Apple Did It!!! New iOS and iPadOS Features Have Been Revealed!
The New Control Center is one of my favorite new features in iOS and iPadOS 18!
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F2ddc0e59-de8b-44b0-a124-ce1d44c7186c_4032x3024.jpeg)
Apple announced the new features for their platforms at WWDC24. Here’s a few I’m most excited about!
Control Center
About a week ago, in my last post before the WWDC24 Keynote speech, I described the way I wanted the iOS and iPadOS Control Center to change and to gain new levels of functionality that could rival macOS Menu Bar Applets (or whatever they’re officially called). I’m pleased to report that Apple didn’t disappoint! Alongside the announcements of other useful new platform features, and new app icon and Home Screen customization options, they also announced the new Control Center. When they revealed the new Control Center complete with more controls, customization, a better media player, and most importantly, APIs for third-party developers to tap into it, I was surprised by how well they had integrated it. This is the #1 thing I was hoping for with iOS and iPadOS 18! Are there other things I’d like to see improved in iOS and iPadOS? Of course, but the new superpowers for multitasking this will unlock will be amazing! Right now with it being new, there aren’t really any third-party controls available yet to add into the Control Center, but that is very likely to change before public release, and I’m really excited to see how developers are going to make use of this new tool! Also, something I can currently do on the beta, is pin my Siri Shortcuts to my Control Center, which is something I am absolutely ecstatic about! Now I will be able to access my Siri Shortcuts even faster by just opening the Control Center! Overall, this is definitely my favorite new feature in iPadOS and iOS 18, and the implementation is better than anything I imagined!
Apple Intelligence
Another feature I’m very excited about is Apple’s big leap into on-device AI: Apple Intelligence. This new system promises to revolutionize productivity and multitasking on Apple’s platforms. Because it runs on-device, Apple Intelligence can analyze your recent activity in apps across the system to determine context about what you want it to do. None of this data is accessible by Apple, and it is completely private. Apple says that this allows their AI system to work grounded with your “personal context”. Apple demonstrated a bevy of new workflows that this new Apple Intelligence platform will streamline, and I’m excited to see how it will improve multitasking within Apple’s ecosystem! Sadly, this system is not yet available in the first developer betas of Apple’s new OS versions, and will be coming in beta later this fall, so there’s no way to test it out yet.
Settings App Improvements
The Settings app sports a new organization layout! This brings more of the settings categories I use most often closer to the top of the stack, such as General settings. And several settings have been combined into some of these categories. Settings for third-party apps have been moved into an “Apps” category, with an alphabetical order with letter buttons on the right of the interface for hopping quickly through the alphabetized list, and a search bar at the top. These changes greatly reduce the clutter in the Settings app, and make navigation much easier. Apple also highlighted improvements coming to the Security & Privacy settings menu. It looks like we will likely see some additional changes in the Settings app in future betas. Overall, the new changes to the Settings app make it much nicer to navigate.
Calculator
The iPad finally got the Calculator app! Before, we could use Siri Search to replace its functionality, but having a dedicated app is more convenient. And the new Math Notes features will be very useful. The new Calculator app even includes graphing capabilities, which elevates it’s functionality well above what we’ve had with prior versions of the calculator. I honestly don’t know how much this will affect my workflow, but it’s definitely a nice addition.
Conclusion
I think this update will make several of the improvements that I was hoping it would, and I believe we will get a better idea of the real impact of this update this fall when Apple Intelligence first launches in beta. I’m very excited about the new Control Center, the ability to add Siri Shortcuts in the Control Center will streamline my workflow and seems to add the basic functionality of macOS Menu Bar Apps to the iPad and iPhone. The new Settings app design is great, I like the new organization of categories and options, and I like that options within it use more glyphs, similar to the macOS System Settings app. The Calculator app is nice to have. I like the overall direction for this update.
That said, I think the biggest new feature for iOS and iPadOS won’t be available for testing until this fall. Apple Intelligence looks like it will completely revolutionize multitasking on Apple’s platforms. I’m really interested in seeing how this new AI integration will improve working on Apple’s platforms. There will likely be several workflows where these new abilities just click and work seamlessly beyond just the ones demonstrated by Apple. This looks like it will unlock lots of additional functionality in iOS and iPadOS, and will likely have a very big impact on both platforms.