Apple has released macOS 15.2 Sequoia, iOS 18.2, and iPadOS 18.2 with new and improved Apple Intelligence features, plus watchOS 11.2, visionOS 2.2, tvOS 18.2, and HomePod Software 18.2 with other improvements.
The Apple Intelligence updates introduce ChatGPT integration with Siri and Writing Tools, the Image Playground app, custom Genmoji on the iPhone and iPad, and Image Wand for Apple Pencil users on the iPad. Writing Tools lets you describe how you’d like something rewritten rather than limiting you to canned styles. iPhone 16 users can also use the Camera Control button to learn more about their surroundings using Visual Intelligence.
Despite Apple’s emphasis on Apple Intelligence, the other new features in this beefy set of updates may have a more significant impact on your overall experience. Let’s examine those first.
Shared macOS, iOS, and iPadOS Improvements
As is usually the case, many of the new capabilities in Apple’s apps and services cut across the company’s three main operating systems. Shared improvements include:
- Photos displays the Favorites album in the Utilities collection as well as the Pinned Collections for easier access. You can also clear the album history for Recently Viewed and Recently Shared.
- Safari offers a few new background images to customize its Start Page, tries to use secure HTTPS on all websites, and simplifies import and export for history, bookmarks, and passwords.
- Find My allows you to share item locations with trusted third parties (see “Find My Will Let You Share Lost Item Locations with Anyone—Including Airlines,” 25 November 2024).
- Apple Music and Apple TV now support natural language search, which lets you describe what you’re looking for using any combination of categories, such as genres, moods, actors, decades, and more. Now, you can ask Siri to play “1960s soul Christmas music” with theoretically better results. This also works on the HomePod once you update to HomePod Software 18.2.
- Podcasts adds Favorite Categories to simplify finding new shows. (On the iPhone, tap your avatar in the upper right, then tap Manage Favorite Categories to select some, after which a Categories item appears in your Library. On the Mac, Categories appears on the sidebar.) Podcasts also now personalizes the Search page to highlight the most relevant categories and collections.
- Apple News+ subscribers now get three difficulty levels of Sudoku.
- Stocks provides pre-market price quotes for tracking the NASDAQ and NYSE tickers prior to market open.
macOS 15.2 Sequoia Improvements
New options that are unique to the Mac under macOS 15.2 include:
- Presenter preview lets you choose a window or the full screen before you share it when connecting to an external display or using AirPlay.
- System Settings > Control Center enables you to place an icon for Weather in your menu bar so you can get current conditions and click through to forecasts.
macOS 15.2 also includes fixes for 42 security vulnerabilities. To protect older versions, Apple released macOS 14.7.2 Sonoma, which includes fixes for 25 vulnerabilities, and macOS 13.7.2 Ventura, which addresses 22 vulnerabilities.
iOS 18.2 and iPadOS 18.2 Improvements
You’ll find even more noteworthy additions on the iPhone and iPad using iOS 18.2 and iPadOS 18.2:
- Mail Categorization sorts your email into buckets for Primary, Transactions, Updates, and Promotions. In my experience, its accuracy is poor, particularly with the distinction between Promotions and Updates, but it’s easy to retrain.
- Mail’s new Digest View groups all the messages from one sender into a single collection for easy browsing (see above).
- Photos improves video viewing by letting you scrub frame by frame and adding a setting to turn off auto-looping video playback. It also fixes a bug that prevented recently captured photos from appearing immediately in the All Photos grid.
- Safari gains a File Download Live Activity that shows the progress of a long download in the Dynamic Island on the iPhone’s Home Screen.
- Voice Memos on the iPhone 16 Pro models now supports layered recording, so you can add vocals over an existing song idea without needing headphones. Apparently, this is a big deal for musicians.
- Hearing Test on the AirPods Pro 2 is now supported in Cyprus, Czechia, France, Italy, Luxembourg, Romania, Spain, the United Arab Emirates, and the United Kingdom. Additionally, the Hearing Aid feature now works in the United Arab Emirates.
- Camera no longer degrades Night mode photos captured with long exposures on the iPhone 16 Pro models.
iOS 18.2 and iPadOS 18.2 address 20 security vulnerabilities. Apple also released iPadOS 17.7.3 with fixes for 14 of these vulnerabilities; I don’t know why iOS 17.7.3 wasn’t released alongside it.
watchOS 11.2 Improvements
The least impressive update of the collection comes from watchOS 11.2, which has only two additions that most TidBITS readers won’t notice:
- Tides expands map support for tidal conditions and coastal locations in China.
- Camera Remote can now pause iPhone video recordings.
watchOS 11.2 addresses 15 security vulnerabilities, though all are in shared code.
visionOS 2.2 Improvements
For some, visionOS 2.2’s changes might make the Vision Pro worth another look:
- Mac Virtual Display offers two new aspect ratios: 21:9 and 32:9, the latter of which is equivalent to two 5K displays next to each other. This feature may make the Vision Pro more compelling to someone who wants to use it for a massive Mac desktop while traveling.
- Mac audio can be routed directly to the Vision Pro.
- Apple TV on the Vision Pro allows sports multitaskers to watch up to five Major League Soccer or Major League Baseball games simultaneously with Multiview.
- SharePlay lets you watch live sporting events with others.
- Safari can display spatial photos and videos embedded on Web pages.
visionOS 2.2 addresses 12 security vulnerabilities, again in shared code.
tvOS 18.2 Improvements
With tvOS 18.2, the Apple TV 4K picks up a few enhancements:
- Screen Savers adds Snoopy and Woodstock animations that adapt to the day, weather, and holidays. If only the featured photos screen saver didn’t obscure images with an entirely unnecessary clock.
- Enhance Dialogue works with the second-generation HomePod to help you hear speech more clearly over background sounds.
- Cinematic playback on compatible projectors and displays supports 21:9 and other cinematic aspect ratios for home theaters. You also get ultra-widescreen viewing for FaceTime calls. However, cinematic playback is only available on the third-generation Apple TV 4K.
tvOS 18.2 eliminates 15 security vulnerabilities that appear to be the same as the watchOS versions.
HomePod Software 18.2 Improvements
Along with Enhance Dialogue when paired with an Apple TV, HomePod Software 18.2 provides one important new capability:
- Siri supports the new Apple Music natural language search, so you can describe what you want to hear using any combination of categories, such as genre, mood, decade, or activity.
Apple Intelligence Additions
With these releases, Apple continues its phased rollout of Apple Intelligence features, with many more of the promised features making their debut.
Note that Apple Intelligence features only work on a Mac with Apple silicon, an iPhone 15 Pro or any iPhone 16 model, or an iPad equipped with an M-series chip or the newest iPad mini featuring the A17 Pro. The device and Siri language must be set to localized English for Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa, the UK, or the US. Apple says Mac users in the EU can access Apple Intelligence when using a compatible device with supported settings and languages, and iPhone and iPad users in the EU will start to get Apple Intelligence features in April 2025.
Although these releases significantly add to the Apple Intelligence features, Apple says that future updates will give Siri access to personal context and onscreen awareness for tailored responses, plus enable it to take action in external apps. Priority Notifications will give preference to your most important notifications, and Image Playground will add a Sketch style.
We’ll have more in-depth coverage of some of these features in separate articles, but here’s a brief overview of what’s available now:
- Image Playground: An entirely new app, Image Playground lets you create images using text descriptions—as you swipe left, it keeps creating new possibilities. Images can be created from scratch or in the likeness of a person from a photo. Deepfakes won’t be happening with Image Playground since you’re limited to two styles: Animation, described as “a modern 3-D animated look,” and Illustration, “which offers images with simple shapes, clear lines, and colorblocking.” Along with the Image Playground app, you can create images directly in Messages, Freeform, Keynote, and others. Images remain in your library and sync across all your devices.
- Genmoji: With Genmoji, you can use text descriptions to create custom emoji. Invoke the feature by tapping the button to the right of the search field in the Emoji keyboard, then describe your desired emoji. As with Image Playground, you can keep swiping left to generate more possibilities. Tap an emoji to insert it, and remember that if you’re sending it in Messages, it will be large if it’s in a message by itself but small if it’s added to text. Created Genmoji are added to your emoji collection, but they’re actually stickers, so you can remove them by tapping the ⊕ button in Messages, tapping Stickers, and using touch-and-hold on a Genmoji to access the Remove button.
- Image Wand: Notes now provides an Image Wand tool for iPad users who take notes with an Apple Pencil. Select the tool, circle a rough sketch, and Image Wand turns it into a polished image. If your circle includes text, Image Wand tries to consider it when building the final image.
- Visual Intelligence on the iPhone 16: With iOS 18.2, the Camera Control button gains superpowers. Press and hold it (whenever the Camera app isn’t already open, since that will trigger video recording), and Visual Intelligence presents Ask and Search buttons on either side of the shutter button. You can tap either button to ask ChatGPT about the image or perform a Google image search. Press the Camera Control button again or tap the shutter button to freeze the image in case you can’t immediately tap Ask or Search.
- ChatGPT integration with Siri: Many people hoped that integrating ChatGPT would make Siri less stupid, but it may have instead muddied the waters. Siri can send queries to ChatGPT, but unless you explicitly specify that, Siri’s responses can mix its own answers with ChatGPT’s, leading to random and inexplicable results. The interface is also awkward because you generally speak to Siri, but there’s no option to have ChatGPT’s responses read back to you. Additionally, you cannot scroll back to any response before the most recent one without using the ChatGPT app or website. I’ll write more about issues with Siri and ChatGPT soon.
- Writing Tools: Adding ChatGPT to Writing Tools is likely a bigger win. The new Compose option taps ChatGPT to generate content wherever you’re writing, and it can also use ChatGPT’s image-generation capabilities to add images. Writing Tools also lets users describe their own changes to selected text (including recasting it as a poem, for example) instead of relying solely on the canned options to make the text friendlier, more professional, or more concise.
Should You Update? Should You Upgrade?
The answer to both questions is now yes. For those who have already upgraded to this year’s crop of Apple operating systems, these updates bring numerous new features, a few bug fixes, and security updates. Apart from waiting a few days to make sure nothing unexpectedly ugly crops up, I see no reason not to update.
What if you’ve been waiting in the wings to upgrade? I’ve had no qualms about recommending upgrades for everything besides Macs. I haven’t encountered any notable problems with any of those operating systems. Nor has macOS 15 Sequoia proved problematic in my testing, but I’m more cautious in recommending Mac upgrades because it’s far more likely that someone would rely on an app that hasn’t yet been updated or a piece of hardware that isn’t compatible.
The main issues that remained after macOS 15.1 revolved around networking—specifically interactions with Apple’s built-in firewall and VPNs. For instance, Objective Development’s Little Snitch ran afoul of two bugs in Apple’s Network Extension framework. Apple said nothing about such fixes in macOS 15.2’s release notes, but that means little—the company often fails to call out general fixes.
Those relying on a VPN or firewall should wait until compatibility has been confirmed, but I think it’s now safe for most others to upgrade to Sequoia. Along with a positive personal experience, my consultant friends generally recommend upgrades to their clients. Plus, the holiday break often provides some time to upgrade and explore new features when you aren’t faced with work deadlines.
Please don’t interpret the fact that I’m saying you can upgrade to mean that you must upgrade now. The main downside to putting it off for another few months is not being able to take advantage of new features. But as always, don’t delay too long. My experience is that the longer the wait, the more likely problems are to crop up after upgrading and the more trouble you’ll have adjusting to all the changes.
