iOS 18 is finally here and it looks like the leaks and rumors were true because this is one of the biggest iPhone software updates we've seen in a long long time anyone remember iOS 7 it seems like apple went all out this year for the new iOS we've got new features we've got new customization options we've got of course the AI magic inside let me break down all the big new features everything you need to know and also let me tell you how to get ios 18 on your iPhone right now totally for free yes this is legit let me show you how to do it so just like the opening intro to this year's event Apple was flying through a lot of sort of the what we expected to be bigger iOS 18 updates and most of these things are pretty good so let me give you the highlights of the big stuff and the features you're probably going to actually care about one of the big rumors that has been confirmed is that apple is focusing heavily this year on customization lots of new areas here for customization all over the iPhone for example your home screen you now can get this move app uh icons anywhere around the screen you'd like that's super cool there's also a new dark mode setting that's going to turn all the apps dark as well as you're able to sort of pop into an additional settings menu and add sort of a colored tint to your icons as well sort of going back to like the days of like icon packs almost if you want everything to have a similar theme you can now do that in iOS 18 control center is also getting a pretty nice revamp seems to be a little bit more Vision oses here a little bit of a refined design buttons seem a little bit smaller and like the home screen way more customization here you now have the ability to sort of swipe through some different things you want to control uh thirdparty apps can now add their own little short cuts here in the control center and get this it only took how many years you can now swap out the default icons for flashlight and camera on the lock screen and change them to something else Apple's also doubling down on privacy and iOS 18 you now have the ability to lock certain apps behind face ID Touch ID or passcode authentication if you don't want anyone getting into a particular app or you have the ability to even hide an app altogether so it doesn't show up anywhere on your home screen but only sort of in a secure folder that you yourself have to unlock messages also getting some nice updates here you have the ability to tap back with any Emoji you want which is sort of cool there's some new text effects and another feature coming late but better late than ever is the ability schedule send a message which is really cool also satellite message support uh not sure if this is for emergency purposes or not but it is here for SMS or iMessage uh via the SOS satellite mode on iPhone 14 or newer you've got some refinements to the mail app to the maps app to the wallet app and the photos app got its biggest redesign ever according to Apple again looks more refined Apple's using some intelligence here to give you some better suggestions you can better categorize things and I love that Apple doesn't mention this but at the the very end with sort of like the uh one slide of everything that they've got in iOS 18 RCS support is there so yes RCS support will be in iOS 18 so you've got some better messaging support with your Android friends okay so all that is great but what about all those rumors about Ai and apple harnessing this special collaboration with different companies what happened with that well Apple saved that to the end they introduced their own version of AI which is not artificial intelligence but as the rumor suggests in Apple's own way they call it Apple intelligence which is sort of this new AI framework AI system that works across all of the new os's so iPad OS iOS 18 Mac OS and basically they used a lot of words but here's what it comes down to it's basically an overhaul of AI across Apple devices and they're doing it in a way that is personal so it understands you and sort of your friends and family in context but also it's private way more safe and secure than other long long large language models online which also can be very long um and Apple's going to do this with by uh kind of a combination of special silicon cloud computing with apple silicon and also a lot of stuff done on device as well so Apple's going to intelligently move that stuff around and of course keeping everything fluid safe secure and private so you're not handing your information over to some random web server online fine okay so Apple used a lot of words to describe this and a lot of different terms but what does this actually mean and how does it work well let me use Siri as an example here uh even Apple admitted this is a new era for Siri this is a major overhaul and Siri is getting a total redesign not just with the icon and the interface and now sort of glows around the display but also it's like harnessing the power of modern AI tools so you can naturally talk to it it's contextually aware and again it personally knows you and it knows your contact and files and stuff like that so you can say hey pull up that podcast my mom recommended to me or pull up photos and me and this person at Apple park with that shirt basically it's way more basically intelligent as the name would suggest and able to do way more things not just feed you answers but also like do things within apps as well and to be clear this is a little hard to describe Apple intelligence is sort of an overarching term for different AI things across multiple Apple devices so it's not just a new Siri but it's a way smarter Siri that can do way more things powered by this new Apple intelligence which can do many different things across all your different Apple devices for example if you want help generating text or refining uh maybe a Word document or summarizing things those typical things you do with AI of course that's going to be built in here as well you can use this system to generate images and different Apple apps and even thirdparty apps can utilize Apple intelligence in interesting ways as well so you can get better context within the mail app for example also your notifications sort of the system is going to know what to prioritize who's more important to you what to show you it's some really really interesting and quite frankly according to the demos they are pretty compelling use cases here that maybe suggests and I'm going to say maybe here because I haven't tried this that Apple being super late to the game on this might not have been a bad thing because if the demos are true to life and all of this apple intelligence works as the demo suggests they do they can pull this off this could be a really big deal and really can change the way we use our iPhones iPads Macs Vision pros this could be a really big deal if Apple can pull this off but as of now got to admit I was skeptical but it does look promising also finally chat GPT support built in a Siri making Siri way better that's cool and that's very very welcome to see finally looks like Siri is kind of good now as a exciting as iOS 18 is there still were some missing components to the WWDC keynote some things Apple didn't tell us and what we didn't get for example there was no Hardware announcements we didn't get any new Macs no new Apple silicon announcements uh no new Mac Studio or Mac Pro last year we got new Macbook airs and a Mac Pro this year that was not the case um we should be getting some harder announcements later on this year we're still expecting new airpods of course new iPhones Apple watches maybe a new Mac or two before the end of the year uh but there was no Hardware this year and also I'm super curious given all these new iOS 18 features what is Apple going to do exclusively for the iPhone 16 lineup because we had heard that Apple might be reserving some more special features or some other AI powered features just for the iPhone 16 lineup and I'm curious now having seen iOS 18 what exactly those are going to be maybe it's some new camera feature maybe it's I don't really know I'm curious if you got thoughts let me know down below but I'm curious how this might change the iPhone 16 story and how all these new iOS 18 features are going to influence the iPhone 16 and especially the all new iPhone 16 Pros uh when they launch later on this fall and having said that yes you can actually get ios 18 on your iPhone right now assuming your model is supported I'll leave a link down below to where you can check all that but I should give you a word of warning um this is going to be a developer beta this is intended for people making apps and testing features and digging in apis if you don't want to experience poor battery life on your phone and bugs and apps not working and crashes do not do this let me say that again if you don't want an unstable iPhone do not do this we've seen many different bugs and issues in the past and according to Mark Gman over at Bloomberg uh this iosa beta 1 is supposed to be particularly buggy so just take that as your word of warning I also should mention that if you do want to sort of play around with these features but you want to wait for something a bit more stable that's going to be the public beta that's going to be available later on this summer where it's usually a stage or two behind the developer beta but it's much more stable and let you sort of play around with it and do all of your uh fun testing uh but not be living on the complete bleeding edge but if you don't care about that warning and you want to do that all you've got to do to get ios 18 right now is head to Apple's developer website it might not be right up when you watch this video depending on how fast or slow apple is but just check it out uh today and what Apple did last year was they actually opened up their developer iOS beta access for free this used to be a $99 per year subscription but starting last year it should still be free this year too uh so you can go to that website you can sign in with your Apple ID then Apple has got instructions for you to get all the new betas on your devices of course including iOS 18 and you can enjoy it right now though again remember there could be some issues here but if you want to get it right now I think it's developer.apple.com or just you know Google Apple developer Portal sign on in and um yeah instant access to the betas should be there assuming it's still free like last year if it's not let me know in the comments down below but should be free all right guys I'm curious what are your thoughts on iOS 18 if you've got an Android phone is this sort of swanging out over to the iPhone Apple life if you're an iPhone owner are you impressed by this do you think Apple did enough in the AI Arena to make this worthy of an update an upgrade and if you've got an older phone does this make you want to get a newer iPhone to take full advantage of all the special features let me know your thoughts in the comments down below let me know if you're going to be updating to iOS 18 right now as always I appreciate you guys watching thank you so much for your support I'm Robert Rosenfeld and I'll see you all in the next one