iOS 17 review: StandBy for more features

iOS 17 and iPadOS 17 offer several welcome improvements, tweaks, and new features. They also continue two trends that have dominated recent updates for both platforms: the expansion of widgets giving modular access to functions from a variety of apps, and on-device intelligence that improves search, recommendations, and more.

This year's update pushes both platforms forward just a bit-but not enough that too many people will notice. A more complete feature set will roll out over time, though, so by the end of the cycle, we'll have seen a nice range of additions.

Honestly, with how mature iOS (and Android, for that matter) have become, I don't think it's a bad thing that we're seeing more iterative releases bringing polish and nips and tucks instead of massive feature overhauls and additions nobody is asking for.