone - That’s what I did to make sure my right button opens up “Calendar.”

Notes App - New Features & “Math Notes” 📒

• Notes now functions more like Notion - Create collapsable headers to organize your notes, and utilize various coloring options to highlight text.

• Math Notes - Write out or type math equations, and as you change variables or need to visualize graphs, the answers will “magically appear.”

  • This is a good one to see in action. Here is a 2min video!

    • Note that this can be done on both iPad and iPhone… it’s just easier to do the written notes on iPad with the pencil.

  • Also this happens in iMessages now.

    • I noticed this when I was texting a friend various Bible verses. When putting an “=” after a reference (because I wanted to show the explanation) iMessages wanted to complete the apparent math equation it detected. For example John 3:16-19 spits out “-3” as I typed the “=” afterwards 😄.

Calendar - New Visual Overview 🗓️

The month view of Apple Calendar on iOS was never very insightful. It would always show a “•” on a day with an event… but that’s practically the whole week. Now it shows you WHAT is going on with visual “bars.”

• Multiple View Settings - My favorite is “Stacked” – The days have bars for each event stacked up and color coded based on what calendar the events are tied to.

  • “Compact” is great too; one single bar segmented to show the types of events contained within the day. If there is a single event it’s a “•” – and then the dot expands with each event, showing a bar length that is relative to the amount of events scheduled.

iMessage - New Features 💬

• Scheduled Send - Tap the “+” near the keyboard and choose “Send Later.”

  • Right after “mark as unread” from last year’s update, I was looking forward to this feature the most.

• Tapback with Any Emoji - Instead of the standard “thumbs up” or “heart” reply, you can now hold on a message and choose to attach any emoji or sticker.

• Text Visuals - Bold, underline, italics, strike-through, plus various text animations available.

Calendar & Reminder Integration 🗓️

• Reminders can now be created in your calendar and scheduled as an event, further tying the two together for easily scheduling tasks.

  • Combine this with Drag-and-drop - Ex: You can drag an email into your calendar and change the “event” into a reminder. You’ve now scheduled a task to follow up with that particular email, and the event details will have all the content from that email you dropped in, so you’ll have the relevant information on hand.

iPhone Mirroring 📲

• Works so well, and it’s great for interfacing with particular apps that are iOS specific; now you don’t have to pause work to grab your phone for whatever is needed.

  • Or you can play Pokémon GO from your computer… I’ve heard that it’s possible… To each their own 😉.

• Drag & Drop - Apple mentioned that we will be able to do this in the near future, but it’s technically not available presently.

  • You’ll be able to grab files from your phone and drag them to your desktop, and vice-versa.

• Notification Mirroring - This will be trouble if you don’t immediately jump into the settings and customize WHICH apps push notifications to your computer. But I can see a use for this!

Magnet Tile Windows 🖥️

• Unless you’re already using Raycast, this is a great option for pinning application windows around your desktop.

• Hold an App Window and drag to a side or corner of your screen - If you hold “Option” while doing this, you’ll gain a preview of how the application will pin.

• Alternatively, you can click-and-hold the “green circle” on the window you’re wanting to manipulate.

  • Tap the Option Key to toggle how the window will pin the selected application.

• Various settings can be tweaked for how much margin the window tiles have, and you can assign keyboard shortcuts.

Safari 🧭

Apple is learning from Arc Browser and doing what they can to imitate some of their developments.

• Summarize - By tapping the “Reader View” icon in the URL window, you can have Safari summarize the webpage you are on.

  • I believe we’re still waiting for an Apple Intelligence patch in the OS updates for this to fully function.

• Remove Distracting Elements - Also by tapping the “Reader View” icon you can select the option to remove elements from a webpage. These will stay gone so long as the element isn’t replaced by the developer.

  • You can use this to get past some annoying popups that prevent you from being able to read web articles 🤫.

  • Between this and “Reader View” you can circumnavigate websites that require subscriptions (think most news sites)… not that I’m advocating for such action… just simply stating the fact. And trusting that you all will act with wisdom! *once again… 🤫

Apple Intelligence - Updated Siri 🧠

We’re still waiting for the patch that makes these updates available. Not to mention they will be limited to anyone with a M1 Mac or newer, or iPhone 15 Pro and newer.

• Ask Siri questions by typing instead of speaking - When you don’t want to distract others with the audio.

• Writing Tools - Text summarization, and text proofing and editing.

• Genmoji / Image Generation - Generate custom emojis and create whole images that can be used directly in documents.

• Better Siri Responses - More natural language is understood by Siri, including when you mess up mid-sentence and correct yourself. Siri also has better capacity for understanding your personal context.

  • Ex: Your mom has emailed you flight information. When you ask Siri, “when does Mom’s flight arrive?” Siri will know who “mom” is and contextually grab the email, pull the relevant data, and give it to you.

🌟 TOP PICKS

I have a personal process for learning as much as I can, as effectively as I can, to be prepared for Fall Tech Updates. Why? Because I know that each update is filled with enhancements that save me time… So if I do something regularly that takes minutes of my time, but an update makes that activity take seconds… then I’ve saved hours of my life within the first month or so of implementing that update!

We all have our different passions and strengths. So perhaps you’ll never dream of dedicating time to “prepare for fall tech updates,” that’s why you subscribe to T+P, I do the work for you 😎

However, if you’re interested, here is my process and therein my top picks for video reviews!

1️⃣ Read documentation from Apple - Simply head to the website and read the page they dedicate to overviewing the new OS. I do this in June when they unveil the new operating systems during the WWDC.

2️⃣ Watch Marques Brownlee “MKBHD” Overviews - Good high level summary, and I enjoy his video quality. Check one out here!

3️⃣ Search YouTube for “Top 10…” Videos Covering the Update - A few minutes scanning the outlines (Most of these videos outline their content in the description or video timeline) should be enough to find anything that you’ve missed.

4️⃣ Final Destination: Brandon Butch Overviews - This is for the SUPER DETAILED! His iOS 18 video is OVER 3 HOURS LONG 🤯. He’s great at showing various features and settings that lie “under the surface.” Check out a shorter one here!

🎬 BEHIND THE SCENES

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