As predicted yesterday, now that Apple has the iOS 10.2.1 and macOS 10.12.3 releases out the door, it's turning its attention to larger updates. Apple is releasing the first betas of iOS 10.3 and macOS 10.12.4 to the public today and has given us a broad overview of the biggest changes that people will see when these are released to the public in a couple of months.
The iOS 10.3 update is the more significant of the two. For starters, it adds AirPods to Find My iPhone to make them easier to find if you lose them, which, given how small they are, is bound to happen to AirPod owners eventually.
Most of the other changes come in the form of small additions to existing features. SiriKit, which can already hook into compatible payment and ride-sharing apps, can now be used to pay bills and check on the status of payments. You'll also be able to schedule a ride with Siri—calling an Uber to come at 2pm rather than "right now," for instance. The weather icon in Maps can be 3D Touched on compatible devices (the iPhone 6S and 7 series, as of this writing) to show hourly forecasts and other information. The CarPlay UI picks up shortcuts for launching the two most recently used apps and can display EV charging stations in Maps. HomeKit now supports programmable light switches. Facemarks on the Chinese and Japanese keyboards have been shuffled around to make it easier to type, and the Conversation View that Mail picked up in iOS 10 has gotten some "navigation improvements."
According to the list of features Apple told us about, iOS 10.3 doesn't include a fair number of features that the rumor mill has previously suggested it would include. There's no mention of the vaguely described "theater mode" that was making the rounds last month, nor have any changes been made to iPad or Apple Pencil-specific features as some early rumors suggested. iOS 10 hasn't been as good for the iPad as iOS 9 was, and basic things like the Split View and app switching UIs could stand to be refined; there's also still not a public version of the multi-user feature that Apple started testing in classrooms in iOS 9.3. Any big iPad-specific features will need to wait for iOS 11, at the earliest.
Any given macOS release usually changes less over the course of its life than iOS does, and that's reflected in the 10.12.4 release. Its biggest addition is an integrated Night Shift feature like the one in iOS or the one that f.lux already offers. Apple is also adding Shanghainese dictation support for converting speech to text, albeit not Enhanced Dictation support that would allow users speaking Shanghainese to control their Macs with their voices.
Siri is picking up a new-if-niche ability in both platforms, though it won't show up in either of these betas: they'll soon be able to display cricket scores, much as they can display scores for baseball, basketball, and other sports now. Siri will be able to pull scores, schedules, and rosters for players and teams in the Indian Premier League and International Cricket Council. The feature will be available in the final versions of the software, but Apple didn't tell us when it would be enabled.
Apple hasn't said when it will be releasing these updates, but a March or early April release seems likely. This is around when iOS 7.1, 8.3, and 9.3 were all released—all were likewise the last big updates to their respective iOS versions before efforts turned to the next major release, and major macOS revisions are normally released at the same time as new iOS versions.
We hesitate to recommend that anyone install and run beta software, especially early beta software, on any Mac or iDevice that they rely on day to day. But if you've got hardware you use for testing, and you're interested in giving the new features a spin, you can sign up for Apple's public beta program here.
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