As it exists today, it’s a remarkably iterative update to the iPhone 15 Pro — it’s hard to find reasons to upgrade from last year’s model. And I’m not at all convinced that it’s worth upgrading to the 16 Pro from older Pro models just yet, either — the Camera Control and Action Button are nice, but not game changing, and unless you’re excited about dialing in the new Photographic Styles and the new tone control, you might find the even-brighter-and-flatter photos to actually be a step backward in photo processing. If you can’t tell, I am personally thrilled by the tone control, so this is an easy choice for me, but it feels like it’s worth waiting a tick for everyone else.
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That’s not to say the iPhone 16 Pro is a bad phone — it’s a great phone, with some fascinating ideas about smartphone photography embedded in it. But it’s also clearly unfinished, and I think it’s worth waiting to see if Apple Intelligence can complete some of these thoughts before spending the money on an upgrade.
It’s a good year for the basic iPhones, and that hasn’t been the case over the past few generations. To be sure, there’s nothing groundbreaking here, and certainly nothing you should trade in your iPhone 15 for. But if you’ve been on the fence for a while about upgrading from an 11 or 12, then I think this is the year to go for it.
You’ll get a couple of new buttons to play with, and who knows, maybe you’ll get along better with the Camera Control than I did. And If Apple Intelligence arrives and proves to be the time-saving, stress-easing set of features Apple insists it will be, then this phone will be ready for it. But even if they never arrive, you’re still getting some upgrades that matter in the long run. It’s a catch-up year for the regular iPhone, and that’s a good year to upgrade indeed.
This year, Apple has done something quite interesting by introducing the Camera Control button that not only functions as a shutter button but also brings up the camera app with a simple press. It also allows for adjusting manual exposure and zoom thanks to a handy sliding interface that operates similarly to a camera dial. You can also use the button as a touch interface on the menu the Camera Control button brings up, so there are many ways to make quick adjustments. Having used the new controls extensively, I can say that I like the additional level of control that it provides. With practice, the operation became predictable and repeatable, and it is always good to have more ways to manipulate a camera at your fingertips.
I was excited to see Apple launch this button because the best photos are often made when you have as much control as possible over your camera. While shooting landscapes in Alaska, for example, I wanted lots of depth of field so I could gather details in the foreground and background and keep everything in the frame as sharp as possible. While shooting white overland trucks, it was helpful to bring my exposure down a little so that the vehicles weren’t blown out when set against a darker background.
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A heads up for anyone who lives in a rainy environment. While shooting in an Alaskan downpour it was hard to get the Camera Control button to react to my sliding finger, so I had trouble changing my exposure or focal length. Many times I had to wipe the button dry with my shirt in order to get it to work. Keep in mind that when you buy a phone case you’ll need to make sure you buy one that either comes with a cutout so that you can directly access the button, or one that Apple has certified so that the phone case button covering the Camera Control button interacts appropriately and doesn’t cause any weird delays or interferences.
Despite a deluge in hardware news at Apple’s “Glowtime” iPhone 16 event, Apple didn’t take any time to discuss repairability. It was a strange oversight, given the momentum that the right to repair movement has gained in recent years. A deeper dive after the event, however, has revealed several new iPhone 16 features designed to improve user access to device repair.
Apple has temporarily paused the rollout of the iPadOS 18 update for M4 iPad Pros. The company has stopped signing the update for these iPads, meaning it will no longer be offered to users when they check, and Apple's servers won't activate the update if it's installed some other way.
The update has supposedly been "bricking" devices for some M4 iPad Pro users; anecdotal reports from Reddit and MacRumors forum users suggest that some users have installed the update without issue, and others have ended up with unresponsive devices. Apple is apparently offering hardware replacements to users who have been affected, which points to a pretty serious bug—usually devices can be put into recovery (or DFU) mode as a last resort in the event of a botched software update.
Apple’s AI feature set will expand to include localized English in the UK, Canada, Australia, South Africa, and New Zealand in December, with India and Singapore joining the mix next year. The company already announced plans to support Chinese, French, Japanese, and Spanish next year as well.
The GSM Association, the organization that develops the RCS standard, said on Tuesday it’s working to enable end-to-end encryption (E2EE) on messages sent between Android and iPhone. E2EE prevents third parties, like your messaging service or cell carrier, from viewing your texts.
A deal between JPMorgan and Apple would further tie together America’s biggest bank and one of the largest technology companies in the world. JPMorgan already offers Chase customers deals on Apple products and pays the company whenever one of its millions of card customers uses Apple Pay. Landing the deal would grow Chase’s card business— already the biggest in the country—while bringing along a loyal base of Apple customers to whom it can pitch more financial products. Apple, meanwhile, needs to find a new home for its credit card, which has over 12 million users, after Goldman decided to abandon its push into consumer finance.
And so artmaking—the cultural industries—occupies the middle of an uneasy Venn diagram. First, the value of an artwork is internal—how well does it fulfill the vision that inspired it? Second, a piece of art is its own end. Third, a piece of art is, by definition, rare, one of a kind, nonfungible.
Yet the end point for the working artist is to create an object for sale. Once the art object enters the market, art’s intrinsic value is emptied out, compacted by the market’s logic of ranking, until there’s only relational worth, no interior worth. Two novelists I know publish essays one week apart; in a grim coincidence, each writer recounts their own version of the same traumatic life event. Which essay is better, a friend asks. I explain they’re different; different life circumstances likely shaped separate approaches. Yes, she says, but which one is better?
Reading all these iPhone reviews gave me mixed feelings. On the one hand: I am envious of the new phone. On the other hand, I am no photographer.
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Thanks for reading.