Tech News: A Few New Things Your iPhone Can Do in iOS 17.4
In this blog post, I will talk about what's new in iOS 17.4 for your iPhone, including updates to Stolen Device Protection, automatic live podcast transcription, and more.
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What's Going On
Apple’s latest software update for your iPhone brings more than a few cool new and useful features, including:
- Stolen Device Protection
- automatic and live podcast transcription
- send Apple Pay payments to friends and family bank accounts or their Apple Pay accounts
- Multilingual support for reading messages, and more
Automatic Live Podcast Transcription
You can now read along to your favorite podcasts as they are spoken, search the transcript, and jump to specific parts.
Stolen Device Protection
Stolen Device Protection was introduced in 17.3. It makes it harder for a thief to access data on a stolen password-protected iPhone, though hopefully you’re using your fingerprint or facial recognition. 17.4 now requires a security delay if you are determined to be away from familiar locations (known only to YOU and your iPhone, NOT Apple) before you, or potentially the thief can attempt can make changes to your Apple Account.
My Take
Automatic live podcast transcription is a game changer and huge for accessibility, but also for anyone following along as they listen to a podcast. I'm sure it won't be perfect, but it's certainly a welcome and long overdue addition that the iPhone is certainly capable of doing. Having it searchable is amazing, so you can jump to the parts you care about.
Stolen Device Protection is absolutely fantastic and long overdue! Much more detail can be found in this Verge article if you want to spend some time getting to know it. Much like laptops, when you're at a coffee shop or in an airport, people tend to shoulder surf, and given the distractions of life, they can grab your device. This literally prevents them from using it, and if they do, you can use Find My to factory reset it the moment it's connected to WiFi.
An important next step is to prevent Account changes on your iPhone using a separate Screen Time passcode. I describe that process in this blog post.
I make a point in my blog posts to only mention something if it's relevant to you and your life. As per usual, Apple packs a LOT into iOS 17.4, You check out a much more detailed article over on MacRumors, where they even talk about the EU Regulations Apple is being forced to adhere to in iOS 17.4 in regards to third-party app stores, but only in Europe. I won't cover that here.
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