iOS 16 is one of the most substantial updates Apple’s given iOS in recent years that makes
the iPhone feel fresh once again thanks iOS 16’s biggest feature: the lock screen.
After six months, the lock screen improvements that Apple has made with this OS upgrade,
that's what's impressed me the most about it.
And one of my favorite things about the new lock screen is actually the media player that
pops on to it. I love that it pops up not only when you listen to something
on your iPhone but also when you listen to anything via AirPlay on a group of speakers.
Another thing I love about it is that you can tap the album
artwork on the mini player to make it much larger which also changes
the blurred out background color based on the colors in the album artwork.
But of course, the thing that really keeps the lock screen feeling fresh is wallpapers
and having multiple of them, You can easily switch between and create new lock screens by
long-pressing the lock screen view in iOS 16. You have quite a few options to choose from,
and these wallpapers can be set for both your lock screen and home screen,
Apple will even do some cool animations for some like the earth one when you swipe up. One or the
most unique looks you can get for your lock screen is when you use the suggested photos wallpaper.
iOS 16 lock screens will place the time either slightly in front of or behind the subject of
the photo used for the lock screen image, which adds this nice subtle depth effect.
You can swipe through to get different looks like classic instagram filters. And you can
tap on the time or date to change the typeface. iOS 16 lock screens also have widgets! You can
choose from ones made by Apple or ones from apps you’ve downloaded onto your iPhone.
For the past six months, I've used widgets in two ways: to show me information or to act as
a shortcut to get me into a specific app. For example, on my favorite lock screen,
with the dynamic weather backgroundI have the weather widget which shows me the current
temperature, conditions. This is a widget that presents information to me but I can
also use it as a shortcut into the weather app to get more information.
Another widget I use all the time as a shortcut is the PocketCasts widget. It
takes me right to the pocket casts app, and importantly, in a faster way. These lock
screen widgets remove one more step from getting to some of your most used apps.
And over the past 6 months I’ve noticed a few widgets from apps I use have been
added like the Tesla app, which will show you your car’s battery charge,
or the sleep app, which shows me how long I slept the previous night.
Another cool thing with box screens is you can tie them to different focus modes.
Focus Modes, were first introduced in last year’s iOS 15, expand upon the iPhone’s do
not disturb mode, allowing you to schedule different focus modes throughout the day,
filtering notifications from certain apps and contacts.
With iOS 16 I can now link lock screens to focus modes, like Do Not Disturb which
I use a lot while working to block out all notifications. You can also select specific
home screens and Apple Watch faces to be tied to these focus modes as well.
Another big change with iOS 16 that I've really been enjoying involves iMessage.Apple finally
rolled out the ability to edit messages right after sending them by long pressing
them on the iPhone, which as someone who sends a typo every once in a while,
I’ve greatly appreciated. Also in the main messages view you can swipe a message to
the right in order to mark it as unread if you’d like to respond to it later.
Another random feature in iOS 16 that i've actually
found by myself using quite a bit is called lift subject from background.
Here’s how it works, you simply bring up a photo basically anywhere in iOS,
tap and hold on the photo and select “Copy Subject”,
then you can paste that image wherever you’d like, like in an iMessage to send to a friend.
The Home app is another area of improvement in iOS 16. It looks
and works a lot better and now supports Matter.
Overall I found the response time for when you hit a button to when a device turns on
or off to be quite fast. Now, another thing I've really liked about iOS 16 is the health
app and the health app in general, for iOS, I think has been a pretty underrated feature.
Apple does a great job with the design of the app,
gives good information on what certain health data and readings actually mean so you don’t
get anxiety over a certain reading and I love the trend notifications like telling me to get
off my a** and climb more stairs or telling me when I hit my sleep goal for two weeks in a row.
Lastly, let's talk about weather. iOS 16's Weather app is much improved over
the previous generations of this app. It now relies on Apple’s own weather data and models
which come from their Dark Sky acquisition and you now have more detailed maps that
are for the most part well designed, however, sometimes the rendering of the precipitation
chart will just cause precipitation to just disappear which is kinda annoying.
iOS 16 also improved dictation,
Apple Maps also got some needed updates and overall I’d say is pretty useful,
it's turn by turn navigations. I've actually found it to be quite a bit better than Google
Maps. Specifically on when it tells you you need to turn. I feel like Apple just
gives me more of a heads up than Google does, at least in my experience here in North Carolina.
Apple also substantially overhauled Family Share,
so parents can now manage requests for screen time from kids right from iMessage,
and with Family Checklist, Apple will give you suggestions of other ways to use the
Family Share and Parental Control features. Lastly, with iOS 16, Apple rolled out passkey
which is a technology that basically replaces the need for a password, but in the past 6 months,
I haven’t run into a situation where I’ve had the opportunity to use it.
All right. Now, let's talk about a few things that I still think need some work,
and the first is lock screen widgets and I know, Yeah, I just said I really liked
lock screen widgets a few minutes ago and I do, the problem here is I want more of them.
For example, there’s no Apple Music widget when YouTube Music already has one? Another thing I
think Apple could improve is AirPlay speaker group volume controls, I find they’re a bit too easy to
make the wrong adjustment or accidentally break up the speaker group by a mistap.
Apple in general could also do a better job in IOS with preventing Spam texts and calls, like
scanning an incoming text ondevice for suspicious links.And then there’s Siri.
Siri’s progression to being an even smarter voice assistant seems to have
stalled somewhat with iOS 16. It's still nowhere near as good as Amazon
or Google's Assistant in terms of general search queries. Now the
Last big issue I think Apple needs to address with iOS 16 and this is a fundamental core
big thing about iOS. They need to support side-loading apps and third party app stores.
It seems like they're already going to be forced to do this with iOS 17, at least in Europe,
but what I'd like to see Apple do is just roll this feature out worldwide. It would
make the iPhone software experience more consistent with the Mac for Pro users,
and you’d see more innovative software and apps developed for
the iPhone that have a better user experience than what we have today.
For example, you'd be able to purchase Kindle books off the Amazon app. And if
Apple markets the Mac in a way that implies its safe to download apps on the Mac from the web,
I don’t see why that wouldn’t be the case for iOS.
Now, to see my review of the device that can take full advantage of iOS 16,
check out my six months later review of the iPhone 14 Pro, you can get to that
video by clicking on the thumbnail here and for an explainer video on how Matter
changes the smart home and how it works with Apple's home app that i mentioned earlier,
you can get to that explainer by clicking on the video, thumbnail here.
And let me know in the comments, what your favorite feature of iOS 16 has been and what
you think Apple should improve for iOS 17. And subscribe to the channel to see more videos on
Apple products like this one. For 6 Months Later, I’m Josh Teder, thanks for watching.