Apple has just announced the beta of iOS 16.6, the last version that will be released before the presentation of iOS 17 at WWDC 2023 on June 5. iOS 16.5 has arrived news officer like fixing several bugs, support for new Beats, matching wallpaper to the new band they released, etc.
In these last updates of the year, Apple generally does not introduce changes at the visual level. At least not a lot. The idea is to give more stability to the software, and to add security improvements. Newer designs tend to leave them for the version they announce at WWDC.
Stability, battery and security: the ABC of updates
It looks like iOS 16.6 will focus on exactly those three pillars, and that’s what an update like this should be. A priori, the only relevant novelty that we have found, beyond the optimizations, concerns security. His name is check iMessage contacts security keyand that makes a lot of sense.
If you recall, some time ago news broke that various governments around the world were spying on journalists, critics, opponents and others. they did access information on their phones through Pegasus, spyware owned by NSO, an Israeli cybersecurity company. They are only sold to states (or so they say) and the Israeli government itself considers it a weapon.
Apple had already talked about it at the time, and began to propose solutions. After all, if there’s one thing the people of Cupertino have always treated with the utmost importance, it’s privacy. They can’t afford to have software that can breach the security of every one of their devices, and do nothing to stop it.
This verification, which is included in the first beta of iOS 16.6, allows the user talking on iMessage to verify, via a password, that You only talk to the person you want to talk to. That there is no one reading the messages or impersonating it. Additionally, those who have this option enabled will receive a notification if, for whatever reason, a state has managed to access these encrypted conversations, or a server in the cloud that contains sensitive information.
The option is included in this latest iOS beta, but so far Apple has not enabled it. We don’t know for sure when it will be available, but from what we see, we understand that very soon. Maybe Apple will talk about it at WWDC 2023. In any case, there is very little left to know.
In Applesphere | iOS 17: everything we know about the operating system that we will install on our iPhones in 2023
