What's New in iOS 17.4? Default Browsers, Cloud Gaming, and Enhanced Security!

The company also published guidelines and tools required for developers to help them

distribute this. In the EU, opening Safari on 17.4 will provide users with a new screen where they can pick

their default browser. The options include Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Opera, and Brave

Once set as default, iOS will also use that browser and its rendering engine across all

system apps. That's another EU change there. Dude, that's a huge update

That is a huge update that people have been wanting for a long time

To comply with the new EU mandates, it will allow third-party app developers and banks

to use the iPhone's NFC chip for tap-to-pay. Apple will allow cloud-based game streaming apps like NVIDIA's GeForce Now and Xbox Cloud

Gaming on the App Store. You won't have to use the sort of hacky solution where you go through it for a web browser anymore

The first beta of 17.4 adds several new emojis, including a phoenix emoji, a lime slice

a brown mushroom, a broken link, and smiley faces shaking their heads up and down, and

several more there. Apple is expanding SharePlay support to the HomePod and Apple TV with iOS 17.4

This will allow your friends and family members to control media playback on your HomePod

and Apple TV after you've given them the requisite permission. Apple is enhancing stolen device protection

Right now in iOS 17.3, the security delay of one hour, which triggers when somebody

steals your device and they get your passcode to try to change your Apple ID stuff so you're

locked out of your iCloud account and they can't put your phone in lost mode or anything

that security feature currently only triggers when you're away from familiar locations like

home and work. If you're in a situation where work is in a bar or a nightclub or if you don't feel

safe at home, those exceptions can still provide some security holes. But iOS 17.4 adds an always setting

So no matter what, if you try to change your iCloud password from your phone, it'll require

a face ID scan, making it more secure. That's super useful. But here's the biggest one that you were alluding to

Audio generated transcripts in Apple podcasts. This is basically like the live lyrics you get in music, except for the podcast you're

listening to. So if you're playing this very podcast in the Apple Podcasts app, you can turn on the

transcription right now and see the words that I'm about to say before I even say them

So it'll automatically generate transcripts in an oncoming update, and it applies to a

variety of languages, not just English. So if I were to suddenly begin speaking in Italian, you'd see that too

That would be amazing. If you just suddenly started speaking in Italian. I would be so impressed if you did that

Is that possible? It would be great if iOS 17.4 could do that for me

Oh dude, your camera got all wacky again. Look at this. This show, it's falling off the tracks all episode long

So look, we got Louis sitting there frozen in time, which I could fix quite easily, but

I don't think I'm going to. For some reason, it just left his camera image on

And now it's zooming in on nothing but your forehead. So that's a lot of fun

I could fix that, but I'd have to switch to a view and show everyone the sausage. And sometimes I get complaints about that

So let's see if we can just go back and forth and see if it fixes it

So I was playing around with this feature last night. And I was like, dude, this is something that I didn't even know that I needed

And I'm talking about the auto-generated transcripts in Apple Podcasts. So you press play on a podcast, and now there's a new button that you can use to show the

actual written text from the podcast, which is huge. If you want to just read it

But it's also groundbreaking when you're trying to find where in a podcast they said something

because there's a search box. And you can just type in what you're trying to find, like a blurb of what they said

And it will take you right to that point in the podcast. And you tap the text, and it will immediately start playing from that point in the podcast

Dude, it is... This is one of the best features that's come to a podcast app, I think, perhaps in the

history of the show. And for me, personally, it's super useful because when we do sponsor spots, I have to show..

I have to give them an indication of where in the show those spots have taken place

Before, I had to fast forward and rewind and figure out exactly where it happened

And now I can just open up the text and search for the sponsor name

It's like, boom, it takes me right to it. So it's a huge time savings for me. But if you've ever been in a position where you're trying to find something within a podcast

that was said, this is going to make your life way easier

Or if you're like, hey, which CultCast episode was it where Erfan was talking about his rabbit

with syphilis? You can just search for it. Oh yeah, that's going to be a big one. You'll be able to find, oh, it was episode 632

That's going to be a big one for sure. I definitely want to revisit that. We kind of breezed over some of the other stuff

Gurren's saying that you like Frozen Louis. I do too, actually. Look how warm and happy he looks

He's giving you that, I'm just a pleased grandfather look, looking down on us as we do this show

I don't know why it did that this time. The face of a man about to leave the CultCast

That's what it is. It's exit face. That's what we call it

Let me see here. Let me go back to the story. I just want to take a look at some of these other features

We'll go back to some of the emotes because I didn't show these earlier

I always love emojis. I call them emotes, emojis. I love getting new ones

They added a bunch of really cool ones here. Let me see

There was something else I was going to say. Only about the browser engine stuff

That might seem like a small thing, but forever, all the browsers on iOS were the same

There was really no reason to use Chrome over Safari. Apple has finally opened that up so that people could use different browser engines

There will actually be differences now between browsers. If you go use Opera or Chrome or whatever, Google is now going to have the opportunity

to actually make their browser better, which they couldn't really do before because they

had to use WebKit, which is what Apple uses. It's like they're all different browsers, but they're kind of all the same browser because

they all operated in the same way. I don't really know if opening up Tap2Pay for third parties is going to make a real

world difference in our life because I imagine that most people just use Apple Pay anyway

I know that alternate payment systems are pretty popular in the EU

This is going to be a feature that's more important to them. Of course, I know you mentioned cloud streaming

We talked about this before, but I can't overemphasize how groundbreaking this is going to be

If you have a subscription to Xbox Game Pass or something, you'll now be able to actually

stream those games to your iPhone and to your iPad, which you couldn't do before

Microsoft was trying to bring that technology to iOS and Apple wouldn't let them

Maybe even Steam. Maybe you'll be able to stream your Steam games to your iPad, which currently you can't

do and is a huge pain in the butt to have a Steam PC and stream that content anywhere

else except for a monitor plugged in via HDMI or something. I know because I recently went through all this trying to figure out how to do that

Ultimately, what I decided on was just moving a TV into the Cult Command Center so that

I could stream stuff to the Cult Commander, which is right over here

I would love to be able to do things. I would love to be able to stream games to my iOS devices

This opens up that opportunity, which would be really cool and is a really cool opportunity

for gamers. I think I sufficiently flogged that horse. I think we're running out of stories here, except for..

Let's just skip this iPhone 16 story. This was Louis's. We're almost running out of time

We could maybe work this in next week. But Ming-Chi Kuo was essentially saying that the iPhone 16 isn't going to be changing that

much from a design perspective, which I think we all expected. I think internally, that will probably not be the case

But new design language, they're going to hold on to this design language for probably

at least three years. We all expected that. I think that's probably the bulk of the story there