**A Deep Dive into iOS 16: What's New and What's Next**

When it comes to power users like myself, updates to the operating system are always met with excitement and anticipation. With Apple's WWDC event this year, we got a sneak peek into what's new and what's next for iOS 16. While some of the updates may seem incremental at first glance, they're actually designed to take our productivity and collaboration to the next level.

**Focus Mode Takes Center Stage**

One of the most significant updates in iOS 16 is the revamped Focus mode. For those who may be new to iOS, Focus mode acts as a shield, filtering out apps that you don't want to see at any given time. However, with the new focus filters, you can now not only filter out apps but also items within those apps that you don't want to see. This level of granular control is exactly what power users like myself are looking for. The ability to create multiple lock screens and tie certain lock screens to specific Focus modes is also a game-changer. While I'm not sure how useful this feature will be right now, it's an exciting development that will likely become more valuable as we get more widgets to choose from.

**Collaboration Takes Center Stage**

This year's WWDC event was all about collaboration and taking our productivity to the next level. With the rise of remote work, Apple has made sure that their updates are designed with collaboration in mind. The new Freeform app is a perfect example of this. Imagine being able to watch something on your iPhone or iPad while messaging someone about it in sync – that's exactly what Freeform will allow us to do. And let me tell you, I'm excited about the possibilities.

**Is iOS 16 Just Incremental Improvements?**

While some of the updates in iOS 16 may seem like incremental improvements at first glance, they're actually designed to make a significant impact on our productivity and collaboration. The redesigned notifications on the home screen, reminders updates, dictation, and live activities are all exciting developments that I'm eager to explore. However, not everything is new – some of these features have been around for a while, so it's hard to get too excited about them.

**Small Changes with Big Impacts**

As I started using iOS 16, I noticed small changes here and there that were actually making a big impact on my productivity. For example, the way Notes show up now in a different hierarchical order is taking some getting used to, but it's definitely an improvement. And let me tell you, having a daily Tech Newsletter put your app and accessory discovery on autopilot is exactly what I need to stay on top of the latest trends.

**The Daily Tech After Party**

If you want to dive deeper into the world of Apple and all things iOS 16, be sure to check out our brand new show – The Daily Tech After Party. It's a chill hangout where we'll talk about the latest news and trends in the world of Apple. From Apple ecosystem stuff to the latest gadgets, we'll cover it all. So, if you want to join the conversation, head on over to the link below.

**Conclusion**

Overall, I think iOS 16 is a solid update that's designed to make our productivity and collaboration easier than ever. While some of the features may seem incremental at first glance, they're actually taking our experience to the next level. With Focus mode, collaboration, and all the small changes in between, this is an update that power users like myself will love. So, what are you waiting for? Head on over to the Daily Tech After Party and join the conversation!

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey it's chris ios 16 is full of great improvements let's go through some of the smaller ways it's going to change life first one of the smallest details that i absolutely love is the new sound that siri makes when activated in car play much less abrasive lock screen widgets are certainly interesting to me helpful i wish i could get another row of them and it'll be great to see when there's more to choose from it's very cool and useful to be able to tap a photo subject to lift it out of the background and paste it somewhere else it's not just convenient but potentially money saving for anybody who's been paying for a background removal app now it does take some practice to learn the right amount of pressure to use and you also have to not aim for text so you don't activate live text it's hard to believe that adding multiple stops along your routes and maps has taken so long to get here but it's here and it's useful and it's also cool that you can now track and meet your fitness goals without an apple watch this makes sense iphones do have a lot of sensors you have it with you all the time it's not as convenient as having an apple watch and one of the nice things about the apple watch is that you can wear it and ditch your iphone but still this is cool all right this is the new and improved cinematic mode it's supposed to have better blurring effects and better focus on your subjects so you tell me does it look any better i think it might be slightly improved which is a huge improvement and the ability to turn on automatically send messages so that siri doesn't have to read everything back to you before sending is priceless really like the new home app redesign because it makes it less of a headache to use that's important and also i love that you can now get a security camera view that shows you four angles at once now i use apple pay wherever i can whether it's in person or online and i'm really liking that you can track your packages your orders right within your wallet now also pretty excited to see icloud shared photo library rolling out because i don't know what you've been doing but for my fan we've tried out several different apps over the last decade to share photos with everybody i think every single one of those apps has died rest in peace so it's nice to have this just baked right into the system you know it's not going anywhere also exciting to see better family sharing and child account management coming to ios 16 because the world and the internet are crazy places so those are some of the smaller features that are really cool that i'm excited about but let me talk about some of the bigger features that i think are going to have a bigger impact in terms of our both digital and actual quality of life practically speaking messages is where a lot of people spend a lot of their time and attention and messaging on the iphone has been missing certain features that were desperately needed and very much wanted like mark is unread one of the most seismic upgrades for me personally because the other day i ignored a family member for like three or four days not on purpose but because i read their message and couldn't mark it as unread and forgot about it now subscribers know i'm a huge fan of the reminders app i pretty much live in there when it comes to productivity and getting things done i don't really use an app like things or a to-do list app i just use siri and reminders and that's how i get things done and the reminders app has gotten so many improvements in ios 16 then i'm going to make a whole separate video about it so that's a good reminder to get subscribed if you want to go through all the ins and outs but i will just say pinned list and the scheduled and today lists along with templates go a really long way towards making the reminders out better in terms of competition for third-party to-do lists if unlike me you actually use one now if you ask me chris what is your favorite new feature in ios 16 i might tell you it's the new dictation now it'd be split honestly between the messaging features which are kind of boring it's just they needed to happen and the dictation because that's something that i'm going to use all the time not just for responding to emails or for messages or anything like that but i feel like i can actually get some work done i could write a whole article with this dictation without actually needing a keyboard because it's so good at inserting punctuation and it's so nice not to have to activate it deactivate it activate it deactivate it whenever you want to voice something and type something it's so seamless now i just love it in terms of convenience the only thing that could possibly make this dictation better is if it would write stuff for you which seems impossible but it's not that's something that jasper my favorite ai writing assistant does that i use all the time so i'll link it up for you if you're new around here but i love it all right let's talk about the newly redesigned lock screen now i like it but i'm not into it for the design aspect for it not because i don't like the new aesthetic options or anything it's not that and by the way if you're needing some new wallpapers to spice things up we just uploaded some new ones to the daily tech wallpaper store so i'll link that up in the description but what mostly has me excited about the redesigned lock screen is number one the widgets we talked about that already but number two the live activities and the notifications that appear at the bottom it's funny because when i was out at wwdc to hear these announcements in person i was dealing with having to open up the uber app all the time and check on the status of my ride and had the live activities been live already then it would have saved me a lot of hassle i could have just glanced at my lock screen and seen what was going on without having to get in and open up the app and wait for it to load live activities is going to be amazing and having the notifications down at the bottom of your lock screen probably had something to do with the combination of not wanting to cover up the new design slash putting it closer to your thumb so you can interact with things a little bit easier whatever the reason i do really like the new placement it's much easier to scroll through and interact with now what about for the power users out there i know the power users are like what is there for me these updates to the way things look and a few new features here and there are cool but what about for productivity and really digging in and getting more done well apple's focus mode has always been great for that but the focus filters that are here are going to take things to the next level so focus has always acted as a shield of sorts to filter out the apps that you don't want to see at any given time but with the new focus filters you can not only filter out the apps that you don't want to see at a given time but you can also filter out the items within apps that you don't want to see at any given time for that extra level of granular focus i also find it interesting that you can create multiple lock screens now and tie certain lock screens to particular focus modes and i'm not sure how useful that's going to be right out of the gate for somebody like me it'll probably get more useful when there's more widgets to choose from but i guess in terms of just context switching and knowing okay here i'm on lunch now it's after work hours or right now i need to be focusing and concentrating and just having different visual cues that is kind of interesting and one thing that all of apple's updates from wwdc do this year whether it's on the mac iphone or ipad is really focus on collaboration and this makes sense right this is kind of an update that was born out of the covet and lockdown era and people were doing a lot of stuff remotely nobody wants to go back into the office so the freeform app is coming that's going to be amazing you have all these new share play options that are both for work and for fun right you want to watch something while you're messaging somebody about it in sync you can do that so i think the collaboration is a big story here and the deepness of that integration into almost everything that apple's putting out there really does set it apart from other options ecosystems so let me give you my assessment of ios 16 the updates here and i think a good way to frame this is does ios 16 let you do more or does it let you do what you always kind of could just better i feel like i'm this is just going off of a gut reaction here that it's something like 30 percent new you know actually new interesting stuff and maybe 70 plus percent or somewhere around there for just you know a new way to do old things well if all i got were the redesigned notifications on the home screen the reminders updates the dictation and the live activities and the messaging updates i'd be pretty happy almost everything else i haven't paid a whole lot of attention to and a lot of the things i may not end up even remembering or thinking about or using that much like the mail updates a lot of these updates are kind of like a long time coming so long and coming that other apps have had these features for a really long time safari with shared tab groups and stuff it's interesting i just don't know how much i'm gonna use it there's all these little things that you kind of notice as you're going about your business in ios 16 that you're like is it better is it not and it's really mostly just a matter of becoming more familiar with it because as you get familiar then you become more comfortable with it and for a good example is like the way that notes show up now in this sort of different hierarchical order so that you have what you've worked on today and then a big gap and what was yesterday or a couple days ago and then everything else you know that takes a little getting used to but at the end of the day i think i have ended up liking it so i think overall ios 16 feels like a really good solid update uh it doesn't feel like there was anything that was super mind-blowing this year but that's the word i think solid solidly useful you know what else is solidly useful two things actually number one the daily tech newsletter put your app and accessory discovery on autopilot it'll just show up in your inbox on fridays and you'll be like wow a cool new app and a great new accessory i never knew about before so there's that and then also the daily tag podcast that's a great thing to listen to on fridays kind of some behind the scenes information that's also linked up but right now we're going to head over to the other channel the daily tech after party it's brand new where we're just gonna have a chill hang out and talk about the latest in the world of apple apple news apple ecosystem stuff if you want to do that that's linked up down below i'm headed over there right now so if you want to follow i'll see you over there laterhey it's chris ios 16 is full of great improvements let's go through some of the smaller ways it's going to change life first one of the smallest details that i absolutely love is the new sound that siri makes when activated in car play much less abrasive lock screen widgets are certainly interesting to me helpful i wish i could get another row of them and it'll be great to see when there's more to choose from it's very cool and useful to be able to tap a photo subject to lift it out of the background and paste it somewhere else it's not just convenient but potentially money saving for anybody who's been paying for a background removal app now it does take some practice to learn the right amount of pressure to use and you also have to not aim for text so you don't activate live text it's hard to believe that adding multiple stops along your routes and maps has taken so long to get here but it's here and it's useful and it's also cool that you can now track and meet your fitness goals without an apple watch this makes sense iphones do have a lot of sensors you have it with you all the time it's not as convenient as having an apple watch and one of the nice things about the apple watch is that you can wear it and ditch your iphone but still this is cool all right this is the new and improved cinematic mode it's supposed to have better blurring effects and better focus on your subjects so you tell me does it look any better i think it might be slightly improved which is a huge improvement and the ability to turn on automatically send messages so that siri doesn't have to read everything back to you before sending is priceless really like the new home app redesign because it makes it less of a headache to use that's important and also i love that you can now get a security camera view that shows you four angles at once now i use apple pay wherever i can whether it's in person or online and i'm really liking that you can track your packages your orders right within your wallet now also pretty excited to see icloud shared photo library rolling out because i don't know what you've been doing but for my fan we've tried out several different apps over the last decade to share photos with everybody i think every single one of those apps has died rest in peace so it's nice to have this just baked right into the system you know it's not going anywhere also exciting to see better family sharing and child account management coming to ios 16 because the world and the internet are crazy places so those are some of the smaller features that are really cool that i'm excited about but let me talk about some of the bigger features that i think are going to have a bigger impact in terms of our both digital and actual quality of life practically speaking messages is where a lot of people spend a lot of their time and attention and messaging on the iphone has been missing certain features that were desperately needed and very much wanted like mark is unread one of the most seismic upgrades for me personally because the other day i ignored a family member for like three or four days not on purpose but because i read their message and couldn't mark it as unread and forgot about it now subscribers know i'm a huge fan of the reminders app i pretty much live in there when it comes to productivity and getting things done i don't really use an app like things or a to-do list app i just use siri and reminders and that's how i get things done and the reminders app has gotten so many improvements in ios 16 then i'm going to make a whole separate video about it so that's a good reminder to get subscribed if you want to go through all the ins and outs but i will just say pinned list and the scheduled and today lists along with templates go a really long way towards making the reminders out better in terms of competition for third-party to-do lists if unlike me you actually use one now if you ask me chris what is your favorite new feature in ios 16 i might tell you it's the new dictation now it'd be split honestly between the messaging features which are kind of boring it's just they needed to happen and the dictation because that's something that i'm going to use all the time not just for responding to emails or for messages or anything like that but i feel like i can actually get some work done i could write a whole article with this dictation without actually needing a keyboard because it's so good at inserting punctuation and it's so nice not to have to activate it deactivate it activate it deactivate it whenever you want to voice something and type something it's so seamless now i just love it in terms of convenience the only thing that could possibly make this dictation better is if it would write stuff for you which seems impossible but it's not that's something that jasper my favorite ai writing assistant does that i use all the time so i'll link it up for you if you're new around here but i love it all right let's talk about the newly redesigned lock screen now i like it but i'm not into it for the design aspect for it not because i don't like the new aesthetic options or anything it's not that and by the way if you're needing some new wallpapers to spice things up we just uploaded some new ones to the daily tech wallpaper store so i'll link that up in the description but what mostly has me excited about the redesigned lock screen is number one the widgets we talked about that already but number two the live activities and the notifications that appear at the bottom it's funny because when i was out at wwdc to hear these announcements in person i was dealing with having to open up the uber app all the time and check on the status of my ride and had the live activities been live already then it would have saved me a lot of hassle i could have just glanced at my lock screen and seen what was going on without having to get in and open up the app and wait for it to load live activities is going to be amazing and having the notifications down at the bottom of your lock screen probably had something to do with the combination of not wanting to cover up the new design slash putting it closer to your thumb so you can interact with things a little bit easier whatever the reason i do really like the new placement it's much easier to scroll through and interact with now what about for the power users out there i know the power users are like what is there for me these updates to the way things look and a few new features here and there are cool but what about for productivity and really digging in and getting more done well apple's focus mode has always been great for that but the focus filters that are here are going to take things to the next level so focus has always acted as a shield of sorts to filter out the apps that you don't want to see at any given time but with the new focus filters you can not only filter out the apps that you don't want to see at a given time but you can also filter out the items within apps that you don't want to see at any given time for that extra level of granular focus i also find it interesting that you can create multiple lock screens now and tie certain lock screens to particular focus modes and i'm not sure how useful that's going to be right out of the gate for somebody like me it'll probably get more useful when there's more widgets to choose from but i guess in terms of just context switching and knowing okay here i'm on lunch now it's after work hours or right now i need to be focusing and concentrating and just having different visual cues that is kind of interesting and one thing that all of apple's updates from wwdc do this year whether it's on the mac iphone or ipad is really focus on collaboration and this makes sense right this is kind of an update that was born out of the covet and lockdown era and people were doing a lot of stuff remotely nobody wants to go back into the office so the freeform app is coming that's going to be amazing you have all these new share play options that are both for work and for fun right you want to watch something while you're messaging somebody about it in sync you can do that so i think the collaboration is a big story here and the deepness of that integration into almost everything that apple's putting out there really does set it apart from other options ecosystems so let me give you my assessment of ios 16 the updates here and i think a good way to frame this is does ios 16 let you do more or does it let you do what you always kind of could just better i feel like i'm this is just going off of a gut reaction here that it's something like 30 percent new you know actually new interesting stuff and maybe 70 plus percent or somewhere around there for just you know a new way to do old things well if all i got were the redesigned notifications on the home screen the reminders updates the dictation and the live activities and the messaging updates i'd be pretty happy almost everything else i haven't paid a whole lot of attention to and a lot of the things i may not end up even remembering or thinking about or using that much like the mail updates a lot of these updates are kind of like a long time coming so long and coming that other apps have had these features for a really long time safari with shared tab groups and stuff it's interesting i just don't know how much i'm gonna use it there's all these little things that you kind of notice as you're going about your business in ios 16 that you're like is it better is it not and it's really mostly just a matter of becoming more familiar with it because as you get familiar then you become more comfortable with it and for a good example is like the way that notes show up now in this sort of different hierarchical order so that you have what you've worked on today and then a big gap and what was yesterday or a couple days ago and then everything else you know that takes a little getting used to but at the end of the day i think i have ended up liking it so i think overall ios 16 feels like a really good solid update uh it doesn't feel like there was anything that was super mind-blowing this year but that's the word i think solid solidly useful you know what else is solidly useful two things actually number one the daily tech newsletter put your app and accessory discovery on autopilot it'll just show up in your inbox on fridays and you'll be like wow a cool new app and a great new accessory i never knew about before so there's that and then also the daily tag podcast that's a great thing to listen to on fridays kind of some behind the scenes information that's also linked up but right now we're going to head over to the other channel the daily tech after party it's brand new where we're just gonna have a chill hang out and talk about the latest in the world of apple apple news apple ecosystem stuff if you want to do that that's linked up down below i'm headed over there right now so if you want to follow i'll see you over there later\n"