Everything New in iOS 11.4 - AirPlay 2, Messages in iCloud, & More

Apple Insider: Uncovering the Changes in iOS 11.4

Welcome to Apple Insider, everybody! It's Andrew here, and we're excited to bring you the latest news on the first beta of iOS 11.4. Not even a week after iOS 11.3 made its way into the hands of the public, there are actually quite a few substantial changes in this latest update. Similar to how we saw quite a few new features in eleven point three, iOS 11.4 has brought some exciting additions to the table.

One of the biggest features that iOS 11.4 is introducing is the return and hopefully the final return of AirPlay. You can see it right away with any AirPlay-enabled device like an Apple TV running CBS 11.4. Inside the AirPlay controls inside a control center, you can see both my Apple TVs' bedroom and living room with this little checkbox that allows streaming audio to both of them simultaneously. When you have them checked and enable to stream your audio, they do remove the independent controls down from below them inside a control center.

When you set up your Apple TV, it'll tell you to select which room in your home for HomeKit purposes. That's because Apple TV is going to be used for controlling smart home devices. If you head to those rooms inside of your home app on your iPhone or your iPad, you will see those Apple TVs now. However, there's a catch - you can't do any automation with them at least not yet. Hopefully, that is something we see in the future.

But right now, you can just play and pause anywhere you have AirPlay controls, whether it's to the music app or a third-party audio app. If you tap on the AirPlay option, you will see all of them appear, both your non-AirPlay 2 devices like the HomePod currently, because there's no beta out as well as any AirPlay 2 devices like my dual Apple TVs. However, there is no AirPlay 2 support for the HomePod yet.

AirPlay 2 is bringing kind of support back to the HomePod for stereo pairing. It shows up if you have two HomePods available inside of the Home app. But, it just tells you that you need the firmware update for the HomePod. That's not released yet, and there's no beta out. So, we still can't test that out.

Another feature that seems to have returned in iOS 11.4 is messages in iCloud. This allows you to store all of your messages in iCloud across all of your devices. When you delete something on one device gets to leave it on the other. It's a very handy feature, especially if you're someone who likes to keep their messages organized.

The new framework that Apple announced at their Chicago Education event is also included in this beta, allowing developers to take advantage of it in their upcoming apps. The performance and battery life are definitely pretty snappy. Notice any real slowdowns or studying? There's nothing there, so that's a plus.

As for actual performance, running a Geekbench test shows promising results when running the CPU test inside a Geekbench for iOS 11.4. I got about 40,150 as far as single-core goes and multi-score pulled in just above 10,000. When we go back into my history and compare that to previous tests of eleven point three, I recently took them inside of the previous betas, I got similar scores that are pretty on par with one another. So, these are the biggest changes we've uncovered thus far in iOS eleven point four.

There's definitely smaller changes out there, but this is a good starting point for what to expect from Apple's next update. If you're interested in knowing more about what features or updates Apple might bring to their next software release, feel free to let us know down below in the comments.