Hands on with all the new features in iOS 17.1

“For devices with Dynamic Island, if you turn the flashlight on, a flashlight icon will appear. Now, you won't feel silly with the flashlight on while you're using the phone. If the flashlight is on, you can also turn it off from the Dynamic Island. No need to swipe into Control Center.”

Kind of weird that Apple could think that you would never want to use the Action button without taking the phone out of your pocket. For some things, sure, but for silencing your phone, the mute switch was already better but now even more so.

The linked accounts to Wallet is smoothly implemented. Linking is very smooth if you have the card's bank app installed; otherwise it just loads the banks website. Adding more than one card from the same bank also works (you have to select both at the same time in the bank's app).

Here's an initial screen (below). One thing it doesn't seem to have (and needs IMO) is a FaceID check option before revealing all your transactions and balances in Wallet or in Settings->Wallet!

Works on Barclaycard, First Direct, Halifax, but not offered for MBNA (odd as Halifax and MBNA are administered by RBOS).

Maybe it’s just me, but over the past few years it seems like Apple announces several potentially interesting new features that will be introduced with the next version of the operating system, be it iOS, iPadOS, or macOS. During the presentation they quietly add a caveat that the feature is “coming soon’ or slap on an asterisk or some other designator to indicate that a feature won’t be included in the initial release or will be limited to certain products. In any case, by the end of the announcement you’re still pretty excited about all of the cool new stuff coming with the next release.

Fast forward several weeks and a slew of betas and finally the new OS finally hits your Software Update queue. You download the update, start using it and trying out all the new features in the release and you’re surprised that your actual experience doesn’t quite match how you felt when you first saw the flashy presentation back in June. There’s something missing. Yeah, you were warned, but now the reality of the delayed features hits home. There’s not as many jelly beans in the package as your brain envisioned you’d be getting with the new release.

Over the next weeks and months the promised features usually start appearing in point releases, along with bug fixes and security updates. By then, if you’re like me, these lagging feature rollouts kind of get lost in the sauce and you may have even forgotten about them to the point of not really knowing if you ever received everything that you thought the new OS would deliver. This is especially true if you quickly jump on every security update that Apple pushes out, which seems to occur every few weeks or even more often. On top of that, some of the highly touted and flashy new but delayed features that slither out with one of these frequent updates don’t always live up to the hype, for example, Stage Manager which is basically useless to the point of being annoying, especially if you manage your multi monitor manually or with third party tools. In the end you don’t know whether Apple underdelivered or you over-anticipated what the feature would give you, It’s probably a combination of both.

I would even go to the point of saying that the feature trickle-out model results in a situation where a substantial number of users wouldn’t even notice if a promised feature never showed up. What was promised in June fades into the fog cloud that comes with each new update that does not include the promised feature. If you’re not keeping track, not keeping score, or not being reminded by AppleInsider, it kind of disappears.

dewme said:

Maybe it’s just me, but over the past few years it seems like Apple announces several potentially interesting new features that will be introduced with the next version of the operating system, be it iOS, iPadOS, or macOS. During the presentation they quietly add a caveat that the feature is “coming soon’ or slap on an asterisk or some other designator to indicate that a feature won’t be included in the initial release or will be limited to certain products. In any case, by the end of the announcement you’re still pretty excited about all of the cool new stuff coming with the next release.

Fast forward several weeks and a slew of betas and finally the new OS finally hits your Software Update queue. You download the update, start using it and trying out all the new features in the release and you’re surprised that your actual experience doesn’t quite match how you felt when you first saw the flashy presentation back in June. There’s something missing. Yeah, you were warned, but now the reality of the delayed features hits home. There’s not as many jelly beans in the package as your brain envisioned you’d be getting with the new release.

Over the next weeks and months the promised features usually start appearing in point releases, along with bug fixes and security updates. By then, if you’re like me, these lagging feature rollouts kind of get lost in the sauce and you may have even forgotten about them to the point of not really knowing if you ever received everything that you thought the new OS would deliver. This is especially true if you quickly jump on every security update that Apple pushes out, which seems to occur every few weeks or even more often. On top of that, some of the highly touted and flashy new but delayed features that slither out with one of these frequent updates don’t always live up to the hype, for example, Stage Manager which is basically useless to the point of being annoying, especially if you manage your multi monitor manually or with third party tools. In the end you don’t know whether Apple underdelivered or you over-anticipated what the feature would give you, It’s probably a combination of both.

I would even go to the point of saying that the feature trickle-out model results in a situation where a substantial number of users wouldn’t even notice if a promised feature never showed up. What was promised in June fades into the fog cloud that comes with each new update that does not include the promised feature. If you’re not keeping track, not keeping score, or not being reminded by AppleInsider, it kind of disappears.

Yup, shame Christmas doesn't come as billed in one big binge. But I guess it's easier from a software release cycle point of view, focusing on new features gradually throughout the year. Might mean it's more reliable too, with fewer gotcha bugs.