iOS 12, reviewed | Hacker News Reader

iOS 12, reviewed

arstechnica.com

240 pointstomduncalf196 comments

I missed my flight.

フライトが恋しいです

Hilarious. That’s “I missed my flight” in the same sense that “I missed my wife (but she’s back from her trip now).” As in, “I long to be with my flight, but alas, we are apart.” See: https://jisho.org/word/%E6%81%8B%E3%81%97%E3%81%84

飛行機に乗り遅れました

This would probably be the translation I would use. I’m surprised that it’s not directly in the corpus as a canned phrase. In this phrase, 乗り遅れました literally means something like “[I] was too late to board [the plane]” and doesn’t express some kind of bizarre longing or affection for the plane.

Machine translation from/to Japanese is astoundingly awful. This has been my barometer for whether the hype around "AI" is real, and I'm always disappointed. It's a hard problem that's nowhere near to being cracked.

That is… absolutely true, and yet “I missed my flight” probably should be in the list of canned phrases that can just be looked up in a dictionary, along with “Where is the bathroom” and ”Check, please”.

Same with Russian (Yandex does an OK job).

But https://www.deepl.com is pretty amazing in my experience for the languages it's available for.

This become even more awful when the target language is not English because English is used as a pivot language: there is now two rounds of errors. I’ve heard from a researcher specialized in the AT field that a rule based Japanese to French system exists and is quite good but I’ve never seen the system itself.

I wonder, would another language serve better as a "pivot", all else equal (like, let's ignore corpus size)? English is both a wonderfully expressive but also frustrating language because of its vocabulary's flexibility, ambiguity, and adaptability.

Esperanto?

french used to be the language in which international laws and treaties were written because it’s supposed to be one of the most precise.

later, german was the language of choice of philosopher because of its rigourous structure and the ability to make new words just by combining them.

now it’s english, because it’s the easier to learn.

but also the real reason was the economical power of its time impose its language. The reason english was chosen probably is only because the software developers were english.

I think slavic language would be the best though, because every single word takes a different variation if they’re about a man or woman, etc. So there’s probably the least amount of ambiguity.

But probably an invented intermediate language would be the best. Except the google style translators don’t try to infer any meaning, which makes it hard to reason about.

Funny English sounds like PHP programming language when it's used broadly, relatively easy to understand but sometimes the rules are too loose and some other languages are more strict but not everyone likes the strictness.

A paper or webpage I read long ago about Bing Translate internals mentionned to use of an intermediate language that was artificial.

why have one pivot at all? why can't french be the pivot between spanish and english?

if we must have one and you believe in euroversals, then german and/or french might be better than english…

Resources availability. English/X or X/English pairs probably exist for a lot of X and may be well endowed. But for any other X/Y pairs resources may not exist at all or be too small to use. That being said it is still interesting to develop this kind of ressources (for example dictionaries) because they can be used for other NLP tasks.

Google translate seems to get the correct phrase so at least there's hope.

When you click on the translation in google it gives you the option of 'improve answer' in the drop down.

There's a huge amount of fixed phrases because google's translate didn't actually get it right unfortunately.

Reminds me of this article by Douglas Hofstadter: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/01/the-s...

I expect that future work which provides concepts in the external world to models will eventually do better. Translation by context rather than content has limits.

Japanese and Korean languages are pretty hard to translate.

In Korean, 나좀 봐주라 literally translates into "Look at me", but in most cases, it means, "cut me some slack".

Google translate gets this wrong.

If you Google translate "cut me some slack" into either Korean or Japanese, it also fails.

But if you translate Japanese phrase "もう勘弁してくれよぉ" into English, it is translated into "Please forgive me already", but in reality, it's more like, "Cut me some slack! Or give me a break!"

Translation is hard.

Even French and German are hard, comparing deeply.org to Google translator shows how awful the latter is.

This is one of the funniest examples of linguistic errors I've ever read. Thanks for the insight!

If the outcome of widespread machine translation is a whole new generation of poets, I'm all for it.

Honestly it may sound stupid but the native integration with password managers is a killer feature. I've trained my family to use 1Password and the biggest pain point was filling in passwords on the iPhone.

iOS 12 completely fixes this issue.

Based on the review, it looks like the iOS 12 password manager has matured quite a bit, but it doesn't say anything about integration with an external password manager. How have things changed for 1Password users?

You can now autofill passwords from a 3rd party password manager via a native api integrating with the OS keyboard.

Source: https://twitter.com/rmondello/status/1041737681141587968?s=2...

Wow, thank you so much!! I totally missed this. This was so badly needed.

No mention of KeePass, which is a shame

It's an api (https://developer.apple.com/documentation/authenticationserv...) so KeePass just needs to do the work.

KyPass 4 works. Costs $7, but I was fine with that.

Does KyPass autofill? I've been using MiniKeePass for years but would be happy to pay for autofill support. It would also be nice if it kept a persistent connection to my Dropbox database, eliminating the need to update it periodically.

1Password shows up on the keyboard just like the native password manager. It's an API that you can allow 1Pass to use.

If you want to try it out, remember to update the 1Password app first. Took a good 10 minutes this morning of "wtf, why can't I select another password manager" before it dawned on me.

More detail here: https://www.macstories.net/stories/ios-12-the-macstories-rev...

Are there any reason to use 3rd Party Password Manager now iOS12 has everything built in ?

I am wondering what sort of uses cases am I missing, assuming everything I use is inside Apple's ecosystem.

Synchronizing with desktops - particularly non-OSX desktops.

It's not stupid, that's why android already has it ;)

I was going to comment on how is it possible to still have features from one OS not yet implemented in the other (because let's be honest it goes in both directions)

Autofill was an Oreo feature, so it checks out, Apple added it as well in the next release.

(Autofill as a feature has been there for way longer on Android but it was relying on accessibility, which was a bit hacky and pretty unsecure)

Most Android phones will never see it. I replaced my Moto G3 with a 6S Plus in part because I was tired of the lack of care from the manufacturers once the payment cleared.

I replaced the Android before it for the exact same reason. Motorola developed a good reputation, which was promptly torpedoed once it got bought.

>Most Android phones will never see it

I am pretty that most of the Android phones will be sold in the future ;)

Even without being cheeky, I believe that most of autofill is supported through play services on older phones

> I replaced my Moto G3 with a 6S Plus

I have plenty of issues with Motorola (and the Android OS update situation) but you bought a budget $250 phone. Not particularly surprising that the customer care and updates etc. weren't on par with a phone that retailed for 3 times that.

The Autofill API is an Oreo feature but password apps can draw over others and fill forms without it so it has worked on Android for years. It was one feature which meant I would never consider an iOS device, so good to see it implemented.

iOS had integration with 1Password before but it was slightly clunky and required a couple taps to get there.

I do like that each platform tends to stay up with the other for the most part, adopting the good ideas. I switched to iPhone to get the native call blocking API, which I believe in the next release Android adopted as well.

Also 2FA via text now works. Not the most secure solution, but it's cool to see improvements in usability.

anyone offering 2fa via SMS without any other possibility needs to be named and shamed.

Instagram

any bank

etc

It's better than not having it at all, I would think.

That depends. If you're a sufficiently valuable target, it's actively worse, because it creates a false sense of security.

I disagree that it's worse. I have SMS on some of my accounts.

I am aware of the risks, but it's inherently better than nothing at all.

I have yet to see how SMS / Mobile Phone account can be hijacked in places where getting a new SIM card requires some form of ID. So SMS being unsafe for 2FA is mostly (?) a problem in US and some part of EU.

Does this explain it well enough? https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/05/thiev...

If I know your phone number I can get your 2fa code. It a security HOLE.

Instagram accounts get swiped all the time. There is a vibrant account trading economy on IG, and there are no reassurances that the account won't get swiped back.

Facebook knows how to do to 2fa without SMS, but they want everyone's phone numbers and social graph too much.

Account trading lives in the shadows and it won't have a favorable public view, therefore the problems inherent to the platform itself don't get attention right now.

Putting Facebook on blast is the way to change this.

the only reason its not worse is because nobody's leaked a phone number database yet with accuracy regarding who is using it for 2fa. Currently strangers can't look at a list of phone numbers and tell if they are used with Instagram or Facebook and if that account is even valuable, quickly.

just security through obscurity.

Wait, I must have missed this feature after I updated. Is it now connected with my 1Password? Or do I have to set it in the settings or something? I'm only seeing the autofill icloud password stuff.

It's hidden kinda deep in the settings...

Settings -> Passwords & Accounts -> AutoFill Passwords then check 1Password.

Ahh found out the problem. I had to update 1Password in the app store for it to show in there! Thanks!

Just updated on my iPhone 6s that I dumped due to slowness. It’s just as fast now as the android I replaced it with and LastPass works with all my Apps now. Only thing missing now is good keyboard support (disclaimer: haven’t tried since update)

I’m really impressed and happy with this direction Apple’s taking. Hopefully they’ve learned their lesson with the battery slowdowns.

Been using 12 on my 6s since the early betas, and it was like getting a brand phone. If it wasn't for wanting the new cameras and OLED screen, there isn't much reason for me to upgrade!

Same boat with a 6s+ but the camera is really feeling its age, especially in low light.

Agreed, my occupation has been shifting to a professional food photographer/influencer/promoter/marketer/whatever you want to call it. For off the cuff shots, when the DSLR isn't around, or live video, I need better high ISO performance. Really didn't want to spend the $1000, but the camera is MUUUUCH better than the 6s.

Maybe you'd be interested in a smaller camera like the Sony RX 100ii? Seems like it might be perfect for high-quality off-the-cuff photos, and with a big sensor and an f1.8 lens it ought to do very well in low light.

I have the Mark IV, it's a great little camera that I use for mountain hikes. But it's not discreet or small enough to just pocket daily. Also doesn't do Instagram live videos, or allow me to upload stories at that moment. iPhone pretty much required.

Also! It's confirmed the new sensor in the XS is 32% larger than the X, which is SIGNIFICANT.

The XR is getting the same new sensor, so if you want to save a couple hundred bucks and can wait a month, it might be a thought. (That's my plan, less for absolute cost-saving reasons than I think I really want one of the colors that are only going to be available on that line.)

Decided this time I'm just taking the iPhone Upgrade Plan path, and treating the phone as a service. $55 a month interest free, and a new phone ever year + roughly $500 yearly trade in. Also comes unlocked, and without carrier contract.

Thank goodness. The lack of 3rd party password manager integration was infuriating. Glad LastPass is usable natively.

I avoided ios 11x entirely due to performance concerns and it looks like I may update to 12 because it's reversed most of the slowdowns.

That’s what I was waiting to hear. My iphone 6s went from “this is the most amazing phone” to “I need to change phone” because of the last upgrades. I was waiting for this.

Replacing the battery on my 6s resolved most instances of my phone feeling slow. So far this new update resolves the remaining lag and pauses.

I went to the apple store a couple days ago and they replaced the battery for my 6S for free!

Probably due to this issue: https://www.apple.com/support/iphone6s-unexpectedshutdown/

Battery replacements aren't normally free unless you have AppleCare.

Bought an iPad last summer and it keeps crashing. Is there a similar issue for these?

My GF did the same here in Australia and, even though her health was above the threshold, they did the same.

I was actually thinking of buying one of these battery case. Don’t care much about doubling the size of my phone, but I do care about the extra day of battery. Anyone has a recommendation here?

What do you feel is missing from the system keyboard on iOS?

Swipe and comma button in a reasonable place.

Yeah first thing I do on a new iOS install is install SwiftKey.

I recommend using Gboard on iOS. SwiftKey never felt quite as good.

Thanks, I will give that a try. I've always been pretty happy with SwiftKey but I'm game to try something else that is reputed to be better.

It would be so cool if Apple would provide swyping in an own keyboard. Maybe a "Siri-Keyboard".

Number row.

Dvorak. Even after more than a decade, it's the only current OS I can think of that doesn't have a Dvorak option -- and the only Apple OS since the 1980's that didn't.

There are third-party keyboards, but none of them are good. That's not the third-party developers' fault: the iOS keyboard API is so wimpy, developers literally cannot make a keyboard that works like the default ones.

I don't want to hunt and peck, so on iOS I mostly use the Japanese "flick" keyboard, which is much more logical, but doesn't offer English autocompletion, so it's just bad in a different way.

I really don't know why iOS doesn't support Dvorak.

>I really don't know why iOS doesn't support Dvorak.

Probably because Dvorak is used by less than 0.001% of the users and it is only optimised to the English language.

It's _really_ niche.

It works really well with any language that alternates vowels and consonants, which is most of them. I can also confirm it works great with Japanese, via Kotoeri (kana input essentially alternates vowels and consonants, even more so than English). I have yet to run across a language where it isn't better than QWERTY, though I'm sure they exist.

And less than 1 in 100,000 sounds awfully low. Where'd you get that number? There's 700,000 people living in my city and I personally know a lot more than 7 Dvorak users here.

iOS does support Dvorak for Bluetooth keyboards, so it's not so niche to cause Apple to ignore it completely. Isn't "Dvorak on BT (only)" even more niche than "Dvorak"?

This, so much. I've been a Dvorak-only user for nearly two decades, and the iPhone is unusable to me, as I'm not going to relearn QWERTY just for a single mobile OS.

Do any third-party keyboards on iOS even support Dvorak? Last time I checked, keyboards (e.g. SwiftKey) that support Dvorak on Android don't have the option on iOS for whatever reason.

I don't even need predictive text or autocorrect – just swapping the stock keyboard keys to Dvorak, and removing both prediction/autocorrect features would make it vastly more usable.

The especially infuriating thing is that iOS does support Dvorak at a software level – I use my iPad with an Apple Magic Keyboard via Bluetooth, and Dvorak works perfectly.

I share your complaints about 3rd party keyboards in iOS, but just a heads up in case you hadn't noticed: Google's Gboard recently added support for Dvorak and Colemak, and is by far the most stable/usable 3rd party keyboard I've used.

You can buy one for 0.99 from the App Store.

Multiple languages supported in the same keyboard. I frequently type in several different languages, and apps (and even contexts inside apps) never retain the correct keyboard for long.

The best alternative I've found so far is SwiftKey which lets you add dictionaries for many languages and just combines all of them together with Markov chains. Works perfectly. On the other hand, I miss out on features such as the new password filling, and I don't really trust SwiftKey privacy wise (they have a cloud service which they try to sell you).

My 6s has amazingly poor battery life even after I got the battery replaced and this was before battery gate. I got frustrated and bought an 8 Plus because I knew it had a very large battery and the battery life while using it is about at iPad levels - I can use it all day without it breaking a sweat.

I updated my 6s and reset it to see if that improves the battery life situation.

iOS 11 reduced my battery life significantly over iOS 10. Don't have hard numbers but it felt like ~30%.

The 6s's battery was fine until iOS 11. I've been running iOS 12 for a day now, and I notice an improvement in battery over 11.

If the rumor that programmers and even executives had to carry and use iPhone 6 Plus devices for a while so that everyone felt the pain of slowness, then I'm in awe. This is exactly what needed to be done.

This is a great release and I hope Apple continues in that vein. We don't always need "NEW FEATURES", but we do always need fast, responsive and stable systems.

the value of dogfooding

At a previous company we periodically flipped a feature switch on our dogfood builds that would throttle all network requests to simulate speeds in developing countries with slower cell networks, and it was really cool to see what stuff worked and what was awful when, for example, pictures could barely load or assets wouldn't show up.

You mean Facebook? I know Facebook used to do this for a while

Pretty much every big enough company does it.

I wish they would carry iPhone 4S. iPhone 6 is pretty modern phone. Did they manage to slow it too?

iPhone 4S doesn't support iOS 12–it stopped at iOS 9. iPhone 6 Plus is slow because it had to drive large display after downsampling, and it just wasn't all that much more powerful than iPhone 5S.

Snow Leopard and Windows 2000 I believe will long be fondly remembered by some, for being stable releases that barely introduced new features, but focused instead on stability.

Another review worth reading is MacStories. It covers the new Shortcuts automation app in more depth.

https://www.macstories.net/stories/ios-12-the-macstories-rev...

I was interested until I saw the article is broken up into 17 pages, and the first page was entirely fluff.

It's 42250 words long. Each page has a different subject, and breaking up saves your bandwidth since you don't have to load the entire thing at once.

A little inside baseball, but MacStories also doesn't get paid for "pageviews", it's just an easier way to navigate a MASSIVE review.

While they do have some inline advertising, it's all worked out ahead of publishing.

For reference: https://www.macstories.net/advertise/

Thanks for the link. This is a pretty insightfull and detailed review. Definitely worth the read.

Seconded. The depth and insight of the coverage reminded me of the Siracusa MacOS reviews that Ars posted years ago.

In case you want to vote it up: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18006605

Shortcuts blew me away when I saw what you could do. I assumed based on the demo that it was pretty limited, but you can set variables, loop, execute remote SSH commands, call into APIs, execute Python, etc. And it comes with API access to send iMessages/read contacts/etc. The fact that it's so much easier to write an automation "script" or shortcut than swift code is huge!

The System 7 OS on Macs introduced AppleScript[1] which offered a similar set of features (but designed for the 90s).

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AppleScript

AppleScript is still around, as part of OSA, which now includes JavaScript support.

This had been possible with iOS before. It was this workflow app (https://workflow.is/) which app bought to integrate more natively in iOS

Sadly with some crazy UX changes - tapping on an action used to open it but now it runs it (which has caused me a few misfires already!) Plus the "pick an action from the list" is now a scroll-up pane rather than a scroll-sideways pane making it horribly more clunky to find what you're after.

I'm super happy with the update so far on my 6s. I did a comparison with a family member running iOS 11 and the difference is huge, particularly for camera apps.

My only sore spot with iOS now is the Music app's horrible UX. Otherwise, I'm feeling pretty confident my phone will last me another year.

"I'm feeling pretty confident my phone will last me another year"

That's great to hear. I used to be one of those people who got every new iPhone release (or at most every 2nd release), but I've been keeping my trusty old iPhone 6 going for a couple of years now and I have very little interest in getting a new phone any time soon. My 6 is getting a bit slow, so if performance is better on iOS 12 that's great news

I'm on a 6+, and the performance is a significant step up (more so than going from a degraded battery to a new battery sometime after the iOS 11 thing). It wedges me somewhat between a rock and a hard place; I'm getting the grey bar of death (https://ifixit.org/blog/8309/iphone-6-plus-gray-flicker-touc...), so really want to replace the phone... but the performance is back to where I wouldn't otherwise bother. Bugger.

Literally same situation here except with a 6 Plus. Upgraded this morning and the speedup and faster animations are pretty damn noticeable. Camera used to sometimes take 6-7 seconds to open which is now cut to about 1-2s. Definitely recommend the update, the new features are also pretty convenient, I especially like the new Do Not Disturb and Screentime provides some interesting stats. Now it's just battery life getting awful, but I've been putting off getting the battery replaced because spending a week+ without a smartphone is borderline impossible and I have no backup device.

Your old battery might be causing your slowness. Replace it for $30 in the store, too; you don’t have to be without it for more than an hour if they have the parts in stock. My iPhone 6a is super quick. Camera opens in under a second.

I got tired of Apple forcing their music streaming service down my throat, while making the music app worse every year. I finally stopped syncing music to my phone entirely and just stream from my home server with the Plex app.

The best part is, I haven't had to open iTunes in over a year.

I've decided to look into using alternate Music apps at this point (some have pretty good reviews) because the "Apple Music" pop-up I get nearly EVERY time I launch the Music app causes me problems. If I don't happen to have a connection (say on an iPod) the screen sometimes freezes and I can't even get to the music stored on the device. They really ruined the Music app.

Note: This is one I've heard good reviews of, but I haven't purchased it yet:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/doppler-music-player/id12521...

When Apple first presented iOS 12 to the public and to developers, it promised a feature called Group FaceTime that would basically work like Google Hangouts; you'd be able to video chat with up to 32 participants at the same time. That feature has now been pushed back to a later software update in the iOS 12 cycle—meaning it's not available for us to test yet.

Bummer... :/ that’s probably the one feature that I’ve been most waiting for

First developer beta[0] is out if you want to try it out...

[0] - https://www.macrumors.com/2018/09/18/apple-seeds-first-beta-...

We'll see if they keep it in. iCloud messages was reintroduced in the beta and removed in public version.

that feature was in some promotional material i just recently watched, either within their recent presentation or an ad. that is really disingenuous of apple to have not removed it from their ad campaign while knowing it was delayed. that feature alone was a major consideration of mine when recently deciding whether i should get an iPhone (i chose not to) since my family has iPhones.

Between this and my battery replacement I opted into, my 6S Plus feels brand new. If your battery health is < 85% I really suggest you take advantage of the cheap battery replacement by year end.

https://support.apple.com/iphone/repair/battery-power

And use something like coconutBattery to check. iOS reports 82% while coconut reports 62% (!) on my 2 year old 6s. Definitely getting that replacement ASAP.

My iPhone X is at 90%. You don't think it's worth the $29 + trip to Apple Store?

If your battery health isn’t low enough, Apple will not replace the battery. This happened to my mom and her iPhone 6.

This was the rule early on, but I heard that they will now replace the battery no matter what. The current guidelines don’t mention any threshold: https://support.apple.com/iphone/repair/battery-power

He tried to tell me that I didn't need to but I told him the battery drains precipitously in the cold and that'd I prefer we switch it and he just said ok and started the process.

[edit]

To answer your question, I guess it couldn't hurt? The thing is that I definitely did not trust the 81% that the battery health check was telling me. My battery would drain in minutes from 30% and the phone was practically useless in the cold.

The apple store replaced it for free for my 6S.

I recently replaced the battery in my 6S (it was free under a replacement program). Combined with iOS12, I have no reason to upgrade to a new phone for another year or two. Performance is great.

The camera is really the only feature that I would upgrade for at this moment. But I don’t use the camera much.

They refused to replace my 6S battery unless I paid $150 to replace the screen (there was a crack outside of the main display).

Amazon sells a bunch of self-install battery kits for ~$21, which has a same-or-higher capacity battery, including the tooling.

It was very easy to do the self-install, and my 6S is just really snappy. This was only on iOS 11 too. Excited for iOS 12.

A minor feature/bug fix that I noticed was that the "back to camera" feature of the in-app photo viewer in camera is harder to activate.

That's a mouthful -- the way that I usually view photos is by bringing up the camera (since that's so easy from many entry points) and clicking on the lower left to get to the photos. The main downside of this is that if you didn't slide exactly left to right (even the slightest diagonal) then it would exit the photo viewer and go back to the camera. This was very annoying because if you flip back a few photos and then mis-swipe, you completely lose context.

But now that has been made significantly harder to accidentally invoke. Still possible, but harder, and it has so far made a nice difference for my usage.

I've been using iOS since the iPhone first came out and never knew about this feature. Thanks for the hint!

I just used Google Maps to get to work this morning using Apple Car Play - it's awesome. There were a few annoying errors in Apple maps on my daily route that I won't have to deal with ever again.

why do you need maps for your daily route ? public transportation ?

Some people drive to work.

Some people don't need a navigation system for a route they drive every day.

I tend to use Google maps anytime I drive in Seattle - they've added information about accidents and closures that I'd otherwise miss. When I did drive to work it'd routinely save me time when there was a wreck on i-5 by telling me that and giving me another route.

It can recommend an alternate route if there is traffic on your regular route.

It is nice to know when there are traffic incidents ahead and sometimes it'll route around it for you. I like knowing my ETA also

Article misses best new feature: You can close apps on the iPhone X by swiping up from the app switcher, rather than holding down in a very small area to bring the red x forward.

Closing apps on iOS unless they are using location services in the background (which you can disable) doesn’t save anything in terms of battery life or processor usage most of the time.

Sometimes I find I do need to close an app to “reboot” it. But yes. It’s actually amusing to me to watch people compulsively close their background apps. I used to try to explain why it wasn’t important but I don’t think anyone ever accepted the advice.

My wife is one of these people. I tried to talk her out of it and tell her it actually makes her phone run slower, not faster, but, as typical, she'll listen patiently to what I tell her and then go on doing her own thing anyway, so I eventually gave up.

I’ve seen this brought up in several threads online. I really don’t care about that. The app switcher is not a task manager as you say. The reason I compulsively close apps is the same reason I keep my chrome tabs small. It’s a pain to find the one I want if I don’t

> There are three configurations for this feature in the notifications section of the iOS 12 Settings app: automatic, by app, and off. It defaults to automatic. In this case, notifications from one app will generally be grouped together, but, for not entirely transparent reasons, iOS might intelligently decide not to in some cases.

This is transparent; it's decided the "thread identifier" for the notification so that threads are split out separately: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/usernotifications/...

Transparent to developers, yes. But not to end users.

Well, the goal is that developers implement this in a way so that it makes sense why notifications are split up.

>but, for not entirely transparent reasons, iOS might intelligently decide not to in some cases.

This would perhaps be better worded as "for reasons the article's author didn't understand, but people who familiarized themselves with information released months ago at WWDC did…".

I'm going to reiterate the advice to read the MacStories review instead of the one at Ars. It has much more depth and insight.

I’ve read both. Just wanted to explain how notifications work.

My no-frills, hardcore iPad mini 2 is alive and rocking again, thank you Apple for having allowed that on a 5 years old machine.

The only feature I wish Apple would implement, is Phone Call no longer takes full focus on my screen. We don't call as much any more, at least compare to 5 - 7 years ago. And we get lots more Spam calls than we used to. It really is annoying when I am in the middle of something and a whole screen splash telling me I have a call.

I wonder is dark mode is coming to iOS 12 in later updates because it is awkward to go back and forth with Mojave and iOS.

Has anyone worked out how to stop mobile Safari asking to save passwords every time you log in to something?

Settings > Passwords & Accounts > AutoFill Passwords > Flip the switch to off

Just talking instinctively (from using iOS 12 since GM last week), iOS 12 has been one of the best and smoothest releases I've ever experienced. If you haven't updated, do it now. Barring any security issues or HW bugs, outlook for Apple looking very strong going into 2019.

Did the new emojis make it into this release? I can't seem to find them on my updated phone.

It's pretty minor compared to all the other things, but I was looking forward to some of them...

https://www.theverge.com/2018/7/16/17577288/apple-ios-12-new...

New emojis usually go into the .1 releases to nudge people into updating to get the last major release's bug fixes.

I updated to iOS 12(on an iPhone SE) yesterday and my WiFi calling feature went to hell. Needed two/three reboots and toggling WiFi calling for it to work again. Still seems flaky and I'm heavily dependent on it to work as my apt gets 0 reception. Apart from this frustrating issue, I love the integration for password managers they have now. It's made my life so much easier.

My AT&T WiFi didn't work immediately after the update, but I didn't reboot and within a few hours it was working again. I did turn WiFi Calling off and on again, once, in Settings---not sure if that was necessary as it didn't immediately fix it.

I use AT&T too. It was spotty but much better yesterday. I suppose it just needed some combination of reboot/toggle to work again.

They definitely changed something about how WiFi calling works, because with this update my carrier was finally able to support WiFi calling on iOS for the first time. For some reason, up until iOS 12 they couldn't do that or visual voicemail.

My carrier is a reseller (MVNO) on top of T-Mobile. Curious to know why they couldn't offer these features before.

Does anyone have any idea of when I'll be able to do a full-wipe re-install of iOS 12 via iTunes? I have a super-annoying bug in Youtube and I'm hoping this step will resolve things, but as of last night, my iPhone 7 wouldn't re-install via iTunes because the version wasn't available from the software center.

I deleted my Beta profile, but still no go.

You could probably use the full nuclear option by using recovery mode[1] to restore it.

[1] https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201263

See my other response..

Can't use iTunes: https://imgur.com/a/nnt1f75

The above is what I get when I plug my iPhone into my Mac and it pops up iTunes.

EDIT: After some trial and error, recovery mode may have been activated, not sure it's working yet. Hopefully I don't brick my phone. EDIT-2: Nope, same result..

Download the IPSW from here: https://ipsw.me/

Manually install through restore. Example: http://osxdaily.com/2010/11/23/how-to-use-ipsw-files/ (Click restore instead of update button for a full wipe)

Wish that I could but I'm stuck in an endless cycle shown here: https://imgur.com/a/nnt1f75

...and iTunes is unusable during this cycle.

Actually quite surprised, their claims of increased performance ring true. My iPad Mini 4 and iPhones 5S and SE all seem significantly faster after upgrading. On older devices it is more noticeable. No more animation lag, hitches/delays, etc.

Would like to see a continued focus on these kinds of improvements.

Apple Maps (at least in Barcelona) are outdated too much. Wrong buildings, wrong roads, wrong parcs - maps are 15 years old. Unusable.

While Apple (naturally) never really publicized this, the map data they've been using, including the terrible data where you are, has been cobbled together from a variety of third parties. According to reports earlier this year, a new Apple Maps data set is rolling out with iOS 12 -- but it's going to take a long time to be everywhere worldwide, because they're essentially building it from scratch the way Google did.

The good news is that they had their new data available where I live in the San Francisco Bay Area during the iOS 12 beta period, and it's a noticeable improvement. I haven't been using Google Maps too much recently, but I find Apple Maps' routing here to be pretty comparable to Waze's, without doing the "here's a crazy shortcut!" thing that Waze occasionally does. (Sometimes the crazy shortcuts are good, but more often than not I've found they...aren't good.) The bad news is that it's probably gonna be years before they get Europe done.

> iOS uses machine learning to study how you manage your notifications and recommends how to deliver notifications in the future based on that.

This seems silly to me. I never have so many notifications on the lockscreen that I need help organizing them. Different notifications require different actions; ML can't possibly know the difference. For example, I never click Google calendar notifications but I usually want them on top. It will be confusing when everything is out of chronological order.

Anybody try on a 5s?

Yes, installed smoothly, seems faster. For example, time until the camera is up by swiping right on the lock screen is 2-3 seconds instead of roughly 6-8 seconds.

Same here. Installed it on 5s, seems faster (not 100% sure though, maybe that's a placebo efect) than iOS 11. Definitely does not feel slower, so it's safe to install IMO.

I went from 10.3.3 to 12 directly. There doesn't seem to be any performance degradation.

A “small” release that is 1.2GB? Hate to see what a large release will be...

Just because it's a small visual update doesn't mean that there haven't been changes in system frameworks which now need to be updated.

I'm going to be one of those people who wait until 12.1 or 12.2 this time. I upgraded right away with iOS 11 and had my phone constantly lock up on me or randomly restart, that was not a great experience. Especially when you're renting a car that can only be unlocked through a phone app and your phone is dead for 30+ minutes.

> when you're renting a car that can only be unlocked through a phone app

Off-topic, but this is an incredibly horrible idea. Can you name and shame the company so I make sure I never rent from them?

I tend to be a forgetful and generally clumsy person, which means I neglect to charge my phone a lot. So I would be stranded in this case?

The only one I know of is Silvercar. They only rent Audi A4s and Q5s.

Maven by GM is like this. It's a little bit clumsy at times[1], but it does the job for hourly rentals (the primary purpose of the app). The cars have Android/iOS chargers in them. As far as I can tell, you would be in quite a bit of trouble if you ran out of battery.

[1] If the internet connection is weak, it will attempt to update trip information before letting you unlock the car. You're better off turning on airplane mode.

Most of the car share companies operate this way near me. It's not "exclusively via app", but most people rely on the app and NFC to unlock/start and lock/end their trips for convenience.

That said ... you are in a car that can charge your phone too.

In my case the issue wasn't battery, it was the phone locking up and no "reset combination" for it would reboot it.

https://www.maven.com/us/en/ - unlike Zipcar, they don't have a physical card they send you to unlock your car, you can only use your phone.

Reviews are heralding this version as being quite stable, and my experience since the early betas matches this. I encountered a handful of little quirks, but no crashes or restarts.

This whole release is mostly a performance and stability release and so far, lives up to the hype.

In general, I'd agree with you. I still remember how a newer iOS release brought my iPhone 4 to near-unusability because of slowness. But this release is different (really). They really got it to be faster and better.

I will buy an iPhone the day I can choose a different rendering engine for my browser. Or, at minimum, Safari stops being a turd.

Just yesterday I watched hilariously how a friend tried to do an online job interview on her iPad. But no MediaRecorder API support. Had to lend her my 200 euro Android burner to get it done. Pathetic.

Edit: To be fair, Edge would also have dropped the ball, but then again you probably have FF or Chrome also installed. In iOS you are SOL.

You know that you can install Firefox on iOS?

From wikipedia [1]:

Firefox for iOS is a browser from Mozilla, for the Apple iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch mobile devices.[5] It is the first Firefox branded browser not to use the Gecko layout engine as is used in Firefox for desktop and mobile. Due to iOS security restrictions chosen by Apple (specifically the inability to set writable pages executable, which is essential for just-in-time compilation), Firefox has to use the built-in iOS WebKit-based rendering framework instead of Gecko.

In short - no Gecko.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox_for_iOS

Firefox didn’t use the Gecko engine on Android until a week ago and it’s still in beta.

https://hacks.mozilla.org/2018/09/focus-with-geckoview/

For Firefox Focus, which is a fairly young (released last year for Android) offshot. The main Firefox for Android has been using its own engine all along.

I doubt Gecko is handling the media recorder API. More likely it’s Spidermonkey on most platforms and JavaScriptCore on iOS.

MediaRecorder is a working draft. Developers who use draft API and don’t even bother to test on other platforms are cowboys.

TIL, thank you.

I am considering making the switch when my Pixel 2XL is no longer getting security updates, but I agree with your point. I don't think I'd pull the trigger unless they stopped that ridiculous behaviour. Every other operating system I've ever used has allowed other rendering engines.

Or they could have used one of the dozens of apps that have the functionality....

She was in no position, as a job applicant, to be dictating the company as to what sort of an app they should be using to interview her. They used an online pre-screening tool called Videolind [1] which actually pretty cool.

But that is my point - if you force your customers to such a position, albeit for plausible security reasons, you better make sure your browser is top of the game.

I still very clearly remember when Jobs showed everyone that you can have a Real Browser in your palm (as opposed to WAP-somethings). You could hear jaws dropping around you. It was glorious! I do not think you get a proper browser with iOS these days. The world has started to be "optimised for Chrome" and this sucks.

[1] https://help.videolind.com/article/4-video-does-not-work

> She was in no position, as a job applicant, to be dictating the company as to what sort of an app they should be using to interview her.

We're off topic now, but why is that? I frequently get meeting requests to speak to potential clients via Skype, which I decline because I don't use Skype due to built-in surveillance.

I think there is potentially two potential scenarios here.

- The company conducting the interview is not aware that the software they are using to conduct interviews does not work on a significant proportion of mobile devices. or

- The company conducting the interview is aware that there is a problem and either don't want to employ those who use ios devices, or are using the problem as a test for the candidate to overcome.

If I were having to be interviewed/screened via an online process, I think I would anticipate problems and make sure that I had access to a computer running a recent windows and a range of browsers on hand. Web based applications have got a whole lot better at dealing with differences between browsers, but when you get to the more involved processes such as camera/microphone integration, you can still encounter problems if you are not running the systems the software was tested on. Even then, I think you could still have problems if you have just updated your OS or browser to the latest version.

Only Firefox and Chromium-based browsers support MediaRecorder. I use Firefox and have for over 15 years now, since it was in beta, but native browsers (Edge/Safari) are my 2nd choice and what I recommend to others by default due to power usage. That's why Apple restricts you running whatever you want on their devices, and they're correct in doing it.

That employer is an entity that more than likely only develops with and expects everyone else to use Chrome, which in this day people have realized is shameful, lazy behavior. If you don't want to support other platforms and all the diversity that entails then you're in the wrong business. I'm glad the tide has finally turned in public opinion on that front. Chrome is the new IE.

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