The updates in iOS 17 are generally underwhelming but there’s one feature I can’t wait to have on my iPhone.
If the instant feedback on Twitter is to be believed, Apple’s 2023 iPhone software update is going to be pretty underwhelming.
Actually, I watched software boss Craig Federighi outline the new features along with these keyboard warriors and I’m inclined to agree with them. Sure, there may be a few nifty quality-of-life updates such as NameDrop, but this and other new features – such as Check In – are surely useful only if you and the other person own iPhones.
Since the demise of business cards, the world has needed a digital equivalent. Namedrop does exactly this, sharing your contact details – and your new avatar background – with a stranger when you hover one iPhone over another.
That’s not going to work if the other person has an Android phone, though, and neither is Check In, which looks to be exclusive to iMessage and therefore useless if you need to send notifications of when you arrive (or fail to arrive) at an expected destination.
Cross-platform apps can already do a lot of what’s coming in iOS 17, if not quite as elegantly, and other updates such as being able to say “Siri” instead of “Hey Siri” and auto-collated photo albums of your pets fall under the category of features that you wrongly assumed were already in iOS but, in fact, weren’t.
