But I think it’s far more successful than Memories, which sometimes shows me slideshows of weirdly disconnected or boring images. Featured Photos nearly always contains 10 to 20 images of happy or interesting snapshots from my life, typically featuring my children.įeatured Photos, like Memories, relies on some kind of machine-learning algorithm that Apple doesn’t describe. Featured Photos is a small, ephemeral album iOS assembles for me every day. You might see an entry from Memories, the AI-generated oddball collections that might include “Exploring Pittsburgh over the years” or “On this date.”īut I most often see one of my Featured Photos, which I prefer. That widget shows entries from the For You section in Photos. My favorite thing each morning is to see what photo appears in the Photos widget on my Home Screen. If only Apple could extend this sort of machine learning to the My Photos screensaver on the Apple TV. I have the Photos widget on my first Home Screen, and I created a custom Photo Shuffle for my Lock Screen as soon as I started using iOS 16. While Twitter and other social media are decidedly mixed bags, I’ve made new connections with people, and that was especially important for my mental well-being during the pandemic.īut what about pure joy? I’d have been hard-pressed to give you an answer to that until Apple let us add the Photos widget to the Home Screen in iOS 14 and iPadOS 15 and use Photo Shuffle as a Lock Screen wallpaper option in iOS 16. I’m glad to have FaceTime, Zoom, and other videoconferencing tools to connect with family and friends. I enjoy the quality of photography modern iPhones are capable of. If I instead ponder how technology has enhanced my happiness, the list is far shorter. When I think about how technology as a whole has improved my life and the lives of people around me, I tend to focus on things like the development of vaccines, the improvement of chemotherapy and other oncology treatments, and emergency tools like the Apple Watch’s fall detection and automated notifications of dangerous weather conditions.

#1664: Real system requirements for OS 2023, beware Siri creating alarms instead of timersīring Yourself Recurring Joy with Apple’s New Lock Screen Photo Shuffle.

#1665: Important OS security updates, abusive Web notifications, solve myopia with an iPhone, Self Service Repair.

#1666: Air quality websites and apps, The Password Game.#1667: OS Rapid Security Responses, 1Password and 2FA, using Siri to request music.

#1668: Updated Rapid Security Responses, OS public betas, screen saver bug fixed, “Red Team Blues” book review.

Mac screen saver google photos album