
iOS 8 reviewed - guardian5x
http://arstechnica.com/apple/2014/09/ios-8-thoroughly-reviewed/
======
Someone1234
Credit where credit is due, the lack of customisable keyboards was a major
gripe of mine when people asked me why I'd never buy an iOS device.

A Swype-like keyboard (I actually use Google Keyboard's Swype mode, even
though I own Swype) is a "must have" on my phone and has been for over three
and a half years (since Swype beta was available on the original Galaxy Note).

While there are definitely thumb typists who can type quite fast, for me
personally Swyping is significantly faster than tapping. I refuse to go back
to that, it is bad enough things like passwords require tapping (although
thanks to LastPass working with Chrome on Android, that too might be a thing
of the past).

Now all we need is Microsoft to get with the program. Windows 8/8.1 still
lacks a Swype-like keyboard and third party keyboards don't really exist. Kind
of sucks on the Surface (you don't ALWAYS have the keyboard cover on).

~~~
sirn
My usage case is probably a very edge case, but my biggest complaint with
Android 3rd party keyboard ecosystem is how hard and inconsistent is to switch
between third party keyboards. I like SwiftKey, but I use about three
languages daily and SwiftKey is not good enough for two other languages I use
(Japanese, Thai), so I have to use other keyboard.

Switching between multiple keyboards in Android is totally pain. This was over
a year ago, but back then I have drag down the notification area, choose
Change Keyboard, select keyboard I want to use and go back to typing (maybe
optionally switch the layout to the correct one before that) instead of a
single button press. Some keyboard do provide a way to switch to other
keyboard, but they're mostly non-obvious (e.g. in Google Japanese IME, you
have to long press the layout switch [A/あ] button for few seconds, then choose
"Change keyboard"). Even though most non-English keyboards also provide
English layout, but most of time they're simply half-baked or just downright
bad.

I don't know how Apple designed their third party keyboard API, but I truly
hope they have some kind of guideline regarding the keyboard switcher, and
that third party keyboards in iOS are per-language so all non-English
keyboards out there don't ended up implementing a half-baked English keyboard.
Either way, I'm really happy to see SwiftKey coming to iOS, even more so when
my favorite Japanese IME (ATOK) announced they're going to release a keyboard
for iOS.

~~~
speedyapoc
You can switch keyboards just like you would when changing from English to
Emoji, etc.

~~~
y4mi
you can switch keyboard layouts like that (i.e. swiftkey english to swiftkey
japanese), but he wanted to (my example) change from aosp keyboard for
japanese to swiftkey for english. This is often also possible, but the way
differs for keyboards.

i believe aosp keyboard put a button left to space which you can long-press in
order to get the switch keyboard popup. but his biggest gripe was probably the
settings which default for some keyboards after changing the standard...

------
ZanyProgrammer
I really wish I could block ads somehow on my iPad Air. I'm pretty invested in
the Apple ecosystem and use an LTE iPad Air almost every day on public
transit, and the inability to block ads really makes mobile Safari a shitty
experience. I mean, I'd never run (and I'm sure a lot of people here don't
either) a desktop browser without some sort of ad blocking going on. That and
being able to have two apps run side by side would be a great boost to my
commuting productivity, but I've long since resigned that I'll finally have to
move ecosystems if I want any of that.

~~~
untog
_I 'd never run (and I'm sure a lot of people here don't either) a desktop
browser without some sort of ad blocking going on_

I'd actually be interested to see an HN poll on this. I do not run an ad
blocker and frankly I find most complaints about ads online to be totally
overblown. Years ago there was a hellish amount of pop-ups, pop-overs and pop-
unders, but these days I really don't have many problems, and I'm happy to
support the sites I use.

~~~
personZ
It's also worth noting that ABP is an absolute pig, on either Firefox or
Chrome. I found that memory consumption and machine churn significantly
dropped when I simply removed it and lived with ads. I've done no empirical
measures on this, but am convinced that the cure is worse than the disease.

~~~
Osiris
I'm using HTTP Switchboard which uses much less memory has offers a lot more
control over what to block and what to allow through, but it does take a bit
more configuration than ABP.

~~~
jobu
µBlock is from the same author and a whole lot easier to use:

[https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock](https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock)

------
subdane
Maybe I'm just a corner case, but the "Spotlight, multitasking" section didn't
address whether Apple has changed the refresh settings when multitasking
between apps. Not a day goes by that I don't switch between open apps (say,
Mail and Safari) only to watch the browser content disappear under my fingers
while it decides to hit the network and refresh the screen with the same
content. This is especially frustrating when out of network/wifi range which
happens frequently in NYC.

~~~
Sephiroth87
That simply mean that the app was killed usually for memory reasons, you see
the old content because the app shows you a screenshot that was taken before
going in the background, and then starts again, thus refreshing

~~~
EpicEng
Who cares _why_ it happens? I've gone back and forth between iOS and Android
over the years and it never happens to me on my Android devices. Both
platforms have their strengths and weaknesses obviously, but this used to piss
me off to no end on iOS.

~~~
scott_karana
It's kinda strange, honestly: 2011's state-of-the-art Android phones (Galaxy
S2) had 1GB RAM, and yet Apple is still stuck on that maximum, while Android
has long moved on to 2GB on flagships. Kind of a shame :(

~~~
encoderer
And yet they continue to pack more power into a smaller package. So how do you
explain it? Ram is cheap and small. Yes it uses power but not all that much
and certainly it would be worth it for a more powerful device.

The only logical explanation I can come to is... more RAM won't make a
meaningful impact on the experience. More ram is the cure-all on a desktop but
that's not apples-to-apples.

~~~
jayd16
>And yet they continue to pack more power into a _smaller_ package.

Well, not this time =p

~~~
macwarlock
The A8 is fabbed using a new 20nm process, so part of the phone is more power
in a smaller package.

------
duncanawoods
The feature I'm most excited about is full-speed Nitro javascript engine
outside safari. The impact for Cordova, web views and 3rd party browsers
should be awesome.

[http://daringfireball.net/linked/2014/06/09/ios-8-webkit](http://daringfireball.net/linked/2014/06/09/ios-8-webkit)

~~~
e1g
The Nitro engine is available only to the new WKWebView component, but that
component has a bug [1] which prevents it from loading local files. This means
that Cordova must continue using the old UIWebView, which means no Nitro boost
at least until 8.1 or possibly later (however long it will take to fix that
bug).

[1]
[http://www.openradar.me/radar?id=5839348817723392](http://www.openradar.me/radar?id=5839348817723392)

~~~
drewblaisdell
This bug, which continues to cripple HTML5 apps on the App Store but not ones
accessed in Safari, seems almost too perfect to be unintentional.

~~~
jahewson
But Safari doesn't load local files, so the bug wouldn't be noticed there.
Makes perfect sense.

~~~
drewblaisdell
The point of including WKWebView in the iOS 8 SDK is to make it accessible to
non-Safari apps. They must have actually _tested_ this new component.

I don't doubt that there is probably an explanation that makes sense, but
based on what we know, the least malicious explanation is that they forgot to
test WKWebView with local files, which doesn't make sense.

~~~
untog
"They must have actually tested this new component."

Honestly, with Apple sometimes I wonder. Safari had so, so many bugs when iOS7
launched that I no longer believe they spend a meaningful amount of time
testing Safari before launch.

~~~
skeeterbug
I agree completely. IOS7 screwed over html5 devs so hard. IOS8 is just as bad.
Putting overflow:hidden on a text area in IOS8 Safari makes it so the user can
no longer scroll within to edit the text at the top. It also causes it to draw
extremely weird on the screen (you see the border appear way above it).
Putting a height of auto on an input is causing Safari to pop the keyboard
open when trying to scroll (the page and happen to touch that element). File
uploading is completely messed up too
([http://blog.fineuploader.com/2014/09/10/ios8-presents-
seriou...](http://blog.fineuploader.com/2014/09/10/ios8-presents-serious-
issues-that-prevent-file-uploading/)). We also have issues clicking buttons
when the app is using a cache manifest and saved to the home screen. I will be
having a few drinks over the next few weeks.

------
chton
To pick on just one point of this massive article: The quick actions on
notifications are going to be very useful. I hope other OSs implement them too
(I'm a WP user myself). They're unobtrusive, and they can make the entire
phone feel more natural. They also enable new kinds of quick interaction:
imagine an 'OK' button on a text message that lets the sender know you've seen
it, without the need to send a message saying just that yourself.

~~~
untog
Android has had them for some time, and as you say, they are fantastic.

When implemented. It's a weakness of Android that few developers take
advantage of all the features - I suspect a lot of apps are made iOS-first, so
if a feature isn't available in iOS, it isn't implemented on Android. I hope
that iOS gaining this feature will mean it is used a lot more on Android, too.

~~~
giovannibajo1
Yes, though they are more limited in Android: they are just buttons that can
jump to the app (= launch a specific intent). On the contrary, the new iOS
notifications can have a real interaction; e.g.: you can answer to a message
within the notification itself and never switch context.

~~~
untog
Yes and no - Android also allows apps to draw standalone windows on top of the
OS, like this one does:

[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.everything...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.everythingandroid.smspopup&hl=en)

So it isn't quite the same, but nor does it require switching apps.

~~~
giovannibajo1
AFAICT, that's because it's a SMS application, so it's got a special hook
being called when a SMS arrives. For normal notifications (delivered through
GCM), that's not possible.

------
untog
It's ironic - the addition of extensions, custom keyboards and the like was
possibly going to be enough to bring me back to iOS from Android - I always
preferred the hardware, just wanted a little more flexibility from my
software.

But now Apple has totally ditched the 4" hardware factor - the main reason I
liked the hardware so much. To me, Apple has lost an edge by doing that.

~~~
rweir
eh, totally ditched? the 5s and 5c remains available.

~~~
daxelrod
Apple's iPhone support cycle is such that there are significant downsides to
getting a device from an older generation.

For example: The iPhone 4S was released in October 2011. In October 2013,
Apple released iOS 7. While iOS 7 supports the 4S, it increases RAM overhead
to the point that switching from app A to app B kills app A the vast majority
of the time. (This is terribly annoying when you're writing, you switch to a
web browser to look something up, and when you switch back the thing you were
writing disappears.)

The user adoption rate of new OSes is ridiculously high. This means you will
have maybe 3-6 months after the new OS comes out before apps no longer support
the old one.

~~~
wingerlang
Really? iPhone 4S can't handle iOS7? I'm using an iPhone 4 on iOS7 without any
problems whatsoever, and I'm a heavy user+developer.

~~~
frogpelt
32GB model?

The 8GB really bogs down and the 16GB has noticeable lag.

~~~
hrabago
Aren't the differences only in storage?

~~~
tsm
Presumably that also affects the amount of swap space available.

~~~
pshc
iOS doesn't swap like traditional OSes, although it does persist a small cache
of metadata about running app instances. The file system is not particularly
fast, though, so I could see low space conditions (that might trigger
reclamation or defragmentation) slowing things down in general.

------
maxst
Let's not forget APNG.

[https://twitter.com/stuartparmenter/status/51207180752061644...](https://twitter.com/stuartparmenter/status/512071807520616448)

------
acheron
I hadn't heard about the "family sharing" thing. My wife and I use the same
Apple ID, because we're not going to buy apps twice. Mostly it works fine,
every once in awhile we run into a hiccup though. If the family sharing works
well it'd be a nice help.

------
kuhnster
Has anyone considered if the iPhone is a good choice of you are a Gmail user?

I have noticed that the Gmail app load time, on the iPhone, is unusably slow
but it is one of the apps I need to use daily.

~~~
dewey
Is there a specific reason you are using the Gmail app instead of the OS
provided mail app?

~~~
acheron
For me it's because I've come to rely on the Gmail tabs
(primary/social/promotions/updates), which the built-in Mail app just ignored.
I could probably duplicate the effort with folders (though I use those also,
in parallel to the tabs), but I just started using the Gmail app instead which
handled it all fine.

~~~
r00fus
There's that - and the fact that Gmail app can prevent the non-Primary tabs
from sending notifications.

Also there's search... Mail.app does not handle search well for Gmail.

------
ksec
This update requires 1.1GB download and 5.5 GB Free space to install!.

Did iOS7 also have similar requirement? I dont record that happened last time.

~~~
cenhyperion
iOS did have a sizable requirement, although I forget how much space was
required to do the install. I had many friends who had difficulty upgrading
due to it.

~~~
ksec
Because I remember iOS7 had the quickest update rate ever. It slows down the
Internet as well as router around places.

However to have that kind of update rate their iPhone must have been able to
update, I am not so sure everyone had 5GB free space

------
shurcooL
> Mobile Safari also picks up support for WebGL, an API that has been
> supported in recent mobile versions of Chrome and Internet Explorer for a
> while now.

For me, that's the feature of iOS 8 I'm most excited about.

I'm really looking forward to do some hobby graphics/game development using Go
and have that run on my iOS device.

~~~
frik
WebGL support on iOS 8 is the best new feature for me.

It looks like there are still some limitations that Apple could fix:
[http://codeflow.org/entries/2014/jun/08/some-issues-with-
app...](http://codeflow.org/entries/2014/jun/08/some-issues-with-apples-ios-
webgl-implementation/)

about 75% of all user already have a browser with WebGL support:
[http://webglstats.com/](http://webglstats.com/)

------
jl6
Now that the iPhone has a big screen, there's only one feature it's missing
before I'd be happy to trade in my Android: background camera upload syncing
for Dropbox that doesn't cut out after 10 minutes.

Edit: would appreciate an explanation for the downvote. Does iOS already allow
this and I missed it?

------
recalibrator
As a Blackberry user, I was just thinking today how I could never go back to
the iPhone. Multitasking is much faster on the BB10 OS. No button mashing and
drilling down menus - not like I remember with the iPhone.

Of course, the iPhone has it's strengths too, but I just want to get work
done.

~~~
serve_yay
A Blackberry strikes me as more of an impediment to work these days, but then
I guess that's why the market exists.

------
shurcooL
"This update cannot be installed because it requires at least 6.9 GB of
storage."

That's over _half_ of the maximum available capacity on my 16 GB model. No
wonder they're releasing 128 GB iPhones now.

~~~
billyhoffman
That is simply the "slack" space needed to download iOS 8 and install it
inline on your phone. The OS does not consume 6.9 GB of your 16 GB model. See
the Ars Technica review

~~~
shurcooL
I know that (it still does consume more than iOS 7 did, but not 6.9 GB of
course). But it's pretty inconvenient to have to delete more than half of the
contents of my device for the update.

~~~
billyhoffman
Then don't update over-the-air. If you plug your iPhone into your computer and
update via iTunes you don't have to delete anything from your device.

------
frik
Would you install it on an iPad 2 with iOS6?

~~~
aisenik
I've been using it on my iPad 3, which is functionally slower than the iPad 2,
and it's fine.

The biggest annoyance is the password screen animation doesn't really work at
all, and I'm sure other animations aren't as fast as they could be but the
login is the only place I notice it. The iPad 2 has more GPU/pixel so I
wouldn't expect it to be worse.

Apps work fine, Safari is better than ever.

