Hands-On With the iOS 27 Public Beta: Just OK

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Apple released the public beta of iOS 27 on Monday, July 13, about a month after the company announced the upcoming iPhone software at its Worldwide Developers Conference in June. After living with the developer and public betas, I can confidently say the upcoming software is not astounding, but also not a huge disappointment.

The iOS 27 betas have a few useful new features that I enjoyed, like the big widgets. But there were an equal number of gimmicky features, like the new Reframe and Extend tools for photos. Despite the focus on AI and a revamped Siri, the software hasn't convinced me that I need, or want, those AI features. If, like me, you don't use generative AI regularly, a lot of this update might not feel all that useful. From my time with the developer and public betas, it feels like Apple did more fine-tuning under...

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