Apple’s iOS 4.2 Available Today for iPad, iPhone & iPod touch
apple.com
apple.com
Compare to now, where you can unlock and relock the device while you roll, without looking at the screen.
Holy crap. Doesn't Apple drug-test their employees?
Decisions like this make me think they don't use their own products, which I know very well isn't true. Just plain weird.
It's not typical usage, however.
Orientation lock is incredibly useful in two key areas for iPad: people lounging at home, and in business. I use the lock all the time in both settings -- especially when I'm using the iPad to demo and want to be able to pass it around the room.
Hiding the lock away in an area where many, many people will never find it and it's far slower to access is a hugely retrograde step, and the only thing in its defence is that it's consistent with the iPhone. Which is no defence at all: not only are the buttons different (vertical lock vs horizontal), the two devices are different, too.
I feel so strongly about this I'm staying on 3.2. I haven't felt the need to multitask on iPad yet -- I have an iPhone anyway :)
People use their iPhones to listen to things, but use iPads for the screen. On a device you listen to and that RINGS, making this a mute switch makes sense.
On a device you use for the screen, you're often twisting and turning views between portrait and landscape such as to suit each new web site you visit, so making this an orientation lock makes sense.
These devices are not the same, and the switch doesn't need to do the same thing.
It was a bad decision. People don't confuse their iPhone with their iPad. Both functions are accessible from the home home swipe screen; the hardware switches could have remained purposed to the device's most common uses.
An unrelated but interesting tip I stumbled on: on the lock screen, you can double click the home button to bring up the audio controls (without unlocking the device). Using those controls you can skip unlimited Pandora songs without getting the 'our license doesn't let you skip...' warning.
And the lock can be activated from the task tray, so it's still there.
Is this true of iOS 4.2 as well -- meaning, you can only lock the display in portrait mode with the double-click-wave-a-dead-cat-and-swipe-the-task-list maneuver? If so, I absolutely am not going to upgrade my iPad to 4.2.
The real frustration is that this would be a perfect place for a system preference: "Side switch: Orientation lock / Mute". But as usual, it's Steve's way or the highway.
Why would they support locking both modes on the iPad, and not on the iPhone? It's not that I don't believe you, but I'm still reluctant to install 4.2 on my iPad until I understand what Apple actually did here.
It is that you don't believe me, otherwise you would ... believe me; that's OK though I grok "trust, but verify" so I quickly made a demo video:
That really is a strange inconsistency, though. I guess it's tied to the functionality that allows the home screen to reorient itself on the iPad but not on the phone.
I'm running pandora and I flipped the "mute" switch and it did nothing. I then switched to a video podcast and the same issue occurs, flipping the switch does NOT mute. The volume rocker worked normally... holding it down actually muted the device.
I've been aware of this change since beta, but what's the point? Especially if it doesn't function as expected. The iPad doesn't have a ringer or a vibrator (lol, for lack of a better word). I find this confusing! Which mute mutes‽
I preferred it as an orientation lock anyway... Maybe this should be configurable?
- AirPlay
- The Find My iPhone feature is now free to use without a MobileMe℠ subscription
- AirPrint ("a next-generation Wi-Fi print architecture that dramatically simplifies printing by completely eliminating printer drivers") (thanks, rufo)
The free Find feature is only for "iPhone 4, iPad or new iPod touch (4th generation)"
* Create a free Find My iPhone account on any iPhone 4, iPad, or iPod touch
(4th generation) running iOS 4.2. Once you create an account on a
qualifying device, use your Apple ID and password to enable Find My iPhone
on your other devices running iOS 4.2. Find My iPhone is not available in
all countries.
Also consider that many apps are using the same (system) libraries, which are only loaded once.
Needless to say this was an unexpected little surprise to start the week.
Note: posted in other thread, but this one looks like it'll be the one.
Wrong !
Although 93.6% of our users use iOs4, the other 6% were pissed off when they found out that the app crashed on iOS 3.1
The icing on the cake ? After the app crashed, the users deleted it - and were prompted to rate it. I'm sure that you can imagine the rest.
Thank god that the 'rate on delete' feature was removed from iOS4 - although that is scant consolation.
Yes, it does. It just doesn't install them anymore. If you look at the packages (in a hidden folder), you can find them.
It also occurs to me that a torrent would solve the problem.
I'm wondering though, if this will be the last version iOS that supports the iPhone 3G.
By the way, the actual page about iOS has been updated with 4.2 info: http://www.apple.com/ios/
>a next-generation Wi-Fi print architecture that dramatically
>simplifies printing by completely eliminating printer drivers
It would be nice if AirPrint could be enabled for non-AirPrint printers through something like Apple's AirPort Extreme, which already makes printer sharing easy. Maybe this is already supported via some other means and I'm just missing something.
But other reviews I've seen, including MacWorld's, seem to imply that printing to a shared printer isn't supported.
I've built printing into my iOS app, so I'm a bit desperate to determine what the status is exactly. It's so frustrating because it works fine in iOS 4.2 beta, and the difference between AirPrint-compatible printers only and supporting any printer is HUGE (obviously).
I'm quite sure that Apple has stated that officially the only printers supported by AirPlay (now) are those few HP models listed in the press release. I've seen a few statements supposedly made by Apple people that always include the words "for now." I suspect what happened is the beta test either revealed that the setup process was "too weird" or they ran into a number of nasty bugs and decided to hold off until they could nail it all down. Whatever the real reason is, though, Apple doesn't seem to be talking about it.
Thanks for letting me know. =)
Edit: After further reading, I've discovered that this is not the case. =( There are apparently means to fix this via third party apps, however.
Mea culpa.
It seems largely like an iPad release, but they're updating the version numbers for everyone.
There's AirPlay for iPhones though (If you use it). And, independent from the iOS version, the Find-My-Phone functionality now for free. Which was, before, the only reason I was even considering paying for Mobile Me.
(Bloody Californians think their time zone is the centre of the universe. Grump.)
Patience.
It's for iOS 4.0 but can be changed to check for 4.2.
However, my experience is that downloads are pretty slow in the first hours, when a new major version becomes available. Patience is needed.
You know... we should optimize the IDL with a graph partitioning algorithm. We can measure inconvenience by the number of times any human's life trajectory passes the IDL. That's impossible to measure, so let's use recorded passenger airline / boat transportation numbers as a proxy. That also quantizes our graph into distinct origin and destination nodes. We penalize any graph edge that transits the IDL. Then we just find the min-cut of that graph, and draw the new IDL across the cut. That still leaves us lee-way about where to cross each edge in the cut, so we can apply aesthetic heuristics to try to draw a maximally straight line, or one most aligned with meridians. Then this will no longer be arbitrary.