iOS 11.3 is available today | Hacker News Reader

iOS 11.3 is available today

apple.com

118 pointsrunesoerensen120 comments

There is a privacy push in this release. Immediately after upgrade you will get a page letting you know that "Apple believes privacy is a fundamental human right…" and explaining steps they take to help with that, along with introducing a new icon which lets you know an Apple app is asking for personal information. That sounds like a way to train you to think about personal information differently, but I don't expect any users to read that screen or to know the icon. Darned users.

You can read a bit more about it here: http://www.idownloadblog.com/2018/01/25/ios-11-3-new-privacy...

It the one reason I continue to use Apple products. They've definitely had their snafus when it comes to security implementation, but bugs are bugs.

I don't doubt that at their core that they believe strongly in personal data privacy though. They've shown multiple examples, and this is just another step in the right direction.

It makes sense as massive scale data collection is not their fundamental reason for existing (unlike Google and Facebook).

Unfortunate that the idownloadblog link asks for permissions to turn on push notifications though.

Genius move by Apple. This is a marketing move, clear and valuable differentiation from competition. What's perfect about this is that the competition can not claim the same (Google/Samsung/Android and to a degree FB). It's not like increasing RAM and the competition then easily follows. Props to Apple for realizing their strengths.

Now, if their laptop keyboards didn't stop working after 3 months...

In case anybody from Apple is reading: In Bluetooth Settings being able to assign an alias to my bluetooth devices would be really good. SPEAKER-ACD3, SPEAKER-ADCD SPEAKER-DAFF is much worse than "Livingroom Speaker," "Kitchen Speaker," "Bedroom Speaker."

I've submitted these sentiments to https://www.apple.com/feedback/iphone.html before, but nothing seemed to become of it.

Some devices allow you to rename them, UE speakers comes to mind. If you change the name (usually within the device manufacture's app,) unpair, then pair again, the new device name will show. I've used this method on a few Bluetooth speakers but it obviously won't work if the manufacture doesn't allow you to rename the device.

Even better, I have two Bluetooth adapters with identical names. At least they show up in a consistent order.

The problem is that users don’t understand aliases, and ‘renaming’ would only work for devices under the same iCloud account, so they would be confused when their renamed ‘Kitchen Speaker’ still shows up as BTS-123 in Android.

You could reduce almost any feature to "users are bottom-feeding troglodytes who barely know how to breathe so we shouldn't make this because they will just be confused."

I don't think it's the case here. The person who cares what their Bluetooth devices are named and is invested into renaming them would be able to figure that they renamed the device just on their phone, even if they were a bit confused.

> The problem is that users don’t understand aliases

This is demonstrated at my neighbor's house where he accesses the lamps in his living room through an app where they're labeled "Bedroom Lamp #1," "Living Rom Lmap," and something like "Living Room Lamp #3" because at some point the furniture got rearranged and lamps ended up in different rooms after being associated with the app.

He's a smart(ish) guy, but can't figure out how to rename them.

IIRC, Mac allows aliasing BT names, so there's precedent here.

Not if they also renamed it in Android, which is a feature I use on my Pixel 2 XL

I wonder if it fixes the issue in iMessage where messages that have similar time stamps can get displayed in the wrong order.

I sure hope it does, because it was driving me crazy :). According to this review [1] it is fixed, but we'll see I guess.

[1] https://youtu.be/h2_zIoBvCRI?t=4m1s

I was able to fix it on my phone by disabling iMessage, disabling "Set Timezone Automatically", waiting a few minutes, and re-enabling everything. We'll see how long it lasts. My MacBook is still wonky.

That only temporarily fixed it for me. Thankfully I'm downloading 11.3 now, hopefully this most annoying of bugs is gone finally. Mine started in the release that claimed to fix it, which I found an amazing feat.

Wait that’s just a bug? I thought my iMessage contacts had all developed precognition :-/

I thought they fixed that in the last patch release? (Just looked, it was 11.2.5)

Are you still having the issue? My mom was still complaining about it, but I just assumed she hadn't updated her software.

Still happening to me on 11.2.6

No, it's still happening in 11.2.6.

Temporary fixes worked for me for ~ 1 week.

Oh god I hope so... Ios11 has been a total $#17 show for me...

It was still happening in the betas. Not sure if it was solved for the final release.

When I get new texts, they’re immediately displayed as “in 1 minute”.

Probably means the time on your device is wrong.

Note that 11.4 is already in the works for the final versions of ClassKit and Shared iPad. Probably the first betas for 11.4 will start appearing soon. Can't wait to try it. Looking forward to not have girly stuff appearing anymore in my Photo stream!

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Downvoting factually correct information? Why?

"Shared iPad" for classroom use (and the MDM server requirement...) was first introduced as far back as iOS 9.3 in Jan 2016, regardless of the Classkit announcement this week, so I wouldn't take it as given we are getting it for general consumer use in the next beta given the feature is over 2 years old now.

> https://www.macrumors.com/2016/01/11/ios-9-3-new-education-f...

I'd love for multi-user support too (my iPad Pro is a 900 dollar computer...), but it seems Apple are wedded to the 1:1 model for ordinary consumers so far.

Is Shared iPad for home use, or does it require an enterprise MDM backend?

From the release notes:

- Fixes an issue on iPad Pro that prevented the iPad Smart Keyboard from working after connecting to a captive Wi-Fi access point

I was sure mine was broken while I was staying with a family member in a hospital, then it "fixed" itself when we moved back home. I'd love to read a description of what caused this bug, I mean "use a captive wifi portal" → "hard wired keyboard stops working until reboot" isn't really where I'd look for a bug.

I suspect it has something to do with the captive wifi webview being (frustratingly) modal.

I was staying at a hotel recently that wants you to put in your rewards account credentials at the captive portal page, but I couldn't switch over to 1Password to retrieve those credentials without iOS dismissing the portal page and leaving me with no easy way to get back to it. At which point the internet is working, and you're no longer "captive," but the half-completed process implies you want them to bill your room $15 for a day access pass...

Affects Logitech Create Pro keyboad as well. Only some access points, which means that either wifi access point network/frames or the captive portal website can have side effects on the device keyboard. Many security implications, if so.

Here's the Apple forum thread with 19 pages of customer reports: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8075772

Knowing how much Apple loves mixing Bluetooth and wifi for some products, are we sure that the Smart Keyboard is actually entirely wired? I mean, I know it has a connector, but is there any chance it uses wifi as well?

https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Smart+Keyboard+Teardown/5305...

Fairly confident it's just the smart connector driving the input.

My keyboard has a 72MHz 32 bit processor‽ I think I was on my 7th computer before I had one that powerful.

Basically every device with both Bluetooth and WiFi use a single chip for both.

I don't know the details about how the Smart Keyboard works but I'm confident it doesn't use WiFi.

I don't know why this would be the case, but my first guess would be that something is trying to phone home when the keyboard gets initialized and it's connected to a network

Someone that apparently works on Safari at Apple, posted some interesting comments about progressive web app features on Jan 24.

https://twitter.com/rmondello/status/956256845311590400

"iOS 11.3 and macOS 10.13.4 include Service Workers — a powerful specification that allows background scripts to power offline web applications. iOS 11.3 also consults Web App Manifest when adding web apps to the home screen."

"Web apps saved to the home screen and web pages in SFSafariViewController can now use the camera to capture images!"

I'm hoping Apple finds that PWAs can actually start replacing native apps in 2018. Now that smartphones have so much extra processing and memory capacity. There doesn't appear to be any technical reason PWAs couldn't become the primary way that users install apps, with native apps being a rare necessity.

> Now that smartphones have so much extra processing and memory capacity.

Not saying that PWAs are necessarily less efficient, but this isn’t a good reason for doing anything on mobile as more power usage = shorter battery life, which is still one of the main issues with today’s smartphones

I think it would be awesome to see a version of, say, iOS 3 compiled to run on modern iPhone HW and see how long the battery life would be.

That would take a ton of work to make it all 64bit safe again. Basically redoing iOS 7.

Engineering is largely about making trade offs. Battery life is just one (very important) variable for smartphones.

PWAs are generally going to be less efficient than native apps because they're just web apps running in Safari.

This performance penalty explains why PWAs couldn't replace native apps in the past. It would have hurt the user experience. But now that smartphones are so much more powerful, we should be able to take advantage of PWAs.

There are lots of technical and non technical reasons to prefer native apps, but most of them boil down to a simple thing: better user experience. So sad to see that “I only have a hammer, let’s approach eveything as a nail” attitude getting so prevalent. “I only know react, lets misuse already misused web tech even more”.

Here's a solid technical / user-experience reason to prefer PWAs: people can fork them and install them on their devices without needing a Mac and a developer account. That is, if you want your app to meaningfully be free software and have all the associated technical benefits, or if you want the option for someone who's better than UX to do it to fork it with low friction, PWAs are significantly better.

+ :

- "Here, i present you my simple mobile app that adds value" : URL => exchange of value

- submit to OS verification => "Here, i present you my simple mobile app that adds value" : URL to OS app/play store => explicit download + build => exchange of value

Billions of people install apps without the Mac or developer account. This devloper-centric view is why we cannot have nice things. Stop for once thinking how to make life easier for the developer, start to think about the end users.

I am thinking about the end users. I am thinking that they should not be held hostage to the tiny number of app developers out there. If an end user has a problem with their app today, they don't have any choice but to throw themselves on the mercy of the developer, or upon the vain hope that other developers will come up with a competing app. If they have a problem with a PWA, they, or more likely their friend or their friend's kid in middle school who's learning HTML, can fix it.

Saying "Your app comes in a compiled and encrypted format, it's illegal to decompile it, and anyone making a competing app needs a Mac and $99" is the way to make life easier for the developer.

>I'm hoping Apple finds that PWAs can actually start replacing native apps in 2018.

Funny; what once was old is new again.

Back in 2007 when there was no App Store, and everything was a web app I wrote one of the first non-Apple weather apps for the iPhone, in conjunction with a local TV station.

It had streaming audio from a real meteorologist to accompany the weather graphics and animated radar. This was a big deal back then. Today... notsomuch.

It's not obvious how to install a PWA in iOS 11.3.

You have to open the URL in Safari and use the Share menu to find "Add to Home Screen."

"Add to Home Screen" isn't new, it's how links to web pages have been added as icons for a long time. That's why the <head>s of some sites links to icons just for display alongside iOS native apps.

Support for the technologies PWAs use will change what the sites can do.

Given the commotion a few months back, this is notable:

This free software update also offers customers more visibility into the battery health and performance of their iPhone.

Looked at mine now. I've spent maybe 3-4 minutes on bookface today and it's got a huge percentage lead to the next few apps, which I have spent considerable more time on.

It makes me want to just switch to FB through mobile safari...

Make sure location tracking is off/denied, otherwise its always running in the background and reporting in.

Great, now how about storage? The system setting that says "manage your storage" or whatever should really read "look at your storage and despair because there's nothing you can do".

Tou can clear application/web sites data. You csn opt in to have original photos on iCloud and keep only lower res versions on the device. You can enable apps offloading so the rarely used apps are removed until rewuested back.

I know it's been available in betas for a while, but that took way longer than I'd expected. Three months!

Notable points for consumers are that neither iMessages in iCloud nor AirPlay 2 are in the release, despite being tested in 11.3 betas (and earlier 11.x betas).

I'm not sure what to make of this. On one hand, I'm glad Apple is taking their time to ensure these features are fully stable before releasing; on the other, I wish they were not "pre-announced" as early as they were.

To me, iMessage in iCloud seems to be as risky as the APFS rollout, if not more. I'm guessing that is going to be a one-way conversion, and any issues are going to be very apparent to users. Apple did lots of "test" conversions for APFS over betas before a final release (which is why some updates took so long).

Does anyone have any insight into what a rollout of such a feature looks like? Most iMessage databases are multiple GB, and iMessage has millions of users.

Does anyone know what this feature actually entails? iMessage on my Macs has always synced for at least a year, including SMS (non-iMessage) messages sent from my phone.

Personally, every device I have (aside from my phone) has a different subset of messages on it. When they're on and near each other, they all get the same messages, but they definitely don't get everything all the time when off/out of range of my phone.

I suspect that the current setup is a best effort sync, while the full message backup exists within the iPhone backup.

iCloud iMessages would, I think, make that backup/storage a first class entity, separate from the phone's backup.

Oh yeah, maybe the syncing only happens from phone to Mac right now. I've never noticed or tested that, since my phone is basically always with me when I'm on my computer. I've had occasional issues with my Mac having out of order or missing messages, particularly when powering on my Mac after lengthy downtime, but it seems to resolve itself in a few minutes.

I have a desktop at the office, laptop and iPad at home and it's pretty amusing the way the messages between them do and don't overlap. SMS messages are the worst offender by far, but even the iMessages don't always end up on every device.

I've never noticed out of order messages on any device, even though it seems to be a pretty prevalent problem amongst the comments here.

From a user perspective, probably the biggest aspect of this is freeing up local storage. My iMessage database is 10 GB, my wife's is 9. That is not an issue for me, but there are still lots of 16 GB devices in active use.

Oh gosh, delayed again? I was really looking forward to iMessages being backed up iCloud.

I guess there is still the potential to roll it out with a server side trigger, as Apple did with Apple Pay Cash.

But, I would imagine it would be in the release notes if that were the case, and it isn't.

IMessages are backed up as part of the normal device back up. They just aren't synced to other devices with the canonically source being iCloud.

Even the APFS final release still had a scaled roll-out I believe for safety.

I'm not touching another iOS11 update on my 6+ unless I know exactly how it will affect performance.

I love my 6+, its a great device, but I was using my Wife's 5 yesterday on iOS 10 and it was a breath of fresh air. So much more responsive.

A good trick I use is to turn on Reduce Motion in Settings -> General -> Accessibility

Seems to not lag as much when transitioning between apps. Given, I shouldn't have to do this in the first place.

I have seen the source code of what changes when you turn that on for Springboard transitions. They are exactly the same. The difference is perceptual. You notice hitches in a zooming and moving animation more than a fading animation.

I understand that. That's why I said "Seems to not lag as much" meaning the perception of lag changes.

In general it's always been a wise policy to wait. It's been especially wise since Apple adopted the yearly clockwork ready-or-not release schedule.

I find the best policy is to wait to upgrade until just before the next release. I'm not touching iOS11 until iOS12 is almost out, and maybe not even then.

It's been especially wise since Apple adopted the yearly clockwork ready-or-not release schedule.

For iOS, the release schedule has always been yearly. There have been 11 releases in 11 years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IOS_version_history.

I'd love any tips on speeding up app-switching on my 6+. I measured it this morning and it takes about 10 seconds to switch apps. And that's AFTER I turned off as many notifications as I could, and reduced Mail accounts to only 1.

It's at the Apple shop at this minute getting a replacement battery, so that should help some... but still? 10 seconds to switch apps? Seriously?

Two tips Make sure you have at least 25% of you disk storage free at all times. Never manually exit apps. Doing so clears caches and you go through the slow path when you return to the app.

My 6 is basically useless now, it’s sooooooo slow

Try getting a new battery. My 6S is a brand new phone after a swap. Always running the latest beta os.

I tried a few articles on speeding it up and switching off background app refresh for all but a few apps seemed to make a difference. Of course it could have been a combination of several other things as well, but that was the last thing. It's a little better, but still rubbish compared to a 5 or 5s on iOS 10, or a 6s with twice the RAM.

I'm convinced the problem is insufficient RAM memory. Freeing up Flash storage is often mentioned, but I think it's marginal. Switching off services that require things to run in the background is probably saving RAM, preventing the OS having to constantly swap apps and services in and out of memory.

If Apple were still signing iOS 10 binaries I'd downgrade today, I'm thinking of going down to iOS 11.1 to see if it's any better.

I' probably getting a 6s soon from work and my wife will get my 6+ to replace her 5, but I'm worried she'll hate the step down in usability.

It is almost certainly a degraded battery - the 6 still has plenty of horsepower for iOS 11.

Actually I think you're right. I Geekbenched my phone when I upgraded to iOS 11 and thought it was a bit slow, but it checked out ok. I just did it now and it's 30% slower than it should be. At some point the battery must have degraded.

> I'm thinking of going down to iOS 11.1

1. That's not signed either

2. But, anyway, people reported better overall experience on 11.2 than 11.1.

Download CPUDasher X and see what your CPU clock speed is. Mine was dropping to 600MHz when the battery hit about 50% and things were laggy. After battery replacement its on a steady 1400HMHz right down to 10%

I will second replacing the battery. The difference was night and day (6S Plus).

iOS 11.3 also tells you about your battery health and how it affects performance

> Additionally, users can now see if the power management feature that dynamically manages maximum performance to prevent unexpected shutdowns, first introduced in iOS 10.2.1, is on and can choose to turn it off. This feature can be found in Settings -> Battery and is available for iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, iPhone SE, iPhone 6s, iPhone 6s Plus, iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus.

Why only those models? What about the 8 and X?

I believe Apple has stated they don't ever throttle the CPU on their current generation iPhones, i.e., they wait until they've been out for a full year and replaced by the next generation.

Was waiting for the battery health from a long time. My iPhone 6 plus is completely laggy from iOS 11 update. I regret doing that.

I hope they fixed the Safari bug where even though Private mode is enabled, clicking on webviews within apps will still cookie the hell out of you. This used to not be the case.

I thought "Private Mode" was just a set of tabs in Safari. As in it doesn't actually put you in "private mode", nor any app using Safari View Controller.

Correct, it used to work as follows:

- Private mode was enabled by a switch in Safari settings: No cookies/storage in any tabs and in webview controllers

- The switch in settings was then removed, and Private mode is enabled in the tab view in Safari — However, the setting used to carry into app webviews

- There is no longer a way to not be tracked in app webviews. You'll be cookied by apps, and you need to manually clear everything in Safari settings. This is a step backwards from how it used to work.

In my experience, this always has been the case - unfortunately :-(

There are some important features I think are being overlooked.

1. Business chat Now talking to a business is integrated on your phone.

2. Apple music now doesn't have ads? This might just kill Spotify's ad revenue from their free tired users. The only thing holding people ball is the playlists that people have made AFAIK.

I read that they're shifting from launching everything together in one single event where some products might not be entirely ready to launch their updates when they are actually ready. is this part of that new schedule?

I believe so as a few features were removed (or not enabled) from the earlier beta.

I am weary these days of updating right out of the gate as in the past the GA version still felt like an unstable beta, so I will keep postponing the current push until a later date.

Not really. This includes the Battery Performance tool which was made after BatteryGate blew up late last year.

Looks like iMessage in iCloud is not a thing again?

According to EverythingApplePro's review of the final beta version [1] it is enabled in 11.3 (haven't checked that yet for myself, my device is still updating).

Edit: Unfortunately it seems that while it was present in the betas, they've removed it from the final build [2]. Pity.

[1] https://youtu.be/h2_zIoBvCRI?t=3m45s

[2] https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/apple-releases-ios-11-3...

I wonder what makes it so difficult? Merging partial conversations from multiple devices, maybe? I never imagined it would take them this long to roll it out.

Sounds feasible. I was also thinking perhaps it's about storage/capacity? I'd assume a lot of messages are sent through iMessage, including pictures and video, so perhaps they haven't reached the iCloud infrastructure for the sudden deluge of incoming data.

Not sure because I'm running 11.3 beta on my device and iMessage/iCloud integration is there working ok. It didn't make it into 11.3 release cut though.

I'm assuming that they postponed it due to iOS 11 bad reputation. People can handle dozens of UI glitches and crashes, but disappearing messages, sync inconsistencies would drive consumers crazy.

Awww. I was holding out hope this was the version they'd launch it too.

Wait a few weeks before updating. Apple updates are buggy these days.

It fixes the issue of half loaded pages in Firefox for iOS.

when will they fix iMessage threading?

Thanks. I'll wait till 11.3.3 :)

I wish I could go back to 10 :/

I wonder if this will help with the sometimes brutal keyboard latency thst crops up on the iPad.

I observe that too, the iPad 9 inch.

Same with my iPhone 6.

Wish they would let me start blocking adds in browsers :/

Isn’t this exactly what Safari content blockers do? I’ve been using Firefox Focus for a while and it seems great.

I've tried a lot of them, but they just seem to randomly break websites. So now you've just clicked a link from somewhere, but the page shows up blank. And you wonder, is the javascript still booting, or maybe the content blocker is blocking too much?

And as whitelisting websites from blocking must be implemented per content blocker, instead of being a builtin Safari feature. As a result it's different per content blocker how to whitelist, involving switching apps, copying over URLs and page refresh.

I’ve found that blockers have trouble with sites that display things even a fraction after initial page load. For example, even if they show you “the page” to select something to block, the annoyance won’t even be visible.

Desktop uBlock Origin works soooo much better than anything on mobile right now.

It's exactly what Safari content blockers are supposed to do, but I've tried every highly-recommended content blocker and none of them seem to ever block anything.

What? 1Blocker works fine. I use it on iOS and macOS.

I have 1Blocker and Crystal enabled, and while I can't verify how many ads it is blocking, I still very frequently see really bad fullscreen ads (like the "Congrats, you've won a free iPhone" ads that are inescapable without closing the Safari tab).

Yeah, I get that same thing, so tried Chrome and Firefox until i figured out they don’t support extensions such as uBlock, then went to try those built in blockers, and while i kinda understand why they built them into the system it seems most of them are no where near uBlock and only seem to work on Safari. So got Firfox klar which removes a lot of adds and kinda doesn’t brake pages but has no tab support and no history so it’s basically useless for everyday browsing...

I am trying to use FF and Chrome cos i have most of my stuff synced on them...

Install Firefox Klar from the App Store and enable it as Content Blocker in Safari (Settings app > Safari > Content Blockers). It blocks most ads.

Does this fix the plethora of UI bugs introduced by iOS 11? By comparison, the final release of iOS 10 was very stable.

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