The Apple event revealed much more than a new lineup of iPhones. Maria Diaz is a staff writer with a passion for home automation, smart home devices, and tablets. The iOS 27 general release is almost here. It features many upgrades like recomposing photos. It also optimizes app launches and improves performance.

Say More Mashable Selects Look Up Trending Now Good Connection: Uplifting stories for a digital age Creator Playbook Mashable's Best: E-readers, robovacs, laptops, earbuds, smart home and more Switch Off Mashable Voices Safety Net Versus Gift Ideas For Everyone On Your List All Series Even if your keeping your old iPhone, this iOS update should feel like a device upgrade. Matt Binder joined Mashable's tech vertical in 2018, where he covers social media, tech policy, cybersecurity, online scams, cryptocurrency, AI, creator news, weird tech, and other related tech beats. We are just days away from Apple's big September iPhone event . That means that along with new iPhones, the official launch of iOS 27 is just around the corner. Even if you're not planning to upgrade to the iPhone 18 Pro or Apple's first foldable device, the new iOS 27 is packed with new features that will make your current smartphone feel brand new, including the long-awaited debut of Siri AI.

Amid the flurry of Apple Intelligence features pushed out to iPhones, iPads, and Macs in recent months, AI-powered art generation hasn't been forgotten. Apple has debuted a new AI art maker called Image Playground, ready and waiting to turn your text prompts into pictures. If you're running iOS 18.2, iPadOS 18.2, or macOS Sequoia 15.2, you'll find Image Playground on your device as a preinstalled app. You can use it for everything from backgrounds for digital invites to cartoon depictions of your friends and relatives. If you can describe it, Image Playground can make it--and here's how to get started.

They are some of the world's most popular smartphones. But if you have an iPhone, make sure to update your device as soon as possible. Apple has released iOS 18.3, with urgent security updates to protect your phone from hackers. This includes a patch for one vulnerability that criminals have already been using to hijack iPhones. Sylvain Cortes, VP of Strategy at Hackuity, says: 'To safeguard against these threats, we'd strongly recommend users to promptly update their devices to iOS 18.3.'

The tricky thing about naming the year's biggest losers in tech is that in 2024, it once again felt like everyone lost. Amid the depressing spiral that is social media, the will-they-or-won't-they dance of banning TikTok in the US and the neverending edited and deepfaked content that has everyone questioning what's real, the world lost. But a few areas this year stood out as particularly troubling. Specifically, AI and dedicated AI gadgets proliferated more than ever, spreading not only to our digital assistants and search engines but to our wearables as well. We also saw more deterioration in Intel's standing and bid farewell to a robot maker, as well as Lightning cables.

Apple Intelligence is essentially a snazzy brand name for Apple's new-found focus on AI, triggered by the huge success of the ChatGPT. Here's a look at some of the best features of Apple Intelligence, which comes to the UK via the new iOS 18.2 operating system. Surely the biggest part of Apple Intelligence is the integration of OpenAI's hugely popular chatbot ChatGPT with Siri, Apple's in-built virtual assistant. With better'language-understanding capabilities' enabled by ChatGPT, Siri will help you across multiple apps and'accelerate everyday tasks', Apple said. You'll be able to press and hold the side button to activate Siri as normal, but with ChatGPT behind it Siri will be able to'answer thousands of questions about how to do something' that it couldn't before.

Apple has begun rolling iOS 18.2 and iPadOS 18.2 to iPhones and iPads. The updates bring with them major enhancements to the company's suite of AI features, and are likely the final software releases Apple has planned for 2024. More Apple Intelligence features are available through macOS 15.2. However, note access to all of the AI features mentioned below is limited to users in the US, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa and the UK for now, with support additionally limited to devices with their language set to English. Provided you own an iPhone 15 Pro, 16 or 16 Pro, one of the highlights of iOS 18.2 is Image Playground, which is available both as a standalone app and Messages extension.

Apple Intelligence was the big news at the company's Worldwide Developers Conference back in June. Apple made good on a modest first wave of features in October. But iOS 18.2 -- along with sibling OS upgrades for Mac and iPad -- will bring a meatier set of Apple Intelligence features to Apple's suite of devices, including Genmoji, Image Playground and ChatGPT integration. To check out Apple's new AI, you must have an eligible device and run the current iOS 18.1, iPadOS 18.1 or MacOS 15.1. Once approved, you'll receive a notification saying it's ready to activate on your device.

The Apple Intelligence rollout has been slow, staggered and steady since the company first unveiled its take on AI at WWDC this year. It continues today with the release of the latest developer betas for iOS 18, iPadOS 18 and macOS Sequoia. The updates in iOS 18.2, iPadOS 18.2 and macOS Sequoia (15.2) bring long-awaited features like Genmoji, Image Playground, Visual Intelligence and ChatGPT integration for those running the preview software, as well as Image Wand for iPads and more writing tools. This follows the announcement that iOS 18.1 would be available as a stable release to the public next week, which would bring things like writing tools, notification summaries and Apple's hearing test to the masses. That represents the first time for people who haven't opted into beta software to check out Apple Intelligence, which the company has widely touted as the headline feature for the devices it launched this year. The iPhone 16 series, for example, were billed as phones designed for Apple Intelligence, though they launched without those features.

The new mobile OS can rewrite your text messages, summarize emails, and identify objects in photos. But one of the most fun features is Image Playground, which generates cartoon-like illustrations based on a text prompt. While Apple has shown examples of its output during its keynotes, demos, and product videos, we have yet to see a real-world example of an Image Playground character until now. Apple has shared with WIRED the first-ever example created by Image Playground that it's shown outside of its pre-recorded keynotes and marketing materials. Her name is Bailey, and she belongs to Craig Federighi, senior vice president of software engineering at Apple, who created the image for his wife in honor of Bailey's recent birthday.