Apple has released iOS 18.1, macOS 15.1 and iPadOS 18.1 updates just a month after the release of iOS 18. Let's take a look at the important features that have been added.

New features in iOS 18.1, macOS 15.1 and iPadOS 18.1

Call Recording

iOS 18.1 allows you to record phone calls. It's about time. The recording is not done automatically, you will have to tap on the soundwave button in the top left corner of the screen to start recording the call. The app will play a sound that says "This call is being recorded.", to warn participants about the same. That's fair, this is perhaps due to legal requirements in many countries.

A transcript of the call is generated and saved to the Notes app. You can listen to the recorded calls from the Notes app. I tested it, and it works fine, we'll take a closer look at this in the coming days.

Hearing Health features

AirPods Pro 2 users on iOS 18.1 or iPadOS 18.1 or macOS Sequoia can use their earbuds to detect hearing loss. The hearing test can be accessed via the Health app. Here is a list of countries in which Apple's Hearing Health Features are available.

The updates also ship with improvements to the Photos and Camera apps.  macOS Sequoia 15.1, iOS 18.1 and iPadOS 18.1 ship with a couple of dozen security fixes for various vulnerabilities. Apple has also released macOS Ventura 13.7.1, macOS Sonoma 14.7.1, iOS 17.7.1 and iPadOS 17.7.1 to patch some security issues. None of the vulnerabilities seem to have been exploited in the wild.

Apple Intelligence is now available for iOS 18.1, macOS 15.1 and iPadOS 18.1

Apple has been advertising the AI features everywhere since the iPhone 16 series was launched in September. It's finally here, but even this version of the AI is limited to US English, more details below.

I have already discussed the features of Apple Intelligence, but I'll briefly mention them here. Apple's AI-powered features include systemwide writing tools across apps that can proofread text, offer to rewrite or summarize the content in all apps. The Mail app supports summarizing of emails, smart replies for mails, time sensitive alerts, etc. Siri has been redesigned, and is now smarter at understanding what you say, thanks to the richer language-understanding capabilities. The AI can offer assistance to use features that are available on their device, like how to take a screenshot, or share a Wi-Fi password. You can also type to Siri.

Apple Intelligence is available on iPhone 16, iPhone 16 Plus, iPhone 16 Pro, iPhone 16 Pro Max, iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro Max, iPad with A17 Pro or M1 and later, and Mac with M1 and later. Apparently, the reason why the feature is not available for older iPhones is because "they don't have enough RAM".

There's another catch. Users will need to join a waitlist to access Apple Intelligence. This is weird, but the good news is it takes just a few minutes or so to get access.

Apple Intelligence is coming to EU for iPhone and iPad users

Apple has announced a new 24-inch iMac with an M4 chip, and surprisingly the base version comes with 16 GB of RAM, although it still has 256 GB of storage. But the real surprise is on the announcement page for the new computer, it has a footnote that says Apple Intelligence is available now as a free software update for Mac with M1 and later. It isn't geo-restricted to the US, which means it can be accessed in most regions around the world, as long as the device and Siri language are set to U.S. English. This includes the European Union. The page also mentions that the features are still in beta, with more to come in the coming months.

Apple Intelligence will be available for localized English in Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa, and the U.K. in December. The company will bring expanded language support in April. Chinese, English (India), English (Singapore), French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Spanish, Vietnamese, are some of the other languages that will be supported.

Localized versions of the iMac announcement page for Europe/Africa have another interesting footnote, it confirms that Apple Intelligence is coming to iPhone and iPad users in the European Union in April 2025. The fact that it has been delayed for iOS and iPad does suggest that there were some issues related to the DMA (Digital Markets Act). Apple Intelligence for EU users will offer core features including Writing Tools, Genmoji, a redesigned Siri, ChatGPT integration, and more.

I'm going to go slightly off-topic here to talk about something. In an interview with TFiR at the recent Open Source Summit in Vienna, Linus Torvalds, who created the Linux kernel, said that while AI is interesting and could change the world, he hated that it is all being hyped up, and would just ignore it for now. Torvalds said that the tech industry is in a very bad position, and it's 90% marketing and 10% reality. That is a brilliant quote, and he's absolutely spot on. Everyone is going bonkers about AI just because, even Apple is jumping in because everyone else is, probably because their shareholders "wanted AI like everyone else".

I'm not completely against AI, productivity features shouldn't come at the cost of privacy. As long as it uses a privacy-friendly language model, i.e. if it runs locally with machine-learning, I think AI-powered tools can be useful. For example, you could run a local instance of Llama. Apple may be the lesser of all evils, when it comes to caring about the user's privacy, at least in comparison to its immediate rivals, Google, Microsoft, etc. Maybe that's one of the reasons why they are being cautious to roll out the features.

This might sound silly, but the thing that I look forward to with Apple Intelligence is actually interacting with Siri by Typing. Asking it to set the alarm or reminders, especially based on context, without using speech sounds really cool. This is what Siri should have been capable of in the first place. I don't really care about chatbots or the generative AI side of things, automating day-to-day tasks on the other hand, or at least delegating part of it to an AI does seem like something that could have a practical usage.

Have you used Apple Intelligence?