Apple boss shares way to skip infuriating call centre ‘hold’, summer holiday iPhone hack & free car upgrade for millions

A TOP Apple executive has revealed the best new tricks coming to your phone later this year – and there’s a bonus upgrade for drivers too.

In a UK-exclusive chat with The Sun, Apple’s Greg Joswiak revealed a clever way to avoid being stuck on hold, an essential summer holiday hack, and a “once-in-a-decade” change to the iPhone.

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I sat down with ‘Joz’ at Apple Park in California this week to find out what’s next for your iPhone, and whether the tech giant is “late to AI”.

The company dished out a dizzying array of updates at its WWDC event earlier in the week, many of which were powered by AI.

Apple is locked in a gadget arms race with the likes of Google and Amazon – but Joz reckons Apple’s strategy isn’t “late”. It’s just different.

“Our strategy really is a bit different than what some other are doing,” Joz told us. He’s one of Apple’s most senior leaders, in charge of global marketing and reporting directly to company chief Tim Cook.

“We didn’t want to create yet another chatbot. There’s brilliant ones that are out there already – they do an amazing job.”

SMARTER PHONE

Joz explained that the whole point is that the apps and systems work better without gadget owners “even always knowing that they’re going to Apple Intelligence”.

Apple Intelligence debuted last year, adding the ability to create your own custom emoji, get help rewriting text, and generate images from scratch.

Some of the showy AI-supercharged Siri upgrades that were promised still haven’t arrived yet – but a lot of the best AI tricks are meant to just quietly work without you noticing.

Joz gives the example of Hold Assist and Call Screening – two of the blockbuster features coming to your iPhone later this year, likely September.

Hold Assist is a robot that holds on a call centre line so you don’t have to.

And once a human finally picks up, you’ll be alerted and can join the call – dodging the misery of call centre hold music.

Call Screening is a similar AI feature that uses a robot to vet your calls.

So when a stranger rings you, the robot will gather info and then share it with you.

It’ll ask the caller for their name and why they’re calling – and then type the answer out on screen.

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“Those are great examples of how Intelligence can help the features without you necessarily knowing you’re using intelligence, right?,” Joz said.

“And again, you didn’t have to go on an Apple Intelligence app to make that happen.

“It’s just the experience is better.”

He went on: “We can recognise: we know you’re on hold music. Do you want us to help you here?

“We can put you on hold and we can take care of it from there.”

These tricks are coming in the iOS 26 update later this year.

It’s a free upgrade that’ll roll out to millions of iPhone models.

And not only are they handy tricks to avoid a nuisance, Call Screening might even save you from a costly nightmare.

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“In its most ideal state, keeping you from getting scammed is a good thing,” Joz said.

“But we all get spam, whether it’s in our messages or our phone calls. And we’re always looking for ways to deal with this.

“And here’s yet another one – and hopefully a pretty effective one.”

Joz also points out that the current line-up of AI tricks is just the beginning.

Apple rarely talks about the future – but Joz teased plans to introduce significant AI upgrades for years to come.

“This isn’t something that we do for one, two, three years,” he told us.

“This is the kind of thing we’ll be working on for a decade, or decades, right? We’re working on this for a long time because it’s incredibly powerful stuff.”

TALK TO ME!

One of the headline new features is the roll-out of Live Translation.

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This lets you understand and even speak in foreign languages live during conversations.

It’s available inside the Translate app, but will also work across text conversations in Messages, FaceTime, and even phone calls.

It all happens in real-time, so you can have a natural conversation even if you don’t speak the same language as the person you’re chatting with.

“I’m especially looking forward to using it when I travel.

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“We’ve all found ourselves in a situation where we’re in a different country, and we’re running into somebody who doesn’t speak to the same language.”

Joz added: “We can all think of times that we could have used something like that.

“And now you have it and it’s, again, very simple to use.”

FRESH APPLE

The new updates don’t just add AI tricks, though.
Apple has also announced a brand new redesign for how the software on its gadgets looks.

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The makeover is called Liquid Glass and, as the name suggests, looks very glassy.

Senior Apple execs say the new icons and animations are so technically demanding, they wouldn’t have been possible until recently.

“You’re seeing content beneath this glass, this translucent glass, which reflects the light. All that is happening with no latency in real time,” Joz said.

“This is a big thing to do, right?

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“And so it’s not the kind of thing you want to do too often, right?

“It’s kind of an opportunity that comes around every decade or so. The last time we did this was 2013, so 12 years ago with iOS 7.”

He added: “This one is, in a lot of ways, even more ambitious.

Joz explained that iOS 7 was just about improving the design for iPhone.

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But this revamp works to “commonise” the look across almost all of Apple’s gadgets.

“They do come from one company and one design time. It should feel that way, right?

“And it should feel more comfortable as you’re using them or moving across our products.”

ON THE ROAD

Of course it’s not just iPhones, iPads, and Macs getting upgraded – but your car too.

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Apple is the tech titan behind CarPlay, the software that’s now supported by almost every new car.

CarPlay launched back in 2014, and uses your iPhone to offer an infotainment system on your car’s screen.

It can happen via a cable or even wirelessly, and gives you access to your apps, music, contacts and much more.

“It’s a sigh of relief when you get in the car and you say: ‘Oh my goodness, it has CarPlay.

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“You know automatically how to use everything – but it also has your content, which is great.

“You know how to use your maps, you want to listen to your music.”

He added: “Many people are like you – they wouldn’t be a car without CarPlay.”

CarPlay is extremely popular.

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Joz noted that CarPlay is used a staggering 600 million times a day around the world.

“It is by far the most popular phone projection system in a car,” Joz said.

“We worked very hard to minimise glance time and to make sure that you didn’t have to take your eyes off the road for longer than a couple seconds to get something done.

“And to be able to do things with your voice as much as possible – and to create a very simple user interface.

“To your point, it has become incredibly important to our users.”

CarPlay is changing with iOS 26. For a start, it’s getting the slick new Liquid Glass look.

But you’ll be able to use Tapbacks for messages to quickly react, widgets for your screen with important info, and Live Activities (like a sports score).

Apple has also just (finally) debuted its next major version of CarPlay: CarPlay Ultra.

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It’s now available in new models from British motoring giant Aston Martin, but it’s destined for more vehicles in the future too.

With CarPlay Ultra, it’s not just replacing your infotainment screen, but much more.

“We’re also bringing out that next generation of CarPlay, which we just brought out for the first time about a month ago,” Joz told The Sun.

“CarPlay is this beautiful ability to use the features of your phone.

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“We wanted to have an experience with CarPlay Ultra that allows you – through that same interface that you can control your phone – to also control the aspects of your car

“Whether it’s the seat heaters or the heating system in general, or even the car radio.

“Things that are outside of normal iPhone capabilities. To control these with CarPlay Ultra.

“We’re very happy with the initial rollout of that. Some of the first vehicles started coming out last month. There’s plenty more brands working on it.”

ONE MORE THING

The list of new features announced at Apple’s WWDC event this week was enormous.

So I asked Joz what he thinks people might have missed.

And he gave a special shout-out to a long-demanded iPad change – a good reminder that it’s not just iPhone owners getting free upgrades.

“People were very excited about us being able to bring a new windowing system to iPadOS,” Joz said.

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“And again, doing it in an Apple sort of way.

“Which is: look, if you love the simple experience that your iPad has today and you want to continue with that, then great.

“But if you want to take it further and be able to use multiple windows and menus and all the things that come with that, then we enabled that in a very simple way for iPad users as well.

Apple is expected to roll out its new software upgrades later this year – this usually happens in September.

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But we’d expect to see a public beta test version before then that you’ll be able to download and try out before the full release.

So Apple fans, get those gadgets ready.