I am not sure why this is being touted as a "hidden" gem, it was on the feature list and expounded as much as many of the other features in iOS6.
It is inexcusable that it wasn't previously possible to upload photos to sites (one of what is now the most common use cases for the internet) without involving a native app. The iOS ecosystem struggles to find a middle ground between native and a competitive/competent browser. This feature was no doubt strongly argued by Apple's PMs for many years, but finally they won out over some other dept's PM team.
We should at least be thankful that it wasn't introduced as a Safari-only feature.
The idea that there isn't a file system is nothing more than a suspension of disbelief, of course there's a file-system, it's just that there are folder handlers that know how to render the contents, it's actually an idea that can be traced back (possibly further to other sources also) to Microsoft's active directory notion. It morphed over the years and never became what was originally planned but iOS is very similar in how it 'hides' the underlying architecture. Camera Roll is ~/Photos + Pinterst-like dynamic grid a la Masonry.
> The idea that there isn't a file system is nothing more than a suspension of disbelief, of course there's a file-system, it's just that there are folder handlers that know how to render the contents
This is both the strength and weakness of iOS and for the most part, it's a benefit to the vast majority of it's main users (ie, not you or me). Have you looked at a non-techie's folder recently? It's a complete nightmare, and without a really good indexer and search system (OSX is ok, Windows sucks, not sure how Linux fares these days) it's nigh impossible for those users to find their saved documents - was that Tomorrow's Picnic Details.xls or did I convert it from the downloaded .csv? Maybe I only preserved it as an attachment that lives in a mail item in my inbox?
Ideas are one thing, execution is another. The fact that file uploads didn't exist forced app developers to be creative in how they managed local storage on iOS - glad the feature is there now, but I can see why Apple didn't include it originally.
>I am not sure why this is being touted as a "hidden" gem, it was on the feature list and expounded as much as many of the other features in iOS6.
Because many people don't yet know about it? As if people read the "feature lists"...
>It is inexcusable that it wasn't previously possible to upload photos to sites (one of what is now the most common use cases for the internet) without involving a native app. The iOS ecosystem struggles to find a middle ground between native and a competitive/competent browser. This feature was no doubt strongly argued by Apple's PMs for many years, but finally they won out over some other dept's PM team.
I seriously doubt this conspiracy theory. How about, they just got around to it? It also took Android a version or two to add the same feature -- and Mobile Safari has been more feature complete AND faster than the built-in Android "Browser" for years, so it's not like they tried to stifle mobile apps.
(As a matter of fact, when Jobs touted mobile apps as the way to build applications for the iPhone (pre SDK), people were frothing at the mouth, demanding a native SDK).
>Camera Roll is ~/Photos + Pinterst-like dynamic grid a la Masonry.
Nothing like Masonry, which is all about calculating and presenting images of differing heights in a non uniform grid. This here is just a grid, something ages older than Masonry and/or Pinterest.
The "input type=file" has been handled great on original iphone iOS using the iCab browser, and consistently since as well.
You can use that browser with any version of iOS you like. It was my go-to browser on both iPhone and iPad up until Safari in iOS 6 gained a few of iCab's features. I still use iCab on iPad, however, for the ad blocking.
No, they weren't! They just wanted to force all major websites to create an iOS app as well. Now that there are 750.000+ apps in the App Store, they can give web a long-overdue break.
They still don't give websites access to camera feed (read or frontal), among other things, so you can't use a website to make a video conference.
...given that Mobile Safari has been around longer than the app store I'm not sure that's strictly true. And let's be honest, Android support for direct camera access through getUserMedia is pretty ropey at best. Neither platform is at a state where it's usable by the masses.
Yeah, the shipped the best and most performant mobile browser for years, but omitted one small feature that no-one has implemented well for nefarious purposes.
>They still don't give websites access to camera feed (read or frontal), among other things, so you can't use a website to make a video conference.
And they will NOT do it until the battery, CPU power et al are there to support it running on the browser in the way a random website wants to handle it.
It's plausible some specific carriers have locked specific models but it's also plausible some people posting in that thread were using Android 1.5 back in 2009 - note how the thread was opened in April and closed in October 2009 as "Status: Released"
But even before then there was a trick to using HTTP POST for browser uploads in Android. iPhone could never do that.
The were so ashamed that they decided to announce it among other new features in iOS 6 at WWDC this year. No-one pays attention to those silly conferences, especially Apple's.
I didn't know about it and I watched the iOS6 presentation, skimmed through the iPhone 5, iOS 6 apple.com pages, regularly read 2-3 Apple websites + HN, and am a web developer.
My bet that Apple will provide something similar in the future. It's just too good. All that sharing stuff in Android, i really miss it on my iPad, it's imo the biggest feature difference between those two OS today.
It's great news (especially in regards to Nitro-ed UIWebVIew), but still it's short of what intents are able to do. For example, I don't suppose it would be possible to "announce" to the system that I, for example, do "image editing" by getting a "png, jpg, pdf" and returning a "png, jpg, pdf". XPC would mostly be used in a single app for further sandboxing and increased security/stability.
I don't have any inside information on how Apple will do things in iOS, but I see no reason why they couldn't do that.
"Services" have been part of iOS/OS X since the late 80s/early 90s with NeXTStep, the precursor to both.
I don't think Apple is deliberately not allowing services/intents in the manner you describe, I think it's just taking them a long time to figure out how to do it within the process and security model they are trying to enforce in iOS.
Not to condone the way they've interpreted file input, but at the very very least - you can upload almost any image in the system by either saving it to camera roll, or taking a screenshot.
This is really a lowest-common-denominator for file transmission - for example, until recently my mom couldn't upload her photo on meetup.com due to this limitation (she uses only an iPad)... I figure Apple cares more about her needs than mine (saving specs.xls into a JIRA).
Any other file uploads (docs, etc) are likely better handled by an app or simply email.
This is great but sadly you can't resize images in the same version of mobile safari so it limits the usefulness for image uploads. There is a bug that makes large images incorrectly render to a canvas. It seems odd that this wasn't a use case they tested against.
I wouldn't be surprised if they wanted to force people to create native apps instead of allowing web app file uploading via the browser. Forces extra people to buy a developer license, so more money for Apple. And not to forget, more apps in the store...
Unlikely given that iPhone 1 launched with no SDK and Jobs claiming web apps were just as good. That it wasn't in that initial OS was bizarre enough - that it persisted until iOS6 is really odd.
Just a guess, but it could be that Jobs didn't approve file uploads all this while, and now Cook and team didn't see why they shouldn't allow file uploads.
I spent 20 minutes playing with balloonduck.com at the gym the first time because I thought the ability to upload pics from mobile safari was so great. Then I went on with my life.
You can upload things, yet have nearly nothing resembling a filesystem accessible to users. How's that work? Do you just use your iCloud or Dropbox files?
If this isn't the ethos of everything Apple I don't know what is: other people have to support Apple. Apple just can't do anything standard or play along nicely with everyone else.
>If this isn't the ethos of everything Apple I don't know what is: other people have to support Apple. Apple just can't do anything standard or play along nicely with everyone else.
You mean like the hundreds of standards they adhere too, from POSIX (OS X is a certified UNIX OS), to all the networking standards, unicode, MIDI, OSC, VPN, ... whatever?
Or several they have released themselves for wider adoption, like the HTML5 Canvas thing, CSS transitions, Webkit, LLVM, Rendevous, etc?
Perhaps, it's not a hidden gem but a needed pursuit which most of us waited for. I know so many developers who were forced to use third party APIs (picplz etc.) just to have normal web experience on their application.
Anyway, this is good news for the web. Hope the browsers on tablets go beyond their 'mobile' paradigm and there is increase both in horsepower and adoption of web standards.
It is inexcusable that it wasn't previously possible to upload photos to sites (one of what is now the most common use cases for the internet) without involving a native app. The iOS ecosystem struggles to find a middle ground between native and a competitive/competent browser. This feature was no doubt strongly argued by Apple's PMs for many years, but finally they won out over some other dept's PM team.
We should at least be thankful that it wasn't introduced as a Safari-only feature.
The idea that there isn't a file system is nothing more than a suspension of disbelief, of course there's a file-system, it's just that there are folder handlers that know how to render the contents, it's actually an idea that can be traced back (possibly further to other sources also) to Microsoft's active directory notion. It morphed over the years and never became what was originally planned but iOS is very similar in how it 'hides' the underlying architecture. Camera Roll is ~/Photos + Pinterst-like dynamic grid a la Masonry.