
Apple releases iOS 10.3 - zitterbewegung
https://9to5mac.com/2017/03/27/ios-10-3/
======
jordansmithnz
I've been running the beta for a few weeks now. The thing that stands out the
most? They changed the filesystem, and I haven't noticed a thing - the upgrade
time wasn't even significantly longer. If anything, the beta has been more
stable than 10.2 releases.

The fact they've pulled it off so seamlessly is pretty impressive. Heck, the
majority of users won't have a clue that their filesystem has changed, and
that's the way it should be - users shouldn't be required to know about
technical implementation.

~~~
derefr
> the upgrade time wasn't even significantly longer

I wonder if it works like FileVault, where there's a notion of a "partially
converted" volume and blocks are slowly converted as a background-idle task
after the update completes.

~~~
mrsteveman1
Could be, it may be more like the ext3/4 -> BTRFS conversion process[1], where
metadata for the new filesystem is written in the free space, but with
pointers to the original data which isn't moved or re-written.

[1]
[https://btrfs.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Conversion_from_Ext3](https://btrfs.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Conversion_from_Ext3)

~~~
tradersam
I believe they discussed about this being the method they were actually doing
on ATP a few weeks ago, I'll find the link and report back soon.

------
sirn
Biggest change to me in this release is that iOS now switches language
immediately with hardware keyboard rather than after the switcher animation
ended.

This problem is not very noticable if you do not use non-Latin input method.
However for some languages (Thai in my case), in iOS 10.2, it means you will
have to wait a little moment until the language switcher faded out until you
can type in the target language, otherwise it will still stuck at previous
language. I'm _really_ glad to see this fixed.

(Previously I workaround this problem by using Capslock, which seems to be
able to make iOS go into latin input mode.)

------
dmerrick
I'm excited about exposing to app developers a way to ask for ratings.
Specifically, the ability to opt out of them.

I think this doesn't address the real problem though, which is that ratings
reset after every app update. This means that app developers have to
constantly ask for reviews, which is exhausting as a user.

~~~
drusepth
>ratings reset after every app update.

What's the reasoning behind this? On Android, reviews for prior versions have
a "This review was left for a previous version." banner at the top of them,
but the star aggregates are all still there. How do apps keep reviews if
they're wiped out every time an app updates?

~~~
thecosas
There are two views when looking at ratings in the iOS App Store:

    
    
      Current version
      All versions
    

It defaults to "Current version"

~~~
dceddia
This is true, and also, when searching the app store the star ratings
displayed next to each app are based on the "current version", so if an app is
recently released it might say "0 reviews" even though it previously had
thousands.

~~~
k-mcgrady
I guess as a developer this approach is useful if your first version is bug
ridden, gets terrible reviews and you quickly push an update that fixes them
all. Your product is doomed. Maybe after 5 updates or something to an app it
should show the 'all ratings' as defaults but before that show 'current
version'.

~~~
0x0
Or, alternatively, if a previously popular app changes hands and turns into
semi-malware, it's useful to not get a free 5 star listing.... :)

~~~
drusepth
How often does something like that happen on iOS?

------
geofft
Here's the security info: [https://support.apple.com/en-
us/HT207617](https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207617)

Notably, ten kernel arbitrary code execution bugs, seven from Google Project
Zero and two from Qihoo 360's research team. There are also a few WebKit RCEs,
so it seems like it's prudent to update as soon as possible, lest a malicious
website silently jailbreak your phone.

~~~
pdog
Don't upgrade immediately unless you're willing to deal with problems. If
these security updates were critical they'd be made available in a 10.2.x
point release.

------
AdamGibbins
Changing filesystem for billions of phones in a point release? That doesn't
sound fun.

~~~
pflats
Initially, I was thinking the same thing. Given how fast the average Apple
consumer updates to major iOS releases, I imagine that rolling it out over a
point release is actually part of the plan.

Presumably, if something does go wrong on the individual level, the support
burden on the genius bars will be lower (since major iOS releases have
traditionally come alongside hardware releases), and if a major bug is found,
the number of devices affected will also likely be smaller.

It stills feels wrong on a gut level, and semver folks might not be happy with
it, but it seems to make some real sense.

edit: Also, if it went out with 11.0, coordinating all the bug fixes for a
11.0.1 would almost definitely take longer than whatever will be in 10.3.1
release, letting any APFS issues get tweaked faster.

~~~
mikeash
Rolling it out first on iOS at all doesn't seem like the right approach.

If I were somehow in charge of it, I imagine I'd want to do it like: 1) ship
it as officially supported on the Mac, but off by default. 2) a year or two
later, ship it as officially supported on the Mac, on by default, but still
allow HFS+ as an option. 3) A year or two after that, if all has gone well,
then introduce it into iOS (where presumably it's not reasonable to make it
optional).

It's really weird to me that Apple is rolling it out to hundreds of millions
of devices all at once, when it's not even a bootable filesystem on any of
their platforms yet. Seems like the kind of thing where you'd want to take a
more gradual approach.

I get that HFS+ is super old and I see why Apple wants to switch to APFS. But
I don't get why they're in such a hurry.

Here's hoping their approach works well, in any case!

~~~
coldtea
> _If I were somehow in charge of it, I imagine I 'd want to do it like: 1)
> ship it as officially supported on the Mac, but off by default. 2) a year or
> two later, ship it as officially supported on the Mac, on by default, but
> still allow HFS+ as an option. 3) A year or two after that, if all has gone
> well, then introduce it into iOS (where presumably it's not reasonable to
> make it optional_

The plan doesn't make much sense. For one, the Mac has way more edge cases
than iOS (in that people do more, and in more low- and -high level ways) with
the filesystem, including running all kinds of unix userlands, exchanging
files with other filesystems, etc. In iOS all fs APIs and access are tightly
controlled, and there's no mounting of disks, no touching outside the sandbox,
no disk management apps, etc.

So iOS is a much better target for first launch than OS X.

Second, with this plan it would take 3-5 years to ever arrive. Why so late?
Apple has been developing it for a while, and probably have thousands of tests
it has to pass. And they have been running it on 1 million or more devs on the
10.3 beta program on actual devices for feedback for 2 months.

~~~
mikeash
3-5 years seems to be pretty typical for a filesystem to go from merely
available to being battle tested enough to use without thinking about it. Bugs
could destroy people's data (and the cloud won't necessarily help if the bugs
corrupt data rather than erase it). What's the hurry?

~~~
coldtea
> _Bugs could destroy people 's data (and the cloud won't necessarily help if
> the bugs corrupt data rather than erase it)._

There's no reason to expect bugs if you have a comprehensive test suite and
extensive internal and beta testing (like with a million of registered iOS
developers running it for months).

Doubly so if you control most of the APIs and interactions with the OS tightly
in your platform (as iOS does).

~~~
mikeash
Which is why the rest of iOS has no bugs?

This statement makes me wonder, have you written any software before?

~~~
coldtea
> _Which is why the rest of iOS has no bugs?_

It has no show stopper bugs, and is used by close to a billion everyday just
fine.

And the "rest of the iOS" (kernel, userland, etc) is orders of magnitude more
LOC than the filesystem. And with all kind of interactions between components,
not just a constrained API that all sandboxed apps use, as is the case with an
FS. It has way bigger test surface and (presumably) way smaller test suites
than an FS would.

What's the reason to assume an FS which is under production for 2 years now at
least (it didn't appear magically formed a day before last WWDC) will have not
just some obscure or infrequent bugs, but data killing bugs?

(And why they'd be more than with the frequent new features and changes that
Apple made/retrofitted to HFS over the years? Because they've started from
scratch?)

~~~
mikeash
Because software has bugs, filesystem software has data corruption bugs, and
two years of development with only a couple of months of serious real-world
testing is _tiny_ for something like that.

What other filesystems have gone from zero to being the only supported option
on their platform in such a short time? ZFS took almost five years. HFS+ was
supported in parallel with HFS for a _long_ time.

"And why they'd be more than with the frequent new features and changes that
Apple made/retrofitted to HFS over the years? Because they've started from
scratch?"

Once again I have to wonder: have you _written_ software before? Of _course_ a
brand new from-scratch effort will be buggier than something with a long
history.

~~~
coldtea
> _Once again I have to wonder: have you written software before?_

Yes, for several decades -- though not filesystems.

And I trivially know that software can always have bugs. I also know software
has to ship at some point, and that is a different point than the "we're 100%
sure it has 0 bugs" point -- which is not possible anyway.

I also don't believe in some cargo cult "optimal necessary period of testing"
to make sure a given piece of software has or doesn't have bugs.

I also know that it's perfectly possible to have 10x the testing in 1/10 the
time other teams/companies might take for their tests -- (e.g. by having far
heavier test suites, more intelligent tests, better fuzzing, more systems to
test on in your labs, more QA engineers thrown at the problem, or even
formally proving your software's behavior) .

Finally, I can make ad hominem arguments too: have you wrote and deployed any
filesystems before? If the domain experts designing AFS are confident to put
it in use why we should trust you? Because of your scientific observations of
checking how long other companies took to deploy their new filesystems and
extrapolating some BS "optimal deployment time" from that?

In any case, maybe visit back this thread in 1 month? If the sky hasn't fallen
for iOS 10.3 users (except, at worse, for some edge cases affecting tiny
minorities/uncommon setups), maybe you'll be ready for your serving of crow?

~~~
mikeash
I knew this argument would be made.

Why should you believe me instead of the people writing APFS? You shouldn't.
I'm stating my opinion on the matter. I'm allowed to disagree with them, and
you're allowed to disagree with me, but "Apple thinks it's OK" is _not_ going
to convince me. If it was, then I wouldn't have formed a contrary opinion in
the first place, since it's so obvious.

Further, we don't even know if the experts are confident. It's entirely
possible this decision was made above them and forced on them. It's also
entirely possible it wasn't, we just don't know.

In any case, if everything goes smoothly (and I hope it will), that doesn't
disprove me. It could mean that you're right, or it could mean that I'm right
and they got lucky. It could also mean that some people _are_ losing data, but
not visibly enough and not in large enough number to make the news.

You say "except, at worse, for some edge cases affecting tiny
minorities/uncommon setups" as if that would justify Apple's approach. That's
exactly the kind of thing I'm worried about here. I have no doubt it'll work
for the common case. 99.9% of users will not suffer any problems. But I don't
see why pushing APFS now as opposed to in a few years is worth the risk of
that 0.1%.

~~~
coldtea
> _In any case, if everything goes smoothly (and I hope it will), that doesn
> 't disprove me._

Doesn't that make your case an empty statement that basically amounts to "you
can never be too careful" (and which is always right, no matter the outcome)?

> _But I don 't see why pushing APFS now as opposed to in a few years is worth
> the risk of that 0.1%._

Because it improves lots of things with the 99.9% -- SSD utilization, better
Time Machine, etc.

------
graeme
Backup first. Both my parents phones went to recovery mode. They have an
iphone 5c and another old model.

Going to see if I can extract data. They didn't have itunes backups.

~~~
astrange
You can use Revive from Apple Configurator to possibly fix them.

~~~
graeme
This worked, thank you!

------
nitinreddy88
I dont know whom to blame? I need Google Maps in Apple Car play and without
that its not worth at all for me (countries where Apple Maps is not supported
and Google maps is superior)

------
nicholassmith
I've been running the beta without issues for a while but I've PSA'd for my
extended circle to say "definitely do a backup". I fully expect this to be a
smooth transition but it's definitely an impactful change.

If you have less tech savvy members of your family with iPhones you might want
to just remind them how to do a backup (to save having to explain why it's
gone wrong).

------
michaelmurray
Just upgraded to 10.3 last night on my iPhone 7. Nothing works! iMessage
doesn't work anymore, I can't even swipe up to toggle wifi/bluetooth, the menu
pops up about 1/3 of the way and just freezes.

Twitter hangs when it starts to fetch new data.

Anyone else had these issues after upgrading to 10.3?

------
Synaesthesia
Cricket scores in Siri! But only Indian Premier league. I want international
games too.

~~~
praveenweb
You can ask Siri for "Latest ICC Cricket Scores" or more specifically like
"India vs Australia Cricket Score" for international match updates.

~~~
Synaesthesia
I'm very happy about this.

------
melling
My iPad Pro only sees beta 7. I removed the device from the beta program a
month ago, but it still sees the betas.

Rebooted several times. My iPhone 7s, and two older iPhones upgraded to 10.3,
as well as another iPad. Why is the iPad Pro different?

~~~
X-Istence
When you remove the device from the beta program, you have to re-install from
scratch by restoring from a non-beta version.

If you had stayed on the beta program, you would now be upgraded to 10.3
automatically.

[https://beta.apple.com/sp/betaprogram/restore#ios](https://beta.apple.com/sp/betaprogram/restore#ios)

~~~
IMcD23
That's untrue. You can upgrade to a newer release version if there is one.
(source: just did this today with 10.3)

You only need to restore if you want to downgrade to a release version when
you are on a later beta.

~~~
X-Istence
I have a device that I unregistered from the beta's and it never picked up a
newer version, I had to manually restore it.

~~~
k-mcgrady
I had the same issue but a manual reinstall wasn't necessary. I believe the
problem was that in the developer > profiles menu there is a certificate for
beta updates that needs removed. Something along those lines.

~~~
sigzero
That is correct. You have to unregister yourself and remove that beta profile.

------
newman314
Just updated all my devices and I must admit that things feel snappier, even
the 5.

~~~
cpncrunch
How do you know it isn't the placebo effect? I once had one of my customers
saying that a certain feature in my product was faster after an upgrade, but I
hadn't actually touched that feature...

------
pawelgrzybek
Night Shift is cool but I wish to have a quick shortcut to toggle it or
disable for some apps (like f.lux). Any idea how to control Night Shift via
AppleScript?

~~~
DopamineHigh
Notifications menu on the very top(need to scoll up a bit for the hidden
toggle switch to appear).

Super easy and smooth way to toggle Nightshift: I have the multi-touch gesture
to open the Notifications menu with two-finger swipe from the right edge. Then
I scroll up and turn on/off Night Shift.

------
zitterbewegung
Just installed it myself and runs very smoothly. Also the changes in Safari
are good especially interactive form validation.

------
bitmapbrother
I just updated and was greeted with an Analytics screen asking to send usage
and other telemetry data back to Apple. The first option to opt in was in
large text while the second option to opt out was in very small text. Is this
new? I don't recall seeing this screen before.

~~~
DopamineHigh
Been there for a long while now. Think it was introduced in iOS 7 with he UI
redesign.

------
jbverschoor
"An error occurred installing iOS 10.3"

~~~
beamso
I got this error attempting an over-the-air update. I was forced to do a full
install of iOS 10.3 using iTunes.

