
iOS 11.3 is available today - runesoerensen
https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2018/03/ios-11-3-is-available-today/
======
jws
There is a privacy push in this release. Immediately after upgrade you will
get a page letting you know that _" Apple believes privacy is a fundamental
human right…"_ and explaining steps they take to help with that, along with
introducing a new icon which lets you know an Apple app is asking for personal
information. That sounds like a way to train you to think about personal
information differently, but I don't expect any users to read that screen or
to know the icon. Darned users.

You can read a bit more about it here:
[http://www.idownloadblog.com/2018/01/25/ios-11-3-new-
privacy...](http://www.idownloadblog.com/2018/01/25/ios-11-3-new-privacy-
icon/)

~~~
lalos
Genius move by Apple. This is a marketing move, clear and valuable
differentiation from competition. What's perfect about this is that the
competition can not claim the same (Google/Samsung/Android and to a degree
FB). It's not like increasing RAM and the competition then easily follows.
Props to Apple for realizing their strengths.

~~~
nkkollaw
Now, if their laptop keyboards didn't stop working after 3 months...

------
symkat
In case anybody from Apple is reading: In Bluetooth Settings being able to
assign an alias to my bluetooth devices would be really good. SPEAKER-ACD3,
SPEAKER-ADCD SPEAKER-DAFF is much worse than "Livingroom Speaker," "Kitchen
Speaker," "Bedroom Speaker."

I've submitted these sentiments to
[https://www.apple.com/feedback/iphone.html](https://www.apple.com/feedback/iphone.html)
before, but nothing seemed to become of it.

~~~
05
The problem is that users don’t understand aliases, and ‘renaming’ would only
work for devices under the same iCloud account, so they would be confused when
their renamed ‘Kitchen Speaker’ still shows up as BTS-123 in Android.

~~~
pilsetnieks
You could reduce almost any feature to "users are bottom-feeding troglodytes
who barely know how to breathe so we shouldn't make this because they will
just be confused."

I don't think it's the case here. The person who cares what their Bluetooth
devices are named and is invested into renaming them would be able to figure
that they renamed the device just on their phone, even if they were a bit
confused.

------
monochromatic
I wonder if it fixes the issue in iMessage where messages that have similar
time stamps can get displayed in the wrong order.

~~~
greg5green
I thought they fixed that in the last patch release? (Just looked, it was
11.2.5)

Are you still having the issue? My mom was still complaining about it, but I
just assumed she hadn't updated her software.

~~~
monochromatic
Still happening to me on 11.2.6

------
dep_b
Note that 11.4 is already in the works for the final versions of ClassKit and
Shared iPad. Probably the first betas for 11.4 will start appearing soon.
Can't wait to try it. Looking forward to not have girly stuff appearing
anymore in my Photo stream!

\----

Downvoting factually correct information? Why?

~~~
giobox
"Shared iPad" for classroom use (and the MDM server requirement...) was first
introduced as far back as iOS 9.3 in Jan 2016, regardless of the Classkit
announcement this week, so I wouldn't take it as given we are getting it for
general consumer use in the next beta given the feature is over 2 years old
now.

> [https://www.macrumors.com/2016/01/11/ios-9-3-new-
> education-f...](https://www.macrumors.com/2016/01/11/ios-9-3-new-education-
> features/)

I'd love for multi-user support too (my iPad Pro is a 900 dollar computer...),
but it seems Apple are wedded to the 1:1 model for ordinary consumers so far.

------
jws
From the release notes:

 _\- Fixes an issue on iPad Pro that prevented the iPad Smart Keyboard from
working after connecting to a captive Wi-Fi access point_

I was sure mine was broken while I was staying with a family member in a
hospital, then it "fixed" itself when we moved back home. I'd love to read a
description of what caused this bug, I mean "use a captive wifi portal" →
"hard wired keyboard stops working until reboot" isn't really where I'd look
for a bug.

~~~
freehunter
Knowing how much Apple loves mixing Bluetooth and wifi for some products, are
we sure that the Smart Keyboard is actually entirely wired? I mean, I know it
has a connector, but is there any chance it uses wifi as well?

~~~
artimaeis
[https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Smart+Keyboard+Teardown/5305...](https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Smart+Keyboard+Teardown/53052)

Fairly confident it's just the smart connector driving the input.

~~~
jws
My keyboard has a 72MHz 32 bit processor‽ I think I was on my 7th computer
before I had one that powerful.

------
staunch
Someone that apparently works on Safari at Apple, posted some interesting
comments about progressive web app features on Jan 24.

[https://twitter.com/rmondello/status/956256845311590400](https://twitter.com/rmondello/status/956256845311590400)

"iOS 11.3 and macOS 10.13.4 include Service Workers — a powerful specification
that allows background scripts to power offline web applications. iOS 11.3
also consults Web App Manifest when adding web apps to the home screen."

"Web apps saved to the home screen and web pages in SFSafariViewController can
now use the camera to capture images!"

I'm hoping Apple finds that PWAs can actually start replacing native apps in
2018. Now that smartphones have so much extra processing and memory capacity.
There doesn't appear to be any technical reason PWAs couldn't become the
primary way that users install apps, with native apps being a rare necessity.

~~~
tomduncalf
> Now that smartphones have so much extra processing and memory capacity.

Not saying that PWAs are necessarily less efficient, but this isn’t a good
reason for doing anything on mobile as more power usage = shorter battery
life, which is still one of the main issues with today’s smartphones

~~~
JustSomeNobody
I think it would be awesome to see a version of, say, iOS 3 compiled to run on
modern iPhone HW and see how long the battery life would be.

~~~
kridsdale1
That would take a ton of work to make it all 64bit safe again. Basically
redoing iOS 7.

------
WalterGR
Given the commotion a few months back, this is notable:

 _This free software update also offers customers more visibility into the
battery health and performance of their iPhone._

~~~
Humdeee
Looked at mine now. I've spent maybe 3-4 minutes on bookface today and it's
got a huge percentage lead to the next few apps, which I have spent
considerable more time on.

It makes me want to just switch to FB through mobile safari...

~~~
OP9000
Make sure location tracking is off/denied, otherwise its always running in the
background and reporting in.

------
oflannabhra
Notable points for consumers are that neither iMessages in iCloud nor AirPlay
2 are in the release, despite being tested in 11.3 betas (and earlier 11.x
betas).

I'm not sure what to make of this. On one hand, I'm glad Apple is taking their
time to ensure these features are fully stable before releasing; on the other,
I wish they were not "pre-announced" as early as they were.

To me, iMessage in iCloud seems to be as risky as the APFS rollout, if not
more. I'm guessing that is going to be a one-way conversion, and any issues
are going to be _very_ apparent to users. Apple did lots of "test" conversions
for APFS over betas before a final release (which is why some updates took so
long).

Does anyone have any insight into what a rollout of such a feature looks like?
Most iMessage databases are multiple GB, and iMessage has millions of users.

~~~
baddox
Does anyone know what this feature actually entails? iMessage on my Macs has
always synced for at least a year, including SMS (non-iMessage) messages sent
from my phone.

~~~
eric_h
Personally, every device I have (aside from my phone) has a different subset
of messages on it. When they're on and near each other, they all get the same
messages, but they definitely don't get everything all the time when off/out
of range of my phone.

I suspect that the current setup is a best effort sync, while the full message
backup exists within the iPhone backup.

iCloud iMessages would, I think, make that backup/storage a first class
entity, separate from the phone's backup.

~~~
baddox
Oh yeah, maybe the syncing only happens from phone to Mac right now. I've
never noticed or tested that, since my phone is basically always with me when
I'm on my computer. I've had occasional issues with my Mac having out of order
or missing messages, particularly when powering on my Mac after lengthy
downtime, but it seems to resolve itself in a few minutes.

~~~
eric_h
I have a desktop at the office, laptop and iPad at home and it's pretty
amusing the way the messages between them do and don't overlap. SMS messages
are the worst offender by far, but even the iMessages don't always end up on
every device.

I've never noticed out of order messages on any device, even though it seems
to be a pretty prevalent problem amongst the comments here.

------
simonh
I'm not touching another iOS11 update on my 6+ unless I know exactly how it
will affect performance.

I love my 6+, its a great device, but I was using my Wife's 5 yesterday on iOS
10 and it was a breath of fresh air. So much more responsive.

~~~
crispyporkbites
My 6 is basically useless now, it’s sooooooo slow

~~~
simonh
I tried a few articles on speeding it up and switching off background app
refresh for all but a few apps seemed to make a difference. Of course it could
have been a combination of several other things as well, but that was the last
thing. It's a little better, but still rubbish compared to a 5 or 5s on iOS
10, or a 6s with twice the RAM.

I'm convinced the problem is insufficient RAM memory. Freeing up Flash storage
is often mentioned, but I think it's marginal. Switching off services that
require things to run in the background is probably saving RAM, preventing the
OS having to constantly swap apps and services in and out of memory.

If Apple were still signing iOS 10 binaries I'd downgrade today, I'm thinking
of going down to iOS 11.1 to see if it's any better.

I' probably getting a 6s soon from work and my wife will get my 6+ to replace
her 5, but I'm worried she'll hate the step down in usability.

~~~
eric_h
It is almost certainly a degraded battery - the 6 still has plenty of
horsepower for iOS 11.

~~~
simonh
Actually I think you're right. I Geekbenched my phone when I upgraded to iOS
11 and thought it was a bit slow, but it checked out ok. I just did it now and
it's 30% slower than it should be. At some point the battery must have
degraded.

------
maltalex
> Additionally, users can now see if the power management feature that
> dynamically manages maximum performance to prevent unexpected shutdowns,
> first introduced in iOS 10.2.1, is on and can choose to turn it off. This
> feature can be found in Settings -> Battery and is available for iPhone 6,
> iPhone 6 Plus, iPhone SE, iPhone 6s, iPhone 6s Plus, iPhone 7 and iPhone 7
> Plus.

Why only those models? What about the 8 and X?

~~~
lucascantor
I believe Apple has stated they don't ever throttle the CPU on their current
generation iPhones, i.e., they wait until they've been out for a full year and
replaced by the next generation.

------
varunteja
Was waiting for the battery health from a long time. My iPhone 6 plus is
completely laggy from iOS 11 update. I regret doing that.

------
ProfessorLayton
I hope they fixed the Safari bug where even though Private mode is enabled,
clicking on webviews within apps will still cookie the hell out of you. This
used to not be the case.

~~~
mikewhy
I thought "Private Mode" was just a set of tabs in Safari. As in it doesn't
actually put you in "private mode", nor any app using Safari View Controller.

~~~
ProfessorLayton
Correct, it used to work as follows:

\- Private mode was enabled by a switch in Safari settings: No cookies/storage
in any tabs _and_ in webview controllers

\- The switch in settings was then removed, and Private mode is enabled in the
tab view in Safari — However, the setting used to carry into app webviews

\- There is no longer a way to not be tracked in app webviews. You'll be
cookied by apps, and you need to manually clear everything in Safari settings.
This is a step backwards from how it used to work.

------
ktta
There are some important features I think are being overlooked.

1\. Business chat Now talking to a business is integrated on your phone.

2\. Apple music now doesn't have ads? This might just kill Spotify's ad
revenue from their free tired users. The only thing holding people ball is the
playlists that people have made AFAIK.

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thepumpkin1979
I read that they're shifting from launching everything together in one single
event where some products might not be entirely ready to launch their updates
when they are actually ready. is this part of that new schedule?

~~~
ekovarski
I believe so as a few features were removed (or not enabled) from the earlier
beta.

I am weary these days of updating right out of the gate as in the past the GA
version still felt like an unstable beta, so I will keep postponing the
current push until a later date.

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FBISurveillance
Looks like iMessage in iCloud is not a thing again?

~~~
richard_todd
I wonder what makes it so difficult? Merging partial conversations from
multiple devices, maybe? I never imagined it would take them this long to roll
it out.

~~~
FBISurveillance
Not sure because I'm running 11.3 beta on my device and iMessage/iCloud
integration is there working ok. It didn't make it into 11.3 release cut
though.

~~~
luigi23
I'm assuming that they postponed it due to iOS 11 bad reputation. People can
handle dozens of UI glitches and crashes, but disappearing messages, sync
inconsistencies would drive consumers crazy.

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some_account
Wait a few weeks before updating. Apple updates are buggy these days.

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st3fan
It fixes the issue of half loaded pages in Firefox for iOS.

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greatamerican
when will they fix iMessage threading?

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fantasticsid
Thanks. I'll wait till 11.3.3 :)

~~~
lowlevel
I wish I could go back to 10 :/

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bitumen
I wonder if this will help with the sometimes brutal keyboard latency thst
crops up on the iPad.

~~~
acqq
I observe that too, the iPad 9 inch.

------
mirko22
Wish they would let me start blocking adds in browsers :/

~~~
tomduncalf
Isn’t this exactly what Safari content blockers do? I’ve been using Firefox
Focus for a while and it seems great.

~~~
baddox
It's exactly what Safari content blockers are _supposed_ to do, but I've tried
every highly-recommended content blocker and none of them seem to ever block
anything.

~~~
jasonmp85
What? 1Blocker works fine. I use it on iOS and macOS.

~~~
baddox
I have 1Blocker and Crystal enabled, and while I can't verify how many ads it
_is_ blocking, I still very frequently see really bad fullscreen ads (like the
"Congrats, you've won a free iPhone" ads that are inescapable without closing
the Safari tab).

~~~
mirko22
Yeah, I get that same thing, so tried Chrome and Firefox until i figured out
they don’t support extensions such as uBlock, then went to try those built in
blockers, and while i kinda understand why they built them into the system it
seems most of them are no where near uBlock and only seem to work on Safari.
So got Firfox klar which removes a lot of adds and kinda doesn’t brake pages
but has no tab support and no history so it’s basically useless for everyday
browsing...

I am trying to use FF and Chrome cos i have most of my stuff synced on them...

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applecore
Does this fix the plethora of UI bugs introduced by iOS 11? By comparison, the
final release of iOS 10 was very stable.

