iOS 10 is no small upgrade. It’s actually the biggest we’ve seen since the massive redesign that came with iOS 7 almost three years ago. But is it exciting enough?
Despite all the new features and improvements, iOS 10 doesn’t exactly bring anything groundbreaking. It’s not going to change the way you use your iPhone or your iPad, and it still doesn’t deliver some of the things fans have been calling for.
So, is iOS 10 enough to boost iPhone demand?
Join us in this week’s Friday Night Fight as we battle it out over Apple’s latest iOS upgrade.
Killian Bell: iOS 10 is possibly Apple’s most exciting upgrade since iOS 7, but I can’t but feel it’s not quite exciting enough. We have great new features like the Universal Clipboard, a massively improved Messaging app, and rich notifications — but there’s still so much that’s missing.
We can remove stock apps now, but we still can’t choose our own default apps. We still can’t place useful widgets on the home screen, or swap those static icons for dynamic ones. We still can’t use NFC for anything but Apple Pay.
Android users are already used to these things, and I can’t see many of them giving up their existing devices for an iPhone with iOS 10. I can’t imagine this fall’s upgrade will get fans excited in the iPhone again, either. I know you’ll disagree with me, so tell me why you think iOS 10 is awesome.
Luke Dormehl: Ever the optimist, Killian! Well, you’re right that I was impressed by iOS 10. Quite honestly I was more impressed than I thought I might be, since it seems that — at least as far as new iPhones go — 2016 is shaping up to be more of an incremental “s”-style year than Apple’s usual major “full number iPhones” refresh. But with the iPhone’s hardware sounding like it’s not going to take a big leap forward until next year, it was up to the software to do it, and from the look of things Apple has done exactly that.
Yes, all the features you mentioned are present, along with some other nifty ones like voicemail transcription, better HomeKit integration, a bunch of aesthetic improvements and more, but I think you’re really sleeping on two of the most exciting features: opening up Siri to developers and Apple’s new focus on artificial intelligence. The first of these has the potential to be absolutely massive for Apple — and it sound like you’re largely missing that. A Siri API could completely transform the way that we interact with apps, and longer-term a lucrative earner for Apple if it wants to go down the route of taking transaction fees for services booked through Siri.
As to the second point, Apple showed with iOS 10 that it is serious about embracing AI. Yes, some of that might be gimmicky features relating to vacation slideshows and the like, but the smart photo analysis tools and — most important of all — the concurrent API release for developers to tap into Apple’s neural network technology is going to be big.
Steve Wozniak recently described the App Store as Apple’s most important invention of all time. This version of iOS may look incremental on the surface, but it was one of the most exciting ones for developers in company history. I think we’re going to look back on iOS 10 as every bit as significant as you’d hope from a tenth-birthday edition of Apple’s mobile OS.
Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac
Killian: I haven’t missed Apple’s new focus on artificial intelligence; I’m just not that excited by it. As we’ve discussed in previous Friday Night Fights, rival companies are already doing similar things — and they’re doing them better than Apple. Apple is playing catch-up, and it’s going to be years before it gets anywhere near what Amazon and Google are doing with AI.
Don’t think iOS 10 is going to miraculously solve Apple’s lacklustre AI overnight, then. Don’t think it’s going to come close to making up for another boring iPhone upgrade, either. Android is getting better every year, and there are devices out there with better displays, better cameras, and better features than the iPhone has now — and will have come September.
I’m looking forward to getting iOS 10, and I’ll be installing it on my devices as soon as it’s available. There are a few features I can’t wait for. I just don’t think this upgrade is enough to increase demand for the iPhone — or the iPad, for that matter. I can’t see it selling more devices in the same way that I see watchOS 3 selling more Apple Watches.
Why isn’t Apple giving us those other things we want, either? Why is it still impossible to choose our own default apps? Why can’t we send apps to our iPhones and iPads from a web browser? Why can’t we have a more customizable home screen that makes our iOS devices more useful and more productive?
Luke: The thing is, Killian, that — yes — companies like Google and Facebook have an advantage in terms of the amount of money and length of time they’ve been exploring AI. (Although let’s not forget that Apple is also a lot more secretive than either of those two companies, so we can’t say that for sure just based on their lack of published papers in the area.) However, what Apple is doing with its new focus on artificial intelligence is grafting cutting-edge machine learning technologies onto an underlying system that is profoundly better than Android.
Google is doing some great work in a number of areas, but whether it’s talking about the superior size of Google’s data sets or Samsung’s smartphone features, you seem to forget that a lot of people don’t want to use what they view (possibly quite rightly) as an inferior Android system.
The ability to choose default apps would certainly be nice, but I think you’re being disingenuous in suggesting that Apple has somehow slipped up and released a version of iOS that’s not going to win over new customers. As you say, we’ll see in September: but I think we’re going to see another massive launch for the next iPhone — and while the hardware will get people into the stores on day one, it’s the software that’s going to convince them they’ve made the right choice.
Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac
Killian: What is Apple feeding you? You seem to be suggesting that what Google’s doing with AI is not “cutting-edge machine learning.” But that’s exactly what the company is working on. Yes, Apple is more secretive than Google, and we don’t know exactly what it’s working on. But it certainly isn’t advanced as what Google has right now.
Anyway, let’s bring this back to iOS 10. The thing that disappoints me is that when I browse through a list of iOS 10 features, I can’t find anything that looks like it will change the way we use our iPhones and iPads for the better. It’s still iOS as we know it, with all the flaws and drawbacks we have today. Yes, there are some nice changes and improvements — but no, they’re not groundbreaking.
Let’s see what the readers think now. Do you think iOS 10 is exciting enough to bring new customers to the iPhone, or is this yet another update that ignores the features we’ve been calling out for for years?
Friday Night Fights is a series of weekly death matches between two no-mercy brawlers who will fight to the death — or at least agree to disagree — about which is better: Apple or Google, iOS or Android?
