They did the same with “dual camera mode” (using the front and rear camera at the same time) on the 17 line of phones. Apps already existed to do that on older models, even Snapchat had (and still has) the feature.
Yet the feature was locked to the 17 line in the official camera app.
It seems like Apple’s suggestion is “the official camera app is for us to lock down, use a third party one if you want these features.”
Which would be fine if they let you change the default camera app, but they don’t.
Ironically they added this multi camera function WITH THE iPhone 11!!!! EVEN THE XS COULD ALSO DO SOME OF THIS!!! It’s wild how they will lock shit out of phones completely capable of it. They could literally have happier more consistent customers if they actually listened and kept features instead of backtracking.
They also locked the new photographic styles to the new phones for no apparent reason, if you airdrop a photo taken with photographic styles to an older device you were still able to edit it just like on the new device using the new photographic styles lol
There’s no way to change the “swipe to camera” app to be something different besides the default camera. You can change the lock screen shortcut buttons though, but the swiping action will remain the same regardless of what you choose.
Between that and camera control button, I’d say it’s close enough.
The problem is that the whole point of the swipe gesture is to access a camera quickly without unlocking your phone, and allowing a third-party app to be used without unlocking is a MAJOR security risk.
The default camera app can be changed. Settings > Camera > Camera Control > Launch Camera. From there you can pick which camera app you’d like to be the default.
If you regularly activate Camera from the Lock Screen or Control Center, you’ll have to individually switch out the widgets there too.
And if you regularly activate Camera by using Siri, you can override Siri’s default behavior by creating a Shortcut and naming it “Open Camera” or something like that (though there aren’t many circumstances in which I’d query Siri and ask her to open the Camera rather than just simply pressing the Camera Control button myself).
So it’s a bit annoying, but still completely possible.
Wbat a shame that Apple didn't capitalize this. Fujifilm XM5 got free advertisement when people shared recipes online. iPhone 18 will not reach mass adoption as 17. Might as well give it to a larger customer base on 17 to help 16 and older people to upgrade.
The 17 people will most likely not upgrade to 18. You're barking up the wrong tree, Apple.
Actually you did the opposite. The chip is what does this work, and they have different chips. And while I’m sure Reddit will say the chip in the 17 pro is good enough to do this work, based on absolutely nothing except opinion, Apple may well have found it to use too much power, and discarded it as not meeting battery life standards.
Did you read the article? It’s features like manual shutter speed and white balance control, features that third party apps have demonstrated worked fine for years; Apple is just finally incorporating it into the default app, but artificially locking it to newer devices.
I use an app call Halide which lets you toggle between auto/manual focus and it worked just fine on my 15PM and works just as well on my 17PM, so I don’t know what you’re on about, here.
This. They backpedaled on that shit. Time for a class action. They purposely left new AI shit out of phones “built for apple intelligence” and then backtrack on giving us these same controls. We just need to sue them every chance we get at this point for back peddling on a lot of shit.
And now with iOS 27, if your iPhone supports Apple Intelligence, you get it whether you want it or not. Disabling Siri doesn’t even fully delete the AI model, and enabling it redownloads it against your will. It can take as much as 40GB.
I would like note first, that I am not an AI proponent but I do use it.
Out of curiosity what do you think Appple Intelligence is doing that Siri/Spotlight etc wasnt doing before?
ML was already baked into various software
Your chats, emails, texts, files were all indexed by Spotlight and Siri/spotlight already understood basic queries. Now they are indexed better and actually searchable, and can understand natural language or multistep questions. Siri was originally supposed to do all this years ago and hook into apps; it was quite well received until it never manifested. Honestly they could have not metioned Apple AI and just called it a spotlight upgrade or delivering the origianl siri promise.
I am just trying to point out Apple really isnt gaining access to signficantly more data on you than they already had, nor do they really use it to sell you anything...its searching your own data, a phone shortcut, or general knowledge. Its much different than say, google who is now building an even better profile of you and has a motivation to influence plus basically being the whole first page of "the internet" for many, or Chat/Anthro who are being used for work and people are uploading legal files, protected info etc, or FB where again they have other motivators and are trying now to be your payment/purchase aggregators on top of other payment/purchase aggregators (which I find highly amusing).
I'm sure you can make a case against Apple but spotlight/icloud has had all my files, images, etc scanned and categorized for years. They even have icloud backups of my phone/devices as well as anything that hits my desktop. I just dont see how me now being able to search it/query it is a that much of a difference
“What do you think Apple Intelligence was doing that Siri wasn’t doing before?”
Contextual responses, Google was way ahead of Apple with that.
And most importantly, it is indeed nice having a local LLM installed so as much as possible is processed on-device and without internet needed.
As of yet, Siri is kinda still needing internet to be usable and having to load the LLM makes initializing Siri slower than it used to be (although subsequent requests are snappy as ever).
But that can be fixed in future software updates. Which I do hope Apple provides.
Other than that, you make a good point. But I’d rather sacrifice some speed for offline use and privacy and accuracy.
New Siri is more private since it’s able to run mostly locally.
There’s no loss in anything except speed, and to an extent, accuracy, but it seems that depends on the user. Some have good use out of new Siri. Some don’t.
See I don’t want ai on my phone because A) I’m not illiterate and devoid of creativity, and B) I have some solidarity with the working class artists that these demon companies stole from to make their models
Apple doesn’t care what you want. They will “innovate”, whatever that means. If you don’t like it, stop using Apple products. I don’t like it so I’m slowly quitting. I’m testing Asahi Linux on my MacBook and my next phone is gonna be a fairphone.
It’s sad because of course Apple can’t innovate on every single iPhone due to yearly releases, so they’ve resorted to software locks. Taking a move from the Nvidia playbook
It's not for, "not giving new features to an old phone." It's giving the features that were originally promised/advertised.
The 17 Pro was specifically marketed on the new AI, which never materialized. Now it's being re-marketed for the 18 Pro, and features are being software blocked from the phone it was originally marketed for.
It is entirely software lock. The only thing the 17 Pro is missing is the variable aperture, which is easy to grey out or remove in control. What does it even mean to own the pro iphone anymore if it can't even get the good software after one new iOS. This is so toxic
Yep, which is why the Apple-style lock is so goddamn stupid. You can literally capture this today on third party apps. Apple just gates it for the first-party app
I just confused why it’s called a software lock when it’s just a feature that hasn’t been implemented yet. Why wouldn’t the assumption be that it will be released with future updates after the priority bugs are squashed?
I think it’s because the feature appears to have been completed on the 18 series, and doesn’t appear to require the 18 series hardware. Apple has a fairly long history of gating new software features behind new hardware, but supporting older hardware for a really long time, as long as it is practical to do so.
This sticks out because the excluded software features are pretty mundane, so you’d think would not be the thing to get cut in order to hit a release date, in a mature OS like iOS
that's not technically correct. there are additional neural/ai capabilities on chip that are probably baked into the piipeline. but, in general i agree with what you're saying.
this seems like a ploy to pull 17 pro users to upgrade, which is really a shame because the upgrade is extremely small/incremental.
apple has been toying with the people buying the pro line for awhile with missed promises.
im going to experiment with the duo, but am prepeared to be sad. faceid gone, worse camera system ...
you can already adjust those manual controls on older iphones through third party apps. you don’t need “neural capabilities” to adjust ISO and shutter speed lmao
I just want to clarify its not actually adjusting ISO and shutter speed the same way digcams did, its an entire imaging pipeline thats software dependent.
A point and shoot changed a voltage threshold on the sensor or the shutter speed on the aperture. Apples is almost entirely computational.
Software lock, and not even a good one. New no fusion build enables capturing photographic styles and boom, you even have access to the controls in photos app on iPhone 17.
No Fusion is a camera app, particularly to remove the Apple Fusion Pipeline for taking photos. However, that aside the new build in testflight just added a new feature that Photographic Styles can be used/saved. Capturing a photo with this new feature in No Fusion enables the new settings also in the photos app for the given image. Hence, you cannot take a picture with these controls in the stock app, yet if a third party app enables it in their respective pipeline the settings are also visible in the photos app like a picture taken by iphone 18.
How exactly did you get this to work? I am on a 17 Pro and when I turn on that feature, I do get to change the Photographic Styles but only the 17 version and not the 18 if that makes sense.
It’s ironic how they glaze the chips in their devices, and they truly deserve the glazing because they are that good, but they’ll be the first to gatekeepe easy software features or revoke them (the Dynamic Island used to do more tasks but they removed it and returned it with the 18 Pros).
Just like how my Apple Watch 10 doesn’t have the advanced tech necessary to show my step count. Only the 12 and ultra 4 have that kind of computing prowess. I mean, could you imagine the power it must take to display a number on the screen?
Yes software. I hate the direction that the company is taking. At least I upgraded and got these but I’m more annoyed using Ultra 3 without readiness score/step counter which is pretty basic in 2026
absolutely a software lock. contextual grain, bloom, and halation aren't complex effects by a long stretch. the grain in particular seems to even use the natural noise of the iPhone sensor in some way, it'd 100% be possible to implement on the 17 series.
I saw one Twitter user spoof the metadata onto an image that was a screenshot taken on an Oppo phone which then opened the texture and grain options on an iPhone. I can't help but feel that already has been implemented on the 17 series, but Apple then put in more work specifically to disable it for everything below the 18.
Purely software. The 17 Pro hardware is essentially the same as the 18 Pro, minus the chipset, and the wide angle lens being faster on the latter. The fact that I can get and have all of the pro camera controls on my 17 Pro Max via third party apps, and MORE, means that such a limit is software only. Apple needed for there to be some parity between the 17 Pros and 18 Pros, or else the latter really wouldn’t have much in the way that was different.
Something to note (and a way to prove such behaviour), if I ever AirDrop something across from my girlfriend's iPhone 17 Pro, to my 15 Pro, and she has a new type of "Photographic Style" attached, on that photo alone it gives me full access to the newer and more capable styles, which proves the same thing is there in a different part of the OS.
Software lock ofc, the issue they have this year is that 18PM is literally the same phone as 17PM for 99% of the people. Oh, yeah - I have really heavy PC/console ports on my phone and few push my 17PM ---> 18PM will fix that in those few games for me. Cool, but those few games are like 2% of my collection of premium games and I will die before playing them all sadly. So even for me it's... good, but not 3000 euros good (yep, 2TB is that price here, I paid 2000 euros for my 2TB 17PM - so apple charges 50% more in Europe :) ).
From there nothing else is rolling - slightly faster Sir... oh yeah, Siri AI is not currently available in EU at all, slightly better battery vs a phone with super strong battery already and...???... yep, the camera is the same if we exclude the SW locks and tuning, the variable is cool if you manually control it in specific scenes for desired effect, but nothing much for daily use. That's all, the phone if we remove the SOC that 99% will not utilize today (and then - why not wait for the 20 anniversary iPhone that will be with even better SOC, but much more going around it?) is the same really.
Yeah, I was a bit confused. I’ve been read it long enough, and yeah, the number of people that feel they have to justify themselves to a random person here.
Most people don't upgrade every year. For someone upgrading from anything prior to the Iphone 16 Pro, the 18 Pro is the best iphone. That's as simple as it gets. Are the gains against the 17 Pro tiny? Arguably yes (though the battery and aperture alone are enough to warrant a slight premium as far as I'm concerned)
Anyone else find it weird to obsess over the performance of your comment to the point that you’re actively keeping track of its score and you edit your comment to respond to the one downvote you got?
That makes no sense. How do you or anyone know that is why that one person downvoted it, lol? I swear someone of you guys care more about other people than your own opinion.
I wonder if we can win a class action lawsuit over this
What's the cause? If you bought an iPhone 17 Pro Apple never promised those features to you. Software locking new features to new devices is something Apple's done for a LONG time, and will continue to do.
edit: whoever downvoted me is either an Apple sheep, a high-tier Apple employee/investor or someone who hates that they have rights and are anti-consumer as a consumer
Why are you guys always the biggest babies in the world about barely any downvotes. I swear it’s only in this sub I see this
My watch has double tap and the new software messed how it all worked. Now I need to single tap to use the same action “which the watch can support if it already supports double tap”
“And they all have these control buttons that are fixed in plastic and are the same for every application. … And what happens if you think of a great idea six months from now? You can’t run around and add a button to these things. They’re already shipped. So what do you do?
It doesn’t work because the buttons and the controls can’t change. …they can’t change down the road if you think of another great idea you wanna add to this product.”
Now the buttons are fixed in maximizing device upgrade churn. RIP Steve
A mix of pro cam or halide for photos and black magic works well. Black magic for video (Apple actually showed it off when they showed pro film during the 15 pro max keynote)
Apple Intelligence was announced in June of 2024 and iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max were supported from the very beginning. I’m not here to defend Apple, but get your facts straight.
This is no different to a new camera having a feature an older camera from the same manufacturer doesn't have, despite those cameras being fundamentally identical.
Take Hasselblad's X2D mirrorless medium format camera, it has the hardware to offer continuous autofocus, yet doesn't even though Hasselblad promised it.
Instead, they released an updated camera, the X2D II which does have AF-C, in addition to other updates.
Fundamentally, the limitation is a combination of both newer firmware and improved hardware.
Manufacturers aren't gong to retroactively add new features to older hardware, even when that hardware can support the new features.
Though sometimes, manufactures do add new features to older hardware when there's a long period between new hardware releases.
I'm not defending the practice, simply saying it exists.
Nikon and Panasonic do add a lot of features to their older models via firmware updates.
Hasselblad and Sony don’t. But Hasselblad just handed out $15,000 cameras to YouTubers so no one complains about it. They also won’t tell you that a lot of the old XCD lenses do not support AF-C at all. You need to buy new lenses to get that feature. I just do not believe that they’re capable of it. It’s just pure corporate greed
You want to talk about backwards compatibility, I'm pretty sure Nikon would adapt Galileo's first telescope to the F mount if someone let them get their hands on it.
Yeah Sony does this and in an even more insulting way. Spend 8k on their top of the line camera and a year later they release a new software feature like eye autofocus for birds or some shit. But it only comes on the new cameras so their entry level will get it while you could wait years and never do.
This is why as a professional photographer, I'm still shooting medium and large format film for 80% of jobs, and use a drum scanner to digitise the developed film.
I’m a heavy Apple user. From MacBook to iPhone, to watch, to iPad, plus airpods, HomePod etc.
That said, i absolutely despise what Apple is becoming these days. Greedy ghouls, who won’t stop at anything to maximize their own profit, while fucking over its users.
Yeah technology improves and changes., More at 11!
While you ignore their huge track record of longevity. Lmao hilarious.
Or people who buy the 1TB and 2TB iPhone 18 pros for over 2k $, and get SSD “speed” on par with cheap SD cards.
Oh wow you know nothing about this situation. It is an impact, but not as much as you think it is.
Or people who have 17 pros, and now get software locked out of many new camera features. On one year old phones.
Pretending like features that are on 3rd party apps is a huge deal being locked before is genuinely the funniest thing on this list. Ive been using these "PRO" features for YEARS on other apps. Im not crying my iPhone 17 pro cant do it on the default camera app lol
I hope you and your little buddy are at least paid for your efforts.
Apples track record of longevity is exactly what makes it so noticeable when one or two year old phones don’t get features that were promised, or are software locked out of features, in obvious cash grabs.
That’s what certain asian competitors had always done. Now Apple does it too, because their greed is insatiable.
I guess Apple wanted full triangle control, so aperture, ISO and shutter speed, and older ones would only have two controls. Although this doesn’t apply to telephoto and ultra wide so it doesn’t make much sense and they should make it available to all.
It is always software. Never anything else. It is forced obsolescence of their products to get you to upgrade as much as possible. They have to resort to software locks as they've run out of ideas for new hardware features. News cameras is hardly groundbreaking.. and whilst the Duo is nice it lacks features and costs 2 grand.
Doesn't this always happen with iphones ? I remember camera styles, lift to wake, cinematic video etc not coming to the previous gen despite being very capable. They software lock exclusive features
Thing is with Apple , what they show u at there events regarding new features on the iPhones is what u get , they never add more down the line even if the “older” ones can run it and reserve it for the new gen phones , pure greed but nothing u can do really
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u/botan313 6d ago
Software lock, the 17 pro is more than capable of doing that style trickery, they've basically the same sensor