IMHO, the most compelling reasons to install this are RCS support in Messages and the dark mode icons.
That said, I imagine 18.1 will be in public beta soon, and people will probably be more interested in that. That includes the newer Siri model, writing tools, notifications summaries, etc.
First thing I did was test out the new RCS support, and it’s pretty awesome!
What makes it awesome?
Being able to text an Android user and have things like: typing notifications, read receipts, better image support, working reactions, etc.
It’s like imesssge but with non iOS devices
Are you able to send messages from iPads and Macs to Android users now?
You’ve always been able to do that. Settings > messages > text message forwarding
Thank you. I am relatively new to having an iphone and had no idea that was available.
(Not a trolling/joking)Why Americans so tied to Apple messages and as result waiting for RCS? We, here in Europe, just use Telegram/Facebook messenger/Instagram direct for decade and only 1.5 nerds like me knows about existence of Apple iMessage. I’ve tried iMessages with my friends and then we just back to Telegram, because we have tried to convince our friends to use iMessages and nobody wants to learn how to use it and first question from everyone is: how I will write to people with android(most people here have android)?
Using metas privacy invasion apps for messaging is cringe
There's some history here:
SMS was ubiquitous in the United States long before smartphones. We didn't have country codes to worry about, so anyone else in the United States was reachable in near real time over text, using an asynchronous, open, inter-carrier method of communication. If I had your phone number I could text you for free. Layered onto that was various automated systems over text (alerts, etc.). Later on, the carriers rolled out MMS for basic pictures being sent, group texts, etc.
So when iPhones became popular here, the default method of communication was SMS/MMS. The iPhone user knew that it would work with dumb phones, Android phones, Windows phones, whatever. And those habits and those chat threads predated the rise of WhatsApp, FB Messenger, WeChat, Telegram, etc., and a lot of those apps simply didn't work with old dumb phones. Why give up an existing group chat thread just because one of those friends didn't have a smartphone yet?
Then, whenever every member of a chat had an iPhone, the system automatically defaulted to the upgraded iMessage experience: high quality media sharing, typing/delivery/read notifications, reactions, etc. It was a slow transition, and didn't start to show clear advantage over the open SMS/MMS standard until smartphones were ubiquitous, and where most people had iPhones.
And so once everyone had a "it just works" app, they didn't want to switch to an app that required everyone to get a separate account and download a separate app. Especially because the iPhone hit something like 80% market share among certain demographics (the young, the non-technical rich, etc.).
Excellent write up. I hear people ask about this all the time, why the USA defaulted towards SMS/MMS/iMessage when other parts of the world didn’t. It is not the case of now but the history of the technological development and saturation of the technology within the younger demographics that got us here naturally. We didn’t have to make a choice of which platform to migrate our friend/family groups too because we had enough of the functions we needed built into all of our phones along the last 30 years.
It doesn’t come down to what is the best platform right now, it comes down to what was the best, and easiest, platform to get all my friends and family using when my country/region/friend group/etc got smartphones. There are large swaths of the world population where their technology exposure was landline>TV>Internet cafe>smartphone. Where the beginning of their online presence was through an Internet cafe and then very soon after (within years) they had a smart phone. In that model their first interaction with instant messaging was not phone to phone but computer to computer and they used messenger/instagram/whatsapp/wechat and etc and those social networks of friends migrated with them from the Internet cafe PC as the main point of access to a Smartphone as the main point of access.
I primarily use Signal because I like my chats end-to-end encrypted. iMessage is not that bad on that front.
I avoid any Facebook-written code like the plague, including WhatsApp and Messenger. They literally have a track record of putting malware in their products. I don’t understand why Europeans aren’t bothered by this.
Apple is less evil than Facebook/Meta/etc so it’s an easy choice not to use them.
Open communication standards are always superior to proprietary lock-in that relies on the good graces of a corporation that doesn’t care about you.
I don’t usually install major Apple OS updates on launch; there seem to be major bugs often enough that I try to wait until the first bugfix release.
Okay 👍
I’ve updated on launch since iPhone was initially released. I can’t recall any time I ever had an issue with bugs; not to say others hadn’t. After seeing what this OS looks like, I will be holding out on iOS 17 (on my 12 mini) for as long as possible. Apple has gotten into the habit of breaking things that previously worked perfectly well for no apparent reason. Meanwhile, we can’t get basic things like smart folders or a decent music app. I’m really fed up with the crap this company puts out.
Same. I always wait for the first point update to hit before upgrading.
Running iOS betas on test devices is enough pain for me.
YOU STILL CAN’T MOVE THE LOCKSCREEN CLOCK. FUCK.
Is this really a major problem?
It’s literally making me consider a different operating system. If there were more options than just android I would probably unironically switch largely due to this.
^not guaranteed to be a true fact^
It might be time for you to pick up a hobby.
Unfortunately that’s the key reason why the clock position is bugging me
I checked my group chat and noticed that it only shows SMS despite the whole Android-side of the group all showing RCS in their individual chats. Is this the intended implementation?
I’m guessing that the iPhones in the group also need to be upgraded to iOS 18 for it to work correctly.
Everyone has to be RCS.
Dang it. I’m pretty sure my aunt is using an iPhone 8. Fingers crossed she upgrades this year!
Tbf, there might be people like myself who refuse to use Google messages too and since there is no Oss way to use RCS, kinda stuck.
Wish the standard was open.
Kinda breaks the purpose of the S in RCS
Services?
I thought the S stood for Standard 💀
I thought it stands for Sucks
I seem to remember vaguely that iOS 18 was supposed to have a feature but was left out in the end. I do not mean the AI stuff, there was some other major part. Something like handoff but not handoff. I completely forgot what it was and searched online but searching without knowing what to search is a...challenge :-)
Anybody here have any clue what it was or am I imagining things?
Ah! Found it!
iPhone Mirroring
That was the one. Sadly, not available in the EU for now :-(
Yeah and I can't get my head around why it won't be available here in the EU. This is so fucking stupid! Like how is the DMA or any other legislation supposed to prevent them from implementing iPhone mirroring? They literally offer every other continuity-related feature over here. This is just Apple being upset they're actually being regulated in the EU.
I honestly think it’s just because their lawyers work through other stuff first. They’ll get to it eventually
I tried it out today! Works decently with most apps, but lags a bit with others. I’ve run into one app that doesn’t scroll vertically, but hopefully that is an easy fix on the developer’s part.
Guys, what do you think about the Home Screen personalization tint? Do you like the new control center?
I’d like to hear y’all!
The tint sucks because it tints the widgets too. I use the dark icons. The new control center is like a bootleg chinese phone. I would expect better keyboard language understanding and more fluid gestures for ease of use (still struggling with opening control center after using Samsung’s one hand operation)
Lmao, the part about the control center feeling like from a bootleg phone made my day. I felt like something was off the whole time but couldn't tell what was bothering me
Do you like the new control center?
I love the ability to launch OmniFocus Quick Entry from control centre. Had that for Todoist on Android and couldn't believe this wasn't possible to do at all when I switched.
I’ve been running the beta and have no issues with 1:1 chats. But the group chat (3 people) I tried didn’t switch to RCS until the other iPhone user sent a message.
Does the other iOS user have 18? I'm the 1 android user in a 3 person group chat and I'm wondering if I should try to get one of them to update.
Everyone needs iOS 18.
to the largest Apple community on Lemmy. This is the place where we talk about everything Apple, from iOS to the exciting upcoming Apple Vision Pro. Feel free to join the discussion!
Apple Hardware
Apple TV
Apple Watch
iPad
iPhone
Mac
Vintage Apple
Apple Software
iOS
iPadOS
macOS
tvOS
watchOS
Shortcuts
Xcode
Community banner courtesy of u/Antsomnia.