While you can’t please everybody, apparently it’s quite possible to upset everybody. Half of the iOS 18 users hate the OS for its instability and lack of novelties — besides Apple Intelligence. The other half was actually eager for Apple Intelligence, and hates iOS 18 because the feature is just terrible. If you were hoping these issues could be fixed on iOS 18.4, check below which features the update won’t have.
1. (Significantly) Improved Apple Intelligence
For starters, Apple’s huge promise for iOS 18 (and iPadOS 18, and macOS 15, but I digress): Apple Intelligence. It wasn’t there in iOS 18.0. It arrived underwhelming and buggy, with iOS 18.1. On iOS 18.2, there were some minor improvements, while iOS 18.3 had an even more disappointing change log — and many bugs.
One would expect that the company would have gotten its act together by now and have fixed Apple Intelligence. Well, it didn’t. Most functionalities either work poorly, only work sometimes, or don’t work at all. A great example is Notification Summaries, which was so bad at, well, summarizing notifications that the company disabled the feature altogether.
2. Siri 2.0
Most of the actually useful Apple Intelligence features promised by the company were related to Siri. The assistant was posed to receive a major overhaul, becoming something like a ChatGPT on steroids. Was posed to.
How about on-Screen Awareness or the ability to “see” what you’re doing and provide useful information or perform actions? Not here. Personal Context, through which Siri would use what it knows about you to improve itself in a hyper-customized way? Missing, too. In-App Actions, or, basically, autonomously using your phone to save you from thinking? Nowhere to be seen.
The situation got so embarrassing the company decided to do something it had rarely done before: address its failure publically. Apple unusually acknowledged it didn’t deliver, and, right after that, the Siri team saw a change in leadership.
Siri 2.0 was initially promised in iOS 18.4. Then, it was pushed back to iOS 18.5, then delayed again, to iOS 19. Now, it’s not expected to arrive before iOS 20, in 2026. That means iOS 18.4 won’t have this feature, and neither will iOS versions for at least the next 15 months.
3. Major Redesign
Recently, there have been rumors about a major design overhaul in iOS (and, possibly in all of Apple’s OSes). These, however, won’t come for at least a few months, so don’t expect any significant visual changes in iOS 18.4.
That’s not to say there won’t be any changes. They’ll exist but will be minor. The Genmoji icon, e.g., has changed, as has the Focus Mode selector in the Control Center.
CarPlay, on the other hand, has gotten a more comprehensive redesign. It’s not an Apple OS per se, obviously, only a specific viewing mode for iOS. For those who spend a lot of time in their cars, however, this can represent a significant interface update.
4. Third-Party App Stores
In March 2024, Apple released iOS 17.4, which allowed users to install alternative app stores on iPhone. Third-party marketplaces for iPads arrived only with iPadOS 18, in September. That is if you live in the European Union.
Now would be as good a time as any for Apple to drop the walled garden and release this worldwide. Except, obviously, it won’t. For now, you’ll have to rely on makeshift methods to sideload iOS apps, like ESign or SideStore. Not only iOS 18.4 won’t have this feature, you shouldn’t expect it to arrive anytime soon.
5. Worldwide Apple Intelligence Availability
Presently, Apple Intelligence for users in the European Union is somewhat like the third-party app stores situation, but reversed. While almost the whole world can use the features, even if they’re underwhelming at best, EU users can’t.
It’s highly likely this will change in iOS 18.4. To be fair, that is something to be done server-side. If you leave the EU, you can use Apple Intelligence today without any updates. However, the word is that the company finally cleared all regulatory hurdles and is all set for the EU launch. The announcement is expected to come in April, and Apple could decide to make it alongside the iOS 18.4 release.
There’s one place where Apple Intelligence still won’t be available, however: China. Similarly, Apple has had to adapt to Chinese regulations, which include partnering with a local company for the AI’s backbone. It went with Alibaba, though Tencent, ByteDance, and Baidu were considered as well.
While Chinese users will have to wait a bit more, it shouldn’t be that long. Apple Intelligence is expected to arrive in the country in May. There’s a chance Apple couples this with the iOS 18.5, or even iOS 19, release, but that’s not a given. What is known is that it won’t be available in time to be announced as an iOS 18.4 feature.
Bonus: Long-Overdue Features Coming in iOS 18.4
Not all is lost, though. There are quite a few features you can expect from iOS 18.4, and some may even get you excited.
Music lovers, for instance, now have an Ambient Music section in the Control Center. This allows you to set playlists according to your mood, and instantly play them.
Worried parents will have the possibility of selecting an age range when setting their children’s iPhones. This comes in addition to many other parental controls already existing in iOS.
Owners of iPhones 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max might like to know that iOS 18.4 will enable Visual Intelligence. The feature, previously limited to the iPhone 16 family, can be triggered via the Action Button.
Lastly (for now), you’ll be able to set non-Apple default apps for more categories. One of them is the navigation app, though it’s not clear if this option will be available worldwide. At least, we’ll all get the possibility of changing the default iOS translation app.
The list above is far from comprehensive since the update brings some interesting quality-of-life improvements. In fact, there are over 20 changes you can expect in iOS 18.4.
Will iOS 18.4 be all we were expecting? No. Will it be all that we deserve? Also no, Apple has messed up a lot this time. Surely, there will be some improvements, but these are seriously outweighed by the list of features iOS 18 won’t have.