Apple previewed numerous features during the keynote and listed even more on its website afterward. Below, we’ll focus on those we think are most likely to entice you to upgrade your Apple devices, but we encourage you to read Apple’s pages for each platform to learn more about what’s coming. Those are linked here, along with hardware requirements, so you can determine if your devices can upgrade this fall:

• macOS 27 Golden Gate: Only Macs with Apple silicon, including the MacBook Neo (2026), MacBook Air (2020 and later), MacBook Pro (2020 and later), iMac (2021 and later), Mac mini (2020 and later), Mac Studio (2022 and later), and Mac Pro (2023)
• iOS 27: iPhone SE (2nd generation and later) and iPhone 11 and later (unchanged from iOS 26)
• iPadOS 27: iPad (9th generation and later and A16), iPad mini (6th generation and later and A17 Pro), iPad Air 11-inch (4th generation and later, M2, M3, and M4), iPad Air 13-inch (M2 and later), iPad Pro 11‑inch (2nd generation and later), iPad Pro 12.9‑inch (4th generation and later), and iPad Pro (M4 and later)
• watchOS 27: Apple Watch SE 3, Apple Watch Series 9 and later, and Apple Watch Ultra 2 and later
• visionOS 27: All Vision Pro headsets

Siri AI Everywhere

The long‑promised “more personalized” Siri, now called Siri AI, is slated to ship later this year as a dedicated app that lets you carry on conversations much like with ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini. Apple is integrating Siri AI deeply into its platforms, so you can invoke it by swiping down from the Dynamic Island on an iPhone or via Spotlight on the Mac. Contextual menu commands on the Mac will let you focus Siri AI on images, files, and text. You’ll even be able to use Siri AI with AirPods and in CarPlay.

Personal context enables Siri AI to tailor its responses and actions based on your messages, emails, calendar events, photos, and other data. It will also be aware of what’s showing on screen, so you can ask Siri about what you’re looking at or direct it to take actions based on what’s showing. Siri AI will be able to work directly with compatible apps, creating contacts, sending email, calling people, and much more, depending on developer support. Finally, Siri AI will be able to respond with broad-based world knowledge gleaned from Web searches.

On sufficiently powerful devices, Siri AI provides more expressive voices and more advanced dictation. For that, you’ll need an iPhone Air or iPhone 17 Pro, an iPad with M4 or later, or a Mac with M3 or later.

Better Performance

Although we don’t think of our Apple devices as slow, Apple has improved performance across many areas. iPhone and iPad apps launch up to 30% faster, new photos appear in the Photo Library up to 70% faster, files transfer via AirDrop up to 80% faster, and files can be copied from an iPad to an external drive up to 5x faster, matching macOS transfer speeds. People with older iPhones will particularly appreciate the effort Apple put into improving general performance with a new CPU scheduler.

More Reliable Spotlight

We’ve all encountered the frustration of Spotlight failing to find a file we know exists. In response, Apple has rearchitected Spotlight’s search index to make it faster and more comprehensive. Searching in Mail and Photos also benefits from the new search index.

Liquid Glass Refinements

Apple showed several refinements to the Liquid Glass interface that debuted last year, addressing common requests for more control and legibility. Most notably, a transparency slider lets you adjust Liquid Glass from ultra-clear to fully tinted. macOS apps get a new uniform toolbar to improve legibility, and macOS sidebars will extend to the edges of windows and regain colored icons.

Visual Intelligence on More Devices

So far, Visual Intelligence, which can tell you about anything in the camera viewfinder, has been limited to iPhones with the Camera Control. Apple is moving it to a dedicated Siri mode in the Camera app, which brings it to the iPad; on the Mac, you’ll be able to select on-screen items and ask about them.

Automatic Updates to Weak or Compromised Passwords

We all have old accounts with weak or compromised passwords that we’ll get to changing real soon now. Apple recognizes this, so it’s adding Apple Intelligence to the Passwords app, enabling it to log in to eligible websites and change your password to something strong and unique.

More Comprehensive Parental Controls

To address parental criticism and potentially head off governmental regulation, Apple beefed up its parental controls. A new setup assistant helps parents configure child accounts, which now feature Ask to Browse (parental permission to visit specific websites) and communication controls (permission to communicate with people outside the family). Communication Safety now warns about gore and violence along with nudity, and a redesigned Screen Time app provides an at-a-glance view of a child’s device usage.

New Photos Features

The Clean Up tool that debuted with Apple Intelligence has been popular, and Apple says it now does an even better job of removing distractions and filling backgrounds realistically. A new Extend feature expands images outward, adding a realistically generated background around the photo’s subject. Even more impressive is the new Reframe feature, which lets you reposition the virtual camera after taking a photo. You can use it to shift perspective or change the zoom, generating new content only for the shifted areas.

Build Shortcuts with Natural Language

It’s often useful to automate tasks in Shortcuts—say, notifying your spouse when you leave the office—but many people have found it too hard to create those automations. Thanks to Apple Intelligence, you’ll now be able to describe what you want a shortcut to do, and it will be created for you. If it doesn’t work quite right the first time, you can keep iterating until it’s what you want.

Image Playground Gets More Productive

The images Image Playground has been able to create so far have been on the childish side. Apple says that Image Playground will now be able to create photorealistic images, incorporate multiple people from Photos, transform images with natural language descriptions, and generate images in multiple dimensions. It won’t replace a professional illustrator, but it might help you generate quick images for a presentation, website, or invitation.

Apart from Siri AI, these aren’t earth-shaking features, and that’s the point. Apple wants to keep improving the user experience, but part of that is not changing too much too fast. We’ll write more about when we recommend upgrading each of your devices after the beta this summer.

(Featured image by Apple)

Social Media: From a smarter Siri AI to faster app launches and better parental controls, here are 10 reasons Apple’s version 27 updates may entice you to upgrade when they ship this fall.

For more information on all the great Apple products, features, and services, give us a call!  940-767-MACS (6227).  Or stop by MacTech Solutions, 4020 Rhea Rd, Suite 3B, Wichita Falls.  We’re open Monday thru Friday, 10am to 6pm

(Featured image by Adam Engst)

You may need some of that new hardware to take advantage of Apple Intelligence. Its features work only on a Mac with Apple silicon, an iPad with an A17 Pro or M-series chip, or an iPhone 15 Pro or any iPhone 16. Intel-based Macs and older iPhones and iPads can’t play.

Although we have no problem with recommending that you upgrade your iPhone and iPad to iOS 18.1 and iPadOS 18.1, we recommend more caution when it comes to upgrading your Mac to macOS 15.1 Sequoia. There aren’t any general showstoppers, but you shouldn’t upgrade until you’re confident your particular workflows are fully compatible.

What will Apple Intelligence do for you if you upgrade? Here’s what you need to know.

Writing Tools Everywhere

The Apple Intelligence Writing Tools will help you craft and polish your prose—or just make your email sound more professional. Writing Tools provides three core functions:

• Proofread: The Proofread tool will significantly reduce spelling, punctuation, and grammar mistakes in your text. While it may not match up with a human proofreader, using it will make your text cleaner.
  
• Rewrite: If you’re unhappy with the tone of your text, use the Rewrite tool to improve it or make it friendlier, more professional, or shorter. Even if you don’t adopt the complete rewrite, some of its phrases or word choices might take your writing up a notch.
• Summarize: A straight summary might be useful for condensing text, and specialized summaries can list key points, make a list, or create a table. These features are probably most useful when working with text you’ve been given and need to edit into shape.

Writing Tools are available in nearly all apps that accept text. Either look for an Edit > Writing Tools menu or Control-click a text selection and look in the Writing Tools submenu. Right now, Apple apps like Mail and Notes provide proofreading controls that let you see (and revert) each change independently. With the Rewrite and Summary tools and Proofread in other apps, you have to compare the original and the rewrite manually, with your only options being to replace the selected text or copy the suggested revision.

Photos Enhancements

Photos benefits from Apple Intelligence in three ways as well:

• Clean Up: Many a great photo suffers from a random bystander or distracting telephone pole. Clean Up removes people and objects from your photos, either identifying them automatically or working from your manual selection. It’s not perfect, but Clean Up is a hugely welcome addition to Photos.
  
• Descriptive search: We’ve been able to search for objects in photos for several years now, but with Apple Intelligence, you’ll be able to find photos and videos based on more extensive and natural descriptions, like “Halloween in 2014.”
• Descriptive memory movies: The Memories feature in Photos automatically creates movies based on photos it thinks you might want to see together. With Apple Intelligence, you can describe the photos you’d like it to include.

Notification Summaries

Apple has long been sensitive about how distracting our devices can be due to numerous apps posting notifications throughout the day. Apple Intelligence tries to help by summarizing lengthy individual notifications and groups of notifications. Notification summaries probably won’t rock your world, but it can be nice to have a sense of what’s going on with a group of notifications before you wade into an involved conversation. If you don’t like the summaries for particular apps, turn them off in Settings > Notifications > Summarize Previews.

Mail (and Messages) Enhancements

Speaking of summaries, in Mail, the most welcome Apple Intelligence change is to replace each first-line snippet in message lists with summaries of the message or conversation content. It makes scanning email for important messages easier.

Other Apple Intelligence changes include moving priority messages—those that require a quick reply—to the top of the message list and the option to summarize long messages or conversations using a Summarize button at the top of the message pane. Both Mail and Messages also offer a Smart Reply feature that suggests reasonable replies. They’re like tapback responses on steroids.

Audio Recording, Transcription, and Summarization

Apple Intelligence offers major advances for the Notes and Phone apps: audio recording, transcription, and summarization. Be aware that the Phone app alerts participants when you start recording—just joke, “For quality assurance…” before tapping the record button.

The big win comes with Notes (on the iPhone, iPad, and Mac), which can record a meeting and provide a transcript for later searching and summarization. The clearer the audio, the better. It stumbles on many names and doesn’t differentiate between speakers, but transcripts can be hugely helpful. You can keep a transcript in its recording (left), where you can jump around in the audio by tapping the associated text, or you can use the ••• button to export it to its enclosing note (middle) or tap a button to get a summary (right).

Siri Enhancements

Apple has promised a lot for Siri but hasn’t delivered much. A new interface replaces the animated circle with a glowing light and the option to type your query rather than speak it. However, the only functional improvement from Apple Intelligence so far seems to be Siri’s awareness of the iPhone, iPad, and Mac user guides. If you’re unsure how to accomplish a built-in task, try asking Siri.

What’s Coming Next

Welcome though they may be, the initial wave of Apple Intelligence features won’t set the world on fire. But Apple has big plans for Apple Intelligence, with new features slated for release in December 2024 and more coming in 2025. Things you can look forward to in a few months include:

• ChatGPT will make its promised appearance, bringing world knowledge into Writing Tools and Siri.
• You can jazz up your conversations in Messages with original Genomoji merely by describing the emoji you’d like to see. “Penguin on a surfboard,” anyone?
• The Image Playground feature will let you generate original images in various styles, though none are photorealistic on purpose—no deepfakes from Apple.
• Image Wand will enhance your Apple Pencil sketches by turning them into polished images, and if you circle an empty space, Image Wand will create an image from the surrounding area.
• Writing Tools will let you describe a specific change you want to apply to your text, like adding more descriptive words to a blog post. We hope Apple puts more thought into the workflow so it’s easier to compare the before and after.
• The Camera Control button on the iPhone 16 line will tap Apple Intelligence to help users learn about objects and places in the iPhone’s viewfinder.

Further out, Apple says that Priority Notifications will surface your most important notifications, and Siri will learn how to draw from your personal context, take action in numerous apps, and gain awareness of onscreen information. We’re still curious to see how Apple will integrate a more intelligent Siri into the HomePod and Apple TV.  

For more information on all the great Apple products, features, and services, give us a call!  940-767-MACS (6227).  Or stop by MacTech Solutions, 4020 Rhea Rd, Suite 3B, Wichita Falls.  We’re open Monday thru Friday, 10am to 6pm

(Featured image by Apple)

For more information on all the great Apple products and features, give us a call!  940-767-MACS (6227) MacTech Solutions, 4020 Rhea Rd, Suite 3B, Wichita Falls.  We’re open Monday thru Friday, 10am to 6pm

(Featured image by Adam Engst)

(Featured image by Apple)

(Featured image by Adam Engst)

Embarrassment might be low on the list of problems such photos could cause. It’s not hard to imagine a male supervisor innocently sharing photos with a female employee but ending up embroiled in a sexual harassment situation if she were to stumble across the kinds of NSFW photos that regularly land politicians in hot water.

It’s safest to avoid taking NSFW photos to start, especially if the iPhone is a work-managed device. If that’s unrealistic, we recommend deleting any NSFW images from the iPhone as soon as feasible. A third option may be the best solution in the modern world—the Hidden album Apple provides in the Photos app on the iPhone, iPad, and Mac. On the iPhone and iPad, you’ll find it with other albums in the Utilities collection. On the Mac, it appears in the sidebar under Photos. (If you don’t see it, you may have hidden it—we explain how to unhide it below.)

There are four essential things to know about the Hidden album:

• You don’t add photos to the Hidden album by dragging or using an Add to Album option. Instead, you choose Hide from a contextual menu. On the iPhone and iPad, touch and hold a photo (or a set of selected photos) and tap Hide in the menu that appears. Or tap the ••• button and choose Hide. On the Mac, select one or more photos, Control-click them, and choose Hide X Photos. To remove a photo from the Hidden album, use the same approach with the Unhide command.
  
• Unlike regular albums, whose photos also appear in All Photos, photos in the Hidden album won’t appear anywhere else, including in searches. That’s the point of the feature.
• You can hide or show the Hidden album on each of your devices independently. On the iPhone and iPad, control whether it shows up in the Utilities album collection with Settings > Photos > Show Hidden Album. In the Photos app on the Mac, control whether it appears in the sidebar using View > Show/Hide Hidden Photo Album. Obviously, if you’ve hidden the Hidden album, you must show it to look inside.
  
• If you use the Hidden album, we strongly recommend protecting it (and the Recently Deleted album) with Face ID or Touch ID so only those with biometric access to your device can view it. On the iPhone and iPad, enable Settings > Photos > Use Face/Touch ID (see above). On the Mac, go to Photos > Settings > General and select “Use Touch ID or password.” Again, these settings are per-device, so what you set on the iPhone won’t automatically carry over to other devices. But really, turn it on everywhere.
  

Overall, the Hidden album is a welcome feature, and if you have any photos that could embarrass you if someone were to stumble across them, put them in the Hidden album and turn on the biometric protection.

(Featured image based on an original by iStock.com/AlexZabusik)

Social Media: 

(Featured image by iStock.com/mpiokpee)

If your iPhone were to be stolen or suffer an unfortunate accident, would you lose all your precious photos? Those using iCloud Photos are probably shaking their heads smugly, thinking that all those baby and vacation photos are backed up securely in iCloud. iCloud Photos does indeed store a copy of all your photos, but you shouldn’t assume that everything in it is completely protected. Although it’s extremely unlikely that Apple’s systems would fail so that you’d lose anything, the contents of your iCloud account aren’t as safe as would be ideal.

An Aside to Explain Why iCloud Isn’t Perfectly Secure

Recently, Wall Street Journal reporters Joanna Stern and Nicole Nguyen covered a troubling form of crime aimed at iPhone users in an article (paywalled) and accompanying video. Thieves hang out in bars, looking for users who tap in their passcodes instead of using Face ID or Touch ID. Once they’ve learned someone’s passcode with surreptitious shoulder surfing, they grab the iPhone and run. As soon as they’re clear, they use the passcode to change the user’s Apple ID password and enable or reset a recovery key, which prevents the user from employing Find My to locate and lock the iPhone. Worse, with the passcode, they can make purchases with Apple Pay, access all passwords in iCloud Keychain, and use other information on the iPhone to facilitate identity theft. It’s a disaster.

But it gets worse, as the reporters detail in a new Wall Street Journal article (paywalled) and video. By enabling a recovery key, the thief disables Apple’s normal account recovery process for resetting the Apple ID password. In other words, if this were to happen to you, along with all the financial losses and headaches, you would lose access to your iCloud account, possibly forever, and with it, all your photos in iCloud. With luck, Apple will block this attack soon.

For now, follow this commonsense advice to reduce the chances of being victimized:

• Pay attention to your iPhone’s physical security in public.
• Always use Face ID or Touch ID in public.
• If you must enter your passcode in public, conceal it from anyone nearby.
• Never share your passcode beyond highly trusted family members.

Backing Up Your iPhone Photos

As with so many other modern ills, good backups go a long way toward minimizing the pain of problems. They won’t prevent someone from stealing your iPhone or locking you out of your account, but if that were to happen, at least you won’t lose all your photos!

There are two possible backup scenarios. Using iCloud Photos and downloading originals to your Mac is easiest but requires that you pay Apple for more storage if you have more than a handful of photos. If you don’t use iCloud Photos, you can just back up your iPhone to your Mac or, better yet, import images into Photos on the Mac and then sync them back. It’s more work and fussier, but doesn’t cost anything.

• iCloud Photos: When using iCloud Photos, the trick to protecting your pictures is to sync the originals with your Mac. In Photos > Settings/Preferences > iCloud, select Download Originals to this Mac. The only downside of this approach is that you need enough disk space on your Mac to hold them all; if that’s not the case, you may need to move your system Photos Library to an external hard drive.
  
• iPhone-only photos: If you aren’t using iCloud Photos, the best approach is to connect your iPhone to your Mac using a USB-to-Lightning cable or Wi-Fi and then import new snapshots into Photos on your Mac manually (select the iPhone in the Photos sidebar). It’s helpful to remove the original photos from the iPhone with the Delete Items checkbox after importing so you can manage them solely on the Mac.
  
  Then you can sync all the photos (or just desired ones, if your iPhone is low on space) back to your iPhone using the Finder. First, select the iPhone in a Finder window’s sidebar. Then click Photos in the button bar at the top, and select “Sync photos to your device from Photos” along with “All photos and albums” and “Include videos” in the options below. Finally, click Apply or Sync.
  
  Technically speaking, backing up your iPhone to your Mac without syncing to Photos also backs up your photos, but the only way to get them back is to restore a backup onto an iPhone. It’s much better to have all the photos accessible in Photos too.

Either way, once the photos are on your Mac, you should back up all your data using Time Machine, an Internet service like Backblaze, or a third-party app like Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper. If you’re concerned about the quality of your backups for preserving photos, contact us for advice.

(Featured image by iStock.com/metamorworks)

Four of these pieces of metadata are particularly useful:

• Dates ensure that photos sort correctly in Photos.
• Titles simplify searching and make it easier to group photos.
• Locations let you see photos on a map and search by location names.
• Faces collect images of individuals automatically after you identify some manually.

Problems crop up when you have old digital photos that lack full metadata and with scanned photos, which seldom have any metadata at all. The lack of metadata hits especially hard if you’ve taken advantage of a service that scans boxes of old snapshots so you have digital versions. Bulk scanning is a great way to protect the images and share them with others, but without appropriate metadata, the images can be nearly incomprehensible to anyone who doesn’t already know who’s in them and when and where they were taken.

Happily, Photos has tools for adding metadata to multiple images at once. If you have a large collection of scanned photos, follow along to learn how to give them the metadata that will make them easier to find and understand in the future.

Before we get started, make sure you know how to select multiple images at once in Photos. There are four basic approaches:

• Drag: Click in any blank area, and drag a rectangle around the pictures you want to select. If you drag to the top or bottom of the screen, Photos scrolls to bring more images into view. Dragging is easy, but you can select more than you want.
• Shift-click: Select one picture. Then hold down the Shift key and click any other picture to select both of them and all the images in between. Shift-clicking is the fastest and most accurate way to select many contiguous photos.
• Command-click: To select an arbitrary set of photos, Command-click each one to select it; another Command-click on a selected image deselects it. Command-clicking is too slow for selecting a lot of photos, but it’s great for removing photos from the selected set if you’ve accidentally added too many with another method.
• Select All: If you want to select all the photos in an album, choose Edit > Select All.

Change Dates

Photos scanned by a service will likely come back with the date they were scanned. That’s not helpful, and while it’s hard to know exactly when the photos were taken, if you can get them in at least the correct year, they’ll sort reasonably in Photos. Once you’ve selected the photos you want to adjust, follow these steps:

1. Choose Image > Adjust Date & Time to bring up the Adjust dialog.
2. In the Adjusted field, enter the date you want to apply to the selected photos.
3. Click Adjust.
   

It’s important to note that this doesn’t change the date and time to what you enter exactly. Instead, it adjusts each photo’s date and time by the amount specified. In all likelihood, the selected photos have slightly different times and possibly dates, so adjusting them by the same amount means they’ll retain their basic order. In the screenshot above, you can see that each photo’s date will move more than 55 years into the past to when that tractor was newer.

Change Titles

No photos, scanned or taken with an iPhone, will automatically have useful title data assigned to them. At best, the title might be the same as the image’s filename, something unhelpful like IMG_3343.JPG. In Photos’ predecessor iPhoto, Apple provided a way of changing the titles of selected photos and appending a sequential number to each image. That way, you could have Niagara Falls Trip 1, Niagara Falls Trip 2, and so on.

That feature is no longer available in Photos. You can still change the titles of selected photos, but all the titles will be the same, without a sequential number. Once you’ve selected the desired images, follow these steps:

• Choose Window > Info to bring up an Info window.
• In the field labeled “Various Titles,” enter the desired title.
• Press Return to apply the title.
  

If you desperately want sequential numbers appended to your titles, there is a way of doing it using AppleScript, as explained in this discussion forum post.

Change Locations

Scanned photos and those taken with most digital cameras won’t have location metadata showing where the photo was taken. With many photos, you may not know the precise location—who remembers where that picnic in 1980 was held?—but you can probably specify the city or state/province. The process for adding locations is similar to adding titles.

1. Choose Window > Info to bring up an Info window.
2. In the field labeled Assign a Location, start typing the name of the location until you see the correct location appear in the suggestion list below.
3. Click the desired location to assign it to the selected photos.
   

If you want to do a lot of geotagging, check out the app HoudahGeo, which provides additional tools for connecting locations with images stored in Photos. It even lets you drag images to spots on a map, which may be faster than typing in locations.

Identify Faces

Though not perfect, the facial recognition feature in Photos is a wonder of modern machine learning. Once you identify someone a few times and then confirm or reject additional suggestions, Photos automatically identifies people as they appear in new photos. It could be particularly effective when importing a large number of old family photos where you might not recognize all the people in a previous generation. For help using facial recognition, refer to Apple’s Photos documentation, but here are the basics. The first task is to identify or create a new person whose face you want Photos to recognize:

1. In the Photos sidebar, click People, and look to see if the person has a thumbnail. If so, move on to the instructions for associating more photos with them.
2. If they don’t have a thumbnail, find a photo of them. If there’s an “unnamed” tag under their face, type their name in the box, selecting the appropriate suggestion if they’re among your contacts.
   
3. When there’s no tag under the person’s face, you’ll have to add one manually. Choose Window > Info to bring up the Info window, click the Add Faces button, click the image again (surprising, but necessary), drag the Click to Name circle over the face of the person to identify, and then type a name in the box.
   

Once you have identified or created a person for someone whose face you want, there are three ways to train Photos to identify more photos of them. These aren’t exclusive—you’ll want to employ all three. The first approach is generally pretty accurate, the second sometimes grasps at straws, and the third may kickstart more recognition by the other two later on.

• In the People album, double-click a person’s face. At the top of the window, Photos may display a banner saying that there are additional photos to review. If it does, click Review, and in the dialog that appears, deselect any photos that aren’t of the person before clicking Done. The banner won’t appear when there are no more photos to check for that person.
  
• In the People album, double-click a person’s face. Scroll to the bottom of the window, and click Confirm Additional Photos. If it has any photos that might be of that person, Photos displays the first one and asks at the top of the screen if the photo is of the desired person. Click Yes or No as appropriate for each photo that appears. Often, identifying a particular face as being associated with the person will add more photos. When you finish, click the Done button at the top of the window.
  
• Scroll through a bunch of photos individually, typing names into the “unnamed” box whenever possible. Those photos will immediately be associated with the person, but then you should leave Photos running in the background for hours or days so it can use that new information to identify more possible faces, which you may have to confirm using the previous two methods.

Identifying faces can be time-consuming, but it can also be somewhat addictive if you like feeling that you know more than the computer. Note that face metadata lives only in Photos itself, so if you were ever to export or share the photos with someone else, you’d have to find a way to convey who was pictured in another way.

With the tools in Photos to change dates, titles, locations, and faces, you can bring order to that large collection of scanned or old photos.

(Featured image by iStock.com/vgabusi)

(Featured image by iStock.com/simona flamigni)

(Featured image by iStock.com/Kenishirotie)

Just before the holidays, Apple released a full set of updates, including iOS 16.2, iPadOS 16.2, macOS 13.1 Ventura, watchOS 9.2, and tvOS 16.2. Between those updates and the ones immediately preceding them, Apple has now delivered on all of its 2022 promises.

Here is a rundown of what’s now possible. Some features are specific to one of Apple’s operating systems; others cut across several and may work only on updated devices or even require that all your devices be upgraded:

• iCloud Shared Photo Library: Starting in iOS 16.1, iPadOS 16.1, and macOS 13.0, you can create another photo library and share it with family and close friends. It’s a great way to create a single shared space for photos and videos, but note that everything you contribute moves out of your Personal Library and into the Shared Library. Plus, everyone with whom you’re sharing has equal permissions to add, edit, and delete content in the Shared Library. The person who creates the Shared Library must have space in iCloud for it; it doesn’t count against anyone else’s iCloud storage.
  
• Live Activities: With iOS 16.1, Apple also unveiled Live Activities, a new type of dynamic notification that can appear on the iPhone’s Lock Screen or the iPhone 14 Pro’s Dynamic Island. Live Activities allow apps to display data like live sports scores (from the TV app), active weather (in CARROT Weather, below), flight tracking (in Flighty), and more.
  
• Freeform: The most notable addition in iOS 16.2, iPadOS 16.2, and macOS 13.1 was Freeform, Apple’s digital whiteboard app designed for collaborative brainstorming. It enables users to lay out a wide variety of content on a flexible canvas without worrying about fixed layouts or restrictive page sizes. Boards can contain text, hand-drawn graphics, sticky notes, shapes, and attachments—nearly any file on your Mac, iPad, or iPhone. Data syncs to your other devices through iCloud, and you can invite others (who must also be running a supported operating system) to collaborate on a board in real time.
  
• New Home architecture: Apple promised that the new Home architecture would be more reliable and efficient, although it’s not clear what that means. It does require an explicit upgrade, and once upgraded, devices that aren’t running the latest versions of iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS, tvOS, and HomePod Software won’t be able to access the home. Apple has temporarily removed the option to upgrade after problems were reported, so perhaps wait until the company restores the upgrade and others have had a chance to test it.
• Stage Manager on external displays: The feature that initially caused iPadOS 16 to be delayed was Stage Manager, Apple’s new windowing paradigm for the iPad and the Mac. However, even when it first shipped in iPadOS 16.1, Stage Manager didn’t support external displays on the iPad. With iPadOS 16.2, you can finally have four apps in Stage Manager on the iPad display and another four on an external display. However, using Stage Manager on an external display requires an M1 iPad, which means the fifth-generation iPad Air, the third-generation 11-inch iPad Pro and later, and the fifth-generation 12.9-inch iPad Pro and later.
• Race Route and automatic track detection: In watchOS 9.2, the new Race Route feature gives you the option of racing your last or best time on any route you’ve run or biked at least twice. Plus, if you start an Outdoor Run workout while at a track, you’re prompted to begin a Track workout that optionally provides track-specific metrics like lap time and pace.
• Advanced Data Protection: In a surprise announcement in December, Apple unveiled Advanced Data Protection for iCloud, which extends end-to-end encryption to many more types of data in iCloud. For those concerned about breaches of Apple’s security or overreach by law enforcement, Advanced Data Protection is a very good thing. The downside is that when the feature is enabled, Apple cannot recover your data if you forget your iCloud password. For most people, the standard iCloud data protection remains sufficient. If you want to upgrade, note that all devices that you want to connect to your iCloud account must be running the latest operating system versions, which may not be possible for some otherwise fully functional older devices.
• Apple Music Sing: If you’ve been hankering to sing along with your favorite songs, Apple Music Sing is essentially karaoke for Apple Music subscribers on the iPhone, iPad, and third-generation Apple TV. Alcohol not included.

Between these new features and some important security updates, we strongly encourage anyone running iOS 16, iPadOS 16, watchOS 9, and tvOS 16 to update to iOS 16.2, iPadOS 16.2, watchOS 9.2, and tvOS 16.2. And if you’re still running an earlier version of one of those operating systems, you can upgrade to the latest at any time—they’re fine.

Similarly, if you’re already running macOS 13 Ventura—perhaps on a newly purchased Mac— you should update to version 13.1 to take advantage of security fixes. However, if you haven’t yet upgraded from macOS 12 Monterey, perhaps wait a little longer. There has been only one macOS update with bug fixes since the initial release of Ventura, so it feels as though another bug fix update might arrive soon, after which we may recommend general upgrades.

(Featured image based on original by iStock.com/champpixs)

Identifying duplicate photos and videos is difficult to do manually. Although the human eye is good at noticing when things aren’t the same, it’s much harder to determine if two images are identical. And which of two identical images you want to keep can require that you compare file formats, sizes, and other metadata, which is fussy, tedious work.

Apple has come to the rescue with a new duplicate identification and merging capability in Photos in iOS 16, iPadOS 16, and macOS 13 Ventura. It may not be perfect, but it’s a good start and extremely easy to use.

To get started on the iPhone, tap Albums in the toolbar, scroll down to the Utilities section, and tap Duplicates (left). On the iPad, Duplicates appears in the sidebar under Utilities (middle), and on the Mac, it’s in the sidebar under the top-level Photos section (right).

Even if you use iCloud Photos, which syncs your photos and videos between all your devices, you may not see the same number of duplicates on each device. We’re not sure why this is the case—perhaps Apple’s code isn’t identical between platforms—but it may be necessary to run through the merging process on multiple devices to catch everything. Plus, it seems as though Photos identifies new duplicates slowly in the background, so the Duplicates album may not include new duplicates right away.

Regardless, once you’re in the Duplicates album, you’ll see a scrolling list of all duplicate photos and videos. Photos automatically displays the file size on each item so you can see that some are smaller than others. Tap the ••• button at the top right on the iPhone or iPad, or use the Filter By menu on the Mac to show all items, just photos, or just videos. You can also switch between a square grid and one that preserves the aspect ratio of the images—the control is in the ••• menu on the iPhone, the Aspect/Square button on the iPad, and the thumbnail toggle button next to the size slider on the Mac.

Note that Photos explains at the bottom of the screen what counts as a duplicate. Exact duplicates do, of course, but Photos also matches images that differ in size or other metadata. It may also identify images that are very nearly the same.

You can tap or click each image in a set to view it at full size, and if you were a glutton for punishment, you could delete one of the images in the set manually with the trash button. But there’s no reason to do that because Photos provides a Merge button (or link, on the Mac) next to each set. Tap or click that, and Photos will keep one version that combines the highest quality and relevant metadata, moving the rest to Recently Deleted. Note that Photos tells you when duplicates are exact (left) or very similar (right).

When you have lots of duplicates, using the Merge button for each set will be time-consuming. Instead, tap the Select button at the top on the iPhone and iPad. Then you can tap to select individual photos (which you could then trash manually; left), tap the Select button next to duplicates to select them (right), or tap the Select All button to select everything. Once you select one or more duplicate sets, a Merge link appears at the bottom. Tap that to merge the selected duplicates.

If you don’t want to verify each of the duplicates Photos has found, the process becomes as simple as this:

1. Open the Duplicates album.
2. Tap Select.
3. Tap Select All.
4. Tap Merge (###).

Boom, you’re done, regardless of how many hundreds or thousands of duplicates you had.

In our testing, Photos does a pretty good job, but for another approach, check out PowerPhotos, which uses a different visual comparison engine and may identify more images that are sufficiently similar to qualify as duplicates in your mind. It costs $29.95, but you can use its free trial to see if it will help your duplicate problem.

(Featured image by Adam Engst)

(Featured image by iStock.com/fizkes)