As is tradition, Apple will leave some of its older devices in the dust when it starts rolling out its latest operating systems. When iOS 16 arrives this fall, it will be available for iPhone 8 and later — in other words, all the phones Apple has released since 2017. That means iPhone 6S, iPhone 7 and iPhone SE (first-generation) users won't be able to upgrade to iOS 16.
When it comes to iPadOS 16, Apple will drop support for a couple devices, the iPad Mini 4 and iPad Air 2. Given that the Mini 4 debuted in 2015 and the Air 2 is from all the way back in 2014, it's safe to say those are showing their age. If anything, it's a testament to their staying power that Apple supported them all the way up to iPadOS 15.
You'll need an Apple Watch Series 4 or later to use watchOS 9. Apple Watch Series 3 users were able to install watchOS 7 and watchOS 8, but some features weren't available.
Things get a little more complicated when it comes to macOS Ventura. The following devices will be supported:
iMac, 2017 and later
Mac Pro, 2019 and later
iMac Pro, 2017
Mac mini, 2018 and later
MacBook Air, 2018 and later
MacBook, 2017 and later
MacBook Pro, 2017 and later
By way of comparison, macOS Monterey is compatible with late 2015 or later iMac, 2017 or later iMac Pro, early 2015 or later MacBook Air, early 2015 or later MacBook Pro, 2013 or later Mac Pro, late 2014 or later Mac mini and early 2016 or later MacBook.
It's always sad to see Apple bid older devices adieu, even though all of the models it will no longer support were all released at least five years ago — the iPad Air 2 and 2013 Mac Pro in particular had a good innings. While folks will still be able to use older models, Apple will surely be hoping that those clinging onto them will upgrade in the near future.
Apple packed a lot into its annual developer's conference keynote. On the WWDC stage, company execs touted the latest improvements coming to iOS 16 and iPadOS 16 in the fall, plus forthcoming enhancements to macOS, watchOS and others. Apple also announced new hardware at the keynote this year: a new MacBook Air and MacBook Pro powered by the new M2 processor. Here are the biggest announcement to come out of WWDC 2022.
iOS 16
Apple
The next iteration of the iPhone's operating system will include new intelligence, sharing and communication features, plus new ways to customize your smartphone. Key among the latter is the completely designed Lock Screen, which lets you personalize most elements you'll see before unlocking your iPhone. You'll be able to tap on any element of your Lock Screen and customize it, changing the color and font of the time, adding widgets from the widget gallery and changing the backdrop with filters. If you prefer to have a photo as your Lock Screen backdrop, you'll be able to now set a "photo shuffle" as your background, which will cycle through multiple photos throughout the day.
Also coming to the Lock Screen are Live Activities, which are essentially widgets that will update in real time as events happen. They'll let you better keep track of things like sports games that are going on right now, Uber rides, workouts and more. The new Lock Screen will also better support different Focus modes, allowing you to customize which alerts and notifications you receive on your Lock Screen when you're in a particular Focus mode. So, for example, you'll be able to make a work-specific Lock Screen that will accompany your Work Focus mode.
iOS 16 will also bring some highly anticipated updates to Messages, namely message editing, undo send and mark as unread. You'll be able to edit sent messages so you can get rid of any typos, undo messages you just sent and mark Message threads unread, in case you want to go back to them with fresh eyes. Apple's also extending SharePlay's abilities into Messages, allowing you to share things like videos and watch them with friends while sending messages back and forth.
Apple
iPhone users will also have access to a new feature dubbed Apple Pay Later in iOS 16. This splits purchases into four equal payments and spreads them out over many weeks, with zero interest and fees applied. That should make it easier to pay for big purchases over time, and it'll accompany the new Order Tracking feature, which will let you monitor where you're shipments are before they actually arrive at your doorstep.
Apple has a number of Family sharing updates planned for iOS 16, including easier ways for parents to manage their kids accounts and devices. The new Quick Start setup process will let parents more easily set up a new Apple device for their child with all the necessary parental controls and restrictions in place. A more general new feature coming to Family Sharing involves Photos — within your family, you'll be able to have a dedicated iCloud Shared Photo Library, a separate space into which you can share specific photos that you want everyone in your family to see. The Photos app will even give you sharing suggestions based on who's in the photo and other factors, allowing you to more easily pick and choose which images you want everyone to be able to access.
There are a bunch of other updates coming to Wallet, HomeKit, CarPlay and more, but the other new feature in iOS 16 that we wanted to touch upon here is Safety Check. It's a new privacy feature that will let you review and reset access you've granted to others. In case you ever need to remove someone's access, you'll be able to use Safety Check to do things like stop location sharing via Find My and reset permissions you previously granted for certain apps.
MacBook Air M2, 13-inch MacBook Pro M2
Apple
Uncharacteristic for WWDC, Apple unveiled a new piece of hardware at today's keynote: the new MacBook Air M2. As the name suggests, the laptop runs on the company's updated M2 chipset, which Apple promises to provide up to 18 percent faster CPU performance and 35 percent faster GPU performance than M1 chipsets. The new MacBook Air also has a totally new design — gone is the wedge shape from the previous model, as it's been replaced by a more squared-off design that remains quite svelte at 11.3mm thick and only 2.7 pounds.
The MacBook Air M1 will sport a 13.6-inch Liquid Retina display that's 25 percent brighter than the screen on the previous model and has support for one billion colors. It also has a 1080p webcam, a four-speaker sound system, a TouchID keyboard with a full Function row and a fanless interior design. Unfortunately, there are still only two Thunderbolt ports on this machine, but Apple did bring back MagSafe charging with a dedicated power port, so at least you will not tie up one of the two Thunderbolt ports with a charging cable. As for battery life, Apple estimates up to 18 hours of video playback on the MacBook Air M2. The new laptop will be available next month starting at $1,199.
The M2 chipset will also hit the 13-inch MacBook Pro soon, providing a similar performance boost to another one of the company's most popular laptops. The MacBook Pro M2 will have an 8-core CPU and a 10-core GPU, support for up to 24GB of RAM and up to 2TB of storage, plus a battery life of up to 20 hours. The updated 13-inch MacBook Pro M2 will also be available next month and it starts at $1,299.
macOS Ventura
Apple
The upcoming version of macOS, dubbed Ventura, will bring a handful of new organization and collaboration features to Macs. Stage Manager presents a new way to organize app windows on desktop, automatically putting the app you're currently working in front and center. Other active apps will be highlighted in a separate side dock into which you can drag and drop files to share, copy/paste and more.
Mail will get similar updates to Messages in iOS 16, like rescind send, schedule send and reminders to come back to emails at a later time. Elsewhere in Safari, it'll be easier to share multiple tabs with friends and family, and collaborate with them in real time. For example, if you're planning a camping trip with many people, you can share multiple tabs with camping gear, locations, information and more with your group, see which tabs they're actively looking at and more.
New Handoff and Continuity features are coming to FaceTime on macOS, too. For the former, you'll be able to hand off a FaceTime call you started on your iPhone to your Mac seamlessly, allowing you to use a larger screen when you need it. The new Continuity Camera feature present an interesting way for you to use your iPhone as a webcam. Using in-development magnetic stands, you'll be able to attach your iPhone to your Mac's screen and use its camera array as your webcam for FaceTime, Zoom, Microsoft Team and other video calls. Also, this process is completely wireless, so you won't have to worry about hogging one of your computer's ports for this like you would a standard external webcam.
Also worth noting here are Apple's new passkeys, or digital keys securely stored on your device. Designed to replace passwords, these unique passkeys aren't stored in the cloud, which Apple claims makes them much less susceptible to phishing and theft attempts. Passkeys will integrate with TouchID and FaceID on Apple devices for biometric authentication, and they can be synced with other Apple devices via iCloud Keychain.
iPadOS 16
Apple
Many of the new features that will hit iPadOS 16 are those we've discussed from iOS 16 and macOS Venture. But iPads will also gain things like new collaboration perks, updated Game Center profiles and sharing capabilities and its own version of macOS' Stage Manager feature. The latter is arguably the most interesting new feature as it pushes helps push the iPad further into the desktop-alternative realm. Stage Manager on iPad will let users resize app windows for the first time and overlap app windows as well, making them more similar to browser and program windows you'd use on desktop. Add in full external display support and the iPad inches even closer to being a true laptop-replacement device.
watchOS 9
Apple
Apple Watches will gain a number of handy new exercise features in watchOS 9. Most of these are confined to the Workout app, where you'll be able to keep track of heart rate zones while exercising and even set goals based on the heart rate zone you want to stay. Runners will appreciate the new trackable metrics available in the Workout app, including vertical oscillation, stride length and ground contact time. When you're tracking a run, you'll be able to see more on your Watch's screen by using the Digital Crown to scroll through various screens with different data recorded on them. Apple will also add a Custom Workout feature to the app, which lets users create exercise routines with specific goals that they can go back to on certain training days.
Sleep tracking on Apple Watch will also get better in watchOS 9 thanks to the addition of sleep stages. The Watch will now be able to monitor when you're in REM, core and deep sleep, recording the amount of time you spend in each phase, as well as the amount of time you spend awake each night.
Finally in the health and fitness realm, Apple's new Medications app will make it easier for Watch users to track the medications, vitamins and supplements they take and how often they take them. It has a reminders feature, which will use the audio and haptic alerts on the Watch to ping you when you need to take one of our medications throughout the day.
You won't have to wait ages to try Apple's major software updates this year. Apple has confirmed that public betas of iOS 16, iPadOS 16, macOS Ventura and watchOS 9 will be available in July through the company's testing website. Developers already have access, but this is welcome news if you're eager to try new features on a personal device.
Each update has at least one clear draw. iOS 16 offers a much-improved lock screen with widgets and a customizable look. You can also expect major improvements to Messages, Wallet, Home and CarPlay. iPadOS 16, meanwhile, finally adds overlapping windows and proper external monitor support. Use macOS Ventura and you'll find improvements to multitasking, Spotlight searches and core apps, while watchOS 9 delivers big updates to fitness tracking, faces and notifications.
Like any beta, you'll want to be cautious about installing the public test releases. You'll likely encounter bugs and incompatible apps. These are for risk-aware early adopters, or at least those enthusiasts who can afford to install a beta on a secondary device. You'll want to wait for the polished versions if you absolutely need stable software.
Apple is getting more serious about gaming on Mac and iPad with the help of its silicon chips. At WWDC, the company showed off upscaling tech along the lines of NVIDIA's Deep Learning Super Sampling and AMD's FidelityFX Super Resolution.
Metal 3 will include support for MetalFX Upscaling. Your Mac will render smaller frames that are less compute-intensive. MetalFX will upscale the visuals and apply temporal anti-aliasing. The idea is to deliver better and more efficient gaming performance with higher framerates than might be possible from pure hardware-driven rendering.
Apple
Resident Evil Village will utilize the tech when that game comes to Mac. Capcom says the game will run at 1080p "effortlessly" on MacBook Air and at 4K on Mac Studio. No Man's Sky will also use MetalFX upscaling when it arrives on Mac and iPad later this year. Grid Legendsis on the way to Mac as well.
Apple also announced a fast resource loading API that's designed to minimize loading time, akin to Microsoft's DirectStorage tech. It works by routing directing game data more directly from storage to the CPU. Apple says this will enable games to "easily access high-quality textures and geometry needed to create expansive worlds for realistic and immersive gameplay."
While Apple historically hasn't done a great job with supporting games (there's no native iOS app support for Stadia and Xbox Cloud Gaming for one thing), the introduction of MetalFX upscaling is a positive move. Getting big-name studios and publishers such as Capcom, EA and Hello Games on board could help turn the tide for Mac as a viable option for gamers. However, broader support for Steam games would be a bigger step in the right direction.
As part of the company's ongoing efforts to improve user security, at WWDC 2022 Apple announced new digital passkeys that add an extra layer of security to your passwords.
Available on both iOS and macOS, Apple's passkeys are designed to replace standard passwords by providing unique digital keys that are stashed locally on your device. Apple says that by not storing passkeys in the cloud, they are much less susceptible to being stolen in the case of a data breach or phishing attempt.
Passkeys will feature integration with biometric security including Touch ID and Face ID, and can be synced to other Apple devices via your iCloud Keychain. They will also work with apps and on the web, allowing users to sign into their accounts using their iPhone instead of their password.
The arrival of passkeys comes after Apple, alongside Google and Microsoft, announced a partnership with the FIDO Alliance and the WWDC earlier this spring. Apple's passkeys look to be the company's attempt to simplify and streamline the use of passwordless sign-on methods and will feature end-to-end encryption and compatibility with a wide range of Apple devices including the iPhone, iPad, Mac and Apple TV when it arrives sometime later this year.
Apple is working on a new whiteboard-style app to enable people to collaborate in real-time. Called "Freeform," the app allow groups to work together via FaceTime. Freeform will be available on iPadsOS 16 "later this year," and will also be available on macOS and iOS.
iPhone users are walking around with great cameras in their pockets, so why not use that with their Macs? That's the basic idea behind Continuity Camera, a new feature that'll let you plop on iPhone on top of your Mac, and use those mobile cameras to power video chats in FaceTime, Teams and any other conferencing app. While cool, the feature is a bit clunkier than typical Apple offerings, since it requires a phone stand. It's also a slight admission from Apple that its laptop and desktop webcams aren't the best around. (That's something we noticed with the pricey Studio Display.)
The entire Continuity Camera setup works wirelessly, and it also brings over features like Center Stage, which helps the camera follow you around the room. It can also tap into your phone's ultrawide camera to show a top-down view of your desk. Mostly, though, it's a nice way to get better background blur and lighting effects for all of your video chats. The only problem? You won't be able to surreptitiously use your phone while you're stuck in a work meeting.
If you're an iPad user who always wished your tablet could do more, Apple has you in mind this year. At WWDC, the company just unveiled iPadOS 16, the annual update to the company's iPad software. Naturally, many of the new iOS 16 features are coming here as well, including big updates to Mail, Safari, Messages and more. Oh, and 12 years after the first iPad was released, Apple is finally bringing the Weather app to iPadOS.
For the first time, iPadOS will allow you to have overlapping windows for the first time, through a multitasking interface called Stage Manager that Apple is also bringing to the Mac this year. That said, some of these features will only be available on iPads with the M1 processor. When you use stage manager, you can resize windows, so you can easily tuck away other apps behind the main window. There's also a few on the left side of the display that shows all your most recent apps. Based on the demo we saw during the keynote, windows dynamically resize and adjust their content view based on how big you make them.
The iPad also supports external displays for the first time, as well. Instead of just mirroring your iPad display, it fully extends your iPad experience to the second screen. You can have up to four distinct apps open on each screen at once, so an external display would let you have windows for eight different apps open at once. This is a massive change for iPadOS multitasking, something that people have requested for literally years now.
One big new feature is called Collaboration; when you share a document from an app like Pages, you can immediately make it sometime that everyone can work on simultaneously. Before, sharing would just send a copy, but now you can share a document through the Messages app and everyone you send it to can start editing it. You can also jump right into a FaceTime call directly from the document, as well. Naturally, this will work first with Apple apps, but Apple is releasing a third-party collaboration API as well. Other examples of Collaboration that Apple showed off is sharing a tab group from Safari, and it'll work in Notes as well.
Another collaboration-related feature that Apple has just announced is called Freeform. You can jump into a board from a FaceTime group call and it basically creates a shared notes document that you can type, draw or paste other content into. This feature will be coming to iOS and macOS, as well.
Game Center will also get some SharePlay features, but they're coming later this year. When they do come out, you'll be able to play multi-player games while keeping a FaceTime call going, for example.
This comes a year after iPadOS 15 added some major new multitasking features that made it a lot easier to access different apps in the iPad's traditional split-view setup. That update also included the handy Quick Notes feature, a controversial Safari rdesign that was eventually rolled back, major updates to the Home Screen experience through a new set of widgets and the expected handful of other smaller changes.
Ventura, the next version of Apple's Mac operating system, will make it easier for you to keep track of all your disparate apps and windows. New to macOS 13 is Stage Manager, a feature that will group all your windows to the side of your desktop, organizing them by app. Whenever you switch between programs, Ventura will move the app and its accompanying windows to the center of your screen. Think of a Stage Manager as a dock for your currently open apps.
You won't need an Apple Watch to access the company's Fitness app anymore. With iOS 16, Apple is bringing the software to iPhone, the company announced during WWDC 2022. Like its watchOS counterpart, the app will allow you to set daily activity goals, with a "Move ring" there to motivate you to stay active throughout the day. Your iPhone will use its sensors to track your steps and workouts and then convert that information into an estimation of the calories you've burned. At any time, you can share your Move ring with friends and family to push them to achieve their activity goals too.
