While we're still a few days away from the launch of the new iPhone 16, existing iPhone users can now upgrade to iOS 18 and take advantage of Apple's latest features.

We've gone through the massive list of updates, and picked out three significant improvements to highlight today, but we can't help but be disappointed by the notable absence of Apple's primary selling point for their new hardware.

Lock your apps

If you have apps on your phone that you don't want your kids getting into, you now have the ability to enforce authentication via Touch ID or Face ID (depending on what your model has) to launch the app at all.

Better yet, you can keep sensitive apps hidden in a folder that won't even be visible until you authenticate.

No more awkward conversations with the kids about your adult-oriented apps.

Messages are much more expressive

You'll be able to apply text effects (like shaking or exploding) on any word you'd like, and you can react with any ol' emoji instead of just a few basic options from previous releases. This makes chats a whole lot more lively.

And, if you have an Android user in your life, the green bubbles aren't going away, but support for RCS will let you have a very iMessage-like experience instead of the stripped-down SMS dregs we're all used to.

If you've ever wanted to save a specific reply for later, it's now relatively easy to schedule your response for a better time.

Find your photos faster

The revitalized Photos app has been designed with a focus on customizability and speed. You can now organize and reorder your photos and collections in a snap, and it'll even automatically detect the most important categories for you.

Hand-written notes, receipts and even screen shots are contained and sorted so your most important info isn't haphazardly scattered throughout your vacation photos.

The bad news? AI is a no show

While Apple has been pushing their AI initiative heavily for the last few months, Apple Intelligence isn't baked into the initial release of iOS 18 — even if you have one of the few models that can take advantage of it.

Some of the AI features are scheduled to be released in beta this fall, but some of the more ambitious features won't hit until 2025. While we weren't so hyped for the AI-heavy pitch to begin with, it's pretty confusing that most folks won't even get to demo it for weeks or months.

[Images: Apple]