Thursday, June 15, 2023

Talking Tech: Five iOS 17 features I'm most excited to use

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Talking Tech

Thu Jun 15 2023

Brett Molina | Consumer Tech Reporter

@brettmolina23

Welcome to Thursday, Talking Tech readers! It's Brett Molina back with this week's tech headlines.

Before we start, shout out to all the parents out there. School's out for most of our kids, and we descend into the magical world of juggling their summer schedule. When does school restart again?

As promised last week, let's talk iOS 17. Apple recently held its Worldwide Developers Conference , where it revealed the first details of the software update for iPhones.

Lots of cool new features in here, including the ability to create journals, live transcription of voice mails and customizable contact posters when someone calls you.

Here are five iOS 17 features I'm excited about because they appear the most useful the moment you download.

Standby. Turn your iPhone on its side and it basically functions like a smart home device such as Echo Show. Big news for users who keep their smartphone nearby as an alarm clock. It can literally function like an alarm clock soon. Just don't go slamming the snooze button.

Keyboard autocorrect. Ducking finally! Apple said the feature (and bane of our texting existence) will work a lot better on iOS 17. When the iPhone wants to make a correction, it will highlight changes and show the original word in a bubble if you want to quickly switch back. The battle over its switching to it gets a lot easier.

Interactive widgets. Right now, widgets are basically just fancier app icons. Granted, you can still pull key information such as a quick weather forecast or battery life on your various devices. With this update, you will soon do stuff like press play and pause on a song from a widget, or check off a task on Reminders.

Grocery lists. Huge update if you use the Reminders app when food shopping. The app will automatically group items into categories to better organize your shopping list. It will also track when you want certain items to live in a specific group.

Photos and your pets. Dogs, cats and other pets are part of the family, too. The iOS 17 update will better recognize our fur babies in photos.

The next version of iOS will launch in the fall, typically right before the release of the next iPhone.

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Thursday tech tip

The school year is over. Kids are excited. Parents, maybe not so much. We've got a couple of months to figure out how to keep our kids busy. And, yes, there may be moments when kids will hang out on their iPad or video game consoles for extended periods. But there are ways to use that tech to get them to learn a little over the summer, too.

One more thing

It's a great week for food lovers who enjoy bacon and spice. Earlier this week, Chick-fil-A said it was testing a Maple Pepper Bacon Sandwich , which includes grilled chicken, pepper jack cheese, lettuce, sweet and spicy pickle chips and bacon hand-tossed in brown sugar and pepper. Meanwhile, McDonald's is updating the Quarter Pounder, introducing a version with bacon and pickled jalapeño slices.

That's a wrap. Thanks for reading!