One thing missing (and has been for years): fine-tuned Contacts access control. Like the one for Photos.
Apps want to access contacts and it’s all or nothing right now. But Contacts also is quite integrated and is better if you fill in more details such as addresses and birthdates.
So an app requesting access gets everything if you grant it.
For Apple‘s pro-privacy stance, this oversight is quite painful.
In conjunction, I would love the ability to have a flag that tells anyone that adds me to their Contacts in iOS to not give my info to any apps. Basically, take me off the share list.
I'm not saying the end-user shouldn't be able to ignore this, but as part of these controls that would be great. I don't need or want a shadow-profile on Clubhouse or anything else.
This seems like something that would need state-level legislation to get done, but I don't see who'd cough up the money you'd need to buy the politicians necessary to make this happen though.
Absolutely. I'd add that we also need a privacy-preserving way to see that contacts have accounts on a given social app (aka contact matching).
A standard pattern for social apps is to ask for access to your contacts to see if anyone you know is on their app. This is important to creating a healthy and diverse ecosystem of social software, because these apps are really up against the natural network effects of existing offerings.
Contact matching is the best shot app creators have at bootstrapping new social offerings, but right now the experience sucks. Just to see if you like a new social app you have to either a) give up lots of private data in perpetuity to an entity you don't know, or b) have a subpar experience of manually finding people.
One solution may be for Apple to offer an API that helps social apps match users. Apple acts as the escrow system to match contacts so that the apps never have access to private contact data, and the apps just get notice when there's a new contact match to offer the user.
On the user side, the user has a simple privacy setting that says 'find matches once' or 'always look for new matches when app is open'. Users may also toggle whether they wish to be discoverable by others.
In a world with this feature, we get to try new social apps without concern, and apps only have access to an anonymized user ID for our contacts that are also using the app.
Hopefully Apple listens and implements something like this. They've already shown that they'll bend to their users even if it means screwing over developers and other large companies. App tracking transparency and precision location [1] come to mind.
They totally screwed up the location thing to the point of uselessness because they report what the user selects to the app, and scummy apps just disable themselves until you grant the permission they want.
The situation is more nuanced than that. For example, I have some security cameras installed around my home where the app has updated itself and now requires continuous precise location tracking. That was not the case when I purchased them and set them up, or I would have returned them and left a bad review. I guess you could say I deserve it for not using hardware based on open standards, but now my only options are to generate masses of ewaste and spend hundreds of dollars more, or just bend over and take it. My OS could work harder to protect me here.
Unfortunately apps which don’t pass the smell test get deleted. Ridiculous requirements such as permanent precise GPS location and access to health and motion and my credit card purchase history are too much man.
Small indie developers are the majority of developers in Apple’s ecosystem. If they are to be screwed over as well (for example, with the upcoming sideloading feature unlocking piracy for everyone), it doesn’t seem fantastic.
Sometimes bending to the user is to the detriment of developers who create the ecosystem your users appreciate in the first place.
Sideloading is going to eliminate the small indie dev who could make an honest living through the simple model of 1) make software, 2) let the user buy it once and own.
No subscriptions, no servers required to use. It is very rare now. Apple made this ecosystem it possible by being an intermediary between you and your customers, ensuring they do not run cracked versions of your work to save money and rip you off. It would suck to see it go.
Note who lobbied for this law. Not coincidentally, not the companies that actually did the above (selling software to own), just big corps with competing platforms.
There are three dominant desktop and two mobile operating systems, only 1 out of those 5 is locked down to where even applications are handcuffed. I'm not talking about embedded industrial systems I'm talking about everyday general purpose devices.
Much simpler would simply be the ability to exclude certain contacts (your doctor, therapist, or teacher etc).
Additionally, it would be great to not share metadata about contacts (ie, don't share that I have this person listed as my sister).
It's quite difficult to have a privacy preserving API system that's on-device because people could pre-compute a rainbow table (phone numbers are only 10-ish digits long). If the API is provided by Apple using their servers, this might work.
iOS 9.0+. The blunder is Apple not deprecating CNContactStore, but then many apps really only work if they get your full contacts list (e.g. knowing when a friend joins Snapchat)
> many apps really only work if they get your full contacts list
Too bad for those apps. They should be able to work whether I have 1000 contacts, 0 contacts, or any number in between.
If they want to have a cool feature like alerting me when a friend joins, they are more than welcome to persuade me to provide my full contacts list so I get the most out of a feature.
> many apps really only work if they get your full contacts list (e.g. knowing when a friend joins Snapchat)
Offering a privacy-preserving alternative to that would be a huge iOS feature. It seems like Apple even already has most of the necessary pieces for that in place (e.g. the contacts app already knows whether my contacts have FaceTime enabled, Messages knows who has iMessage etc.)
Apple has all the necessary pieces in place - it has simply failed to take a hardline stance with apps that still want your full contact list. All apps (outside of ethical developers) want to get all your contacts since that data is valuable... Apple is the party here that is responsible for limiting their access to that data - and Apple customers are the part that is responsible for putting pressure on Apple to take that hardline stance... unfortunately the last party (outside of the technically apt as represented here) aren't particularly motivated to advocate for better privacy rules. Abstractly, sure - everyone wants better privacy, but the average user wouldn't be willing to go to any real effort to get it.
I’m not sure what your feature request exactly is but I guess it’s one of the following:
- Access to all contacts
- Access to selected contacts
Additionally, for any of the two options above:
- Access to all details
- Access to selected details (e.g. phone, email)
Lastly:
- Access to all labels
- Access to selected labels (e.g. home, work)
So, finally, all Germans will be able to sleep at night knowing that they gave WhatsApp only permission to access their friends’ non-work phone numbers and nothing else.
Good germans have a business phone, so they can justify to be reachable 24/7!
Obviously, the companys data protection office will prevent WhatsApp on the business phone, so no work phone numbers were at risk!
I miss no access control for speaker. There is global default. I turn on speakers for one music app and at next launch another social media app plays their ads on full volume.
I really wish all the voice dictation/transcription had better language support. I'd really like to be able to say "Send a message to <my wife> in Spanish" and have it use Spanish dictation, and similarly to say "Read the last message in Spanish" when I'm using CarPlay. Perhaps at some point soon it will just get good enough that it'll detect which language is being used automatically, but right now it's pretty annoying for dual-language households.
To this day I never bothered with speech reckognition, I am not going to talk to my devices in english, and understanding Portuguese, Spanish and German, never really works.
Multilingual support extends much further than just assistant speech recognition - translation and transliteration, keyboard input, media captioning are places where I find current OSes lacking.
But I’m surprised they’re still sleeping in this considering Apple expects it’s highest growth markets to be outside the English speaking part of the world
I think it’s less about revenue stream and more about dev’s languages. There are many tech companies who’s primary revenue stream is China, for example, but in those cases they still don’t need multilingual support nor even devs who speak Chinese.
Yeah. And the keyboard support for multi-languages is horrible, too. The prediction is nowadays so bad, I have to tiền it off or must use a single language only. Alone the notion that it should predict words in a different language than the current setting is baffling for me.
Overall smaller languages is abysmal. Microsoft translated Windows to my native language decades ago. MacOS still not translated. Nor iPhone. While Android phones come with translation out-of-box for most manufacturers UIs.
How I wish Apple's core apps weren't tied to the OS. Apple Music needs a ground up redesign so badly. It's not quite as bad as it used to be, but it's such a core part of the iOS experience, and it really feels like they put in the minimum they could get away with.
It’s so inefficiently designed. Wasted space on oversized album artwork or (even worse) generic playlist covers. High friction to resume listening/browse by recency. Lazy loading everywhere, slow load times. Cluttered menu drawers.
The only thing it has going for it is general ecosystem integration (and lossless), which still is the deciding factor for me unfortunately, despite the qualms above.
What are your issues with it? For me it’s still 100x better than Spotify’s last 3 redesign disasters. And the integration with my own library of bootlegs and bandcamp purchases is brilliant. I have no UI issues with it, but they could spend a bit more time on QA. It’s a bit too buggy from time to time.
Being better than Spotify is an incredibly low bar, and not really what I was comparing against. The iOS music player was very pleasant to use before they haphazardly added Apple Music to it.
As you mentioned, it's full of bugs. Bugs happen, but they seem to have gotten out of control lately.
Top issues:
- 3/5 tabs use lazy load and anything less than great cellular/wifi means waiting to see anything.
- Speaking of cell/wifi, it really shows that this app was designed in a lab under perfect conditions. Music just... stops if the connection is weak when streaming. Was it another bug? My airpods? My car's bluetooth? Who knows, and who needs feedback anyway.
- Listen now tab can show a grand total of one (!!) full item before needing to scroll. On my phone with 1,483,776 pixels. It's also sorted in an arbitrary order that I cannot change.
- The Browse and Radio tabs are not at all personalized to me, so I don't have much to say about them and are mainly ignored.
- My library tab, my mainly used tab, is littered with album views of "Recently Added" in favor of adding a bunch of taps to things I actually want to listen to (Playlists> Playlist Name> Song/Play button) requires 3 taps.
- The album view in Recently Added makes no sense outside of downloading complete albums, which seems exceedingly rare. The music topping the charts is a bunch of singles and maybe EPs, not full albums. Even if one is not into pop music, adding music from a newly discovered artist, it's probably not a full album, rather a song or maybe a few tops. On top of this, it requires two taps or a long hold gesture to play it!
- Search is weirdly segmented for no reason, and is a step backwards from what Apple already solved with Spotlight. I always want results from my music first, and Apple Music second. A "no results" screen is useless for me, just show me Apple Music results, don't add yet another tap. Oh and search has Browse categories of course.
I could go on for a lot longer, but these issues grate me every day. Everything just requires too many taps or scrolling to get what I want.
Yes yes yes. This is well-articulated. I agree with every point, especially poor connectivity. The cellular service in my area is a bit spotty and Apple Music is worthless outside of my home.
All said, I’d say it’s a UX disaster.
Unfortunately, the poor design extends even to Apple TV. My favorite - the “Now Playing” screen doesn’t have a visible Play/Pause button. Seriously.
I’m not an Apple Music subscriber. The other day I was in the car and my daughter wanted to hear a particular song, so I asked Siri to play it (since I knew it was on my phone, I didn’t think this would be a difficult thing for Siri to do). Siri instead announced it was signing me up for a 10 day preview of Apple Music and then tried to stream the song. :/
But I also bought the Marvis Pro iOS app. It’s like $10 or something. It’s fantastic and the developer is incredibly active/responsive online. Worth checking out if you’re unfamiliar
Why would Apple intentionally worsen the experience of Apple Music and then advertise people to sign up for that very same platform? What does that accomplish?
If they could make it only have a Play button, that only played what they wanted to stream to you, while you continue to pay a subscription fee, they would.
The reason to make it harder to navigate your own library is so you don't navigate your library at all and just put on a channel. Amazon did this also, to favor their subscriptions. It is now frustratingly difficult to play your music. Searches return results not in your library, even when you were searching... your library.
It's the same reason Google and Bing are so much worse than they once were. The apps aren't serving the users, they're serving the customers (shareholders and advertisers).
Hey I want to formally apologize for my earlier reply. I misread your comment, thinking your statement was about Apple Music. Reading it now I see you were talking about Amazon Music, which I have no experience with. Sorry again
Apple Music Voice is a subscription service. Music is an app that is preinstalled. If you’ve been using apple long enough you’ll have seen the gradual improvement in apps diminish to stop and in Some cases become removed to add buttons for the “signup” or subscription additions
This is different from intentionally sabotaging and degrading the user experience of a service, then advertising it to the world and telling them they should join, which appears to be what the original comment was saying.
I've thought it surprising they don't put more effort into the core apps and don't remove them from the iOS upgrade cycle. They could really leverage the iCloud subscription to turn it into a money maker.
Don’t worry, as a native speaker it’s not much better. While it can transcribe your request well, it very rarely can actually do anything more than search the internet.
Well, it's even so idiotic than WHEN it understands me (it can't handle any environmental noise.), it will actively change the name of people I call regularly into the name of people I haven't speoken to in 5+ years.
I think these complaints sometimes come from web developers who perceive Safari as being slow to adopt web standard APIs. IMO this is justified in some cases, and not in others where Apple resists implementing certain APIs for principled and/or technical reasons.
For the most part, these issues don’t have a big impact on end users, except when web developers choose to target Chrome-only.
Still no phone and SMS anti-spam features :/ I would have thought Apple would add something similar to Android's speech to text transcription feature or anything more compelling than the current user experience.
From my perspective iOS already has pretty good call/text blocking. Are you sure you know all the existing features?
For calling, there’s a built-in contacts only mode behind a single opt-in switch, this is what I use. There’s also a privacy preserving app system that allows you to install third party apps which provide block lists and labeling to the phone app.
Messages is similar, except with unknowns being put in a separate list and an older and simpler static block list, though it does also support reporting the message as junk which presumably means all iOS devices have a bit of a shared message spam filter.
People want to be called from unknown numbers from time to time. A pizza delivery being outside, my doctor with test results etc. Blocking everyone but contacts is in the realm of "you're holding it wrong" kinda excuse.
Messages going to a different list helps little when iMessage is full of 0-day exploits that happen as soon as your phone receive the message.
There is a support for a third party blocking list which can both hint and block marketers etc (At least for phone calls not sure if it works with texts).
It’s not a well known nor heavily advertised feature - I learned about it from carrier commercial who provides app of their own.
> From my perspective iOS already has pretty good call/text blocking. Are you sure you know all the existing features?
For context I'm comparing what's in place in iOS with what Android has had for at least a couple releases. With that familiarity, iOS's anti-spam features appear rudimentary at best.
> For calling, there’s a built-in contacts only mode behind a single opt-in switch
Contacts-only incoming calls and texts is a clunky design. Businesses (doctors offices, delivery services come to mind) frequently use random 1-800 numbers for their outgoing calls. Having those _and_ spam clutter up one's voicemail is far from ideal; the expectation is that the user will spend their time going through voicemail and delete spam. Live voicemail is definitely an improvement but even if I choose to block an incoming spam call, the voicemail is still left on my phone. Android lets one end the call as soon as spam is detected and there's no action needed after the fact.
> There’s also a privacy preserving app system that allows you to install third party apps which provide block lists and labeling to the phone app.
This is what I was referring to in my original post. On Android suspected spam calls and texts are labelled as such by default. Why does Apple expect users to install third party apps for this? It should at least be an opt-in feature that ships as part of iOS.
The problem I have with these is that unknown but wanted senders get squelched with the spam. I get MFA tokens via SMS from assorted random numbers, or worse calls from them (looking at you Citibank).
That’s why the category is called “unknown” and not “unwanted”. There’s no way to know in advance whether a sender is wanted or not, so people should be actively checking that inbox instead.
Hence the complaints that Apple isn’t doing enough. It’s technically possible to know ahead of time if an SMS or call comes from a fraud operation or from an MFA number. Personally I don’t know if the phone is the right place to handle that. Seems like a carrier problem. But, other people in this thread are saying Android has better capabilities of filtering this abuse, so Apple ought to keep up.
Is this feature globally available? Because I receive an embarrassing amount of spam calls and never had a single of them blocked. The same goes for SMS.
In some locales, you want to do all of your internet use over one unlimited or high usage internet plan and handle SMS/calls over another carrier or plan. This is appealing for business users and regular people alike in some places that have high tariffs, highly asymmetrical usage limits, or other uneven plan limits that don't align with how you use your mobile device.
For example, I once had a lot of automated alerts sent by SMS to my phone for the early rollout of an IoT device I was working on. My regular unlimited voice and data plan was very cheap but only included a couple hundred SMS per month and I was going to blow past that during alpha testing, so I got a SIM from an MVNO with unlimited messaging for ~$5/mo and sent all the alerts to that number and had the company pay that bill, which was a nice way of isolating the expense as well.
It's also great if you are an international jewel thief and need a second line for taunting the Interpol agents hot on your trail without having to add them to your friends & family plan.
I have 4 SIM cards due to living in different countries. Sadly only 2 can be active at all times.
It also a diversification for telco shenanigans. Just to give an example, Singapore regulator just ordered telcos to stop accepting incoming SMS from entities not registered with local regulator. This affected a lot of overseas services OTP.
Work number and personal number on the same device. I’ve friends that switched their number completely to their work number because of the lack of dual sim phones back in the day. That is just a poor decision all around. I know someone who had to negotiate a release of the phone number to him in the compensation package when they were let go
That sounds a little questionable to me. I'd want the company to buy me a new phone because they likely consider all the associated data to be their property, and also because I wouldn't want my real phone subpoenaed in a lawsuit.
Data privacy. one esim I use for all these websites requiring a phone number as 2FA or when it's unclear to me why they need a phone number. It's off all the time, unless I expect an SMS on it. It reduce how much my real phone number spreads and hopefully reduces the amount of phishing I get...
I currently have my personal and company SIMs. Data goes through the company one, calls through my own.
People who travel a lot usually have their "native" sim as the eSIM and just grab whatever prepaid they can get for the country they're travelling in. Easiest way to avoid insane roaming fees.
It can be a bit economical to do that for the US & Canada but once you start needing to regularly make calls in both NA and somewhere outside NA that's where it really shines. There are some providers that cover all of NA for a reasonable price and most other geographies have really wide coverage - but there are scant choices for NA & Spain or NA & France coverage.
To be fair, it's not really all that early if you're doing the public release. I've been on iOS17 for months as part of the beta, and I'm not even using the developer beta, just the public beta.
I agree. I understand the privacy concerns, but my wife and I already share our locations in Find My Friends. If I use her keys to drive to the store, I don't need a warning that her AirTag is following me. I know. And I'm 100% OK with that.
I'd already opted in to share my phone's and watch's location. It was beyond annoying that I couldn't opt in to share a specific AirTag's location, too.
I don’t think this was so much a privacy concern as it was a bit challenging in terms of revoking keys and they, like they often do, opted for a basic implementation first to be refined later.
During the beta the 16 AirTag limit was still enforced with every shared AirTag counting towards it (and individual AirPods as well).
I’m glad to see that they’ve seemed to upped the limit or don’t count the shared AirTags against that limit anymore.
16 seems like a lot, but if you’re traveling with a couple of items you want to track and share with your party as backup, you start hitting it pretty fast.
Only potential problem (at least when I checked on the state of the beta) is that the person you share it with has to be on iOS 17 too. This was the reason I didn't bother with the beta (although it was the feature I needed asap) since the person I was going to share with wasn't going to use the beta.
The most annoying new thing over the last few months for me was that my Android phone started giving privacy alerts for my physical key chain which has an AirTag which is registered to my wife (a present from her to me).
Mostly the usual battery/heat issues, the frequent app crashes (1st and 3rd) and the annoying hidden keyboard bugs that lasted through several public beta releases that required force quitting and restarting apps before it would show up again.
Rather than re-hash, /r/iosbeta is a good indicated of the tribulations of each release.
I was on the developer beta from day 1, then switched to the public beta when that opened up. I haven't encountered any bugs significant enough that I remember details about them.
I'm not saying it was bugfree, just that the apps I use most were in decent shape from the start. (But I still acknowledge that you or anyone else might've had a very different experience from mine.)
Upgraded yesterday. I’m loving the improvements to the keyboard. The autocorrection is a lot, lot better. And I never get ducking now when I’m trying to write something else.
But the real new shift is resizable windows and such on ipadOS 17 and watchOS 10 looks really nice on my series 7.
That’s great news and maybe the only reason I might upgrade. Ever since I went back to an iPhone I’ve had trouble with typing. I don’t know why but the Android keyboard was always much more accurate.
It’s the best keyboard upgrade in years. I’ve changed nothing about my typing and it’s far far more accurate. Not perfect but also not frustratingly bad. It’s very close to perfect.
And yet I still can not get any of the more "advanced" features (like predictive text) for my native language keyboard.
It's been, what, at least five years(?) since predictive text was launched. I never expected to be the first to be supported, but starting to feel a bit ridiculous when some languages with a few tens of percents more speakers have had support from nearly the start.
Meanwhile third party keyboards have had support for ages. I'd rather use the stock keyboard, but can't bear it in its current state.
The keyboard enhancements were very much needed. iOS no longer forcing me to delete 30 times before it finally lets my actually correct word stay is worth the update alone.
It does also seem to have grammar improvements, and doesn’t seem to be so happy to “correct, but actually make incorrect 5 words back” as the prior keyboard would frequently do after apple stopped giving you the option to stop that.
The beta before release had significant alarm issues with alarms definitely not going off. So I hope those are sorted out.
“Were” and “we’re” is also an annoying one. Specifically “were”, it’s autocorrected to the other one six or seven times just trying to type this comment (iOS 16 here)
Autocorrects that "fix" a real word that's spelled correctly and make sense in context to an incorrect word make me want to throw my phone into a lake.
Oh my god, please yes. It acts like it thinks “its” is never correct (except when turning “it’d”, which, admittedly, is rather slangish, to “it’s”) with the result that it causes more harm than good. It’d be an improvement to simply make it ignore that pair of words and never try to correct either, versus the current behavior.
Autocorrect now uses a language model so it won't autocorrect 'fucking' to 'ducking' if it thinks that's how you speak. It learns slang / curse words now, whereas before you would have to manually go in and add a keyboard shortcut to override the autocorrect.
It’s just overall vastly improved. I understand that’s not really saying much since the iOS 16 keyboard, when compared to what’s out there, is essentially unusable.
I can’t remember the last time I said “fuck this stupid fucking keyboard”, whereas I said it with the iOS 16 keyboard every time I had to use it.
You can try going to Settings > General > Reset then tap "Reset Keyboard Dictionary". I think this wipes everything iOS has stored about your typing habits so it should hopefully fix the issue
I must have entered my wife's name in lower case at some point, because it autocompletes everyone else's names with a capital but leaves hers lower cased.
This longer-term support, while still not as long as I'd like it, I'd a big part of why I switched from Android for the device I mostly use. I still keep a few de-crapified/de-bloated Android phones for audiobooks, music files, and as a KDE Connect controller for a media PC, largely thanks to F-Droid, but the security updates on this hand-me-down iPhone give me some peace of mind.
If/when this XR dies or is no longer supported and another old-but-good gift phone is not in the works I'll probably look for a cheap-enough, good-enough Android and stop paying for Apple One. As I get older and the desire for novelty is replaced by the expectation of consistency and reliability for communication, information (a web browser), and a decent camera, I just want this device that I'm used to to keep working.
I was an Android user for ~6 years, but as you said, I want something consistent and reliable. Android was never that for me.
I bought an iPhone 11 Pro four years ago and still like it. Occasionally I'm tempted for a newer iPhone, but there's no compelling reason to buy a newer model.
You aren't alone. I really wanted the 2020 SE to be the 5-year phone but the battery just dies too fast, it's not good for a day even when starting on 100% charge with battery saver mode on and replacing it takes a week because they have to send the unit to god knows where a service center is actually located. And the new battery will just cook itself after a year anyway, so I'm very seriously considering the 15, especially since it comes with USB-C so I can ditch half the cables.
I'd gladly take a thicker SE with a more robust battery. It isn't a fashion item anyway anymore.
This is certainly alleviated a bit on Android by having most of the core apps updatable separate from the OS itself. I know people who are running 5+ year old Android devices that are only just starting to think about upgrading.
They still do security fixes for iOS 15 which is the iphone 6S in 2015 so 8 years.
The last security update for iOS 12 was 7 months ago too.
IMO that's a generous period for security updates.
Their usefulness is honestly more limited by app developer's support of the old api's, and the increasing bloat of web apps rather than Apple's support. It would be better of course if we could homebrew on them after that but I'm not sure I'd call it pitiful.
There have been huge architectural changes under the hood. Granted, most end users are oblivious to them (eg. Neural Engine generational changes, GPU, SoC, etc)
FWIW, iOS 15 updates are still being released for these devices. A. week ago[1], in fact.
Apple does however continue to provide security updates, they released a security update for ios 15 earlier this year. As an iphone 8 user this is perfectly fine for me. My phone works great and none of this new stuff is something I can't live without.
Looking over the list, so much of it seems like application-level changes to stuff like messages, calls, contacts, etc. For a user who has opted out of most of that in favour of GMail, Whatsapp, Signal, and so on, it's hard to see the big draw.
I'm not sure what you mean - the last security update fixed massive 0-day which was an arbitrary code execution caused by the image decoder. CVE-2023-41064
AFAIK every app that uses the ImageI/O api is effected by it, which includes every app you mentioned. You often don't need to even open the message for the image to be decoded.
From my understanding most vulnerabilities are from either the image decoder, text decoder, or webkit which again, effects nearly all apps. All apps can only use the webkit view, which affects nearly all of them to some degree.
I think you might be confusing the attack vector - messages is the easiest to attack since you just sent a regular text. Even if you don't normally use messages, it'll parse the image and you'll be hit by the 0 day. In theory this will work with most messaging apps.
I was referring to the opposite side of things— not the security patches but the actual new features of iOS 17. Rather than being OS-level capabilities that feel like they would impact the whole ecosystem, they're more like app features, and a lot of the app features don't apply to me as I use alternatives to those specific apps.
What are you comparing it to? Python does bug fixes for 2 years, then security updates for 5 [0]. Ubuntu LTS releases do 5 years and you have to pay to get the 10 years [1]. Apple stacks up quite well against any competition I'm aware of here.
You’re comparing the wrong things. A specific release of Python or Ubuntu is only maintained for that long, but you can upgrade to the next version just fine, normally with little effort. (Sometimes it takes more effort, but that’s true of iOS workflows too.) If you have fifteen-year-old x86-64 hardware, you can probably run the latest versions of Ubuntu and Python on it. By contrast (using the figures from this thread), iPhones become less useful after about five years since you can’t get feature upgrades any more and so increasingly apps will stop working, and become unmaintained after about eight years.
What do you mean by “software support”? All I can think of that would be relevant is things like firmware/BIOS security patches. Honestly most people never need or get even that. But even if there’s an unpatched rootkit opportunity (which is unlikely to be practical to invoke), everything else in the stack can still be modern and patched, featurewise and securitywise. I’d say that’s normally good enough.
But even if we allow that, that’s a completely distinct topic, and my point stands; your Python/Ubuntu comparison was still clearly unreasonable.
I have a 7.5 year-old iPhone SE and it has gotten two security updates this past month. In other words, the 5 years you mention is ONLY for entirely new OS versions which old hardware simply can't support. Older phones continue to be supported.
When you can only run one app at a time on iOS, why do you need 8GB of RAM? Outside of high end games or professional editing type apps, this seems hugely overkill for most apps.
You can definitely run more than one app at a time on iOS so I’m not sure what you’re referring to. For me, I am really looking forward to 8 gigabytes of ram because I use stable diffusion on my phone.
Do you think people are consistently keeping their phones for more than a decade? I get that anti-consumer vibe but this doesn't feel like a common use-case. Compare Apple to almost anyone and they stack up well.
Which is funny, because I own an iPad from 2018. Which has the A10 chip (which was used in the iPhone 7). Guess what, the iPhone does not get iOS 17 but the iPad does get iPadOS 17.
It’s a different hardware package too - id imagine the thermals differ significantly between the phone and the pad, and that you can drive the chip harder in the pad.
No, the pump works perfectly fine without an app. At least one pump out there doesn't (the Omnipod), but in lieu of a smart phone, they give you a device (essentially a single-purpose Android)
The ability to bolus (administer insulin) from the app is fairly convenient, that's all. Since that's the biggest area of risk, that's the feature they disable until they've validated the OS version.
Yeah, my dad is in the same situation. The companies that make this diabetes machinery will certify it for use pretty soon (probably) but not immediately.
A notebook isn’t nearly as meticulous as every semi anonymous post I’ve ever made to Reddit or discord or whatever, plus my meme image collection, my browsing history, etc
Why should my kids and future generations get access to my shameful secrets just because I’m dead? If i wanted that information hidden, shouldn’t it stay that way?
To that end I suppose it’s just the philosophical argument of “is it shitty to read someone’s diary after they die?” but with the stakes increased a bit due to the nature of greatly increased data collection
As a counterpoint, it takes a lot less effort to keep a file preserved. A fire-and-flood-proof document storage solution would certainly be a lot more work for me than setting my google/govt. data up so people in my life get access to what they need.
Some writers burn their manuscripts. Phone calls generally aren't recorded. There is historical value to VIPs leaving behind diaries in which they discuss their thoughts and feelings around important events.
Not sure about the journal, but the rest of the Health app allows export to XML (also, it is a GDPR requirement as well), so I would assume the same will be true of journal as well.
If Apple Vision Pro or just the whole VR & friends industry takes off, then we're gonna see a resurgence of z-depth all over the place, and perhaps even a small return to skeuomorphism.
I finally did it... I kept an iPhone long enough to not be able to upgrade. Looks like iPhone 8 doesn't get iOS 17. I guess I won't be bothered with update nags anymore.
Since iPhone 8 started on iOS 11 thats pretty darn good.
It funny, I remember the ad and what was going through my life more than the phone itself. I don't know how apple ads seems to do that to me. I can say that for a lot of their ads.
Even now im looking back and loving that Champagne Gold color with the creme white back. It evokes thoughts of the flavors white chocolate and champagne cola. Two things I love. All of this in a phone that was an afterthought (since Apple launched the iPhone X at the same conference).
Finally, in iOS-17 Maps app one can download offline maps -- a very useful feature for navigating in areas with poor or no cell-phone coverage. I have mostly switched from Google Maps to Appel Maps due to Apples better UI and ability to control font sizes.
> FaceTime now features an incredible connected experience with Apple TV 4K. To see friends and family on the big screen, users can use Continuity Camera to start a FaceTime call on iPhone and hand it off to Apple TV, or initiate the FaceTime call directly from their Apple TV. With Center Stage, users stay perfectly framed even as they move around the room.
I was really looking forward to making FaceTime calls on my Apple TV with my parents who live halfway across the world. But of course, they restrict it to only Apple TV 4K 2nd gen and above. What possible reasons could there be to not support this feature in the 1st gen hardware? Is it just a money grab?
History with Apple is that it's a little bit the older hardware isn't quite powerful enough, and a little that Apple's bar is high. They might be able to make a version of this that was not quite as polished or not as good of framerate etc that did work with older hardware, but they won't bc that's now how Apple rolls.
Sometimes this feels like they're trying to force people onto newer hardware, but Apple also supports old hardware for a long time and regularly adds things to devices that are 3-4 years old, so... it's not actually that one-sided AFAICT.
The A10 came out in 2016... Facetime came out in 2010 on the iPhone 4, a device running iOS 4 on a an Apple A4 CPU and 2.4GHz-only 802.11n. Surely the A10 can handle making a call.
But can A10 handle the coordination involved between a phone and an AppleTV so that it can show the image on one but use the camera and microphone on the other but keep them in sync?
The Apple TV has to stream camera from the iPhone to the TV and the other participants (up to 32 participants) in real time without dropping frames or garbling the audio.
I'm not sure the the A10, say nothing of the A4, could reliably handle group calls. To be fair to the A4 and A10, group calls weren't a feature of FaceTime until 2018. Could the A4 handle an audio or low-res video call? Probably.
You have a great recall of the timeline. I thought that it came out much earlier but I was mistakenly thinking of iChat AV. "In June 2003, Apple announced iChat AV . . ." [1]
> What possible reasons could there be to not supporting this feature in the 1st gen hardware? Is it just a money grab?
This is almost always a limitation of the hardware. Keep in mind the AppleTV has really old SoCs compared to iPhones and iPads of similar vintage. The AppleTV 4k 1st edition has an A10X SoC while the 2nd edition has an A12. The A10 is the same CPU as the iPhone 7 but was sold up through 2021.
Usually there's something subtle about the hardware that's lacking. Maybe not for this particular version, but the next iteration of it that Apple has already planned.
In these cases they usually just gate the feature to the latest hardware versions.
I’m willing to bet it’s both hardware video en/decoding (which is necessary for the near zero lag double jump) and the Wi-Fi chipset. If most people are running these things in a tv cabinet on Wi-Fi, both need to be pretty decent for the experience not to be disappointing
> And it [Communication Safety] extends beyond Messages to include content sent and received in AirDrop, ..., and third‑party apps.
This distorted Apple's vision of privacy is not news to me, but extending their invasive policy to third-party apps is crossing the line.
However, I'm not sure whether this means that they are going to forcefully intercept all content from 3rd party apps, or introduce an API to app developers that will allow them to flag content as sensitive. If anybody knows more about this, please let us all know.
It’s not news to you, you make harsh statements, but reading the actual description of the feature was too much.
And wow, describing Apple’s vision on privacy as distorted is really something.
Is Meta your reference on privacy matters?
I know on a personal level the executives and experts of the entire privacy division. There might be some very US-centric agenda items in what they do (the CSAM detection fiasco which cost them a dent in their reputation) but generally speaking I’ve rarely seen a team more motivated and driven than that one.
> The Sensitive Content Analysis framework enables third-party developers to integrate Communication Safety in their apps. The framework allows developers to detect if content that children receive or attempt to send in their apps may contain nudity, and developers can add protections in their apps when sensitive content is detected.
Thanks. This feature is described as optional for 3rd party apps and a claim is made that the information is not sent off the device. Assuming this is true, I take back my criticism about the policy being invasive.
Yeah, I have an iPhone 11 Pro, which still works perfectly well—good battery life, good performance, etc. It really puts to rest those complaints everyone used to make about "forced obsolescence."
I’ve just had to go back to my 11 pro after my 14 pro met its end. It’s absolutely fine, apart from the broken FaceID sensor, which is driving me nuts (using 1Password without it is irritating as anything. )
Yeah my iPhone X is still doing amazingly. I should probably get a new battery at some point I guess but other than that I have literally zero complaints
You’re giving me a phone with essentially the same feature set and it keeps getting a little bit bigger and a little bit heavier. Why? So they can sell me a new case? The screen is the exact same dimensions. They even dumped a button, which should mean more internal volume for other things.
This is why I’m still on the 12. I only got that because it had a little more screen real estate than the one I had before, but still mostly fits in my pocket.
I implied but did not state clearly that I’m on the 12 still. I usually skip every other version, but at some point I skipped 2 and got on the even numbered editions (never buy the first version from Apple) and now it looks like I’m skipping at least 4.
It’s valid for a customer who had generally been happy with a company (or in this case a division) to complain that they haven’t given them a reason to do so in a long time.
Still no major improvement on Siri. Really disappointing considering iOS does not let you replace Siri with ChatGPT or Google Assistant.
Really behind what’s possible today especially since LLMs. This is where the future of computing lays IMO, not new stickers.
I just want it to unbreak the screenshot button combo.
Before ios16 it would always work. Now half the time it just makes a full screenshot and saves it without any UI feedback that it did anything. So I tap the buttons longer and get the pop-up for editing.
Same. The combo made sense when power was on top of the phone. With it being just opposite of volume, it just means accidental screenshotting all the time. It's quite infuriating!
Oh, I would be also happy for fixing the bugs bothering me: once out of 10 times opening the smart-cover doesn't wake up my iPad (have to close and open again, or use the side button), and randomly I have to kill the email app because it fails syncing my mails. But such quality of life bugfixes rarely happen :( At least I have been waiting for these since years.
iPhone 15
iPhone 15 Plus
iPhone 15 Pro
iPhone 15 Pro Max
iPhone 14
iPhone 14 Plus
iPhone 14 Pro
iPhone 14 Pro Max
iPhone 13
iPhone 13 mini
iPhone 13 Pro
iPhone 13 Pro Max
iPhone 12
iPhone 12 mini
iPhone 12 Pro
iPhone 12 Pro Max
iPhone 11
iPhone 11 Pro
iPhone 11 Pro Max
iPhone XS
iPhone XS Max
iPhone XR
iPhone SE
(2nd generation or later)
Still having good support right?
Btw, I feel like Apple is gradually improving small thing in their built-in apps base on other 3rd-party alternatives' advantages. It's good for Apple ecosystem and its users.
XS was released in 2018. So 5 years support so far.
And they are investing in their core apps because the code base is increasingly shared between iPhone, iPad, Mac, Watch and soon to be Vision Pro. Apps that aren't tend not to get as much love.
I am playing with safari profiles and it doesn’t seem to work as I expected. I expected that a new profile is completely fresh and clean. However, the history is copied and separate from there on. There is an option to clean that per profile but that is an extra step. As for bookmarks / favorites I still have to find out how to get it completely separated.
I want to create a “meta” profile for accessing meta’s webpages but don’t want to give them access to bookmarks/history whatever except their own.
What I really wish was there to be some way to disable Siri. In theory you can, but as soon as you want to use CarPlay, Siri has to be enabled. Very frustrating.
Groceries will take a little bit to generate a ML model and even then it’ll get better over time as it learns more niche stuff based on where you place it.
Pet detection requires a bit more time as it builds the ML model and crawls through your photos, progress towards that is typically only done overnight while it’s on the charger.
Siri trigger word is English only (Australia, Canada, UK and US).
For the photos it'll likely take a little while for the service to rescan all your photos for the newly recognized items. Leave your device plugged in for best performance there.
It’s indeed working now. This is exactly what I did previously (3 times precisely), but now it works. Maybe the update doesn’t actually update everything, just the bare minimum and completes the rest in background.
Your OS is now updated. the updated applications that comprise iOS 17 then have to check and update the data, particularly in cases where other devices tied to iCloud also require updating.
It is likely that if you also have a Mac or iPad that isn't using the most recent point releases, the lists or the Photos will not update to the new behavior.
Whatever new major release promises to deliver, I will wait until spring around .3 to update, because apple .0 releases are riddled with bugs, everytime I tried... Never ever am I going to update to a .0 of Apple. Its basically a public beta with a lot of fuzz.
I’m never doing a manual upgrade again, it took a full hour for my iPhone 11 Pro to install this update. That seems insanely slow for the amount of data that needs copying, and my flash storage is half empty so it should be quite speedy still!
Main one on release day being load balancing on the servers.
It also doesn’t help that major releases are typically done by downloading the full image instead of your typical delta update.
Add onto that the process where it creates a compressed backup of your current version for rollback purposes and the verification process to check that your download didn’t end up corrupted and it’ll keep your iPhone busy for a while.
There is only one thing I wish for. For it to stop butt wallpaper switching. The most retarded feature I have ever seen. I take the phone out of my pocket and I somehow switch wallpapers in the middle of it.
Yeah this is really annoying. I goes I had played around with it when it first came out and created some alternatives with focus modes. I recently stopped using my wallet-like case, so now my screen is exposed in my pocket, and I couldn’t figure out why it kept getting into a meeting focus mode and silencing all my incoming comms!
I haven't had this problem (since I don't keep my phone in a back pocket), but still agreed.
Having to long press anywhere on the screen and then swipe side-to-side between lock screens is weird. Just let me swipe sideways on the handle thing at the bottom like for swiping between apps.
Aside from that, my iOS 17 beta impressions are fine, I've been running it since dev betas on my iPad and since public betas on my phone. Only issue was the camera locking up and crashing once.
For me, the phone must be unlocked to even be able to see the list of wallpapers, and nothing of my clothing triggers capacitive touches on the screen.
It even gets frozen in the transition to that stupid UI. I'll pick up my phone and it's all blurry and doesn't respond to touch. I am really hoping that's fixed.
I have a 5 year old iPhone running iOS 16 which is snappier than most Android phones out of the box. The only problem I have is that it’s extremely aggressive at killing backgrounded apps due to the tiny amount of RAM and no swap.
However, it isn’t surprising or malicious for Apple to optimise their software for modern hardware. They still seem to do a significantly better job supporting old hardware than anyone else.
Perhaps some components in your phone are dying? If you go into Battery settings, has Peak Performance Capability been reduced?
If you don't want to upgrade on day one, it's totally fine to wait - but once 17.1 is available I would recommend everyone upgrades. Most issues will be fully resolved.
Nope. I’m pretty sure it’s an Apple Music/podcasts server side bug, as I’ve had it happen across numerous iOS/ipados updates and devices including Sonos and Bluetooth. It’s so annoying and sounds like it’s barely skipping a beat but it’s noticeable frequently for me.
- Automatically deleting text-based and email-based 2FA codes
- Adaptive Transparency with AirPods Pro 2
- Live Voicemail. This one's huge. You can hear and read the VMs that people are leaving and use that context to decide whether to accept or ignore their call. Android's had this for a while; glad to see it in iOS.
There are others, but I can't think of them right now.
Practically every widely known website you can participate on as a user has terms and conditions, even if they're not linked to on the sign up form. This is to cover for both theoretical and real legal issues down the line.
Multiple timers. Run several timers on iPhone simultaneously, perfect for when you’re cooking
and need to keep track of different steps and
dishes.
Why was this so hard to implement? Or they just never felt like many people needed it? This has always seemed like a really basic missing feature. I'm surprised it took so long.
This is such a welcome addition! I totally agree: it likely took all of 30 minutes to implement (plus testing, QA, etc time).
I'd love to see another Clock feature: let me choose a new timer/alarm sound _without_ immediately previewing the sound. At this point I know a handful of my favorites that I like to choose from, and I don't want to hear them at full alarm volume just because I'm changing the noise. A preview button trailing-aligned in the list would be perfect spot for a quick way to listen to an alarm sound.
And a related feature: include Alert Tones (ie Messages alert sounds) in addition to Ringtones as timer/alarm noises.
Working on a very big but nowhere near as big or far reaching software project, even the most trivial changes take a long time end to end. The design review alone will have taken a long time at apple, without even starting to think about the technicals.
The iPad doesn't even have a native calculator app. The iOS calculator is not part of iPadOS. These kinds of 'basic features' can be really easy to ignore for the flashier stuff that people will potentially use less.
I wonder if they accommodated the issue where you use the timer to "stop playing" (like a sleep timer for Youtube Music) but then the next time you set a timer it's set to stop playing so it makes no noise if you forget to switch off of "stop playing" been bit a few times by that so i remember to switch but that's some pretty bad UX as it makes Siri useless for setting timers
In my view, it didn't make Siri useless for setting timers, it meant there was no universal sleep timer, as I refused to use the "Stop Playing" feature.
Siri always thinks I'm saying "fifteen" when I'm saying "fifty". It's annoying because one dish I make often bakes for fifty minutes. At least Siri understands when I say "five zero minutes". I sound like I'm calling in an artillery strike on my kitchen.
I've been bit by adding timers via Siri so many times because I use the timer as a sleep timer for youtube music. So the next day I go to set a timer with siri and its set to "stop playing" which makes no sound and therefore the timer is next to useless. :( So now I just set timers manually but it nullifies Siri.
I don't intend this as criticism at all, but it's quite amusing how routine iOS updates and new iPhone releases have become. I recall being in high school when the first iPhone was introduced, and the sheer novelty of smartphones was awe-inspiring. Nowadays, they've become so commonplace that I find myself getting more enthusiastic about new additions to the Python standard library!
And even though iOS/MacOS updates happen frequently and bring little new each time, they still manage to break lots of stuff each time.
Like how many devs need to recompile their old apps to keep them "compatible", or how the network stack keeps changing destroying our VPN and stuff, or how even programs like Office sometimes won't work.
I recently rewatched the original keynote where Steve Jobs first announced the iPhone. The thing that struck me was how wild the crowd went when he demoed pinch-to-zoom, something which we basically take for granted nowadays.
It killed the segregated internet for phones. They just figured out how to display normal web pages. And the double tap to zoom in on a column was a pretty big feature too.
I kept waiting for the Apple Watch to have its iPhone 3GS moment, where they came out with one noticeably thinner and with the same or better battery life. But it never came. Is anything they’re a tiny bit taller than the original. Instead they went with a smaller and larger version which is not quite the same.
I still struggle with keeping it on while doing anything that requires work gloves. Make it thinner already.
When the iPhone 12 came out in 2020, we got a new design language. Sharp flat edges were back. Every year since then we’ve been waiting for the watch to get a design update. But still in 2023 it’s the same old fat bubbly design which looks _very_ dated.
I wonder if Apple is waiting for some piece of tech to get better (batteries?), so they can launch a sleeker flatter watch.
They had a patent on putting auxiliary batteries in the watch band. I was so stoked and then nothing came of it. I’m guessing poor performance or a fire hazard. I waited way too long before I gave up on that every hitting the manufacturing floor.
> And the double tap to zoom in on a column was a pretty big feature too.
By itself this feature is not a very big deal: Opera Mobile/Mini had it for quite some time before iPhone, I certainly used it a lot. But the whole package the iPhone brought was a game changer for the industry.
I remember the era. We had to double click or basically press a zoom button. It was still so bad even with zoom that my first job ended up making mobile/responsive sites because nobody wanted to zoom in and out all the time.
There were some tightened security features on both Android and iOS in that phase.
Basically a lot of really dark patterns were killed. A free casual game reading all your files. A game with media access being able to "track" you from location information in your photos, without any file or location access. A social media app could be pasting your password from clipboard to their servers. A messaging app which you gave cam/mic access once to could be recording you while it's in background, and converting your audio information via their speech to text.
So a lot of the changes have been around making this behavior really visible. Sure, any app can access your cam/mic, but there's a green light every time it does. Sure, it can copy/paste from clipboard, there will just be a little notification each time.
> A new feature, Sensitive Content Warning, helps adult users avoid seeing unwanted nude images and videos.
It looks like there's now a feature you can enable that uses a classifier (I'm guessing?) to identify dick pics, and let you choose whether you want to see it or not. The last slide[0] in the last carousel on the linked page has an image of the dialog.
That's a different feature, hashes images and looks them up in a database of CSAM (Child Sexual Abuse Materials) database and then if you have that, reports you to an NGO, not law enforcement.
Are you talking about some specific implementation that you want? Because I know when I miss a call on iOS...
Edit: they want the "Repeat Alerts" setting that "Messages" has but for "Phone" which is missing the option. Settings > Notifications > Messages > Customize Notifications > Repeat Alerts
Nope. It has missed-TEXT notifications. After years of complaints about the lack of missed-call notifications, what does Apple do? Add them for TEXTS only. You can have them repeat up to 10 times.
Now go to the nearly-identical settings screen for Phone. NONE.
Are you talking about repeated alerts? “Missed Call” is a notification I regularly see in my Notification Center, but it does only make an alert sound once: immediately after the call stops ringing.
You see it. Not hear it. And you only see it if you happen to be staring at your phone.
So yes, this is the whole problem. The fact that Apple finally added audible notifications, but only for texts, is just infantile pettiness on their part. Truly incredible, since the settings screens are otherwise nearly identical.
I think, given the difficulty you're having getting people to understand what exactly is the feature that you're missing, undercuts the idea that it's an essential feature which is inexcusable to not support.
Not really. Try doing a search on the issue. It has been complained about for the iPhone's entire existence. The "not understanding" here reflects the sad acceptance of ever-falling design standards. People forget how much something sucks when they habitually incorporate workarounds to its failings day after day, year after year.
Missed-call notifications were a standard feature on cell phones way before the iPhone (the StarTAC, for example). Not to mention answering machines. Even microwave ovens beep periodically if you forget to take the food out.
But if you miss a call on Apple's $1000 handheld Unix computer/phone, it doesn't make a peep. You don't even have the OPTION to make it do so. That's simply dumb.
Yeah, after reading the link you posted above, I get what you're talking about. Fully agree. I should be able to select any arbitrary notification and enable repeated alerts for it. Not just calls or texts or whatever, but anything that's important to me not to miss.
What's really baffling is that iOS hides older notifications after some amount of time, or screen unlockings, or something. I like to leave notifications around so I can remember to handle them later when I unlock my phone ("oh yeah, I need to read/respond to that email"). Instead iOS just removes them from my lock screen so I don't see them when unlocking and I forget they exist. They're still there--you can swipe up from the bottom to bring back your hidden notifications--but that requires you to remember they're there, which is the whole reason I didn't dismiss them in the first place.
iOS's notification system is shockingly bad. Android is leagues ahead here, both in features & configurability.
to be fair your original unedited comment was so vague no one got it until you clarified with the blog post. so maybe there is something for you to take away there
> since there's an elaborate explanation (not that it's needed)
Clearly the explanationn is needed. Most of us didn't understand what you meant. After grasping what you're asking for, I get your request, and I think it'd be nice if Apple implemented this for you and others, but I don't think iOS is broken, nor would I enable such an option if it were implemented – it wouldn't solve a problem for me.
You might try to understand that you are in a minority in wanting this, and that the current behavior is actually acceptable for the vast majority of iPhone users.
I don't buy that. It's just a tiny number of people who
1. Take the time to speak up about it
2. Speak up about it in a forum that you're aware of
Another problem is the diminishing number of people over time who were exposed to more-functional products that were standard in the past. The obvious feature requested here was present on millions of telephonic devices for decades, including cell phones. Android phones have it. But the iPhone is now 15 years old, like many of its users.
The Web is rife with requests for this feature. I posted a tiny sampling of them above.
Not that I wear my watch a lot of time but that’s far more reliable notification than anything in my phone. Though I turn the vast bulk of my potential notifications off anyway.
How do they define "today"? Because I've been running iOS 17 since last week.
EDIT: Seriously, I got notified about the update the day they premiered iPhone 15, I thought that's their standard operating procedure to release software on the same day as hardware. Reading about iOS release today was really confusing.
Is there any "early access" program that I could have unconsciously signed up to, so that's why I did receive it early?
Apps want to access contacts and it’s all or nothing right now. But Contacts also is quite integrated and is better if you fill in more details such as addresses and birthdates.
So an app requesting access gets everything if you grant it.
For Apple‘s pro-privacy stance, this oversight is quite painful.