r/apple • u/IllustriousMatch2049 • 1d ago
iPhone Apple promised Texture & Grain controls for iPhone 16/17, then quietly made them 18 Pro only
When the iPhone 18 Pro was announced, Apple's Newsroom press release said the new Texture and Grain controls for Photographic Styles would come with iOS 27 to every iPhone supporting the latest generation of Photographic Styles. Per Apple's own user guide, that means the iPhone 16 and 17 lineups and the iPhone Air.
Less than two weeks later, the footnote was rewritten: the controls are now limited to photos captured on iPhone 18 Pro models and some iPhone Duo cameras. No announcement, no technical explanation. MacRumors, Macworld and The Verge covered it, and the original wording is still on the Wayback Machine.
What bothers me most: older iPhones on iOS 27 already show these controls when editing a photo shot on an 18 Pro. So the software clearly runs on them.
I'm about to buy an iPhone 17 pro, and this kind of quiet backtracking doesn't inspire confidence.
There is a precedent: in 2022, Stage Manager was M1-only until enough people complained, and Apple extended it to older iPad Pros. If you care about this, send feedback. It takes two minutes, and volume is what they look at.
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u/Vertsix 1d ago
The issue here isn’t that the feature isn’t available, compatible, etc.
It’s that it was advertised that it would be available, and now it is not.
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u/loosebolts 1d ago
It was badly worded in a footnote. It was never explicitly advertised on the iOS 27 page, keynote or announcement. In fact it was specifically stated as coming to the new iPhones in the September event and did not mention coming to older phones.
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u/nemesit 23h ago
still false advertising so if anyone bought a 17 cause of it that person could sue and easily win
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u/coltsmetsfan614 22h ago
Yeah, good luck with your "easy" lawsuit against Apple lmao
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u/nemesit 22h ago
in my country lawsuits against big companies are indeed easy. if you live in a shit world country i guess not.
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u/loosebolts 22h ago
What, people buy phones for a particular unadvertised feature in the couple of hours that the mistake was in the footnotes of a web page?
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u/rhysmorgan 22h ago
Nobody would have bought a 17 Pro because of some camera grain though, would they? Let’s be real.
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u/Boring-Channel-1672 1d ago
If you want to loudly announce that you’re posting AI output to Reddit, say “quietly” in the title.
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u/uni-twit 1d ago
The post is just another weirdly worded AI generated busy-box time waster. Who knows if OP actually feels this way - or even feels for that matter.
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u/Ok_Possibility9937 1d ago
apple doesn’t like to backport their camera stuff, they don’t even backport the pro controls. Also why buy a 17 pro now?
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u/bristianmcbaffrey 1d ago
FB Marketplace deals on 17 Pro’s are insane right now and they qualify for AppleCare+ still in California if you go in store. I got a 256gb one with 22 battery cycle count for $750.
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u/Ok_Possibility9937 1d ago edited 22h ago
deals are insane until they ship you an iphone box with a brick inside
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u/bristianmcbaffrey 21h ago
That’s why you do an in person pickup on marketplace and don’t ship… lol I get your point but there really are good ways to get new-ish phones for cheaper than a brand new 18 pro for those trying to be financially responsible
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u/loosebolts 1d ago
They never have, so I still don’t understand why people thought they would this time and get upset that they didn’t.
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u/UnsureAssurance 1d ago
Yeah but Johnny boy needs to sell a bunch of new iPhones, sometimes that means software locks to differentiate the new model
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u/Educational_Yard_326 1d ago
Promised is a strong word. You bought the phone with the features it came with, any added features are a bonus
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u/epmuscle 1d ago
Also was a line item in a footer note on a web page. They never announced it was coming.
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u/eschewthefat 1d ago
Yeah if you don’t want artificial handicapping of basic features then Apple isn’t the company for you
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u/beforesunsetearth 1d ago
Correct. Being upset you didn’t get a feature that didn’t exist when you bought your phone is weird.
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u/Ambitious_Bee1090 1d ago
It’s not weird at all, that’s literally how software works. Apple wants to sell phones so they won’t allow older phones to have it, but let’s not pretend they couldn’t enable it for every phone if they wanted.
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u/beforesunsetearth 1d ago
Sure then why don’t they enable Siri AI on the iPhone 3GS?
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u/juniorspank 1d ago
This is kind of a poor example because when Siri launched on the 4S, it was quickly ported by communities onto 4 and even 3GS.
https://wccftech.com/siri-ported-iphone-3gs-successfully-video/
I know you said Siri AI, but this is an example of arbitrary software locking that Apple is known for.
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u/muraliramdj 1d ago
Some rich guy should sue apple with the screen shot of that feature announcement and saying we understand ai top feature not coming to 16 series because the device is not capable and battery will take a hit but surely apple can allow these texture and grain control to users
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u/LiveNvanByRiver 1d ago
My biggest gripe is battery health in settings is limited. If you force your phone to do diagnostics you can see the log that checks the maximum capacity of your battery.
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u/LastRebel66 1d ago
Apple is known for keeping some features exclusive to a special model or hardware. iPhone 18 Pro needs more exclusive features because it’s practically same phone from last year.
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u/sortalikeachinchilla 16h ago
Honestly boggles my mind why you guys care about this. If you are a pro photographer you are probably already using a completely different app anyways. This is not like stage manager. That did not have alternatives
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u/lint2015 1d ago
I think it’s a mistake on their press release and it both simultaneously says available on the latest Photographic Styles and available on iPhone 16 Pro and 17 Pro, and we know that they don’t support the latest Photographic Styles.
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u/No-Lawfulness1159 16h ago
There are really more things to worry about in the world than a grain tool.
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u/lofotenIsland 1d ago
Apple barely add new camera feature on older iPhone with iOS updates, the last time they were doing it was High Key Mono effect in iOS 13. So I am surprised they claim iPhone 16 and later can do grain control. The problem is we don’t know if older iPhone can save the data to support grain control and doesn’t slow down. Supporting grain control on existing photo should not be a huge problem, it will be strange if only iPhone 18 Pro can properly edit the photo it takes, it will not a huge problem if older iPhone take extra time to edit it.
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u/AcademicSand1034 1d ago edited 1d ago
This was a communication snafu, and I think they actually changed it pretty quickly. The intent was that every iPhone supporting latest generation photographic styles would be able to edit the texture & grain settings for a photo, but only the new phones would be able to capture photos that enabled this editing. I recall seeing some of the Mac news sites covering the correction/change within a day or two of the announcement. It happens.