
Apple announces iOS 10 - pearlsteinj
http://techcrunch.com/2016/06/13/apple-announces-ios-10/
======
andrewla
Looks like Apple is doubling down on at least two features that really seem
like duds -- 3D Touch (which as far as I can tell nobody even knows exists),
and Siri (which everyone raves about but nobody uses for anything).

I'd love to see UX improvements around minor inconveniences of the iOS
experience:

\- what the hell the volume button does in different contexts (sometimes it
changes the ringer, other times the in-app volume, other times it just seems
to go into a black hole)

\- easier access to app settings for the app you're using (things like privacy
settings and notification settings and revoking/re-allowing privileges (like
camera access, etc.); maybe context-sensitive pull-up or pull-down things? I
like that OS controls this, not the app, just need a better way to navigate to
it.

\- turn off buzzing and booping when I plug in a charger, and maybe some sort
of wireless charging thing if the technology is where it needs to be yet

\- stop showing album art on the lock screen (or make it optional)

\- more uniformity on how lock screen notifications are acknowledged and
dismissed -- sometimes there's an 'x' in the swipe-over, sometimes actions,
sometimes just pressing the notification does something

The only feature that seems interesting to me is the voicemail transcription;
previous services I've used for this have been pretty terrible, but hopefully
this is better.

With Marshmallow's security model (of run-time grantable and revokable
permissions) Android has become a lot more attractive to me -- my biggest pain
point in using Android devices has always been the nightmare of looking at
what an app wants in order to install.

~~~
throwanem
> what the hell the volume button does in different contexts

If the app you're using right now has a handle for audio playback, it changes
the speaker volume. If not, it changes the ringer volume. As far as I can
tell, that's all, and in a half decade of using iPhones and iPods, I've never
actually seen it misbehave.

~~~
martin-adams
This bugs me like mad on Android. When I know the app is going to blast out, I
have to let it before I can turn it down. I'm forever having to hop through
menu after menu to turn the volume down.

My phone is permanently on vibrate (have young kids in the house and don't
want to wake them), so changing the ringer is frustrating at most.

~~~
wlesieutre
On Android 6:

1) Press volume button to bring up volume controls

2) Tap the arrow on the right to expand

3) Adjust ring/music/alarm volumes as needed:
[http://core0.staticworld.net/images/article/2015/05/android_...](http://core0.staticworld.net/images/article/2015/05/android_m_volumes-100587783-orig.png)

~~~
swiley
Just like he said, that involves touching the screen and opening a menu.
There's no predictable way to immediately silence your phone.

~~~
badlucklottery
You can predictably silence it before it happens with the above method. Just
drag the "music" volume to zero.

~~~
wlesieutre
I'm not sure what solution they're looking for. A single universal volume
control where if you turn up a video it means your ringer is now on full
blast? 6 volume buttons on the side of your phone to adjust them each
individually?

Android's system of adjusting media volume when media is playing and ringer
volume when it isn't seems like a reasonably clean solution. It takes a single
tap to expand to the three sliders.

Maybe a shortcut where where pressing volume up/down simultaneously mutes
everything?

~~~
ZeroGravitas
It's not that exotic, you've got a child or a sleeping partner or a boss in
the same room and you want to watch a mostly visual video without any
unnecessary jingles or other audio cues from disturbing them.

So you reduce the volume, but it only reduced the ringer for calls, which
isn't what you want.

As the sibling answer says, newer Androids can do this. One click to display
the volume, a touch to see the individual controls and then slide.

~~~
mintplant
Or swipe down the top drawer and tap the Sound setting to Mute.

------
orbitur
Holy moly, Apple is very aware of the competing chat apps. iMessage looks
amazing and they packed a lot of features in there, but I wonder how they're
going to make it all easily discoverable.

~~~
partiallypro
Really? I felt the presentation of iMessage was embarrassingly trying to seem
hip. The only thing I didn't find to be annoying bloat was the ability to tap
and "like" a message. Really cuts down on messages like "great" and "ok."
Otherwise it honestly felt like Yahoo Messenger from 2005 in level of bloat,
where you could "buzz" people and shake their windows. People use things that
aren't iMessage, not because of features, but because they are cross platform
and secure. Apple doesn't have that, so everything to me just felt like
texting with bloatware.

I don't find those features confusing, just annoying.

~~~
yoz-y
No. People use other apps because they have a large adoption and stickers (we
chat and line) or because they were free while sms were not (whats app). Only
us tech nerds care about security.

~~~
EugeneOZ
But not only nerds think about cross-device compatibility.

~~~
yoz-y
Of course, that is how you get to the large user base. but I think it is wrong
to assume that users care about security. If they did nobody would use SMS,
email or Mc Donald's wifi but here we are. It is a very important feature, but
it does not sell.

------
paperpunk
It's really troubling to me that 3D Touch features are a big part of this
release and yet their most recent phone release (the iPhone SE) has no support
for it at all, and neither does ANY iPad, including the flagship iPad Pro 9.7
released in March.

I know many people are sceptical about 3D Touch. I myself found it to be quite
useful if you build habits around it - until I got an iPad Pro 9.7 and found
all those habits were useless. Since I had to break the habits on the iPad I
rarely use it on the iPhone now.

If Apple wants people to adopt 3D Touch and make it useful it has to actually
be available on anything other than the 6S.

------
bowlingx
Finally they managed to remove the weird intelligent selection behavior in
safari!!! (The one that unpredictable marks blocks or the whole website).
Thank you apple :)

They also ignore any viewport meta data so you can always zoom. My Cordova app
doesn't like this :( I hope it can be disabled for WKWebView programmatically

~~~
zimpenfish
> I hope it can be disabled for WKWebView programmatically

I'm hoping it can't - being unable to zoom a web page means it goes on the
shit list because then I can't read it how I want to.

~~~
bowlingx
For websites this seems ok for me, but for apps that run inside wkwebview, I
think there should be more control about this behavior. You can't zoom normal
apps so this would make the Usebility properly worse or unexpected.

~~~
zimpenfish
Oh, hmm, good point, I missed that subtlety. Yes, apps definitely should be
able to prevent zooming.

(Purely from a personal perspective, I'd prefer that people who made web apps
didn't because they're a much less good user experience.)

------
therealmarv
How is object recognition possible on a (i)phone without a huge/massive
dataset like Google uses on Google Photos' AI backend? It has to be worse AI
than from Google Photos. Can someone clarify?

~~~
nardi
You only need a huge dataset to train the network. The trained network itself
is (relatively) tiny, so it can be loaded and run on iPhones.

~~~
visarga
It's a whole subfield of machine learning called model distillation or model
compression that concerns with shrinking large neural nets, or ensembles of
them, to fit on small devices like phones and tablets. By reducing the space
needed by 10x, they only lose 1-2% in accuracy.

But what I like about it is that neural networks can be transferred between
different architectures, and the whole process of training a neural net can be
sped up by starting from a previous result.

------
ChicagoBoy11
Is this the death of hybrid apps? Seems all the announcements were focus on
the deep integration that apps can now have with the OS. For a long time, the
big knock against hybrid development was that performance was never as good as
native, but it seems that this new wave of integration presents a far more
compelling case for native development, no?

~~~
photokandy
As long as one can leverage plugins for hybrid apps, I don't see why most of
the demoed features today aren't possible in a hybrid app. At least nothing
sent up huge red flags for me as a hybrid app developer.

------
sidcool
A lot of iOS 10 features are Google inspired.

~~~
overcast
Does that matter for some reason?

~~~
sidcool
It does, because when Google did it in past, and they did, Apple zealots
ripped on them.

~~~
overcast
Saying something is valid because someone else did it, doesn't mean anything.

------
makecheck
Since they’re tweaking copy/paste to work between devices, hopefully they are
also working on the phone UI for text selection. Before I care about cloud-
sharing any text, I need to be able to SELECT IT properly, and frankly iOS
fails completely at this right now. They need to remove the second-guessing,
over-selecting, contextually-smartly-selecting code, or whatever it is doing
now.

------
JayHost
I guess as every innovative company reaches it's climax the motivation to
actually innovate dies out.

As long as the money is coming in they don't have to change a thing.

But it begs a different question. What's all the money for if you're not going
to have any fun?

At least do some live drop / break / blend tests or something to spice things
up.

------
prrrnd
Am i the only one thinking that Steve Jobs would have refused most of the
things that were introduced this morning? Apple sure has changed over the
years.

~~~
kylec
Yeah, I don't think that all that junk added to Messages would have been added
under Steve Jobs. Not that I think that's a bad thing, but it's definitely a
notable departure away from clean and simple and minimal to something that is
much, much more complicated and glitzy.

~~~
k-mcgrady
Considering the number of people that use other messaging apps these features
are what people want. Apple can't just ignore that.

~~~
kylec
Why not leave these things to third party messaging apps, keyboards, and
integrations? Why does it all have to be first party?

~~~
k-mcgrady
Why build a first party messaging app if most people aren't going to use it?
For people who just want to send plain text messages the UI is pretty much
identical. Text box, type, send.

~~~
kylec
What if I want to receive plain text messages?

~~~
sotojuan
Turn off iMessage or tell your friends. Or get over it because it's just a
silly message?

------
JustSomeNobody
Third party VOIP sounds great! Trying to answer hangouts from the lock screen
is impossible currently.

------
marricks
Always wondered if they'd stall at iOS 10 and just start moving up minor
versions like macOS. 10.1 etc. Another change that doesn't make a ton of sense
but I guess looks nice.

------
amaks
Was it just me, or ability to interact and access personal data on the lock
screen on a locked phone seems little insecure?

~~~
ilyanep
It's not just you. That was my first thought too, as it pretty much seems like
a huge extension of the amount of data you can see without unlocking.

~~~
k-mcgrady
They're already showing personal data on the lock screen (messages, emails)
and there is a setting to disable and has been for a few years.

~~~
ilyanep
This seems like more than just a summary of a message/e-mail to me. A live
view of the app in question?

~~~
k-mcgrady
Yes but I'm sure the same 'don't show private crap on my lock screen' setting
would apply.

------
drinchev
iOS 10. 10 Features that I think they had a hard time to convince the audience
that were so important.

I've been using iOS since v3 and it's going ^2 complicated every year. Come on
guys, nobody expects that you can deliver a revolution with every WWDC. Just
don't make the interface more complicated.

Siri, 3d touch, home kit? I barely know anyone using those and everyone these
days has an iPhone. The focus is shifted from usability to features. So sad.

~~~
stevep98
I find Siri useful for certain things.

'Set a timer for 20 minutes' is faster for me than using the clock app.

'Navigate to the nearest gas station' is faster.

Setting reminders is usually faster with Siri. Especially geofences ones.

Finding pictures in a location is much easier with Siri.. "Find pictures at
Lake Tahoe"

The main problem is that you have to remember what you can do.

~~~
matt-attack
"Set a timer for 20 minutes" is heavenly. No, extra bloat like, "Shall I start
it now?", it just starts ticking as soon as you as for it.

Every time you feed a parking meter, I recommend this feature.

~~~
veidr
I also use voice to start timers, probably more than once a day on average.

Which is why, by now, the idiotic and unfunny jokes Siri makes almost every
time I do that are _really_ fucking annoying (even though it doesn't say them
out loud, and I just have to see them printed on the screen).

~~~
soared
You can tell their engineers never continuously tested Siri's responses for
multiple weeks. I'd rather have the "Ok" than Siri's 5 other longer responses,
and the one sassy response.

------
bytesandbots
Third party integration and inter-operability with third party apps has been
one of the areas Android fared better than iOS. Now with Siri, Maps and
Messages third-party APIs and keyboard updates, apple can completely shed its
walled-garden image.

------
cm2187
My only question is: will the nagging for apple services increase or decrease?

~~~
eknight15
Depending on how Desktop sync works, I'm thinking we'll all be very familiar
with the "Upgrade Storage" alert.

------
giarc
Anyone know if Siri will still only respond when plugged in? I wish it were an
option to turn on at all time. I realize battery would be drained
considerably.

~~~
franciscojgo
It works every time, so long you are not on "Low Power Mode".

~~~
kingnothing
As of iOS9, the "hey Siri" touchless functionality is only available when the
phone is plugged in.

~~~
kkirsche
Assuming you aren't on the iPhone 6S I believe

~~~
scope
Also the SE

------
pducks32
I love the news maps ui it's beautiful and so much more intuitive. It was
really confusing before even to me: a techie!

------
KuhlMensch
Ah the last operating system I feel comfortable installing on my iphone 6
without risking (designed?) obsolescence crushing the performance.

The features look really good. I use siri daily, but with 3rd party
integrations that could be hourly.

------
SeriousM
"It looks like the Photos app is getting a huge upgrade and now looks more
like Google Photos. The big difference, obviously, is that Apple handles
everything on your device and doesn’t collect data about you. "

Yyyes, rrright...

------
epynonymous
is it just me or has apple really lost its advantage with the departure of
steve jobs, i mean johnny ives is still there, but they seem to be doing a
mediocre job, dont get me wrong, i really liked the new macbook when it came
out, and i own an apple watch (more of a fashion accessory more than anything
else), but maps, siri, music, photos, etc seem like minor increments. blow me
away apple like hou did with the first intel based macs, or how about when mac
os x first came out, the very first ipod, we need more makers, not an
operations guy

~~~
rimantas
Jobs was there when iOS was in infancy. Now it is a mature platform. I don't
get this constant "entertain me" whine.

~~~
epynonymous
i've been a loyal apple user since the motorola 68030 mac ii, this was in the
90's so it's natural to expect apple to change the game every few years, with
cook at the helm, he's done nothing exciting, just a lot of conservative
incremental changes, you see where the stock's trending lately. i am not some
fanboy that jumped on the apple bandwagon in the past 10 years, so from my
perspective, apple is starting to falter, but jobs has laid a solid foundation
of innovative products, couldn't see myself buy a dell/lenovo or android phone
anytime soon, but things have certainly changed in the past few years,
regardless if apple has so much cash in the bank. wwdc's in the past unveiled
mac os x, the intel based macs (from powerpc), ipod, iphone, ipad, this wwdc
has really been underwhelming granted it is a developer conference, but apple
has always been using this to market their new gadgets.

------
subway
iOS X, if you will.

------
mhurron
Can I have Siri answer with the speaker yet?

------
reacharavindh
Accessing everything on lock screen? So, my GF can see my app activity and
pretty do all the things without my authentication?

Craig touts specifically that we don't need to press the home button for all
this to work...

~~~
Razengan
I'm sure you'll be able to decide the amount of stuff you want accessible from
the lock screen, as you already get to do now, but you may have more pressing
concerns regarding your partner's trust.

~~~
reacharavindh
Oh, I used the example of my GF responding to messages/viewing notifications
to essentially bring out my privacy concerns. Not that I don't trust my
partner :) I must have disabled this feature when I installed iOS 9 and being
unnecessarily surprised at this now.

------
philliphaydon
I love 3D Touch. Best feature on iphone.

------
logicallee
If you want to watch the keynote, the last line in this macrumors blog post:
[http://www.macrumors.com/2016/06/13/wwdc-2016-spoiler-
free/](http://www.macrumors.com/2016/06/13/wwdc-2016-spoiler-free/)

provides a link labelled "Video Posted: A direct link to the video file is now
available, with no spoilers." The direct link is: [http://p.events-
delivery.apple.com.edgesuite.net/16faohbadfv...](http://p.events-
delivery.apple.com.edgesuite.net/16faohbadfvoihjbadfvljhbphjb06/m3u8/hls_vod_mvp.m3u8)
\- Hopefully you can just click it and it'll work.

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

If you want to _download_ the above video. (In my case, on Windows, VLC has
trouble with that so I used the instructions here to actually download it:
[http://stream-recorder.com/forum/livestreamer-m3u8-error-
no-...](http://stream-recorder.com/forum/livestreamer-m3u8-error-no-
plugin-t20173.html) )

The exact thing I did was:

1\. Get dl-youtube.exe from here: [http://youtube-dl.org/](http://youtube-
dl.org/) (save the fourth link for windows, labelled youtube-dl.exe, to your
desktop)

2\. Option One: Download Highest-Quality Version

From the command-line execute, in my case. The following line downloads the
best quality version:

    
    
      C:\Users\User\Desktop>youtube-dl.exe http://p.events-delivery.apple.com.edgesuite.net/16faohbadfvoihjbadfvljhbphjb06/m3u8/hls_vod_mvp.m3u8 --hls-prefer-native -o output.ts
    

Notice that the above defaults to the best stream which is 7.13 GB (and
1920x800). It's too much for me, so I killed it and instead did:

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

2A. Option Two: Choose Quality

Instead you can run -F to list formats. The following line outputs possible
settings:

    
    
      youtube-dl.exe http://p.events-delivery.apple.com.edgesuite.net/16faohbadfvoihjbadfvljhbphjb06/m3u8/hls_vod_mvp.m3u8 --hls-prefer-native -F
    

Which outputs:

    
    
      [info] Available formats for hls_vod_mvp:
      format code  extension  resolution note
      meta         mp4        multiple   Quality selection URL
      786          mp4        480x200     786k , avc1.4d401f, mp4a.40.2
      1406         mp4        640x266    1406k , avc1.4d401f, mp4a.40.2
      2029         mp4        640x266    2029k , avc1.4d401f, mp4a.40.2
      2806         mp4        960x400    2806k , avc1.4d401f, mp4a.40.2
      3849         mp4        960x400    3849k , avc1.4d401f, mp4a.40.2
      4967         mp4        1280x532   4967k , avc1.640028, mp4a.40.2
      6581         mp4        1280x532   6581k , avc1.640028, mp4a.40.2
      8728         mp4        1920x800   8728k , avc1.640028, mp4a.40.2 (best)
    

I chose the one labelled 2806 for me, so I just ran:

    
    
      C:\Users\User\Desktop>youtube-dl.exe http://p.events-delivery.apple.com.edgesuite.net/16faohbadfvoihjbadfvljhbphjb06/m3u8/hls_vod_mvp.m3u8 --hls-prefer-native -f 2806 -o output.ts
    
    

Notice that capital -F lists the available formats, lowercase f chooses one.

This one is only 2.3 GB, which is good enough for me. At 2-3 MB/sec it took me
twenty minutes to download.

VLC plays this one just fine.

~~~
logicallee
I'm extremely surprised this was downvoted by two people. Anyone care to
explain? (I just show how to watch the keynote.) Did I post this on the wrong
article or is this not what this is about, or what's wrong?

------
ommunist
Heck, I just bought a course to study iOS9 development... Who can withstand
such a pace?

~~~
k-mcgrady
If you're developing production apps you're likely supporting at least the
last two versions of iOS. I'm a full-time iOS developer and don't remember
half the new stuff in iOS 9 simply because I don't need it yet or it's iOS 9
only and I have to support iOS 7+. Also all of that knowledge transfers. iOS
10 will bring extra deeper stuff that you're not going to get anywhere near
learning on an intro course.

~~~
giarc
3D Touch... you aren't adding it to every app now? ;)

------
ClassyPuff
Looks pretty interesting.... Apple is putting support for 3D touch, more
features we expect to come & a better siri support for future...Siri is fine
now I think, developers should work more hard for siri!!!

------
EGreg
I just want to know one thing:

DID APPLE FINALLY MAKE WEB PUSH AVAILABLE IN iOS THE WAY THEY HAVE IN MacOS?

Anyone know?

~~~
drinchev
Not announced. If it's reality it will come out this week when more
information on Safari iOS.

------
sdegutis
Apple used to be about quality products. They would ignore the demands of
shareholders, who are always wrong and never actually understand what
customers want.

Now they're a generic computer company like Compaq and Gateway. Shareholders
are running their business into the ground, and they're making terrible
products, from head to toe.

~~~
rimantas
So what's so horrible about iPhone? Crappy build quality? Subpar camera?
Nonexistant battery life? Performance is shit compared to cometition?

------
jswny
Does Apple really think that people use Siri? Yes, limited voice control is
useful in the car when you need to call someone. Other than that, I've never
seen someone using Siri for anything other than screwing around. I think
Amazon has forced Apple's hand with Alexa. The problem is, Alexa is more
useful, more open, and overall far ahead of Apple's technology. I don't think
that Apple understands that the main reason Alexa is great is that Amazon put
it in a tube and made it able to control the lights in my house, the music,
and lots of other stuff. It's not just for changing your name to something
stupid and asking it to Google things for you like Siri is.

