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Comment by heavymark | Hacker News Reader

This rumor has been around past few months, hoping it's true. Though while us technies in the minority would rather bug fixes than new features that don't apply for us, the general public would be very upset if iOS12 changes are all under the hood, as they would say Apple has fallen behind and people will insert common statements every years like they are finally considering switching etc. So while I hope the do fix long standing small bugs, I think the average user would lose their mind if they do. I imagine it will be a mix, some new features and some fixes.

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> So while I hope the do fix long standing small bugs, I think the average user would lose their mind if they do.

I really don't think they would. If you asked any person on the street what new features came with iOS 11 vs iOS 10 I really don't think they'd be able to tell you. It was a very minor upgrade, and no-one really seemed to care. A number of people I know try to avoid updating because they mostly associate it with a slower phone!

Isn't the answer poop emoji with facial recognition?

I'd say that was more of an iPhone X feature than an iOS 11 one.

The Mac has had an optimization-centric release following a feature release many times (all the Snow releases, El Capitan). I don't remember mass complaints.

(By its name, High Sierra ought to be an optimization of Sierra also, but its bugginess suggests otherwise.)

There wouldn't be mass complaints. My family are absolute non-techies, while I am something like a techie, and none of us would complain if Apple did a few pure bug-fix releases. Non-techies don't completely understand the current situation where developers care far more about themselves than their users, but they have learned that software "upgrades" will usually waste their time and make their lives worse. Apple can actually fight this, since their users are their customers.

I think the iPhone has historically had more of an attitude of "look at all of the awesome new computer-ey things your phone can do!", whereas computers have always been treated more like appliances. It's much easier to tell a user "the new version of Mac/Windows has absolutely nothing new you care about." than to sit by the wayside while android devices have split-screen and curved displays.

Consumers and shareholders like cell phones because they're shiny.

I would agree that people would want flashiness in the hardware level but I highly doubt they would mind in the software level.

Most people I know are already happy with the functionality of their iOS or Android devices.

I strongly disagree. The « general public » runs on older phones, and so performance and software quality is even more impactful on them.

The next update will bring a revolutionary new feature, an original invention by Apple, a courageous leap forward. It will bring STEREO playback to its homepods!

The HomePod already plays stereo.

Not that I am aware of:

https://www.engadget.com/2018/01/23/apple-homepod-no-mutli-r...

It cannot play from stereo separated with two connected speakers. The unit itself, however, has 7 speakers and it does separate the left/right stereo channels to different speaker pairs.

> they would say Apple has fallen behind

"They" already said that when iOS abandoned skeuomorphism, and "they" were damn right. A friend of mine who is not even a tech guy put it very bluntly: "Apple used to change things to make better phones, now they change things to keep up with what others are doing".

They abandoned skeumorphism because pixel perfect design doesn't work when you have multiple size screens. At the time they had two - a 3.5 inch screen and a 9.7 inch screen. Now they have four different iPhone screen sizes and three different iPad screen sizes.

What’s the link between skeuomorphic and pixel perfect ?

Real world objects come in different sizes, so i don’t see what the problem would be in having screens that look like objects having different sizes.

When you had a picture as the background of your screen in 2010, you needed different images for different screen resolutions - 1 and 2x for the 3.5 inch iPhone and 1x for the 9.7" inch iPad. Then the iPhone 5 came out with a different ratio - you couldn't just stretch the image and make it look decently. Then two years later you had the 6 and 6+ phones with different ratios. Then different ratios for split screen iPad in different orientations.

Skeuomorphic doesn’t mean using background images, it’s just a matter of trying to have GUI elements look and behave like physical objects would. You can do that using textures.

Pictures of both the podcast and iBooks apps in iOS 5.

https://gigaom-com.cdn.ampproject.org/ii/w680/s/gigaom.com/w...

How would they look if you squished it for 25%, 50% or 75% split screen view on the iPad? How would it look on the iPad Pros? In landscape? In portrait?

Usually what you're doing in those cases is that part of the image are stretchable and other parts are fixed. It's a technic that's been used for rounded buttons for ages, and can be applied to pretty much anything. That's also part of xcode (unless it's been removed).

But generally, you can easily have those kinds of design work with any kind of screen dimensions. It won't look completely similar from one size to another, but still look realistic (bigger screen -> bigger objects, or more space between objects).

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