
iOS 11 reviewed - cstuder
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/09/ios-11-thoroughly-reviewed/
======
masklinn
> Practically speaking, do I need to be able to play phone games from 2009 on
> my 2017 iPhone? Not really.

The problem is not that you can't play phone games from 2009 on your 2017
iPhone, tying 32b deprecation to a hardware revision would actually have been
nice (regardless of the hardware still being able to run in 32b mode).

But that's not what's happening, the problem is that you can't play phone
games from 2009 on your 2013~2016 iPhone _which had been able to run them
right until you updated iOS_.

> users (who get some free space back in iOS 11)

"Free space" which they could already have gained back by removing the
applications in the first place.

~~~
ohfouroneone
It's not that games from 2009 don't run, only games that haven't been updated
since 2009 don't run. All a developer needs to do is recompile and push an
update.

~~~
CJefferson
I made a game in 2009, it was quite popular, got a bunch of positive reviews,
I gave it away for free.

I had to keep giving Apple £100/year just to let people keep downloading the
game for free. At some point I tried recompiling it for a newer iOS, and I get
hundreds of message about depricated APIs that I had to change to get it
accepted by Apple. Instead I let it drop.

I can't even put a copy online for people to download, the game is just dead
and gone thanks to Apple. I can still run Windows games from 20 year ago and
with DOSbox, DOS games from 30 years ago. My own iOS game on the other hand is
dead, never to be revived.

~~~
wingerlang
Open source it? Or try to sell it.

~~~
irrational
Those probably are the only valid options. But let's face it. Unless the game
was extremely popular, or has a cult following, it is rather unlikely that
anyone will want to pick it up and run with it.

I play board games and there are games nowadays that require an app to play
(see for example Alchemists). I've argued that this is a bad idea since at
some point the apps will probably stop working as we see happening in iOS 11.
But people always argue back that someone will be sure to create a version of
the app to keep it going. I may be a cynic, but I think that is incredibly
naive to believe that will happen.

~~~
freehunter
I used to have a board game or two that required a VHS tape. Sure, VCRs exist
and can be found, but it’s such an outdated technology that people aren’t
going to search them out. I know there are some games that require LaserDisc
too, same thing but even worse. It’s not necessarily a new development.

------
darthbanane
Review is not thorough.

One huge change in the control center is that the wifi “toggle” doesn’t toggle
wifi off anymore (wait what?). It just disconnects from the current network
and doesn’t reconnect for a minute or so.

If you don’t want to be tracked by wifi APs it seems you have to force touch
settings into wifi and disable the adapter from there. Huge step backwards
IMHO.

~~~
tammer
Eh it sounds to me that this is a great quick fix for the "I'm slightly too
far from the AP to have bandwidth but I'm still maintaining a connection"
problem I have almost daily. Will make an obscure security concern you've
identified slightly more difficult to deal with. If you don't prefer trade
offs like this, Apple likely isn't the best digital provider for you.

~~~
darthbanane
You’re right it’s an excellent solution to that issue and sometimes it’s
exactly what I want. I’m worried about the security aspect because a stock
iphone is what you should get if you care about privacy and security yet the
UI _actively_ misleads you on the purpose of the toggle.

If they wanted a disconnect button they could have designed a new icon for it.
Maybe a toast so that people understand what just happened.

I found this out the hard way because my phone kept trying to connect to the
subway APs and aside from giving them a nice transit map I lost about 30%
battery.

~~~
Terretta
The most common use case is toggling WiFi to drop a bad connection, and then
_forgetting to turn it back on_ , costing you who knows how much in LTE data
when you’re back at home thinking you’re on WiFi.

This UX change is like cash money to most users.

~~~
heartbreak
Although they did the exact same change for the Bluetooth toggle in the
Control Center, and that one has less of a financial benefit.

I don't mind the change, but I do wish that the force touch "pop" menu toggles
would completely turn off those radios instead of simply disconnecting.

For those who haven't used iOS 11, you can force touch the Control Center
icons to pop in a full menu with additional toggles.

------
cromwellian
The 32-bit deprecation issue points to a larger issue of cultural decay. We
can still obtain old Commodore 64s, Nintendos, Gameboys, and other old HW and
run old SW on it.

However, the way these walled garden DRM'ed online app stores work, once
something is taken out of circulation, it's just GONE. You won't be able to
buy an old iPhone 5 10 years from now and go download an old game.

My son really liked this old Simpsons game on the iPhone, but now there's no
way to run it, or even find it in the store anymore.

This isn't an Apple specific problem, but I wonder, if future archaeologists
will even be able to find anything left of our culture, as it digitally
disappears behind upgrades and silos.

One thing I love about the Web, is we can have sites like Archive.org. And I
can still view the very first Web page ever in my browser. Spacejam still
works!

But what if the first iOS games I loved on my original 2007 era iPhone? Will
there be an Archive.org emulator? Unlikely.

~~~
shurcooL
It's best to think of iOS apps exactly as they are, a service. When you
buy/download an app, it's not your own, you're using a service in the form of
an app.

The app will continue to work as long as it's supported by its developer and
Apple doesn't forcibly remove it. If the developer no longer supports it, it's
just a matter of time before it'll stop working.

------
kawsper
There is one thing I hope they that they fix in iOS, and that is to guide app-
makers to understand bilingual users, I type a lot on both danish and english,
and having to switch language in the keyboard for every conversation can get
pretty tiresome.

Luckily both iMessage and WhatsApp seems to support it now, so I hope they
somehow can get other apps in on it. Telegram does not support this :/

~~~
mashehu
Try 3rd-party keyboards like Swiftkey, where keyboard/autocorrect is
bilingual, so no more switching needed (now I would only need a trilingual
keyboard for my use case...).

~~~
jwr
This. Swiftkey solved this problem for me. The only remaining problem is that
iOS is so annoyingly buggy wrt third-party keyboards.

------
odammit
After using iOS11 for a few hours I have to say my favorite new feature is the
gigantic “iMessages” header.

The “Contacts” one is pretty good too but the “iMessages” one seems much
faster and it consumes far less RAM in some benchmarks I ran.

It’s a real disappointment that they didn’t add a banner in Safari. I
generally find myself using Safari and wonder “am I using safari?” I end up
having to close my apps and reopen safari to double check.

Update: I _am_ currently using Safari. My heart was racing for a second
totally didn’t know what app I was using.

------
Exuma
What's up with the absolutely MASSIVE title text at the top of every single
app?? Looks horrible.

~~~
ali_af
To add to the list of questionable UI changes, they are continuing to push
iMessage Apps and there is no way to remove the icon from the input bar. Now
with iOS 11 they have added an additional bar whether you use any apps or not.

~~~
Exuma
If you click the gray app icon it will disable that secondary bar at least.

------
rayiner
iOS 11 running on the new iPad Pro is pretty awesome. Its incredibly
responsive, and the combination of Files and the task bar make it possible to
get real work done. (Surprisingly, even without a keyboard--I've almost gotten
to be able to type with my thumbs without looking.)

~~~
Eric_WVGG
It's not so hot on an A7 iPad. Just reading and responding to a text message
(in the old notification mode, not even the side docking) grinds the CPU
badly. I'd recommend that iPad Air 1 and Mini 2 users stay in the past, and
start saving for new hardware.

I hear that A7 iPhone 5S performance is just dandy, though.

~~~
dep_b
I have a beta on the Mini 2. Didn't update yet to the GM beta. Seeing a ton of
glitches and stutters but it's a beta from two months ago. Battery life is
abysmal as well. I'm waiting for the official release to see how it goes. It's
not really bad once inside apps. I expect it to work a bit better, if not I'll
reinstall clean.

------
JBReefer
The new default image/video codec that no other browser supports seems like
it's going to be ... interesting. Of course they couldn't use VP9, just like
USB-C - this is marginally better, and completely fucks over everyone
developing outside the tiny Apple ecosystem.

~~~
013a
To be fair; HEIC and HEVC are industry standards. If browsers don't support
them, that's on the browser.

~~~
Lutia
An industry standard nobody wants to use in the industry is not a standard,
it's a 'tentative' one at best.

Simply put, the patent groups behind HEVC got so greedy, far more than they
had been with h264, that this thing is pretty much dead on arrival. The only
consumer facing company that's still pushing for it is Apple. Everyone else
has joined an alliance to come up with a replacement open codec, AV-1, which
includes companies such as : Google, Microsoft, Mozilla, NVIDIA, AMD, Intel,
Cisco, Amazon, Netflix, ARM, Adobe, the BBC, Broadcom, Realtek.

There is no backing your term of HEVC being an 'industry standard' other than
it being supported by the MPEG group. But MPEG group standards were industry
standards because people adopted them, not because the MPEG group in itself
has some divine providence given power to call everything they make a
'standard'.

When the fight for which video codec should be 'the standard' was about WebM
vs h264, h264 won and became a true standard not just in name but in practice
because it was welcomed by every major company, while WebM was mostly pushed
and cared for by one (Google), so Apple could get away with not supporting
WebM in Safari and showing hostility to more open formats. This time it's not
going to happen. HEVC on the web is not going to happen, at all. AV-1 is the
only thing that could succeed H264.

~~~
threeseed
Nothing you wrote is even remotely true.

Consumer facing companies that support HEVC: Microsoft, Sony, Adobe, Nintendo,
Netflix, BBC, Intel, Nvidia, AMD, Samsung, Dolby, GE, MediaTek, Philips,
Mitsubishi, Warner Bros etc. In fact there are 100+ more companies supporting
HEVC than AV-1 and is in shipping hardware today from Sony, LG, Samsung,
Intel, AMD, ARM, Nvidia etc.

H.265 is also an ITU-T standard and was adopted as the standard for broadcast
television ATSC.

And irrespective of all of this the fact that iOS has 350+ million users means
whatever Apple decides will have a major sway on the rest of the market.

------
cm2187
Also be aware that iOS 11 seems to be incompatible with Windows Server 2016.
Seems to be an http2 implementation problem.

~~~
JBReefer
In what way? That seems like an extremely serious problem, given how many LOB
apps run on Windows Server.

~~~
cm2187
I don't have much details.

[https://portal.smartertools.com/community/a89593/ios-11-and-...](https://portal.smartertools.com/community/a89593/ios-11-and-
windows-2016-compatibility-issue.aspx)

[http://www.kraftkennedy.com/critical-issue-apple-
ios-11-mail...](http://www.kraftkennedy.com/critical-issue-apple-ios-11-mail-
app-exchange-2016online-windows-server-2016/)

Where I work we received an email urging us not to upgrade, I believe for that
reason.

------
odammit
I think the thing I'm most excited about is Multipath TCP. I can't even count
the times my cell signal has been strong and my phone favors some crappy wifi
and it seems like I've been time traveled back to a 28k modem.

------
pier25
One of the most annoying things in iOS is not being able to change your wifi
network from the control center. Apparently this hasn't been fixed in iOS 11.

At least it seems we can now add a quick access button to Settings.

~~~
DigitalJack
That's interesting. You do that a lot?

What's this about a quick access to settings? That's something I've wanted
forever, but I don't see a way to add it?

~~~
pier25
I do it a couple of times every day.

As for the quick access you can customize control center in the Settings app.
It doesn't make much sense to me that you can't access that customization
directly from control center, but Apple works in mysterious ways.

~~~
DigitalJack
I think I misunderstood. I thought you were saying there was a way to add a
link to the settings app to the control center. In other words, having a
button in control center to open settings.

I go there enough I wish there was a fast access to it.

~~~
pier25
I was wrong. I thought you could add any app to the control center but it’s
only certain predefined features like flashlight.

------
walterbell
No VPN button in Control Center? Do Apple employees use public wi-fi?

~~~
jonathanbull
VPNs are configured in Settings->General. Any reason why that would need to be
regularly toggled, out of interest?

~~~
mikeash
I haven't used it in a while, but when I did, it wasn't very good at
reconnecting after sleeping the device or switching networks.

~~~
RKearney
Sounds like it may have been an issue with the remote end of the VPN tunnel
then. I've been connected to VPN for days at a time, switching between Wi-Fi
and cellular (including switching between IPv4-only, IPv6-only, and dual-stack
networks), and have never had an issue with the device automatically re-
establishing the VPN tunnel.

Of course things could have also just improved over time.

~~~
walterbell
Which VPN provider or enterprise gateway? Does your VPN Profile have an
"Always-On" setting? That's only available on managed devices and it ensures
that no traffic is passed unless the device is connected to a VPN, which is
what causes the VPN to automatically reconnect.

If you have a standalone VPN app, it may also reconnect silently. But the
system VPN does not stay reliably connected across device sleep and network
status changes.

~~~
kccqzy
You don't need managed devices. You just need to configure the VPN in the
Configurator app and push a profile to your device. Though there are still
some manual plist editing required to get this working.

~~~
walterbell
Always-on VPN is possible on non-Supervised devices? Would appreciate a
pointer to the relevant XML tags. Is it selectable, e.g. can you have multiple
VPN profiles and then toggle (in Settings) which profile is Always-On?

~~~
kccqzy
If I remember correctly you just specify the OnDemandRules key and make its
value an empty array.

Yes I have multiple VPN profiles and all of them allows me to specify in
Settings whether to "connect on demand."

~~~
walterbell
Thanks!

------
chadlavi
Gutted that they removed the 3D Touch App Switcher. That was was more
comfortable and intuitive for me than double-clicking the home button.

It's especially annoying that there was no good reason to remove it on devices
that already had it. I don't know if they took it out because it didn't work
on the new X or what, but dang. Feels like a significant UX hobbling to me.

~~~
MBCook
They switched the way you do it on the X, so I guess for ‘consistency’ they
removed it.

It wasn’t a bad feature but I could never remember it was there. Too many
years of muscle memory double-clicking the home button.

------
odammit
I always see a lot of flak around space on iOS upgrades. I seem to always have
a ton of space.

I never delete iMessages, I take a fair amount of photos (16GB) and I have
about 10GB of podcasts and 3GB of Spotify tracks...

What generally burns up people's space on their iPhones? Am I just not taking
enough photos?!

~~~
mrks_
I think iMessage is the worst offender for most (at least it is for me). Every
video or photo I receive eats up space until I remove it or it gets removed in
1 year.

Also, the base model only came with 16 GB for a long time, which I imagine
most people didn't upgrade.

~~~
saagarjha
Messages on iCloud might be useful for you when it comes out, then :)

~~~
mrks_
Yeah, that's one of my most anticipated features from this release, to be
honest. And ARKit :)

------
amatheus
I've installed iOS 11 on my iPhone and iPad and one thing I've been
disappointed with is third-party integration on the Files app. From everything
I've read before installing iOS 11 I've got the impression there would be true
integration, as in, the files from the provider would appear inside the
interface of the Files app in the same way; however, what I see is that, when
I select for example Dropbox in the Files app, a popover appears and shows the
Dropbox app interface unchanged (in fact, on the iPad the popover does not
even goes full screen). Now I'm wondering if this is that the way it's
supposed to be or if the apps need to be updated.

~~~
glhaynes
Dropbox has an update coming soon that I believe will make it do what you're
looking for.

Edit: Maybe? Discussion on the topic here:
[https://twitter.com/stroughtonsmith/status/91008319169595392...](https://twitter.com/stroughtonsmith/status/910083191695953921)

~~~
saagarjha
It appears that Dropbox has pushed version 64.3, which contains this feature,
to the App Store, but it's not available yet.

------
shurcooL
Is it normal for arstechnica.com to be taking up 30-60% CPU in Chrome whenever
the tab is in focus? I don't have any extensions installed.

[1]
[http://instantshare.win/1b0agfj3j7xey.png](http://instantshare.win/1b0agfj3j7xey.png)

------
microcolonel
> _All iPhone cameras support slow-mo video and Burst Mode shots, and all
> iPhones now include Touch ID fingerprint sensors._

All except one. ;- )

> _its never-look-back approach to software compatibility._

You mean no approach to software compatibility? Is walking down the street an
approach to eating ice cream?

~~~
ReverseCold
If down the street there is a new ice cream shop, then yes.

------
arethuza
Not a hugely important feature - but Siri can apparently now understand my
accent :-)

------
CoreXtreme
It's funny to see that they are not even able to implement an Ebook reader
mode. Crowd sourced data to selectively enable/disable JavaScript for
invasive/resource hungry websites will save a lot of battery too!

~~~
walterbell
The Brave browser on iOS has per-site Javascript control.

~~~
sigzero
How do you like Brave?

~~~
walterbell
It's good, works with most sites, can be configured for private browsing only.

------
shurcooL
Since it hasn't been mentioned, an awesome part of iOS is the fact that Mobile
Safari supports WebAssembly and WebRTC standards now. \o/

~~~
styfle
This! It still makes me sad that safari is updated as part of the OS like IE
instead of out of band like Chrome.

------
ProfessorLayton
Its pretty ridiculous that despite all these improvements in Safari, the
permanent website data bug persists in both iOS and OSX

~~~
grzm
Would you provide a reference for this? Searching for "Safari permanent
website data bug" didn't lead me to any definitive conclusion as to what you
mean.

~~~
ProfessorLayton
[https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7910096?start=0&tstart=...](https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7910096?start=0&tstart=0)

Website data is viewable in Settings> Safari> Advanced> Website Data. Some
items won't delete even if they appear so, when you check again you'll see
them return. This is especially onerous considering Apple's stance on privacy.

This happens even with private browsing on both iOS and OSX

~~~
grzm
Thanks for the reference. Given the changes Apple highlights in iOS 11, I'm
surprised this wasn't addressed.

I'd be interested in reading a more technical, in depth piece on the issue
looking at it from both the client and the server side (to determine exactly
what is potentially available to an attacker). Browsing through 17 pages of
user-submitted forum content isn't something I have a lot of patience for
(though I suspect that's a reflection more of how little I am (perhaps
naïvely) concerned about it).

Thanks again for following up with the link!

