By Dan Moren

June 5, 2023 5:15 PM PT

The new Apple OS features I want right now

Processing the keynote is like taking in a big meal: sometimes you have to just sit back and digest. So much information flies by that it can be hard to pick out the details that are important to you, but as I compiled the list of features that didn’t make the keynote cut, I found myself thinking about all the new capabilities that would make the biggest difference to me right now.¹

A link to the past

Not mentioned in the keynote itself, but something that I’ve been looking for ever since Apple started really doubling down on the features it’s adding to Notes: the ability to link notes together.

Currently I’ve dabbled with Obsidian as a place to keep information about my novel writing, in part because the ability to interconnect my documents in a wiki-like format is absolutely critical to being able to keep track of what is basically a huge database of information.

I’m very curious to see how linking notes actually works, and whether it’s as straightforward as, say, Notes’s ability to add tags.

Hard pass

As the Six Colors Resident Passkey Enthusiast, I’m interested in any implementation details connected to the next evolution of security. And this year Apple delivered on my top feature request: the ability to share passkeys with others. Even better, it’s backwards compatible to passwords as well.

I share social media accounts for several podcast with my co-hosts, and while 1Password does make it easy to share credentials with them, not all of them use the app. But with this feature built into Apple’s platforms, it’s a much easier sell. Plus, it keeps the passwords in sync if one of us changes it.

This is also a big deal for my household, where most of the passwords to shared accounts like my streaming services are shared with my wife (and occasionally with my parents as well). Being able to easily keep that information synced between the two of us will ensure that she can log into the Apple TV if it suddenly starts asking for a password to be entered again.

Zoom zoom

There were more than a few criticisms of the Apple Studio Display’s webcam, but the company’s now addressed what might be the biggest: the previous inability to control the crop of your image. This could lead to some weird looking images, especially when using the Center Stage feature.

A shortcoming that has now been addressed! Both Apple Studio Display and Continuity Camera now offer controls to pan and zoom the image, letting you present exactly the face you want to show to the world. And users the world over have heaved a sigh of relief.

A FaceTime for television

I play in a regular Dungeons & Dragons game via Zoom, and my current setup is to extend my MacBook Air’s display to my Apple TV, and put a Split Screen of Zoom and our game board, in Chrome.

But this is annoying, because in order to get both my wife and I on camera, I have to put the Air on a footstool and drag it into place. And then we always end up with our eyes on the TV, and not looking at the camera. I’d actually tried to use my iPhone in Continuity Camera mode at one point, but it turned out that you couldn’t use both that feature and AirPlay at the same time.

So the announcement that FaceTime will now come to the Apple TV—and, more to the point, third-party apps like Zoom—will be a big improvement. I’m curious to see whether or not there will be a way to do a Split Screen so I can still put up my Chrome screen, though.

Oughta correct

My complaints about typing on my iPhone are well documented, and at long last, it seems Apple has heard the plaintive cries.

Apple promised a bunch of new improvements to typing on the iPhone, including improved predictive typing and better autocorrect. The latter is potentially a big deal, since I’ve found myself often struggling to type a coherent sentence on my iPhone, all too often ending up with words changed into other words I didn’t want, even while other seemingly obvious errors went unfixed.

This is one of those changes that, if it indeed pans out, is going to be a huge quality of life improvement. Especially if it means I can enter a web search phrase in Safari without typing ducking periods between each word.

[Dan Moren is the East Coast Bureau Chief of Six Colors. You can find him on Mastodon at @dmoren@zeppelin.flights or reach him by email at dan@sixcolors.com. His latest novel, the supernatural detective story All Souls Lost, is out now.]

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