It’s smart to wait, but iOS 16’s changes are worth the risk of early adoption

Welcome to our weekend Apple Breakfast column, which includes all of the Apple news you missed this week in a handy bite-sized roundup. We call it Apple Breakfast because we think it goes great with a morning cup of coffee or tea, but it’s cool if you want to give it a read during lunch or dinner hours too.

The pain and potential of an iOS update

Technology is a war between progress and inertia, and inertia doesn’t give up easily. Most keyboards in the U.S. still use a layout designed for 19th-century typewriters because it’s a pain to switch to something better; the environmentally desirable adoption of electric vehicles is slowed by the vested interests of big oil. Show humans a groundbreaking tech development and they will get annoyed about having to change their habits.

Apple’s iOS updates are nearly always, on balance, an improvement on the previous version, but they face a similar struggle for acceptance. For sure, iOS 16 has a bunch of interesting new features, as well as patching various bugs and tweaking the visuals of your iPhone’s interface, but it’s also different. Anything that’s different has to be twice as good as the thing you’re used to, or why would you put yourself out?

If we all followed that logic, of course, we’d still be riding horses to work. But that doesn’t mean early adoption is always the best approach. Macworld’s recommendation, in fact, is not to install iOS 16.0 yet, but to wait until 16.1. There will be fewer (new) bugs by that point, the servers won’t be as busy, and some of the features aren’t available yet anyway.

But that recommendation may come too late. If you’ve already got iOS 16 on your iPhone, and you’re experiencing the shock of the new, what’s the best solution?

Fortunately we have some tips. Some of Apple’s less lovable new features and interface tweaks are optional, and can be turned off if you know how; others are a clear improvement but are turned off by default. To help sort all this out, we’ve assembled 10 iOS 16 settings you need to change right now.

But our main advice is to early adopters and cautious adopters is to enjoy the experience. After all, whichever version of iOS you were using before was new once, and you grew to like that. This time next year iOS 17 will seem unpleasantly strange, and iOS 16 will be the comfort blanket you don’t want to leave behind.

Long-term progress depends on short-term discomfort. And we won’t get our jetpacks until we can put the horses out to pasture.

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The rumor mill

An iPhone subscription service may still be coming before the holidays.

2023 will likely bring 3nm chips for the Mac, iPhone, and iPad.

Podcast of the week

The latest major revision to the iPhone operating system is here! In this episode of the Macworld Podcast, it’s all about iOS 16: the new features you can use now, the new features you have to wait for, should you even bother with it? And more! Stay tuned.

You can catch every episode of the Macworld Podcast on Spotify, Soundcloud, the Podcasts app, or our own site.

Software updates, bugs & problems

We round up five incredible iOS 16 features that will change the way you use your iPhone.

And there are dozens of great apps with iOS 16 Lock Screen widgets for you to try.

And with that, we’re done for this week. If you’d like to get regular roundups, sign up for our newsletters. You can also follow us on Twitter for breaking news stories. See you next Saturday, enjoy your weekend, and stay Appley.