
iOS 14 is available today - todsacerdoti
https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2020/09/ios-14-is-available-today/
======
crazygringo
I've just tried out the spatial audio on my iPad with AirPods Pro, with one of
the (many) free first episodes on Apple TV+...

...and it's _stunning_. Seriously. It's actually three separate features in
one. First, all the audio is outside of you rather than stuck between your
ears. Second, it's surround sound so that dialog actually comes from your
iPad, while music comes from all around. And third, it tracks, so if you look
left the dialog all comes from your right AirPod -- and it's _positively
disconcerting_ it's so real. I thought for a second all the sound was
_actually coming out of my iPad_ and, oh crap, I have to turn it down not to
bother the neighbors! Before realizing... oh my god it's actually that
realistic.

So not only does it blow me away technologically, but also that I got it as a
free upgrade almost a year after buying the headphones! People love to
criticize Apple, but man do they do some _wonderful_ things for their
customers.

Now I'm just so disappointed the feature is iOS-only, and not for Macs. I
watch all my TV on a projector hooked up to my Mac, and man... if I had
spatial audio while viewing _that_... I can't even imagine. It would beat any
movie theater I've ever been to. (And sadly, iPad HDMI output is low-quality,
as it heavily compresses the output.)

My understanding is they don't support Macs because they don't have
accelerometers/gyroscopes so the AirPods wouldn't know what they were relative
to spatially. But man, I'd be happy just for a button I could click that says
"my head is looking directly at the screen now". Wouldn't that be enough? But
there's no mention of it being in Big Sur, so oh well...

~~~
shaan7
> People love to criticize Apple, but man do they do some wonderful things for
> their customers.

People rarely criticize Apple for the products themselves. Apple gets
criticism because of the "weird" (for lack of a better word) restrictions on
the products. I've stopped using a Mac for quite a while now - but I recall
examples - when the first Macbooks came without a optical drive you could buy
an external one. But it will only work with _that particular Macbook model_
(after googling around I found that you could send a magic SCSI string to make
it work). There is no iPhone with a SD card slot - my dad _LOVED_ iOS and his
iPhone 6S but he had to switch to an Android phone so that he can use a 500GB
SD card to store all his photos (he wants _ALL_ his photos available locally
on the phone, so cloud sync is not an option).

I could go on. Apple makes some amazing products, but then adds quirks that
makes the amaze short lived.

~~~
samatman
I hear you.

The headphone jack on the phone, I can actually see it. Not a lot of real
estate inside a phone, and they wanted people to try AirPods (which I love,
and might not have tried if it weren't for the missing jack).

But... no headphone jack on a 13" tablet? I edit movies on there sometimes and
I grumble every time I dust off the dongle to plug in a mic for voiceovers.

But, no, people criticize Apple for everything they can think of. It's one of
those companies where there's a set of people who, for whatever weird reason,
have decided it's the enemy. They're against Apple and everything it stands
for.

It's strange, I think the only company I feel that way about is Facebook.
Maybe because phones are the most intimate things we own, they become part of
our identities?

~~~
layoutIfNeeded
>But... no headphone jack on a 13" tablet? I edit movies on there sometimes
and I grumble every time I dust off the dongle to plug in a mic for
voiceovers.

This is especially dumb from Apple considering the number of pro audio apps
marketed for the iPad that require the use of a wired connection for latency
reasons. (no, Bluetooth audio will never have low enough latency for music
production)

~~~
tekknik
these same pro users are likely going to need more than a single USB port and
will likely have dongles with them.

------
AnonHP
One of my favorite new features in iOS 14 is an accessibility setting that
allows a double tap or triple tap on the back of the phone to trigger an
action. You can set this up in _Settings- >Accessibility->Touch->Back Tap_ .

In general, I love how accessibility features on iOS are so useful even for
the average person who wouldn’t be considered or classified as disabled.

~~~
city41
iOS lets you turn on a red filter that disables the green and blue channels.
you can set it to turn on by triple tapping the home button (or I'm guessing
the back for new phones). This is the one thing I really miss after switching
to Android. The red screen is fantastic for reading at night, really easy on
the eyes.

~~~
ponderingfish
That the night-shift mode right? I've been using it for almost 2 years I
think. I have the same settings on my iPhone and macbook pro

~~~
evan_
No, it's a different thing.

Accessibility > Display & Text Size > Color Filters

------
mumblerino
In 10 years, this is the first time I installed a beta version. It suffered a
couple of issues, but they’ve been ironed out in my case.

I really love the new app drawer. My hundred barely-used apps are now neatly
stowed there while I keep a single (Yes, one) Home Screen.

Widgets are nice but from what I understand they’re updated only once every 5
minutes, which makes them a lot less useful.

~~~
vxNsr
I've always arranged my homescreen to be a single screen with folders for each
category of app. makes it much easier to find things. I'm always befuddled
when I see ppl with 30 pages of apps.

~~~
filleokus
I just swipe down for Spotlight and use that as an app launcher, so I'll
probably love the app drawer. I'm equally baffled by people doing it any other
way :-) Do you organise your applications on your computer by category as
well?

~~~
tzs
You can also do it by voice. Tell Siri to "open AppName" and it opens the app
named AppName.

It does have trouble with some apps, though. Authy does not work at all when
pronounced the way I expect it to be pronounced ("auth" as in "authorize").
Siri just says that there is no app named "Offie". And no, I do not pronounce
"th" anything at all like "ff".

If I try pronouncing Authy as "oathy" is works maybe 1/4 to 1/3 of the time.

For nearly everything else I've tried, though, it is fine.

~~~
antipaul
Did you try training Siri? (Enable siri text) and then tap it when it says
this app not found, and change "offy" to "Authie". After a few times, it
should recognize your prompt

~~~
tzs
I'm not sure what setting that is. I've tried hitting the "tap to edit" thingy
to edit the command it head from "open Offie" to "open Authy" several times,
and it doesn't seem to really help much.

It's not that much of a problem on my phone or iPad, because I can just ask it
to open Authenticator (Microsoft's authentication app). When I set up TOTP for
a site, I scan the QR code in both.

It's on my Apple Watch that it is annoying. Microsoft Authenticator on the
watch doesn't do TOTP. It's just for authenticating with Microsoft sites. So
on the watch I need to use Authy if I need a TOTP code for a site.

On the watch, I don't see any option to edit a command that Siri gets wrong.

~~~
antipaul
Yea “tap to edit” is what I meant. But who knows how many past
(mis)recognitions vs manual edits it takes to reform Siri.

I’d try to do it each time, hopefully won’t take too long to get it.

(On iOS 14, enable Siri - Siri Responses - Always show speech. On previous
iOS, Siri is full screen and I think tap to edit is always available.)

Not sure about watch. However, I assume it should sync if you enable Siri to
sync in iCloud. Settings - your name icon - iCloud - toggle Siri.

~~~
OkGoDoIt
Do we actually know for a fact this helps? I had always assumed that
correcting voice dictation helps on android and iOS, but over the past couple
years I’ve been coming to the conclusion it doesn’t actually do anything and
we are just assuming these devices are smarter than they really are

~~~
antipaul
My personal anecdata is that yes, it does help

------
knolan
No sign of it here yet.

I’m curious if it fixed some of the unpleasant behaviour and bugs that were
never fixed in iOS 13.

Things like Mail not displaying new emails properly unless your went out and
back into the mailbox. The keyboard autocorrecting to random names
aggressively and inserting capital letters if you dare move the cursor. All
new behaviours introduced with iOS 13 that adversely affect the user
experience.

~~~
chooseaname
That mail bug is annoying. I don't get why Apple can't push their apps out to
their app store and update them separately so it doesn't take an iOS update.
The only reason I can think of is to force people to always stay on the latest
iOS version, but that's anti-user, so surely that's not the reason. ;)

~~~
applecrazy
They technically are on the App Store, just not updated through that channel.

~~~
m-p-3
Seems odd they're not taking advantage of their own app store to update these
apps without requiring an OS update. Even Google does it on Android.

~~~
Polylactic_acid
Google does that because they aren't able to make sure that every android
device gets an update. Since Apple can make sure of this there is no reason to
have a second way to update their apps. App store updates won't magically make
the mail app devs work faster or produce more.

~~~
m-p-3
> Google does that because they aren't able to make sure that every android
> device gets an update.

Hopefully they'll be able to remediate that in the future and separate the
core OS deployment from the vendor-specific files. Let Google pushes the OS,
and the vendor could update their own stuff separately / through the Play
Store. At least there is "Project Mainline" that helps keeping those devices
secure.

> App store updates won't magically make the mail app devs work faster or
> produce more.

Definitely, but it would make it easier to deploy a patch without having to
wait for the next iOS update.

------
avtar
I hope they start offering something similar to the Android call screening
feature [https://www.androidcentral.com/how-use-call-screen-
feature-p...](https://www.androidcentral.com/how-use-call-screen-feature-
pixel-3) That has been such a huge quality of life upgrade.

~~~
perardi
Not _quite_ , but they are _finally_ making the Phone notification a standard
notification, and not a giant screaming blocking full-screen YOU WILL PAY
ATTENTION NOW modal view.

[https://9to5mac.com/2020/06/22/ios-14-incoming-call-
ui/](https://9to5mac.com/2020/06/22/ios-14-incoming-call-ui/)

I always hated that. I hate phone calls, period, and I certainly don’t want
that phone call to take over my entire phone.

~~~
avtar
I guess that's something :/ A friend of mine went through a horrible support
experience with her Pixel 3 and that was enough for me to not want another
Android phone after mine dies.

> I hate phone calls, period

We're kindred spirits. That's the only reason why I can't give up call
screening.

~~~
perardi
Phone calls are rude. They are a Priority 0 interrupt that you must
immediately deal with. Which has become extremely frustrating with the volume
of spam calls on my 437 area code—to the extent I had to install a phone spam
blocker app.

I have no idea why anyone thought it would be a good user experience to be
typINCOMING CALL

~~~
ghaff
Because going back not that long (non-SPAM) incoming voice calls _were_ a
priority interrupt. And they still sort of are for the relatively few people
who call me in a regular basis.

Phone calls are not rude as a general statement. When my dad calls me it is
not rude.

~~~
perardi
If someone is calling me, without texting first, I assume that either (a) my
boss wants me immediately, or (b) someone is in the hospital.

~~~
irrational
Probably a generational thing. I get far more phone calls than texts. I’d
think it was super weird if a friend texted me before calling me.

~~~
ghaff
Furthermore, a lot of people still have landlines and that's the number that
they give out to service people, etc. That was the case with me until very
recently.

There are very few people I'd expect to give me a call out of the blue these
days rather than texting or emailing. But for that circle, I'm in the same
boat as you.

------
philshem
Faithful iPhone SE (1st gen) user checking in. Thankful to still be in the
club. This will likely our last.

~~~
ghostpepper
If you're hanging onto it, like me, because it's small and not because it's
cheap, there are rumours that the launch of the iPhone 12 in October will
include a 5.4" model. It would be the smallest they've released since the
original SE, and will have flat edges too.

~~~
grugagag
I'm holding onto mine because it still meets my needs, very well I would say.
Why upgrade when I really don't need to? Second, I've grown to know Apple and
am sure they will add improvements to the new model, probably fantastic
improvements but but they will probably take something away as well, something
that I am using now and don't want to be forced to change. I don't know what,
maybe the phones jack or something. I am not buying a phone without the jack
(no dumb dongles please). However, if all is good after the 12 is released and
nothing is taken away I'll consider upgrading when my current SE no longer
works.

I'm actually planning to use my phone less and less because I am trapped bad
habits and that results in unnecessarily wasted time.

~~~
chadstur
I love my original SE. upgraded to latest SE because i needed the LTE bands my
carrier, T-Mobile, is broadcasting on more rural sites.

------
t0mbstone
I'm not touching that update with a 10 foot pole. Not until it's been live for
at least a week, and developers have had a chance to actually update their
apps for it!

Honestly, that's just good policy on all Apple updates lately. It seems that
more and more of them have been plagued with issues and are trailed by
hotfixes. I've learned to just wait a while. Other people can be the test
guinea pigs!

~~~
jackdeansmith
From a user perspective, this release is super solid. I'm not going to be
updating to Big Sur any time soon, but I'm running iOS 14 everywhere now and
haven't had any trouble

~~~
vaxman
It has some big issues (first hand). Avoid for a while if you do mission/life
critical work on your phone. As for some of the devs saying it is great, many
of them have crappy apps. The top devs like Rambo are tweeting to avoid.

~~~
tekknik
> The top devs like Rambo are tweeting to avoid.

Who or what sanctioning body determines who is a “top dev”.

I’m using it on my phone, have been for a bit, and have had no issues. Zero. I
must be reachable at all times. So whoever Rambo is, is wrong.

------
applecore
I'm surprised that AirPods didn't support automatic device switching until
now.

I assumed a lot of people with AirPods would want to switch the audio
seamlessly between their iPhone and an iPad or Mac.

Any idea why it took so long to ship this feature?

~~~
threeseed
Because ever since the first Airpods I was able to jump on any of my devices
and change it from Speaker to Airpods and it would instantly switch. I didn't
need to unpair or disconnect from one device before it was usable by another
like I do with my Sony 1000MX3.

~~~
codezero
Yep. I had this experience. It was for some reason, REALLY good when AirPods
just came out, and seemed to degrade with subsequent macOS updates (In
particular, I had more trouble switching between phone and laptop later, but
not much trouble between phone and iPad).

I recently got some bone conducting headphones which have the dual bluetooth
built in, and that is even more seamless - literally just plays the audio from
the active device, though it's not perfectly accurate, and gets really
confused by Spotify doing off-device play, but it's clearly nicer than even
having to choose the output channel.

Looking forward to trying this out w/ my AirPods though.

------
SamuelAdams
From the update: "Option to set your default email and web browser".

Finally!

~~~
hnarn
It’s a step in the right direction, but honestly, what’s really the point when
all browsers are just wrappers around Safari anyway.

~~~
giovannibajo1
That’s a tech-centric view. For most people a browser is defined by its
features like tab handling, account syncing, preferences, extensions, etc.
Nobody cares about the HTML engine, only developers. The fact that it’s
possible to change the default browser is an important user-level feature.

~~~
gitua
It's true, but I think that's not the point. It's not because people don't
care that it won't impact them.

Many people don't care about Privacy, Ecology, etc... yet it will have
catastrophic consequences down the line.

Similarly here, yes it's true people don't care about the web engine, yet
given Mozilla situation and Microsoft who switched to chromium, the web is
seriously not in a good shape and it will have consequences on the long term.

~~~
Spivak
I mean the most likely effect of iOS allowing alternative browsers is even
more Chrome dominance than already currently exists. The fact that a major
platform forces developers to not just stop once it works in Chrome is
probably a net benefit at this point.

~~~
dismantlethesun
Not really... for me, iOS is a hard target, because all the non-default
browsers (Chrome, Brave, Firefox) interact in different ways with the
underlying engine that Safari provides.

Bugs present in iOS browsers, won't be present in Android browsers even if the
browser version is the same which makes debugging harder.

For example, it turns having 3 targets (Chrome, Firefox, Safari...) into 5
targets (Chrome Android, Chrome ioS, Firefox Android, Firefox iOS, Safari
iOS).

Differences between mobile/desktop browser are relatively minor in comparison.

On the Chrome side, there's fragmentation from all the browser that just wrap
Chrome like Samsung Internet and QQ, but those are greatly mitigated by having
up to date apps or are region specific so won't apply if your business doesn't
do business in China.

------
divbzero
One iOS 14 feature I’m really looking forward to is the use of banners instead
of full screen notifications for incoming phone calls.

~~~
ProfessorLayton
Unbelievable that they stuck with that design for this long. It was even worse
before unknown caller filtering was introduced: I would literally be DDoS'd
from my phone multiple times a day from random numbers, iirc with no option to
decline if your phone was already unlocked (i.e. using it when it a call came
through)!!!

~~~
envolt
Took them a pandemic worth of phone usage to realize how irritating this was.
When lockdown/WFH started, my company was using Google Meet, and everytime
there is an incoming call it used to go full screen completely blocking for
whatever purpose I was using the phone (or what ever I was hearing or saying).
Though Zoom integrates with Call feature (not sure what's the technical term
for it), whenever there is an incoming call between a zoom call it used to go
in waiting.

------
divbzero
Any Android users have insight into the uptake on Instant Apps [1] over the
past three years? I’ll be curious how they and the new App Clips [2] in iOS 14
will evolve versus web apps.

[1]: [https://developer.android.com/topic/google-play-
instant](https://developer.android.com/topic/google-play-instant)

[2]: [https://developer.apple.com/app-clips/](https://developer.apple.com/app-
clips/)

~~~
burntcookie90
minimal to no usage, i expect to see `app-clips` deprecated by iOS 15

~~~
ryanwaggoner
Totally disagree, I think app clips are huge and will get tons of traction.

------
makecheck
The “jiggle mode” for editing icons has always been a bit of a mess but it is
_definitely_ broken right now and I hope a fix is on deck for 14.0.1.

Try moving — well — _anything_ between home-screen pages that have widgets:
there is a good chance that _many_ icons will be shuffled in an indecipherable
order. And worse, it’s so _easy_ to get too close to the edge of the screen
and accidentally switch pages, which means when you try to move one little
icon you might shatter the entire icon layout of two adjacent pages!!

(Also, I really loved being able to edit screens sanely in iTunes and I miss
that. It was just easier to set up a few screens of phone icons using a
mouse.)

~~~
ppeetteerr
Try using two fingers (or both hands). It works really well when you use one
hand to swipe and the other to move.

~~~
dvtrn
_Holy [expletive]_ I had no idea you could do that, thank you for the tip!

 _Sent from my iPad_

~~~
jannes
You can also move multiple app icons at once with this method.

Just tap additional icons with your secondary finger while moving an app, and
the additional apps will be added to the main finger’s “stack”.

------
ddoice
Push notifications on PWAs? ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

~~~
google234123
As a user, please no.

~~~
Teckla
As long as you could approve or reject push notifications on a site by site
basis, what is the problem here?

~~~
Zippogriff
1) I don't want to see the prompts to allow push notifications from a webapp,
nor to have to go disable them. I just never want them.

2) Generally I'd rather none of the software I use be webtech, so anything
that makes it easier to deliver webtech to my phone/tablet is a step the wrong
direction. Yes I'm willing to have less total software in exchange. The point
is that I don't want apps that are or will be native, to be webtech instead,
which may happen as more features are added to webapps. IMO allowing stuff
like React Native and Phonegap is something I'd even rather they didn't do
(and I've been paid to develop both native and React Native apps, plus worked
on a very early and somewhat successful Phonegap-but-more-native solution that
ultimately fizzled out). My ideal situation is that if anyone tells me to try
out some app or to use some app to communicate or share something with them or
whatever, personal or business, it's a webapp 0% of the time. It's either
native or it doesn't exist, so no-one can bug me about it or cajole me into
using it.

In short, my UX on iOS is better without them even being possible, so why
would I prefer they be allowed?

~~~
pier25
> I don't want to see the prompts to allow push notifications from a webapp,
> nor to have to go disable them. I just never want them.

Surely Apple could implement a setting to disable all requests for push
notifications?

> In short, my UX on iOS is better without them even being possible, so why
> would I prefer they be allowed?

Because not everyone agrees with you and web apps have many advantages over
native.

~~~
Zippogriff
> Because not everyone agrees with you and web apps have many advantages over
> native.

But I don't care about those advantages (to the extent that they exist for
users they're secondary effects of webapps being very cheap to make as cross-
platform apps, so more likely to be made in the first place if cross-platform
is a requirement) and like being able to choose a platform where it's hard to
deploy a webapp instead of a native app, forcing the choice of "native app" or
"no app at all" on the part of the developer, because I think it leads to
fewer total apps but way more native apps than there'd otherwise be.

So why would _I_ prefer PWAs become more capable on the platform? I see why
PWA developers and maybe some users would.

------
mrtksn
XCode 12 is also out, taking up over 30GB of space apparently. For reference,
XCode 11 was about 10.

~~~
mkskm
What's the reason for the size increase? ARM support?

~~~
plorkyeran
Finder says it's 28 GB but du says 15 GB. The compressed size went from 8 GB
to 11 GB, so I suspect Finder's number is just wrong for some reason?

The overwhelming bulk of Xcode's footprint is the simulators. Xcode 12 went
from two iOS simulator architectures to three (previously i386 and x86_64,
arm64 added), one watchOS architecture to three (previously i386, x86_64 and
arm64 added), and one tvOS architecture to two (previously x86_64, arm64
added), which naturally increases the size quite a bit.

~~~
AlphaSite
Dont they support app thinning on macOS?

------
bitsoda
Apple seems to be at least 3 hours behind schedule as there's no sign of it
here on the East Coast, yet.

~~~
thematija
Also nothing in Croatia (Europe) so far.

Edit: it just appeared 3 min after I posted this. Downloading.

~~~
cjg_
Update available now for me (Sweden)

------
btbuildem
Looks slick but I'm going to wait for the early adopters to weed out the first
wave of problems.

~~~
brundolf
I've been using the beta for a few weeks with virtually zero issues. One or
two quirks with the brand-new features; zero regressions.

------
stephencoyner
I just tapped the "Download and Install" button. Now the settings app freezes
when I try to tap on "Software updates" and iOS 14 even downloaded yet.
getting nervous...

------
Razengan
Been using since the first developer beta. Alas, still a few bugs and half-
baked features, like the inability to re-add apps back to the Home Screen from
the pull-down search.

If you have a ton of Home Screen pages like I do, you have to tap/drag a long
way to the App Library to be able to restore the "hidden" apps.

Translation is still wonky for EN↔JP: "Test" gets translated into Japanese as
"Testament", okay...

------
rock_artist
One thing similar to Catalina with iOS 14 is the “over” security. It does nice
to have scoped location permission or scoped photos access. But sometimes
those permissions just pops up at a time when you’d click on them by mistake.
For less techie people it would be impossible to go to settings and change it.

------
mattacular
It's actually not available on device as of this writing...

~~~
simonklitj
Got it here on my phone 10 minutes ago. In Denmark.

~~~
phirdev
Currently not available in Germany. I wonder how their rollout mechanism works
like.

------
mrfusion
The translation feature sounds amazing. Any ideas how it works?

~~~
mumblerino
It’a much more usable than Google’s but limited in number of languages.

Also Safari’s ability to translate websites seems to be geolocked to the US.

------
s_dev
Is it?

I'm seeing iOS devs on twitter complain about multiple builds and redundant
versions. I'm waiting for Xcode 12.1 the launch seems to be a mess.

------
numbers
Not yet available in SF Bay Area and looks like others not seeing in Pacific
time zone.

 _Edit_ : iOS 14 and iPadOS 14 are available now as of 1:08PM.

------
bad_user
iPadOS doesn't have the app drawer :-(

------
canadian_tired
In Ontario Canada. It's available.

~~~
lostgame
Thanks for letting us know. I'm in Toronto, so I appreciate it.

------
observr9
So, you still can't disable the pointless and annoying "message sent" tone in
iMessage.

~~~
jwagenet
Settings > Sounds & Haptics > Sent Mail > None

~~~
observr9
I said "iMessage".

~~~
MBCook
Have you tried it? I honestly wouldn’t put it past apple for that one setting
to control both things even though you can’t tell by the name.

------
dewey
Seems to be available now, you might need to kill the Settings.app to make it
show up immediately.

------
BMSmnqXAE4yfe1
Looks like Windows Phone tiles )

------
varbhat
Is there any mechanism to rollback to older versions if newer ones break ?

PS. non iOS user here

~~~
iOsiris
No, once you upgrade with iOS, you're stuck on it as an user

------
rafaelturk
Now run and update your app... we're caught by surprise on this release

~~~
dylan604
I've seen this a lot lately. I'm not an app developer, so forgive the
ignorance. What was the surprise? The actual release date? Does Apple normally
send out an email to devs saying you have 1 week until it drops? From my
experience with Apple, the GM was always a closely held secret and divulging
knowledge was grounds for loss of Apple privileges. Just curious what is so
different this time.

~~~
andrekandre
apple never gives us the release day, so we are always biting nails

when fatal bugs, or issues are reported, there is little communication from
apple... alot people/companies depend on what apple is doing here

hisotrically, they announce new stuff, then ios is released about 1 week later
(conveyed at the annnouncement)

this time, it was one day.

alot of us had apps already in testing and preparation, but depending on what
features you might have used, some bugs occur that have either no workaround
of nasty workarounds, and we need the GM release to confirm certain things and
how to proceed

i cant talk about the issues i have faced in my job, but this 1 day notice has
not gone off well

\-- as an aside --

personally, my feelings towards apple has soured very much, and anecdotally,
many friends who work in industry who have to deal with apple (apps, app
store, safari etc) have soured on them too

when people say "apple doesnt care about developers" i can understand thier
feelings somewhat...

~~~
dylan604
I guess my response would be should Apple hold off releasing a major OS update
until it has received thumbs up from every single developer? Of course not.
The betas for iOS 14 have been out for a long time now (not sure of specific
dates). If your app wasn't ready for GM today, then was it really ever going
to be? I would assume Apple expects that after each beta version is released,
developers update their code for that version with the hope that it is
promoted to GM.

~~~
zacwest
Even if zero app changes are required, you must still:

1\. Download, extract, and run the new version of Xcode.

Note: you cannot upload builds for production App Store with pre-GM builds.
You _must_ use the GM or production Xcode.

It's a 12 GB download, and extracting takes 20 minutes. Factor in about an
hour here. Especially around when it's posted you can expect a very slow
download.

2\. Build, execute and validate the app at least _launches_.

Maybe another 30 minutes.

3\. Create and upload an archived build to Apple.

Maybe another 30 minutes.

4\. Wait for the uploaded build to finish processing.

This takes somewhere between 1-3 hours.

5\. Submit the finished-processing build.

Manual inspection of metadata, screenshot uploading, etc. Let's call it 20
minutes.

6\. Wait for approval from Apple.

Who knows how long.

7\. Release.

So this is somewhere around 4-5 hours at _minimum_ of work to get the build
uploaded.

When you're told at 11am that users will have it in their hands the next day,
even if you are incredibly prepared, there's simply very little time to
actually do the above in a safe way. And if you're not on Pacific Time, you're
going to miss this window entirely.

Not to mention Apple uploaded a GM build of Xcode around noon, and then
silently replaced it with an updated version sometime later without explaining
what the difference was. Fun stuff.

Also: the GM build has regressions.

~~~
dylan604
Thanks for that walk through. Again since I'm not an app dev, I have no
insight into this process.

Do certain vendors get pre-release access that smaller vendors do not? Does
Twitter/Facebook/etc have to do the same thing you just described? If it was
truly as bad as you are making it out to be, how in the world does the eco-
system survive? There's no way Apple could expect to be able to handle
reviewing every single app in this manner. Surely something is missing?

~~~
zacwest
I do not believe they distributed the GM build of Xcode to anybody early. This
is the first time they've ever pulled "also tomorrow it's out" \-- they
usually give 1 week to get app submissions in.

I also believe that, right now, they're just rubber stamping all app reviews.
They cannot handle this volume.

------
mcswell
Still no way to make Maps put north at the top while you're driving.

Grumble, grumble.

~~~
mandeeeeeep
You can with CarPlay

------
submeta
Do we have to fear that some of our apps might not work on iOS 14?

~~~
snazz
It’s always possible, but people (including me) have been running beta
versions since June or July and have already reported any issues with third-
party apps. Even my bank app worked the very first time on iOS 14, even though
it didn’t on the iOS 13 betas.

~~~
submeta
Oh, shoot, didn‘t think about my banking and authenticator app. Mission
critical software.

------
zanecraw
Excited for the widgets

------
eddhead
Oh hello there, Windows Phone tiles!

~~~
quyleanh
I miss these days...

------
moscovium
Installing for me right now

~~~
thematija
Where are you located?

~~~
moscovium
SF Bay

~~~
jasonv
I just got mine started a minute ago, in SF Bay area.

------
butz
Any news on PWA support front?

------
submeta
Not available in Germany.

~~~
dewey
It is, installing it right now.

~~~
submeta
Yep, now available. Just started downloading.

------
yumraj
Software engineers don't let others install major releases. They make them
wait till at least x.1.

------
vxNsr
As usual you're probably better off waiting for iOS 14.1 that will be out next
week to clear up whatever UX breaking bugs they didn't catch during beta in
this version.

~~~
thedanbob
This is the first iOS release where I decided I wasn't going to update
immediately. I'm really looking forward to some of the new features but I'm
tired of dealing with Apple's day-one bugs.

~~~
snazz
And this is the first iOS release where I decided to get the beta on my
primary device—I haven’t noticed any significant bugs or regressions. While
it’s a perfectly reasonable decision to wait a bit, this has been the most
stable beta I’ve used in years.

~~~
mkskm
Have they fixed the regression with background apps being aggressively killed
introduced in iOS 13.2? I still run into it daily even on iOS 13.7 with e.g.
Yelp and Google Maps.

~~~
joshschreuder
Which device are you on? This basically never happens to me on XS but does
quite a lot on iPad Pro 9.6. I’m almost certain it’s just a result of how much
memory your device has.

~~~
mkskm
Latest iPhone SE

------
johnknowles
"Powerful Updates to Messages", lol. Apple hasn't put an ounce of power into
messaging. It's been 10 years, and they haven't innovated at all in the
message space in any meaningful way (no, Memoji is not a meaningful extension
of the messaging space). It's sad to see the lack of energy to actually create
powerful and useful software, rather than to doing the bare minimum to compete
in the smartphone market.

~~~
tribeca18
What's something you wish existed/suggest?

~~~
gingericha
A couple things I would love to see in iMessage having used WhatsApp as my
primary messaging app for the past several years: (1) Direct replying/quoting
to a specific message. (2) More granular group chat controls (eg ability to
add/remove/leave group message threads. (3) Ability to rename group chats so
that I don't have 3 chat threads that contain the same first two people plus
someone else

~~~
jkubicek
re 3: Renaming group chats has been a feature for a few years now

~~~
easton
Not for SMS (presumably because it can’t be shared to the other participants,
but I’d still like a way to apply an alias to these four or five person deep
threads for my own devices).

------
munk-a
Oh how exciting - now if they only removed their restriction of OS
installations on old devices then maybe I could make use of it. As it is it's
just another nail in the coffin for me ever being able to download an app ever
again because their app store doesn't do backwards compatibility well and
everything needs to go through the app store.

~~~
Angostura
The App Store will indeed let you install previous versions of an app if you
have an older device.

~~~
Hnaomyiph
This needs an asterisks, unless something has changed recently, the steps
needed to get an app on an old device are annoying.

If I want to install an app on my 3rd gen iPad, I try to install it directly
in the app store, it tells me it requires an updated version of iOS.

I then have to install the app on my iPhone that's running the latest iOS
version, then switch back to the iPad, change the app store account from my
partner's to my account, and only then am I allowed to install the previous
version of the app.

------
tyrankh
[https://www.apple.com/ios/ios-13/features/](https://www.apple.com/ios/ios-13/features/)
new redirects to
[https://www.apple.com/ios/ios-14/features/](https://www.apple.com/ios/ios-14/features/),
which seems like an unnecessary hacky way to get your SEO up.

Separately: is it just me or has Apple lost its innovative edge? Widgets and
app drawer, that's the huge new update? Android has had these for, like, 5+
years.

Not that android has had anything super exciting lately, either. Maybe phone
OSes have kind of implemented most of the obvious great features, I guess.

~~~
ajconway
Apple continues to invest in the user experience and potential privacy. Unlike
Android, the features that require data processing and ML are not offset into
the cloud. This means that if Apple finally moves to encrypting the iCloud
storage, users won't loose semantic search over their photo library, health
data, and other similar features.

(I particularly like the new option to pre-select the photos that you want an
app to see, rather than giving complete access to my photo library)

~~~
logicOnly
This is not factual, this is Apple marketing.

There's no indication Apple is doing anything noteworthy regarding privacy.

~~~
ajconway
Apple specifically declares that they do these things on device. If they
don't, this is an opportunity for a class action.

