
iOS 7.1 - Brajeshwar
http://www.apple.com/ios/ios7-update/
======
melling
And the biggest feature of 7.1 is that within a few weeks 4 out of 5 iOS users
will be running 7.1.

[http://arstechnica.com/apple/2014/01/apple-80-percent-of-
act...](http://arstechnica.com/apple/2014/01/apple-80-percent-of-active-users-
are-now-running-ios-7/)

~~~
e1ven
Given that Apple still sells an 16GB iPhone (for some baffling reason) I
wonder what percentage of users will not have the necessary 4GB of unused
space.

Anecdotally, Several of my officemates have had this issue.

~~~
swampthing
Not sure that would be baffling - that's the model everyone I know has
(including myself).

~~~
e1ven
Sorry for being confusing - I don't disagree it's popular model. What I don't
understand is why Apple's baseline model has 16GB. It seems like flash memory
can be had very cheaply - Amazon shows several examples of 64GB MicroSD cards
for ~ $25.

It would seem like starting their base model at 64GB would be very consumer-
friendly, and have a very low cost.

------
Ethan_Mick
I've been running the latest beta for a while, and I'm updating my devices
now. Here's my beef:

This came too late. For months now - ever since iOS 7 came out, I've had to
tell people "iOS 7 is great, but buggy. Don't worry, Apple will release 7.1
soon that will fix a lot of these issues." Time, and time again, I said that.
With each beta it became more and more obvious that Apple wasn't releasing a
quick fix for the myriad of issues that plagued users.

I think Apple did this wrong. 7.1 contains new features and updated UI
elements. Fuck that. I wanted the hundreds of bugs that were impacting users
to be fixed back in October. I expected the new iPads to be running 7.1. I
think Apple should have focused solely on fixing the bugs present for 7.1, and
then released 7.2 that had these features. But since September 18th, (173 days
ago!) I've been dealing with a buggy OS and been apologizing for it [0].

To me, that is unacceptable.

[0] I'm a big Apple fan, and develop iOS apps, and a lot of people in my
circle come to me with their Apple questions.

~~~
sxcurry
This is interesting - I've been using iOS7 since the day it came out and don't
think I've seen a serious bug yet, certainly not hundreds of them. I really am
curious - is it the hardware (iPhone 5s here) or different usage patterns? I'm
a developer too, and just haven't had this experience. Please let me know a
couple of the specific bugs you've seen, as I'd like to try and recreate them
before upgrading to 7.1

~~~
masklinn
I've seen two annoying bugs so far:

* the music player corrupts itself and starts skipping all songs, may or may not be fixed by rebooting the device. May require resynchronising all the music (remove/readd everything)

* it regularly decides to stop opening sync sessions with iTunes and has to be rebooted

Apart from that it's been pretty smooth sailing.

Oh yeah, and every single update re-enables bluetooth, that's annoying.

~~~
rickyc091
The only bug I've seen is that the device would restart itself on occasion.
There was a critical bug right when iOS7 came out where if you tapped define
in mail or notes, it would completely freeze the app. Seems to be fixed now.

Then again, I wouldn't say I'm a heavy user. I mainly use it to check on my
mail, read some news, etc.

~~~
r00fus
I've had my iPhone5 restart happen during a call in iOS7.0 - the call went
along as if nothing had happened.

Was it really a restart or just the UI (springboard) restarting?

~~~
frik
Theoretically, both would be possible.

The cell phone modem is a separate hardware piece in your phone, it has its
own operating system. The smartphone OS communicates with the modem over an
interface usually using "AT" commands. The iPhone 1-4 had an cell phone modem
design by Intel (GSM version, modem manufacturer got bought by Intel).

The iOS UI consists app(s), so it may crash and restart.

------
jwr
> "iPhone 4 users will enjoy improved responsiveness and performance"

I hear: "iPhone 4 users will be slightly less screwed over this time". I am
updating as fast as I can, because frankly, nothing can be worse than the iOS
7.0 upgrade that I (regrettably) did.

No matter how iOS 7.1 works on my iPhone 4, I will remember how I got screwed
by the 7.0 update. In the future I will never upgrade to a major new OS
version without waiting several weeks and seeing how other people's devices
behave. The trust has been broken.

~~~
arrrg
Well, it’s a real damned if you do, damned if you don’t situation for Apple.

If they cut off support they are evil for making old devices obsolete too
quickly.

If they don’t cut off support they get poor performance with an OS that takes
advantage of all the performance in the newest models.

~~~
bjxrn
Does taking advantage of the technology in the newer devices automatically
mean you must have degradation in the older ones?

~~~
arrrg
Not automatically, but there is no free lunch. Also, if Apple disables too
much stuff they also get yelled at for not bringing all the features.

I mean, sure, there is a balance somewhere in there, but it’s not easy to hit
quite right and I don’t think it will make everyone happy.

------
acangiano
Having recently switched from an iPhone to an Android smartphone, I really
question the "most advanced mobile OS" claim. Apple phones are more polished,
more logically organized, easier to use, more intuitive... fair enough. But
more advanced? Not by a long shot. The amount of features and customizable
options on Android is insane. You can argue that this is not necessarily a
good thing for the average user, but you can't make the claim that iOS is more
advanced. It's simply not.

EDIT: OK, fair enough. The word "advanced" is very subjective and means
different things to different people.

~~~
giarc
I have never owned an Android device however recently had some exposure when a
colleague asked about battery life. I went through her settings etc to see
what was enabled/not enabled and found a battery graph. It gave a breakdown of
how much power each app was using and a graph of the battery charge over time.

I was quite impressed. There is no native iPhone equivalent and I find most
3rd party apps that claim to track data/battery are not 100% accurate.

~~~
nirnira
That's just the tip of the iceberg. Android offers:

1) Generally much easier rooting/access to bootloader/custom ROM installation
than iOS. 2) Install custom keyboards, home launchers, icon sets 3) Change
default web browsers, caller, messaging apps to third-party alternatives 4)
Full access to filesystem 5) Fully customisable homescreen widgets 6) Full
sharing intents system 6) Generally more "computery" interface - downloads
displayed in notifications pane for example.

And of course you have the advantage of a choice of a range of devices with
much larger screens than an iPhone.

It's just a shame that the Android UX experience is so chaotic. A consequence
of Google never really seeming to settle on a single UI vision beyond
"different enough from iOS to avoid legal action."

~~~
gress
More work for the user to do is a symptom of a _less_ advanced system.

~~~
nirnira
I could reply that a computer system which fails both to satisfy me with its
out-of-the-box experience, and to offer any way for me to tweak that
experience to my tastes, is even _less_ advanced.

~~~
gress
You could, but that would be a spurious argument since it could apply to
anything you didn't like.

If you don't like iOS, just say so.

~~~
nirnira
I don't like iOS.

------
DannyBee
"Now Siri knows when to stop listening."

I find this to be some really interesting marketing spin for "Siri doesn't
always know when to stop listening, so now you can tell it".

IE

Now your car knows when to slow down

Manually control the speed of your car by pressing the brake pedal

~~~
gumby
Funny, I read it the opposite way: as a wry and pithy way to say "FINALLY
goddamned Siri doesn't just hang around and try to parse noise, which has been
annoying all of us at Apple as well for ages."

Not that one or the other of us is "right" it's just funny that a short
sentence can be read many different ways.

~~~
smackfu
Yeah, but they didn't fix that problem, they just made a way to override it.

~~~
roc
It sounds like they changed the UX entirely.

Sure, that's not the same as solving the technical problem of "when to stop
listening". But it's solving the user problem of "it doesn't know when to stop
listening". And it's not some explicit additional button you have to press to
override any default behavior. It's implicit in the new method.

Unless the former UX is still around and this is an additional, optional,
pattern. But that seems ... not very Apple-like.

~~~
smackfu
"Manually control when Siri listens by holding down the home button while you
speak and releasing it when you're done as an alternative to letting Siri
automatically notice when you stop talking"

Given that, it is very Apple-like, in that there is an "advanced" way to use
it if you have an edge case, but you can continue doing it the old way if you
don't care.

~~~
roc
I read it as: hold-to-Siri is just "the way" to use Siri now.

If hold-to-Siri is optional for power-users, advertising it like that doesn't
feel Apple-like. _Having_ it seems fine; Apple does that plenty. But
_advertising a power user option_? That's new-to-me.

------
amima
The most annoying bug of iOS 7 was crashing of Safari. For iPad Air it
happened for me all the time, every day 3-10 crashes during regular usage.
Using other browser did not help - the problem was deeper, all browsers shared
this issue. My biggest hope for 7.1 was this bug being fixed. But no, Safari
still fails.

How to reproduce: 1\. Go to someone's mobile.twitter.com account, like
[https://mobile.twitter.com/newsycombinator](https://mobile.twitter.com/newsycombinator)
2\. Scroll down a few pages (for example, scroll down until 5 new pages load
from infinite scrolling). 3\. Scroll up very-very fast - Safari will fail.
This behavior did not change in 7.1, and this is not the only way to
reprocude. Sometimes it just fails while opening a single page, without any
other tabs opened.

~~~
elboru
I experienced that bug with Google Chrome, it use to happen when I open "too
many" tabs (10 or more). Not sure if that's google's or apple's fault.

~~~
frik
I doubt it has anything todo with the number of tabs. I had hundreds of tabs
open in Chrome. As Chrome keeps only the last few pages in memory, that's not
an issue. But some very JavaScript heavy sites can be an issue, especially
with devices that have only 512MB of memory.

------
brown9-2
This ~200 meg update requires 1.9 gigs of free space to install itself. It
would be so much easier to clear space off of my 16 gig iPhone if it was
possible to clear the space that Facebook (189mb), Tweetbot (181mb),
Instapaper (361mb), Yelp (161mb) etc uses for their caches. Having to
micromanage the disk space on an iPhone when this happens is quite the pain.

~~~
larrik
It may be easier to let iTunes install it. That's how I deal with it.

------
joeconway
A warning for any iOS developers. XCode 5.1 is not on the app store yet so
updating to 7.1 means you can't test on your updated device for a while

~~~
alayne
It's available from the iOS Dev Center.

~~~
dunham
Where? I'm logged in, and the download link in the dev center sends me to the
XCode page, which then sends me to the app store, which still has the old
version of XCode. (This will probably get sorted out in a few hours - the
store did have the never version of the command line tools.)

~~~
jevinskie
It is up now
[http://adcdownload.apple.com/Developer_Tools/xcode_5.1/xcode...](http://adcdownload.apple.com/Developer_Tools/xcode_5.1/xcode_5.1.dmg)

------
kbar13
Am I the only one who is anal about the excessive use of periods in these
marketing pages?

> Getting the update is easy. Go to Settings. Select General. And tap Software
> Update.

cmon, commas were created for a reason.

~~~
davidcollantes
It bothers me too, but what bothers me the most is the last sentence: "And tap
Software Update." It should be "Tap Software Update."

~~~
smackfu
And you "select" General and "tap" Software Update, but those are the exact
same action.

------
tammer
Anyone else find the new 'slide to unlock' animation hideous compared to the
7.0 one?

~~~
clauretano
Yes. For anyone using a black background, switch to a light background to see
it. Much less offensive with a dark background.

Also worth noting it doesn't show the "slide to unlock" for a bit if you have
Touch ID enabled, which is nice.

------
jpwgarrison
Just got a facetime call from my wife immediately after the update, the UI -
button placement, etc. seemed much easier to use.

------
ableal
The CarPlay page (
[http://www.apple.com/ios/carplay/](http://www.apple.com/ios/carplay/) ) is
interesting.

The manufacturer line-up at the bottom is impressive - the major absences are
Volkswagen-Audi and FIAT-Chrysler. Renault is also missing, but partner Nissan
is in. GM seems to be in, with Chevy and Opel brands showing.

~~~
giarc
GM is an interesting addition to the list. They have seen some small
integration with Siri in two models. However there was an article about
CarPlay the other day and it sounds like GM is going away from Apple
integration.
([http://www.autonews.com/article/20140303/OEM06/140309988/app...](http://www.autonews.com/article/20140303/OEM06/140309988/apple-
rolls-out-carplay-technology-in-ferrari-mercedes-and-volvo)

\------------------------------------

GM is launching its own in-vehicle app store for 2015 Chevrolet vehicles,
featuring apps from GM and third-party developers. Apps from the Chevrolet
AppShop can be downloaded into the car and work in the center-stack display.

"This is an evolutionary environment we live in," said Junior Barrett, GM's
infotainment strategy manager. "We're investigating all different avenues."

------
jscheel
Oh look, I'm go glad they changed the way I answer phone calls... again. :\

------
bhouston
Does iOS have WebGL yet? (I feel like I should make one of those Yes/No answer
websites on this topic.)

~~~
untog
Does iOS have WebGL? Yes. Does Safari have WebGL? No.

It's available in the iAd platform but manually disabled elsewhere - you can
enable it on jailbroken devices though. Infuriating. Also infuriating is
Apple's lack of support for WebRTC. I've learned not to expect much from them
in terms of mobile web any more.

------
TruthSHIFT
I've never seen this much marketing for a minor iOS update. I wonder what
prompted the change.

~~~
twoodfin
When they've discussed Android in the past year or so, Apple execs like Cook
and Schiller seem to have focused on two areas where they feel iOS has an
advantage over Android:

\- Android lacks many decent tablet applications; most of them are blown-up
phone versions.

\- The Android ecosystem is fragmented. Very few devices (proportionally) are
running the latest release, and it can take years for new features to be
widespread enough that developers can rely on them and users can benefit from
them.

The technological (OTA "delta" updates) and marketing push around major and
minor releases appear designed to reinforce the second point.

I'm not endorsing either of these claims, since I don't use Android devices
enough to know.

~~~
jmelloy
Also, I think that iOS 7 has gotten mixed press. (Like it, hate it, not-quite-
baked, etc) that it's worth making a big deal of 7.1.

------
pico303
Great. With only having to tap the screen to answer the phone, how many calls
am I going to accidentally answer that I didn't want to by just pulling the
phone out of my pocket?

~~~
gtCameron
The answer call screen that only requires a tap and not a swipe is only used
when the phone is unlocked, which is how it worked in 7.0 as well. A locked
phone still requires a swipe to answer the call

------
pinaceae
Coolest feature for me is a bit hidden in Accessiblity settings:

Outline of Buttons

On/Off Indicator

Those two improve the flat design by a lot. Buttons become clearly visible
again. They should make it the default setting, going back to normal is
jarring.

------
benstein
I wonder if they fixed the iMessage caching-phone-numbers-after-you-switch-to-
Android bug that's been so terrible? Really wish they had a FULL changelog,
not just marketing spin.

~~~
craigching
Just to be clear, this is when one of your contacts who formerly had an iPhone
but switched (to an android in your case), it still tries to send via iMessage
and silently fails? Yeah, that one sucks, I sent a message to my brother in
law congratulating him on his engagement and he never got it. I found out
awhile later he'd changed away from iPhone :-/ Annoying. And then trying to
change my phone to actually send him SMS instead ... I'm still not sure it's
working right.

------
nosecreek
Really thankful they added a "new" Month view in the calendar app. The ability
to see all the events for a day at a glance was something I was really missing
from iOS 6.

------
lewispollard
Anyone know if this includes the minimal-ui meta tag for Safari? Can't see any
mention of it in the changelist

~~~
dcaunt
It does, and the tag works as per the beta.

------
codez
Would an update like this potentially fix iOS' buggy implementation of
rendering CSS viewport units??

------
carterparks
Just updated. Disappointed that it hasn't fixed my ability to connect to Wi-Fi
using an iPhone 4S

~~~
melfar
Why would a software update fix it? Note that it doesn't have hardware support
for the 5 GHz band, much like the iPhone 4.

~~~
carterparks
I can't connect to any Wi-Fi networks at all. This was an issue introduced by
iOS 7. If a software update can break it, a software update can fix it. From
what I understand the strain on the CPU from the additional processing
required to run iOS 7 causes heat to become an issue for the Wi-Fi chipset.

------
davidcollantes
iOS 7.1 release has the same UI bug as the iOS 7.1b2
([https://twitter.com/davidcollantes/status/411597596588011520](https://twitter.com/davidcollantes/status/411597596588011520)).
Reported, hasn't been fixed.

~~~
dubfan
Perhaps it's not a bug?

~~~
davidcollantes
It isn't? I thought of it, but it is so ugly (perhaps is my "OCD" talking
here), that I can't imagine it otherwise.

------
epmatsw
Huh. Upgrading to the release version from the beta requires 3.9 gigs of
available storage. That's pretty frustrating considering every other beta to
release upgrade that I remember has been about 10 mb.

Edit: My memory may be fuzzy though.

------
speleding
Oh no, they've removed the useful little feature where you could scroll
through all your appointments by clicking the search icon and not enter
anything. Still works on iPad but not on iPhone. Why would they do that?

~~~
speleding
Ah, I just discovered the feature is still there, just moved to a different
spot: you need to "zoom in" to a day and then there is a new icon that will
show list view. Note that you cannot get there unless the new combined
month/list view is switched _off_

------
abemishler
iPhone 4 users BEWARE. My brother just updated his iPhone 4 to 7.1 and
afterwards his phone wouldn't boot up fully. His phone is in recovery mode and
his only option now is to do a factory reset.

------
Zelphyr
Is there some trick to getting HDR to actually work? I set it to "On" but the
image is no different than when its "Off".

~~~
zimpenfish
On scenes that don't need it, you'll likely see no effect. I leave it on
[Auto] for my 5s and it very rarely kicks in these days.

~~~
Zelphyr
What is an example of a scene that would cause it to kick in?

~~~
zimpenfish
Person with the sun behind then - you've got a high dynamic range there from
the sun to the shadowed face.

------
nayefc
Is anyone seeing apps that are closed using location now on 7.1?

------
sahaskatta
"Manually control when Siri listens by holding down the Home button while you
speak and releasing it when you're done."

Does anyone think this is a downgrade? Is it optional?

~~~
erlapso
I don't see the point of that either. My home button is going to suffer a lot,
and it's already unsteady.

~~~
LeoNatan25
It's optional. You either release the button and it acts normally, or keep
pressing and when you release it stops listening.

------
kgu87
And where did they put the camera?

------
iPhone4Suser
iOS 7.1 now on my 4S and guess what:

it has crashed at least 7 or 8 times in the few hours I've had the iOS update

thanks a lot, crApple

~~~
sbuk
You created an account just to say that? Wow.

------
cyphunk
people at hacker news still use iOS? meh, developer freedom is overrated i
guess.

------
knoopx
"most advanced mobile OS" an os where you can't choose the default application
to open your mail or files and where you have to double click home button and
tap to go back to the app you were before. I'm sorry but apple lost the "most
advanced mobile os" battle time ago.

~~~
smokey_the_bear
You can also four finger swipe to your last app.

