Apple Releases iOS 11.4 with Messages in iCloud and AirPlay 2 | Hacker News Reader

Apple Releases iOS 11.4 with Messages in iCloud and AirPlay 2

macrumors.com

64 pointsrunesoerensen47 comments

I really wish Apple would add a convenient way to undo autocorrect mistakes in iOS.

The undo button that used to be part of the landscape keyboard seems to have been removed.

Shake to undo is, IMHO, a terrible idea. I have to change my grip to use it, never know if it's available until I try to use it and don't know how hard should I shake my phone to use it.

Backspace on its own is not great either. Quite often I'll delete the bogus "autocorrected" text and it will then put the "correction" back in again on the next space.

When there are whole websites devoted to laughing at people embarrassed mistakes caused by autocorrect it's probably a sign that people would appreciated something better.

I turned autocorrect off years ago. You adapt pretty quickly to typing with sufficient precision.

Same here. I highly prefer what-you-type-is-what-you-get paired with manual autocorrect than autocorrect.

Anyone have details about how Messages in iCloud works? Is it end-to-end encrypted?

Yes they're end-to-end encrypted (according to the release notes here https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208067#114):

- Store your messages, photos, and other attachments in iCloud and free up space on your devices

- All your messages appear when you sign into a new device with the same iMessage account

- When you delete messages and conversations they are instantly removed from all your devices

- Your conversations continue to be end-to-end encrypted

This Messages in iCloud support article has more details on how to set it up: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208532

Thanks!

Anyone know how it works? Currently messages are encrypted with the public key of every target device and dispatched directly to the device who decrypts it with keys in the hardware, but that means a new device which comes on won't be able to receive older messages.

Now that a new device can receive older messages, and assuming apple doesn't have the keys to your messages, who does the sending? Does one of your existing devices have to relay all the messages by downloading, decrypting, and re-encrypting for the target?

Likely with 'CloudKit End to End Encryption', see page 57 here: https://www.apple.com/business/docs/iOS_Security_Guide.pdf

> CloudKit end-to-end encryption

> Apple Pay Cash, User keywords, Siri Intelligence, and Hey Siri use CloudKit end-to-end encryption with a CloudKit service key protected by iCloud Keychain syncing. For these CloudKit containers, the key hierarchy is rooted in iCloud Keychain and therefore shares the security characteristics of iCloud Keychain—the keys are available only on the user’s trusted devices, and not to Apple or any third party. If access to iCloud Keychain data is lost (see “Escrow security” section later in paper), the data in CloudKit is reset, and if data is available from the trusted local device it is re-uploaded to CloudKit.

Some additional questions about it on my mind:

• Does "Messages in iCloud" work for syncing regular SMS messages too, or does it only include iMessages?

• It looks like there's no corresponding macOS update today to add Messages in iCloud support, is there? Should we expect it to be bundled into the next minor macOS patch, or is it more likely to be pushed into macOS 10.14?

It's supposed to come in macOS 10.13.5, but today's Xcode 9.4 update says "...includes SDKs for iOS 11.4, ... and macOS 10.13.4" so I wonder if 10.13.5 will come later?

> Does "Messages in iCloud" work for syncing regular SMS messages too, or does it only include iMessages?

It works for all messages, that is, SMS and iMessages. You turn it on in the iCloud account settings and it uploads everything. The device needs to be connected to mains power though. Otherwise it pauses the sync process until you do. The upload/download progress is shown at the bottom of the screen in the Messages app.

Any chance of auto-reply (not just "Do Not Disturb while driving") at long last? I've had to keep an old jailbroken 4s around with iBlackList on it in order to auto-reply to SMS and iMessage texts[1], as scripting in Messages for macOS is just so buggy.

[0] http://www.iblacklist.com.br [1] https://tinyapps.org/blog/misc/201307210700_iphone_text_auto...

Not from Apple with so much flexibility. But there could be third party apps that use Apple's CallKit SDK to provide something similar for calls.

I'd also suggest sending feedback to Apple periodically at https://www.apple.com/feedback even if it seems like the feedback is never taken into account for changes or new features.

The macOS 10.13.5 beta has it, so I'd assume that it'll be rolled out rather soon.

Yes, and that is great, because iCloud backups are not. So I assume (TBD) that if you enable iMessages in iCloud, they do not need to be backed up as a part of the end to end encrypted iCloud backups, which would increase security for anyone backing up to iCloud or anyone communicating with those who do!

All I want is for my conversations with a particular contact to be grouped together.

I have four threads with my wife, and each update it seems a random one becomes active because of the From address being reset.

This has been an issue since, like, forever.

It's even worse in group chats, where different people will see different messages in different groups

Also super annoying when switching countries. The lack of an international prefix on your existing contacts means they are now unontactable, and all your existing chats show as unsaved contacts with an international prefix.

I think the obvious solution here is to store your contacts with the country code. I believe you can also append it to contacts after the fact and it will update the iMessage thread. If you travel or have contacts out of your country, I find this to be useful.

Any idea if it's possible to prepend it to contacts in bulk?

Perhaps your wife has a different from address on multiple devices, and every so often sends a message from a different device causing the thread to switch?

Worth checking the "new messages from" setting on all of your devices (on both sides probably)

I agree though there is a shortcoming here.

Maybe it's just fond memories from a long-ago era, but didn't the original Airport Express have multi-room audio? I remember it working quite well.

How is this a feature, 15 years later?

That's possible because your computer sends airplay streams to all airport expresses at the same time.

However, you can't really do that with a phone, since it eats battery and needs a stable wifi connection.

AirPlay 2 solves that by allowing the phone to buffer minutes of audio to one speaker, which then distributes that buffer to the rest of the speakers.

And the other protocols, like Spotify Connect, Chromecast etc, just send the URL of the stream and make the speakers themselves handle it. It's such a better approach that I'm baffled AirPlay 2 still has not adopted it.

Doesn't that mean speakers open a separate request, consuming double the bandwidth.

I just remember that chromecast's protocol was actually unusable on a slower connection.

How does this work if the stream isn't a URL? I often use AirPlay with files on my password-protected SMB share.

It could fallback to the current behaviour just fine.

Of course AirPlay and AirPlay 2 support this, if the application sending audio supports it.

The problem is synchronizing the streams, not the bandwidth used by an MP3.

Original AirPlay (which I'm pretty sure, encompassed a bunch of "versions" over time) had a fixed 2 second lag and was designed around wired ethernet playing long form audio/video. AirPlay 2 seems like a well-needed update even if the user-facing feature list isn't impressive.

Not multi room synced audio.

But there was an app called Airfoil that did this.

I remember trying to use that. I got random audible speed ups and slow downs as it tried to get different speakers in sync. It would never truly blend to feel like a single audio stream.

The security page just says "iOS 11.4: Details available soon" https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201222 - is that normal, or is there a particularly nasty security bug fixed here that they want to keep on the down-low until enough people have patched?

There is always a delay. Usually the e-mail distribution goes out an hour or two after the update itself is released, and the support page gets updated a little bit after that.

I do remember a slight delay, but I don't recall them adding an actual entry early with a placeholder "available soon"? Maybe I'm just misremembering.

I have seen this many times.

I guess we'll be getting macOS 10.13.5 at a later date, together with these advisories then.

Edit: looks like 11.4 fixes another root exploit with details "probably next week" (is that an estimate for 10.13.5 then?) - https://twitter.com/i41nbeer/status/1001548232613421057

You're right, I think the last time the delay was this long was exactly that. Better (?) than the times Apple self-dropped 0day on themselves by disclosing Safari bugs that were not fixed on the other platforms I guess.

iMessage web interface on iCloud.com? Pleeeeease?

Not likely, unless I'm understanding how this is supposed to work. The keys to decrypt iMessage are stored on individual devices, so even if you had access to the messages being stored in iCloud, you wouldn't be able to read them.

A copy of your device key is also stored with server side encryption if iCloud backup is enabled.

That's true. But iCloud Messages does not inherently allow for escrowing of keys with Apple.

No way that will happen because then it would be too easy to reverse engineer and port iMessage to other platforms, or roll it into a message aggregator etc.

Would be nice though.

Yeah, it would be nice. Guess I'm spoiled by Google Voice's web interface.

Been using iCloud messages since their first beta release. Seriously a godsend to keep everything in sync. Soooo ready for the macOS support. Drives me nuts having the same message everywhere, I have to delete multiple times.

Anybody know if this addresses the battery issues that have been reported with 11.3.1?

I hope to find that out too.

I managed to characterise the phenomenon a little. If the battery is draining faster than normal then the “Standby” and “Usage” numbers under the battery settings page will be in lockstep, even when the screen is off. If you use the double-click-home task manager to swipe away all your “running” apps, then battery life will return to normal and the Standby time will be much larger than the Usage time at the end of the day.

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