Apple’s work on visionOS has resulted in this year’s iOS, iPadOS, macOS Sonoma, and watchOS 10 being rather minor releases.

Mark Gurman for Bloomberg News:

I’ve been testing iOS 17, iPadOS 17, macOS Sonoma and watchOS 10 since the first developer betas were released on Monday. I find all of the new software updates to be fairly minor, and perhaps, in totality, the lightest set of changes in a single Apple update cycle in recent history.

But I think that comes with good reasons: Apple shifted a chunk of its software development resources to working on visionOS. And as I wrote last week, Apple had originally planned to focus on fixing bugs and improving performance in 2023, rather than rolling out new features. So anything we got is gravy. But there are still some changes that stick out to me.

Let’s start with iOS 17 and iPadOS 17. The best new feature is the iPhone’s keyboard. After 16 years, Apple finally fixed its sometimes subpar autocorrect solution. There’s even predictive typing that works pretty well. You have to use it to see what I mean…

As I expected, the star of the software show other than the headset’s OS is watchOS 10. The standout feature is widgets. The first thing I did was switch to a watch face without complications and move weather, stocks, calendar and my other typical complications to the new widget menu. It looks a lot cleaner. I also find the new scrollable home screen to be a nice improvement.

MacDailyNews Take: As we wrote last week of iOS 17: “Some nice refinements, additions, and improvements to an already mature OS.”

We’re totally fine with nice maintenance releases that clean up bugs and improve performance across the board.

watchOS 10 is certainly the standout this year.

That said, tvOS 17 offers some very nice improvements for Apple TV owners with the new Control Center, FaceTime on Apple TV 4K, and more!

Please help support MacDailyNews. Click or tap here to support our independent tech blog. Thank you!

Support MacDailyNews at no extra cost to you by using this link to shop at Amazon.

The post Apple’s work on visionOS make minor releases of this year’s iOS, iPadOS, macOS Sonoma, watchOS 10 appeared first on MacDailyNews.