iOS 16 Available September 12th | Hacker News Reader

iOS 16 Available September 12th

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323 pointsyottabyte47421 comments

Apple’s call and sms spam filtering remains subpar to say the least. When I had a Pixel, I had the option to let the OS transcribe what the potential spammer was saying and end the call. It’s puzzling why Apple isn’t doing more here.

Boy do i have a lifehack for you. Buy a phone number with a random area code, like ohio or something, all the spam calls come from surrounding area codes.

There's a useful iOS app called Number Shield that lets you block all calls coming from numbers that match the first six digits of your phone number. That's the most common spoofing technique, so it really does help.

E.g. if your number is (555)555-1234 it'll block anything from (555)555-0000 to (555)555-9999.

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/number-shield/id1319082167

It's funny how 30 years ago, probably 90% of my actual phone calls were with numbers that matched the first six digits of my own.

Now that number is 0%.

Begone is better than Number Shield plus its free.

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/begone-call-blocker/id15968181...

This is a great idea; unfortunately now I have dozens of voicemails a week from these numbers instead of just calls. Any option to prevent them leaving voicemail?

Can confirm, bought it years ago, the only app that allows me to easily block full range of numbers. I'm in France and work just fine.

Interesting. Anyone knows what API they are using or how they are achieving this? It’d have thought that this would not be possible.

Just be warned this will also block legitimate numbers.

Does that app transmit data anywhere?

its kinda sad that we need an app for that ngl

One of the things I've noticed recently is that spam call numbers have gotten smarter -- somehow they're figuring out numbers corresponding to regions that I spend time in that aren't related to my area code or central exchange...

Meta smarter

I love this. Used to live in SF and kept the 415 number after moving. Any of the bay area area codes get instant silenced (manually). And any number from my current area code I know to answer as it is legit

I noticed spam callers are even copying the first 3 numbers of my cell phone.

555-555-1234

All the 5s match my number, which hasn’t happened since I used to live in a small town. That always makes me do a double check but it’s also easier to ignore.

this wouldn't work for me. most of the spam calls that I get are from other random cities/states that are far from my area code.

But then my calls will come from the random area code too. It’d be neat if you could do a dual phone number, where your CID on outbound calls shows as your local area code, but you give out the foreign area code for inbound calls.

But then you mess up callbacks.

Your missing the point. Spammers call you from a spoofed number so that you think its someone near you based on the area code. I lived just a town over an invisible line in 2009, and ordered a new phone, and got an area code that the only other person I know that has a number in that area code is my wife. (920)

the ONLY calls that call me from that area code are spammers. if I get calls from any other area code, only 20% or so are spammers. Others are sales/marketing for IT companies, etc, and calls from one of the 2 area codes that cover my area where I actually live are usually all local businesses, etc. If I had to guess, I would say 85-90% of the 'spam callers' call and spoof the 920 area code when they dial me. that drastically cuts down on my automated messages about a car warranty that is about to expire.

You misunderstand slightly. All the calls from the area code matching your phone number are more likely to be spam (spammers matching you to appear legit). So unless you call people in that particular area, you won't be matching their area code, so you won't look like a spammer. And unless you happen to know a lot of people in that area, you won't get calls from that area that appear to be spam.

> But then my calls will come from the random area code too

Nobody will care. Everybody's cell number is just a record of where they lived when they got their first phone; people you call will have you in their contact list most likely.

I must be extra lucky because I receive calls from all over the US and beyond. Just yesterday I received one from Brazil.

I have a 972 number. Caller ID recently made it look like I'd received calls from Israel and Peru, but it was had dropped the US country code (+1) and making it look like the calls were from +971 (Israel) and +51x (Peru).

OK, so basically if you have a 650-64 Palo Alto number, you'd block half the VCs in the world. If you have a lower Manhattan 212 number, you'd block a quarter of all finance recruiters? (granted, the latter has moved to Linked In)

Yeah, I did this. But it's not enough. Most phone number blocking apps get really slow blocking a couple of area codes. Number Shield loads _very_ slowly on my iPhone 13 with just 919 and 984 blocked. But they do fire prober calls from other locations too. The interesting thing is that they never actually say anything on the phone or in text. It's solely some sort of DoS against me. Weird.

In my location the spammer spoofs the numbers of calls that get picked up or go to voicemail.

I assume they do this to muddy the block lists that get used to filter their calls.

I know this because every now and then I will get up to 5 or so calls or texts of people claiming I called them.

Actually, the more-telling part of the number is the exchange. They'll often match yours, which is dumb as hell.

In the age where most phones are mobile, this whole "scheme" is pitifully ignorant.

Spamming, like many other things in life, is a field of bleeding edge technology. :) They were not using your area code a decade back, then they realized your area code works better - it probably did for a while. When it loses effectiveness, they will move on to other patterns they have discovered.

Also, A/B testing is not just for good guys.

Yep. I have had my number for, forever and I'm now in a different area code. Pretty much everything that comes in from that original area code is spam.

Just have the US start sending missiles to spam call centers and people will stop real quick.

People answer phone numbers that their phone doesn’t tell them who it is?

Huh.

This works until you get calls from DC.

Select "Silence unknown callers" and you're done.

Last month I had a flurry of spam texts and calls. I moved the slider to the "enable" side a few weeks ago and have had zero issues since.

I would have this on if it wasn't for the fact that I get calls from delivery drivers, who all have unknown numbers, and for whom the notification must be immediate.

I'm always paranoid that I'm going to miss a call from one of the million numbers that come from my kiddo's school.

Buy a Twilio number that forwards to your real number. Then whoever has that number can call it, and it will ring you from the known Twilio number. Add to address book and voila!

My carrier has an option that forces unknown callers to enter a 2 digit number to proceed with call. I add known contacts to my list online and they don't get the prompt. Works well, however I now get a lot of spam texts which it doesn't work for.

It's strange they don't have some API that would let Lyft or Doordash or whoever provide caller ID for this use case.

This is a great feature but it's a huge double-edged sword. I need to remember to turn it off when I'm expecting a call from an unpredictable number, and then I need to remember to turn it back on again after I receive the call. It would be great if I could turn it off for some number of hours or days.

I've had the same issue if I am expecting a call but not sure what number it will ne. But iIf you already know the number, adding that to contacts will solve the problem ?

I use a Google Voice number for all of my delivery, business, etc phone calls. It has built in verbal call screening and the smarter spam filtering, and thus my personal iPhone # can be exclusive for my white listed personal calls.

My strategy is to have my voicemail say that I don't get calls from unknown numbers and to text or call again if it is urgent.

I do this.

I missed a hospital calling about a family member. They should have left a voicemail, but they didn't.

People always say this but if this is true:

1) You have a kid AND 2) You're not currently looking right at that kid

Then you need to pick up calls from random numbers basically every time. Just the way life is.

For those of you that want to learn more about this feature, Apple has a page describing how it works as well as how calls get through.

It’s a simple read and worth the minute or so if you use the feature.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32757077

Hospitals and MDs often use unrecognizable phone numbers, you may want to receive those.

What is unknown? Someone not in your contacts? That’s just not feasible, I receive a lot of first time callers especially from work.

Be sure to turn it back off when you're waiting for a call to come in from the plumber, A/C tech, etc.

I forgot this was turned on and missed a call from a recruiter once.

They didn't leave a voicemail? Weird of them to leave money on the table like that for the sake of a few extra seconds.

It's the biggest thing I've missed after switching from a Pixel to an iPhone this week. In my first day of iPhone ownership, I received more spam/text calls than in an entire year with a Pixel.

Why would you switch the same week they were going to announce all new stuff?

There's a 2 week return period, and I wanted to be sure I'd be fine switching to iOS before buying an expensive new device. Part of the reason I'm switching is the new Pro models are a lot closer to Android phones with features like always on display. Based on the rumors, I was pretty sure what to expect today, so I have just been onboarding myself with iOS yesterday and today and can return the phone by the time I should have the new one in hand.

Second hand phones exist.

T-Mobile does this and also labels a lot of numbers "Scam Likely". Its been really helpful. I too wish Apple would do more, but the carrier can do a bit.

I'm using yandex app and it detects spam calls. So iOS does have some hooks for that. You just need to find app for your location.

I just use the free version of Truecaller: https://apps.apple.com/app/id448142450

appreciated this rec. trying it out, so far looks legit. always worried that these things are free (so what data of mine are they selling) but the permissions seem locked down

Truecaller is not bad in some areas like EU, US etc as there are strong privacy laws. They have slightly different versions based on the country and jurisdiction.

But where there are no strong privacy laws like india, truecaller is straight up spyware

https://restofworld.org/2022/how-truecaller-built-a-billion-...

Give the app bouncer a try. I been able stop almost all spam texts.

That must be a US thing? I never get spam calls on my iPhone and only very rarely a spam text; maybe a couple of times a year I get the 'you've got a parcel with a fee to pay' scam.

It's definitely not a US thing.

Robocalls seem to be way less of a problem in Europe than in the US, not sure how many other countries suffer from the same.

I’d like it if you could just have an ephemeral call list. I don’t want to add an estate agent or recruiter to my main contact list, but I’d like to see their name come up if they call back or I get another call from them.

Just make it a contact with like a 7 day TTL or something. If it’s longer term, save it proper.

I mention this because the old Caller ID setup doesn’t really work any more.

I set up a VOIP phone number for this and give that one to anyone that I don't meet personally. Anyone that needs to be able to call me has my real phone number.

Apple’s call and sms spam filtering remains subpar to say the least.

It's my understanding that this is largely because of the carriers.

Phone and text spam filtering came to the iPhone in China long before it hit other countries. I only know a couple of people in China, and neither are in tech, but they say it's because spam was absolutely rampant so the government leaned on the carriers to fix it, and the iPhone spam filtering appeared a short time later.

There's no shortage of Chinese users on HN, so maybe one of them can explain further, or refute what I've been told.

Is it true? I’m also curious about it.

Also using Focus mode to whitelist who can call me when has reduced my spam calls.

It's weird there's still genuine uses for phone calls. Tends to be only sort of "official" ones from gov agencies or utilities providers. Both cases should be scheduled via text/email first, otherwise it's rude.

I think they have a patent on it

robokiller does a decent job on ios

Anyone surprised by the Island notch software/hardware design? I don't mean the idea of a pill shaped notch. But the fact they're pouring so much software resource into it (even building dev tools) when the shape/size of that cutout should in theory change in the future when technology allows for smaller (or non-existent) cutouts.

They will either feel commited to that hardware design and stick to it longer than they should, or they will have to abandon a lot of software.

I haven't read the new developer documentation, but if it's like the notch of previous years, Apple will recommend that 3rd-party developers don't pay it any heed specifically, and instead rely on the safe area dimensions/constraints provided by the OS in order to control their layouts.

For 3rd party developers to show information in the Island, that will be achieved through the Live Activities API, which is not specific to the iPhone 14 Pro.

The Island will likely stick around for a few years, after which point Apple will adapt that notification area UI to work without the Island.

Yeah, I didn't see anything about the Island that seemed to be API-specific to it. Music players will probably get into the Island by just adapting the normal Now Playing APIs that get your media information on the lockscreen, live updates get to the island by adapting the Live Activities API, and so on. Maybe there's some customization that you can do, but I imagine developers don't need to specifically code for it.

And since it's basically baked-in that iPhones will have a front-facing camera, and they don't seem eager to abandon Face ID, I don't see the Island disappearing anytime soon. And even if they get some fancy new tech that allows to hide everything behind the screen without massive compromises, it's still possible for the holepunch design to live on in the non-Pro models and later in the SE models (similar to how Touch ID still exists on the SE).

They specifically called out having APIs for having "dualing" (two) different streams of notifications so it seems like they are playing at having this sort of UI permanently (or at least near future).

It makes sense to keep an incarnation of this in the future because they explicitly are replacing a few types of built-in UI with the Island.

Funnily I thought the exact opposite when I saw it. To me it seemed like making the space a dynamically laid out notification blob area was a great way to handle upcoming cutout shape changes. E.g. maybe the iPhone 16 moves the camera behind the screen and then that hole punch becomes just another slot to arrange notification elements. This leaves largely the same UI model to code against (to Apple and developers) among multiple phones which need to be supported for 5+ years but have different hardware layouts.

They likely have the next 3-4 phones mostly planned out. Given the current limitations of under-display cameras, they’d rather pour resources into function over form when it comes to features and services like FaceID, FaceTime, and Memoji.

Sure, maybe by the end of the 20s, the “island” will be obsolete, but I think Apple is secure in the knowledge that the pill is here for several generations of iPhone to come.

Indeed, Apple keeps designs around for quite a while, while other brands iterate more quickly it seems. The notch and fingerprint scanner when underscreen cameras and scanners are available, the MacBook 2016 design, the Apple mouse, are all examples that come to mind.

Do you think they plan out that far in advance? If so that is very impressive.

I viewed this as a signal that the island is not going away anytime soon. It's like they told the team: "how can we make it seem like the notch/island is a good thing, like we did it on purpose?"

I don't mind how it looks/operates, and it's definitely nicer seeming than the notch it replaces.

Right. It's very commital, which I find a bit surprising.

Apple’s shown themselves willing to abandon software as hardware needs dictate (3D touch, grr).

They’ve committed to obviously bad choices before like the touchbar.

I loved the touchbar. The new MBP I received from my new company doesn't have one and I actually miss it :(

When you actually use it to customize your workflows it was really cool. For example I added a global screenshot button in mine. In iTerm I added buttons to split vertically and horizontally, and buttons to SSH on my most common machines. On VSCode I liked to be able to run in debug with a keyboard button.

I'd love a compromise with both the fn row, and customizable buttons, either physical buttons or a mini touchbar (or a full fledged touchbar above the fn row)

I saw it and immediately thought of the touchbar on the Macbook Pro. A little bit like what we can we do to make the "Pro" model stand out with something else.

Well, in their defence the touchbar is still around and actively being supported on all native apps.

Apple, for iOS 17 can you please let me freely rearrange the apps on the screen? Having them shuffle every time I add or remove an app is really a pain

There are a few workarounds.

Clear Spaces https://apps.apple.com/us/app/clear-spaces/id1532666619

iEmpty https://iempty.tooliphone.net/

MAKEOVR https://www.makeovr.io/

I'd like to be able to log into my Apple ID account and do this on a PC. I hate sliding them around various pages with my finger.

And I think years back you used to be able to do it from iTunes when the phone was connected with a wire. It disappeared over the years probably when they moved to Finder, but I think maybe even earlier.

You can do it with Apple Configurator, and there's a command line tool to apply a JSON layout.

It used to be possible with iTunes, but they removed that feature in 12.7.

I thought that was available via iTunes on Windows?

Most painful part of switching from an Android phone. I could always find an app, alphabetically, in one swipe from whatever I was doing.

Swipe down on the home screen and type in the app name.

On iOS you can also tap on the "search" button on the lower part of the screen above the dock. Or you could swipe to the rightmost pane where apps are sorted alphabetically.

Passkeys gonna be fire. Goodbye password managers, credential stuffing, and phishing attacks!

(photo deduplication is nice too btw, been a long time coming)

Indeed, but the lock-in potential of passkeys [1] is concerning.

[1] https://www.fastcompany.com/90755838/theres-a-big-problem-wi...

Exactly. Planning for emergencies is a big factor in password/secret management.

Currently, managing and using close to a 1,000 passwords, all around 35 characters and completely random, is an absolute breeze using 1Password (and likely any password manager of choice) and my data is securely stored in a cloud I can access from any device (and from my neighbor's laptop if disaster should strike).

No way that I am handing over this functionality to a bunch of private keys that I can only access when logged in using a device from one specific vendor.

The security benefits are vastly less than the loss in portability/emergency use.

So the idea of passkeys is fantastic, but as long as I cannot store them in a central platform agnostic place, it's passwords for me.

Can’t you use both a passkey and regular password?

Otherwise if I login by passkey to a website on an Apple device, how do I login outside Apple’s walled garden?

No. That would be like having a steel door in your house, and a cardboard one next to it.

I believe the login flow on another device (let’s say a Windows laptop) is that you scan some QR code on the laptop’s screen from your iPhone. Then the iPhone communicates with the site and validates the passkey. And if that is all OK the site on the laptop will proceed to log you in.

That is concerning. Have to weigh that against the added security, I guess.

The article does talk about how tools like 1Password could allow for PassKey sharing without vendor lock-in.

> FIDO’s current proposal has no mechanism for bulk-transferring passkeys between ecosystems. If you want to switch from an Android phone to an iPhone—or vice versa—you won’t be able to easily move all your passkeys over.

Allowing each tenant to move thousands of highly-sensitive internal tokens to a competitor is something the credit card processing industry, somewhat surprisingly, has more or less solved. Most credit card gateways that store card information on file in a PCI compliant way will allow a merchant to specify another competing PCI compliant service provider, and will export the merchant's information directly to the new service provider in bulk, without needing to provide any of the raw information to the merchant themself.

Via https://www.chargebee.com/blog/credit-card-portability-impor... it seems Braintree developed an industry standard for this in ~2010, potentially (I don't know the history) as a way to force Stripe to allow its merchants to move elsewhere in the ecosystem without holding their cards-on-file hostage. Based on the list at https://docs.spreedly.com/guides/exporting/ - all of whom support this workflow - it seems this was quite successful.

Ironically, the standardization site has been down since 2019, but I suppose it was no longer needed. https://web.archive.org/web/20190212151438/http://www.portab...

Its guiding light was to be "patterned after telephone number portability that was part of the 1996 Telecommunications Act" - which is quite telling in this context.

Point is, there is precedent for developing frameworks in which secure token storage platforms can allow you to freely move between them, with secure bulk data transfers. Apple and Google would do well to get ahead of this, lest it become a regulatory or PR nightmare later when high-profile stories accuse them of intentionally promoting lock-in.

There isn’t really a standard beyond processors publish an OpenPGP and you negotiate over support tickets to determine where an encrypted file can be delivered.

There is no standard for the file format used to exchange data. Could be JSON, CSV, Excel, etc.

> a regulatory or PR nightmare later when high-profile stories accuse them of intentionally promoting lock-in.

Aren't there lots of instances of intentionally promoting lock-in on these platforms already? I haven't seen significant measures taken against that. How would this be different?

Not only the transfer issue, there is no way to have the root source of truth be yourself or your corp for corp owned devices, or dealing with mud puddle issues combined with an inability to have proper off device backups. You bring it up in tech talks about it and they sputter and avoid answering it.

I'll happily accept this tradeoff.

Fire so long as sites implement them. Given how "quickly" yubikeys or even just touch ID webauthn have been going around, it doesn't seem very imminent :( Hopefully Firebase or AWS offer an easily accessible way to add passkeys etc as auth methods.

There's nothing special RPs have to do in order to support Passkeys. It's just WebAuthn that happens to be synced. If the site supports WebAuthn it already supports Passkeys (As long as they're not doing significantly less common things like checking for attestation, which Passkey-enabled credentials won't do).

On the flipside, Yubikey and whatnot are still pretty niche.

That being said, I was hoping to see more touch ID webauthn so I'm not super hopeful. But we can hope!

I dunno. Passkeys scare the crap out of me.

If I get arbitrarily locked out of a Google/Apple/Microsoft account then my logins for absolutely everything go up in smoke too.

(Assumes the key is a composite pair of local passkey + cloud account secret)

I think the best course of action is to add multiple keys when you sign up. If you follow best practices you should already be adding multiple yubikeys in your account so just keep doing the same.

This assumes that every site knows enough about what they’re doing to allow for let alone mandate multiple keys.

I’m just saying, I’ve seen a lot of sites demand mobile 2FA and also allow for nothing else shudder.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong. But, does WebAuthn really improve authentication? With WebAuthn, instead of a secret password, you store a secret key. Why not just use really long passwords behind password managers? You're using some software to save a secret in either case.

WebAuthn drastically improves authentication.

For starters, it doesn't release any secret information into the wild. Instead, it uses a public/private key pair to challenge the user to decrypt something that only she or he can decrypt. The website (as an example) no longer stores anything but your public key, which doesn't reveal anything.

Secondly, you can't give away your passkey information so it is for all practical purposes unphishable. (I can't conceive of a way that it might be phished, but that doesn't mean there isn't one.)

In addition, it is super-duper easy on users. They don't have to remember anything, and can login with the touch of a finger or a glance at the camera.

This is a huge step forward in authentication.

Some malware could steal your keys for example when you have your PM unlocked or snatch it from the clipboard but it’s impossible with hardware keys. It also won’t let you get phished but arguably PMs protect against that too.

I don’t know if it improves security if you already use a password manager but I guess it will mostly be more accessible and practical

I believe it also validates the site via ssl to killnphishing. with passwords you can still trick users.

Once again, reliant on the same Big Tech companies. If you think it is a good idea to hold your keys like this then you have never experienced lock in which is very easy to do for these companies.

> Passkeys gonna be fire

Knowing apple they're going to be another avenue to lock in. Now not only does switching your device been that you have to leave apple's ecosystem, it also means you lose all your passwords for all your websites.

I'm honestly hoping this does not take off.

> Knowing apple they're going to be another avenue to lock in.

I mean it's just Webauthn under the hood, I'd bet money you can export them from keychain into another tool like 1Password or similar.

Time to pay up! Exporting is impossible on Apple's implementation of Passkeys. Even exporting your entire keychain of passwords doesn't result in any WebAuthn keys, just standard passwords. Tested on macOS 13 and iOS 16 betas. I sincerely doubt this will change with the official releases. Google's implementation is probably the same. Microsoft hasn't done a thing yet to support passkeys besides what Edge and Windows Hello do.

Interesting, I’m not running the betas and I searched a bunch before I posted and couldn’t find it mentioned one way or the other. I hope that changes sometime in the future, though I only use 1Password anyways.

> Time to pay up!

What’s your favorite charity?

Exporting is purposefully made impossible in many implementations of Passkeys (aka Webauthn authenticators) other than Apple's. For example, Yubikeys are designed so private keys can never leave the authenticator [0]. Enabling the export of private keys from an authenticator greatly increases the attack surface of an authenticator.

This is a long-standing security/usability tradeoff in the Webauthn spec. Various solutions have been proposed, but as far as I know most of them are still just drafts, e.g. [1]. The best practice has been and, as far as I know, continues to be to register multiple authenticators, e.g. a primary and a backup authenticator. This practice has a variety of benefits:

1. Avoids lockout if an authenticator is lost.

2. If you use multiple authenticators from different vendors (e.g. Yubico and Google) you:

1. Avoid vendor lock-in

2. Can rapidly respond in case a security vulnerability is discovered in one of your authenticators, as has occurred for both Yubico [2] and Google [3].

One could use Apple's Passkeys as one's day-to-day "personal" authenticator, and use an authenticator from a different vendor (e.g. Yubico Yubikey or Google Titan Security Key) as their backup key. I don't see how Apple's implementation increases the risk of lock-in beyond that of any of the other major Webauthn authenticator providers.

[0]: https://github.com/w3c/webauthn/issues/865#issuecomment-3804...

[1]: https://github.com/Yubico/webauthn-recovery-extension

[2]: https://www.yubico.com/support/issue-rating-system/security-...

[3]: https://security.googleblog.com/2019/05/titan-keys-update.ht...

I imagine you'll have the option to still have a password, for those that aren't concerned about Apple lock it'll be a nice benefit.

That would kind of defeat the purpose, no?

No? At least not for convenience. On my phone, instant login, anywhere else, enter password.

They actually provide good migration tools.

When I migrated a few years ago there wasn't, I was only able to find some python script in Github and it still required tonnes of manual process to filter out noise

Have they added the feature to have a locked (and hidden, I know that hidden already exists) folder for pictures?

That is my understanding. FaceID for hidden and deleted photos.

Amazing. I cannot believe it’s taken this long but that’s amazing. Upgrading first chance I get.

Still no ability to have separate accounts on an ipad... I sort of understand that a phone is a single user OS, but the ipad most certainly should be a multi user OS.

There will never be multi user support on the iPad until the iPad has some real competition. Apple has absolutely no incentive to invest resources in to multi user when it’s much more likely that you will buy two iPads than buy an android tablet.

They invested the resources to make it already exist:

https://developer.apple.com/education/shared-ipad/

Yes, but that doesn't work for having one iPad shared by family. That's about writing software to be used for shared iPads.

iPads can be shared in a business or school setting and going through the administrative steps to implement that. https://support.apple.com/guide/deployment/shared-ipad-overv... talks about how to do it using a Mobile Device Management (MDM) server. There are various services not from Apple that provide free servers but we've seen over and over how a free service goes paid or is simply cancelled.

There's nothing on the iPad like Macs have for allowing multiple users.

The main limitation I have heard is it requires apps to store everything in the cloud. The multi user system is basically a single sign on for the apps and requires all this infrastructure to power it.

That's not the same thing, as I've replied to you elsewhere.

I wonder how many children have been traumatized by accidentally seeing their parents Messages on a shared iPad.

Can confirm my kids have and it wasn’t even a shared one.

Ergo I’d rather not have shared devices anyway. It was hell when we shared a family windows 2000 computer back in the day.

This would be great, but it would never be announced in Sept. It would be announced at WWDC, when they talk about the new features of the upcoming OSes.

Apple's products are closer to a personal computer than most PCs ever were ...

"User accounts" in the security sense, maybe isn't the right abstraction.

Have you tried logging in with multiple accounts on a Nintendo Switch? You're sort of just logged into all of them at once; and when you launch a given app/game, it asks you which profile you want to launch it under.

To me, that'd be the perfect multi-user experience for iPad. Any user can unlock it with their own biometrics/credentials; once unlocked, that user can then act as any user that has a profile on the device.

When would you select user? The ipad is designed to swap between apps way more frequently than you swap games on the switch. If you have to select user every time you swap apps on the ipad, it would be horribly annoying.

Probably only as a double-check if the iPad detects that it's been handed to a different person without being locked. In most cases you'd want to continue under the assumption that the user who unlocked the device wants to open things as themselves.

Mind you, the Switch has to do user-switching only at app startup time, because it's an effectively single-tasking OS. Given that you can be running tons of apps (and instances of apps) at the same time on an iPad, there are many other UI possibilities that synergize with an explicit user-chooser. Examples:

- You know the app groups in the new macOS/iPadOS? Imagine a user profile as an app-group-group (in iOS) or a group of spaces (in macOS.) Do the slow-swipe-up-from-the-bottom thing again when you're already in the app chooser, and you get the profile chooser.

- Some gesture you can do while in an app, that means "give me this same app, but viewed as a different user" — which is like a retroactive version of the Switch user-chooser thing. If other users already had the same app open, it'd work like Expose/Mission Control for seeing what their instance of the app looks like. And, as an optimization, apps that detect that you've user-switched away from them soon after launch, when they're still in their toplevel view, could take that as a signal to quit (as they'd assume that you just meant to open the app as a different user.)

> Probably only as a double-check if the iPad detects that it's been handed to a different person without being locked.

Huh? How would the ipad detect that?

> - Some gesture you can do while in an app, that means "give me this same app, but viewed as a different user" — which is like a retroactive version of the Switch user-chooser thing

That sounds horribly confusing and complicated. And it doesn't even address the security problem where you don't want other users to see your stuff. (Eg, my kids shouldn't see notifications for me, or be able to read my email).

I agree that its possible (its software, anything is possible). But I think it would take serious design work to implement user switching like you're proposing in a way thats not horribly complicated.

Probably the easiest way to do it would be at the unlock screen. Have the user lock their ipad then unlock it as a different user via a different profile attached to the fingerprint sensor.

Currently hardware-wise they're designed for a single user experience. E.g. the limit of face-ids in the secure enclave, or more trivially they don't come with a lot of storage to host multiple photo/music/app libraries without having to put every little thing in the cloud.

The pro line is well into the desktop class territory on any hardware requirement, be it CPU, memory, storage etc.

At this point, any feature that exists on their laptops is lacking on the iPad only by choice.

I'm pretty sure the discussion is about multi-user support on the current Pro line-up?

So let me ask you directly: How would you propose to get around the limitations of the secure enclave for Face-ID on existing iPads?

Allow as many Face-ID registration as there is users ?

TBH I’m not sure what you see as an issue, and why it couldn’t be the same secure enclave management as on the MBP with touch-ID.

There is a hardware limit, just like there is with Touch-ID. I don't really see the point in continuing with this if you're going to argue in bad faith - trivial research would have revealed that and other limitations which would prevent this on the current line-up.

Now I'm not saying that Apple can't produce an iPad in the future that delivers on the right experience mix in a multi-user capable setting, but that's not what you're asking for - I've provided just a few of the mant kinds of limitations that will degrade the user experience in a way that makes clear that Apple aren't just trying to juice their customers.

So the answer here is neither "Apple should just make it happen", nor "You should just buy a second iPad" - the answer is: you should buy the tablet that gives you everything you want, or learn how to share, I rdgaf.

I’m starting to think this will never happen.

If you don't mind using MDM you can get something akin to roaming profiles on iPads. It's an enterprise feature, but it was introduced sometime during iOS 13.

I agree though, native multi-user support would be great. Though, I'd hope it's better than what we got on tvOS.

Don’t act like it is either easy or free. You need a verifyable company, and the iCloud accounts need to be managed as well. They can’t be personal or manually created.

It is not a viable solution for either the average user or the advanced user.

This exists.

https://developer.apple.com/education/shared-ipad/

That's not the same thing as they're talking about. The account sharing on education devices, which is what you linked, clears the device every time you switch a user and every user has the same apps installed. What the OP is asking for is individual user profiles that let each person customize the device for their own account.

This may be an unpopular opinion but I find iOS to be a much better appliance OS than Android, Chrome, or Windows. That said they are getting close to the 'computer' gap.

Back when computers were super expensive (like millions of $) the owners (or lessors) would try to get them to do as many things as possible all the time so maximize the "value" of their investment. What was truly revolutionary about microprocessors was that they were inexpensive enough that you could dedicate them to doing just one thing.

But then the capabilities of microprocessors started to greatly exceed the level of computation you needed to do that "one thing" and so the age of "featuritis" was born where the "wasted" compute resource in the dedicated microprocessor could do something to differentiate or add value to a product. That could be as silly as adding more indicator lights, but usually it was a way of altering the thing the appliance did. Today, nobody things twice about a washing machine that has a combinatorial set of 20 different wash cycles, versus the simple "water level", "water temperature", "number of cycles" that was achievable with just simple mechanical switches and a few dumb sensors.

However, it seems we might inflect again, as even cheaper microprocessors make even less expensive appliances available. Further, the subsumption of dozens of devices into the "phone" (copier, camera, recorder, navigator, television, Etc.) has created its own "traffic jam" where you might be watching TV on your device, and suddenly there is something you want to take a picture of and call someone about it. Multiplexing the device kind of works but it can also become annoying.

It will be interesting to me to see how this more "computer os like" version of iOS will fare, and whether or not multi-functioning on a single devices develops into a negative feature vs the current economic win.

I don't understand how anything you said is an argument in support of iOS being a better appliance OS than its competitors.

Then your understanding is correct :-), I was not making an argument about the relative merits of appliance OSes. The point I was trying to make, and it relates to the linked article that I read and the features they are highlighting, is that the gap between "appliance" OSes and "general purpose" OSes, is narrowing. Both because the "general purpose" OSes are becoming more appliance like, and the "appliance" OSes are becoming more generalizable[sic].

As they get closer, differentiating them becomes more challenging. And I am really curious about how this affects both markets.

After all of the iterations of iOS, there is still no way to have only the first new/unread message per SMS/iMessage thread generate a notification--particularly the notification sound or tone.

I find the feature would be useful in all situations, but would be especially useful in group threads. I don't need to hear a ding every time someone in a group thread sends a message if I don't have my phone in my hand. One ding generated when the first unread message is received will do just fine.

Not the same thing by a long shot, but you can turn on "Hide Alerts" for group chats. My wife has all of her long running group chats set to this to prevent alerts all day when her friends are chatting.

Yup, this has been very helpful. Coming back to 20+ messages where 50-75% of them are reactions was annoying to get alerts for.

Well, looks like it's the end of the line for my 1st gen SE. It's been a good run. I'll miss you, little guy.

Looks like my other options for a small phone are 12/13 mini or possibly the 2nd/3rd gen SE. But not nearly as compact as the 4" SE.

The 13 mini is only slightly larger than the SE (2016). Dimensions:

  Model    Height   Width   Depth
  SE       4.87"    2.31"   0.3"
  Mini     5.18"    2.53"   0.301" (strangely precise)
  Diff    +0.31"   +0.22"  +0.001"

The screen goes from 4" to 5.4", which (for me) was worth the slight increase in size. I'm not going to say it's as compact as the SE (2016), but it's not a huge difference (nowhere near the difference of the regular sized 13 and 14 models). The mini is also smaller than the later SE models (except for depth, they are slightly slimmer).

As a lover of the original SE and a a Mini 13 owner the HUGE increase in thickness is what really bothers me with the size change. Their official thickness spec only measures the main body of the phone which is virtually a zero change in size but the camera bump makes it's thickest point about 50% thicker.

Personally I think the screen being made bigger is a downside, makes it harder to use one-handed.

Still, it's too bad there isn't a 14 mini.

I switched to a 12 mini last year, after my last 1st gen SE took a drop that damaged it beyond practical repair. They aren't that different in size, and it didn't take me as long to acclimate as I'd expected, especially when I found I do quite like having a larger display and smaller bezels - especially since few if any apps or websites are still tested on 4.7"-class displays like the 1st gen SE's.

There's definitely an inflection point - I also have a Galaxy 10+ for work and still find it uncomfortably large. The 12 mini seems to fall right in a sweet spot for me.

I just bought a 13 Mini about an hour ago (waiting for the $100 price drop)… don't get the 12 Mini, you're really gonna want that extra battery life

I'm in the same situation as you were. Has there been a price drop? It seems there wasn't one in my region...

12 mini isn't available from Apple anymore

Also the RAM sizes doubled from 12 to 13.

You can use iOS 15. Apple is known to supply security updates to old iOS versions for a few years.

It looks like I'm going to keep my iPhone 13 mini for the next 7 years, or until it won't receive any updates anymore.

2nd gen SE owner here: It was a great little phone, but the batteries are terrible and terribly inadequate. You were warned.

I just ordered a 'refurbished' iPhone 8 plus off of Amazon to replace my SE -- it's slightly bigger than the second generation SE but it has a second telephoto camera so... if I'm going to be forced to have a larger phone then that's sufficient compensation. Also it still has a fingerprint sensor!

I'm surprised they aren't using the iPhone 14 in the promo images.

Anyway, looks like my old iPhone 7 is finally going to have to retire. :/ I can't wait for a good Linux phone.

Edit: 7 years of use isn't bad compared to Android, but the phone is still just fine, and it really bothers me that it's turning into e-waste for no good reason.

Apple just released another security update for the 2014 iPhone 5s.

Yeah but if they’re not guaranteeing security updates then you still can’t rely on it. Which sucks.

I don’t really get it either. You want to charge a premium for your handsets, why not let there be a secondary market all the way down the value chain for prices below where you want to go? It just means you’re selling more iCloud services and locking people in that way so that when they finally do need that upgrade it’s an iPhone rather than an Android.

For some reason they patched one and only one actively exploited bug in iOS 12. They did not patch the bug in iOS 13 or iOS 14. iOS 14 hasn't received any security updates since October 2021. It's been even longer for iOS 13. And also for iOS 12, except for that one unusual patch. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201222

We can't treat the exception as the rule. It would be misleading to claim that Apple is still supporting iOS 12, or 13, or 14. Every other security patch in iOS 15 has been left vulnerable in pre-15 versions.

Apparently, the reason Apple dropped support for iPhone 7 is performance on the new lock screen. Pretty lame if that's the case, Apple has usually been good with supporting all devices as long as the hardware allows it (for example, hardware level secure enclave was required at a certain version of iOS)

It is a extremely hard to maintain differential software features across hardware product lines. What ‘sounds lame’ may translate into significantly added complexity to the maintenance process.

E waste, no no don’t throw it out. You can use 99% of the apps even without ios16. It’s only when individual app developers phase out support for ios15 typically 2-3 years after. Facebook, YouTube etc still supports even iOS 12

Apparently, the reason Apple dropped support for iPhone 7 is performance on the new lock screen.

It’s more likely the fact the iPhone 7 only has 2GB of RAM and two cores, not to mention missing the Neural Engine, the image processor and other features on Apple’s latest SoCs that iOS 16 requires for some of its features.

Most of major features of iOS 16 would have to be removed to run on an iPhone 7.

Same, I still love my 7 (which still works perfectly fine despite using it everyday, even still has its original battery and screen) and been avoiding the upgrade until now because of the lack of Home button on the newer models.

I use both iPhone 13 Pro & Pro Max everyday because I do iOS development (among many other things), so it's not like I don't know how to use the newer models, but the Home button is so intuitive I can use the 7 even when I'm half awake whereas I need to pay close attention to the screen on 13.

Not having a Home button is like a keyboard without an Esc key.

I've stayed with the SE models for the Home Button. Love the Home Button and not having a phone that's too big or too small. The SE models seem just right. But I hear they don't sell well so who knows how much longer they will be around.

I agree that the home button is invaluable from a UI perspective but for unlocking, it's annoying as hell if you live somewhere it's cold (ie gloves) or get your hands significantly dirty or wet.

It's not really e-waste given Apple's recycling program, which is generally decent. 7 years of use with an option to recycle it when upgrading is about as good as you'll find.

Do the phones actually get recycled? (This is a genuine question.)

iOS 15 will continue receiving security updates for a while yet, so there’s no pressing reason to upgrade. Or you could donate the phone to Apple in case they can melt it down and reuse it instead of shredding it.

> OS 15 will continue receiving security updates for a while yet

iOS 14.8 was released on September 13, 2021, iOS 14.8.1 on October 26, 2021, and then nothing else.

My daughter as an iPhone 6, so its many versions pass and I think they have stopped security patches with this upgrade. How much risk is she of being hacked without those updates -- is there any way to track identified risks?

It's the iOS app support that suffers. Apple makes it pretty unbearable to get apps for unsupported devices so I take those and relegate them to single use non-data holding devices like dashcams and other uses.

I’m pretty sure Apple just released a security patch for the iPhone 6 just a week or two ago. Seems like they are keeping “severe” CVEs patches on (some) out of support devices.

Apple just released a security release - iOS 12.5.6 for the iPhone 5s a few days ago (8/31/2022). I doubt they have stopped releasing security updates for the iPhone 6.

The group putting this together almost certainly didn’t have “clearance” to see those images before they were publicly released today.

Apple is getting ready to release iOS 15.7, which will work on iPhone 7…

Don't expect that to last long. iOS 14.8 was released on September 13, 2021, iOS 14.8.1 on October 26, 2021, and then nothing else.

6 years. iPhone 7 was released in September 2016.

come back and let us know how many years that good linux phone gets supported

Is anyone else anxious about updates?

I used to be so pumped for them when I was a teen. They’d unlock a world of new opportunities.

Now I just feel anxious that there’s change for change sake to justify the resourcing of the design teams and that they’ll make things I’m used to worse all for a bunch of features I’ll never use or want.

I don’t want more features. There’s so many already and they’re really cluttering.

Like when they moved the address bar to the bottom in Safari. Bad. Shame. But they let you revert it. I’m just waiting for that team to decide, “no those users are idiots. It’s been a year. Time to remove the setting and impose our new vision on existing users.”

…it’s me isn’t it? This sounds like old man yells at cloud speak.

Maybe not just you, but probably more rare. I’m pretty excited for many of the new features coming in this update! (Lock Screen customization, live activities, and iMessage edits being a few very powerful and practical additions!)

I also liked the safari address bar change, as it’s objectively more ergonomic for thumb use.

Many recent iOS updates have significantly expanded power user features too: we have shortcuts and automations, customizable focus modes, default browser/mail apps, Home Screen widgets, etc. Most of which the HN crowd (and many others) have been asking for for years!

In fact, we’re at the point that people can technically customize app icons.

I think these updates objectively are unlocking a world of possibilities. The features I listed above a pretty powerful — especially shortcuts and automations.

It’s ok to not be in that headspace anymore — but many others still are :) You can always stick around on older iOS versions! And I’d argue there are vanishingly few new features that dramatically change the way you use your phone. The address bar being a good example.

Oh come on. Bad? Shame? I don’t know about you but my thumb is always at the bottom of the screen. Why would I want to reach all the way to the top to reach the address bar?

When browsing I spend the most time interacting with the page, not with the address bar. Thus I want the page to be covering the easiest part of the screen to reach: the bottom.

... but as soon as you start scrolling on said page, the address bar minimizes? Are you sure that's an actual problem you have?

I’m surprised it took this long. Also surpasses that the gone screen isn’t bottoms up.

I use a spacer app for transparent icons for that.

Back button and menu items should also be in the bottom.. park in the ass to go all the way up there

I’m hesitant to update my Mac (it’s still on the last macOS with a 10 in the major version), and I’ve been cautious about the UI changes for several years now. I think the last time I updated during the contemporary release cycle was Yosemite. As far as being more motivated by OS updates in the past, I was one of the schmucks who paid $30 for the first Mac OS X public beta.

I update iOS on my phone as soon as I’m notified I can. I have not been disappointed once. I was also skeptical of moving tabs to the bottom in Safari, turns out it’s awesome! It did take me a bit to get used to. But I can actually reach the address bar, and I can swipe between tabs and even create new ones in the same motion. It’s everything I miss with whatever godforsaken extension I used to use on desktop to scroll between tabs, and a lot more reliable.

The problem with macOS is it’s clear these well considered designs are a backport even if they really put in the effort to make them fit on the Mac. I will stick to 3 year major version upgrades until it feels otherwise. And I’ll continue to update my phone as soon as I get the notification that I can, until I feel similarly disappointed.

They won’t make them functionally worse. They’ll outright break them, and then move on, then eventually once everyone has stopped using it because it’s so broken they’ll quietly remove it.

Generally iOS is quite conservative in its update. They also tend to port the most useful/popular features of the various Android and Android custom launchers with a bit of lag so things are already quite ironed out when they land.

> …it’s me isn’t it? This sounds like old man yells at cloud speak.

Not just you. Other than the automatic OCR of chunks of text in the camera, I can't think of a major feature in the last few years' iOS updates that I have enjoyed and regularly used. Apple used to produce surprisingly stable and snappy software on an OS that didn't have protected memory and ran on a toaster (Mac OS <= 9). Now it produces crashy trash on a teraflops machine with an MMU.

How about if, instead of making buttons harder to identify, Apple fixed the Podcasts app to take fewer than five seconds to load the "downloaded episodes" list? Or to hang and crash less often? Or to not randomly require an internet connection to play downloaded episodes? Or to make the "Listen Now" thing less of an opaque AI-driven roulette wheel of uselessness?

App Library is a huge improvement particularly the Niagara-like list. Control center was also significantly improved and notifications are still lagging Android a bit but are getting better and better with each release.

App Library is a perfect demonstration of the adage that "Artificial Intelligence isn't." Mine has Audible, Clock, Settings, and Contacts in the first box, Craigslist, WhatsApp, something I don't recognize, and a folder of crap I don't use in the second, DDG, the App Store, Calculator, and another folder of crap in the third... Why would I ever use this?

EDIT: If it were marginally "intelligent," it would have a box for "listening to stuff" (Podcasts, Music, Audible, ...), "reading stuff" (DDG, Safari, Books, ...), "scheduling" (Calendar, Reminders, ...), etc. But I don't need AI constantly figuring these things out. I can put those apps in folders or known places on my home screen once, and never have to worry about them wandering around because an AI was trying to be helpful.

From Apple's support documentation (https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/find-your-apps-in-app...): "The apps in App Library are organized in categories intelligently, based on how you use your apps. You can add apps in App Library to the Home Screen, but you can’t move them to another category in App Library." So I can't even make it less useless. Great.

I wouldn't mind if the interface froze for a few years :) . until I get a new device or something. As it is I will turn off the "auto update" feature for a month or two to let the other suckers test it for me.

> …it’s me isn’t it? This sounds like old man yells at cloud speak.

Not just you. I don't feel like the features they keep adding are very well conceived, and they just seem to ignore earlier features that need refining.

Why don't you like the address bar at the bottom? Surely it's more convenient to reach for. Is it muscle memory, or more just a dislike of change?

Muscle memory, and on smaller phones it was never a problem. I can reach the address bar on a 13 mini one handed, and it’s been so long that it’s more annoying to relearn it. It’s best to make it an option.

But it is an option.

I love the address bar at the bottom.

> Like when they moved the address bar to the bottom in Safari. Bad. Shame

Yeah I'd have to disagree on that. The bottom is the correct place for the address bar on a phone. It's where your thumb is.

I’ve been on a similar journey. I’m not worried about the official releases, but in recent years I’ve stopped jumping on the public betas. Probably because I rely on my devices more for work since Covid

I mean, you don’t have to update, at least not right away. Just wait a couple of months for the new version to stabilize and see what the reports say. In the past I’ve sometimes skipped two or three major updates to reduce the frequency of disruptions. But I agree that everything has become increasingly cluttered and decreasingly “it just works”.

Why would you want the address bar at the top?

Been on the β for a while; it’s a good OS. Particularly like the ability to use the iPhone as a Zoom cam. 3D printed a phone mount and everything works pretty seamlessly. Lock Screen widgets are nice too.

Stage manager on iPadOS doesn’t do it for me though.

Can you share the 3D model for the mount?

Would love to try it first, before buying the expensive Apple licensed one.

For those with older devices, a list of supported (& unsupported) hardware -

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IOS_16#Supported_devices

I'm just happy that a decade later Apple is finally catching up to the industry standard home screen and lock screen notifications/widget experience that they resisted so hard for some reason.

> industry standard

You mean a feature of their only competitor?

If the other company doing something makes it an industry standard I guess the way Apple does things is an industry standard too

Huge!

But the bigger surprise is that there's literally nothing in it that I care about despite being an iOS user.

Also, multiple stops on Maps? That's Google maps 15 years ago.

Doesn't really matter if Google Maps had it first, I like Apple Maps more and I'm excited for the feature.

Google Maps UI is a mess - only real advantage is (usually) better POI data. Routing quality is the same in my experience.

I finally swapped to Apple maps permanently. Was ~okay with giving Google my data because it's routing was better, but now Apple is on par, there is no reason to continue to use Google maps.

As someone who tries to avoid Google products more and more, I'm glad they improve Apple Maps. I have zero Google app installed on my iPhone today, but Google Maps is the one I'm the most tempted to use occasionally. I use it in the browser instead but the experience sucks.

On my side I'm kinda excited about live notifications, it looks cool for food deliveries.

15 years ago? Wow! Seeing Google Maps came out 17 years ago, that’s really early in their lifetime!

Next to CarPlay it says "Vehicle announcement coming in late 2023" - what is this related to? Showing car-related information in CarPlay, or are they announcing a car of their own?

The chance of an "Apple Car" is exactly zero. Even actual manufacturers are having huge issues producing enough.

BUT tighter Apple/CarPlay integration with existing brands is most definitely coming.

Soon your iPhone will handle the whole instrument cluster and infotainment for your car as well as functioning as a key.

Likely the former. They announced a new version of Carplay during WWDC. Basically rather than just applying to the infotainment system, it will also include information from the dashboard, and climate systems.

https://appleinsider.com/articles/22/06/09/apples-2023-carpl...

Really hope that this will be compatible with iDrive 8 on my upcoming BMW.

This is something that essentially replaces iDrive and your entire gauge cluster with CarPlay: it will be a very long time before BMW supports it, if ever

I’m not sure, but a while ago they announced a sort of expanded CarPlay where things like the speedometer, fuel gage, etc were shown in the CarPlay format, so I assume that.

I believe this means, "late next year, we'll be announcing 2024 model-year vehicles that will be the first to support next-gen CarPlay experiences".

Late 2023 is when they will announce the list of cars that support this radical expansion of CarPlay to encompass the whole dashboard, as in the image

I think that's surrounding which vehicles will support the CarPlay dashboard.

A great maps feature would be to even let me choose google maps when clicking on an address in iMessage.

My country does not have bike navigation options, so you still need gmaps a lot. I really hope they will add it soon.

Looking forward for PassKey integration. Then the wait for my programs and accounts to integrate and allow for passwordless logins.

I'm looking forward to this as well.

You can already download the RC with the public beta profile. Released few minutes ago.

The iPhone 8 only compatibility means that many teams will be stuck supporting Safari 15.6 for a very long time. Anything under "no support" on this page will continue to be out of reach for years to come https://caniuse.com/?compare=safari+15.6&compareCats=all#res...

The improvements with photo sharing seem promising. Right now my partner and I have Dropbox Photo Sync enabled on our iPhones, but viewing the shared photos must be done through the Dropbox app.

But now with the new improvements it looks like there is an automatic option "you can share photos instantly right from Camera, choose to share automatically when other shared library members are nearby".

Yes, very nice addition for families. Unfortunately there can only be a single shared library, so it can't be used for sharing with other groups.

Interesting the tyranny of "you read my message and didn't reply right away" is strong enough for iOS 14 to allow to mark a message as unread. Doesn't this make the whole point of read receipts moot, actually?

I secretly hope this read-receipts feature (anti-feature?) is coming to an end. I believe read-receipts should be a per-message option or be discarded from apps. I know read-receipts can be disabled as a user choice, but most people expect them nowadays (me too, to be honest). It's that very expectation that I'm questioning and for which I suggest we should at least have a specific notion of ethics or politeness.

Interesting to see the similarities to watchOS

As a non-iOS user it looks like a great update, but at the same time I thought that many of these were already features like in Android

That’s basically where we’ve been for the last few years. Both android and iOS occasionally come up with something new, but a lot of their time is copying something the other one already did that people like.

And there’s nothing wrong with that.

Sure, but if you look at Android 13 it's basically all things that are already in iOS

From the list, I only see two features that don't have equals already in iOS - both related to Material You.

https://blog.google/products/android/android-13/

As who hate auto rotate feature on smartphone/tablet, I'm waiting for Apple copy this https://www.droid-life.com/2018/04/12/android-ps-new-navigat...

I’ll be waiting for reviews and bug reports. I’ve found that for the last releases, subsequent patches have been worth the wait.

I’ve been on the beta for a week, it’s been quite smooth. I understand waiting for reviews but it doesn’t look like a problem release (which has certainly happened before).

FWIW, the iOS 15 beta was also solid leading up to release.

There's something about general availability that just hits different, exposing bugs to be fixed in the eventual .1 release.

I got one or two spammer calls a week on TMobile over the course of maybe 8 years.

Six months on Verizon and I get more spam calls a week than those 8 years.

watchOS 9 also September 12th unsurprisingly.

Any news on SKAdnetwork 4 release date? I can't find anything online.

Think Apple will ever agree to allow RCS into the iMessage ecosystem?

It's a Google-backed project, so I'd wager the probability around "Google will add iMessage and AirTag support to Android" -levels =)

It's not really Google-backed, more Google-embraced. Google didn't even add support on their own carrier (Google Fi) until 2019.

my understanding based on google messaging is that google is interested but Apple prefers to have its walled garden.

Not on their own but there will be legislation. EU just passed the Digital Services Act which requires the largest of the messengers (e.g. WhatsApp, iMessage) to offer APIs for other platforms to interconnect upon request. Google could use this to connect RCS and iMessage users. Not exactly what they wanted (iOS implementing RCS natively), but same effect.

If it will take off among carriers, then yes. As things stand now it's a technology that "sometimes work".

This won't bring ambient display to older phones, will it?

No. That requires new display tech.

time to turn off auto update for a month or so :)

iOS 15 only auto-updates within 15.x.

Still no universal back gesture/button.

What bugs will we get this time?

Just as many as any other software.

still cant disable the flashlight button?

Do people still get excited for these smartphone OS updates? I remember a couple of years ago I couldn't wait to see what the new features were. Now I don't think I've changed the way I use my phone for several years.

I do. The live text last year was fantastic. They’ve made it better this year.

The new lock screen customization is nice, especially combined with focus modes.

Editing iMessages? YES. Dictating emoji? YES.

Easily extract photos from the background to send in messages like a sticker? Sure.

My iPhone 12 Pro feel way faster, especially Safari. Is it actually faster or are animations shorter? You know what? I don’t care. I like it.

Some things like making search prominent on the home screen will help many people.

The new password replacement stuff will be great. Can’t wait.

Live tiles to show the status of a pizza delivery or something like that on my lock screen? Handy.

Built in delivery tracking with ApplePay if stores opt in? Sure!

And none of that includes the stuff announced today for the new phones, like the notification/background changes that look nice.

ALL of that was off the top of my head.

This is a very good year. Not every year can be as big as multi-tasking/etc, but this year is not just piddly little nothings.

I'm more annoyed than excited. Each new version brings in a load of new stuff I really don't need. Features are basically never removed. The whole things is becoming a cluttered mess.

New updates brings features that might be important or useful to some subset of users, while to the rest of us they are something we need to deal with, either remove if possible or learn to ignore. Personally I use iMessage, a browser and a few other apps, but fairly irregularly. That mean that any addition to iOS is an annoyance. The lock screen, with all the gizmos, annoying and pointless. Personalization feature... Sort of pointless if you don't also allow me to disable the gesture that turns on the camera, seriously that is the ONLY personalization I wish to do.

It's understandable that they don't make it, but I'd like an iOS light. One that has the bare minimum of features, for those who use their phones for calls, text messages and a few basic apps.

I’m excited to be able to use my phone as a camera for video calls. The quality difference between my phone and MacBook webcam is quite large.

What is there to implement once you’ve reached perfection?

I recently published an article[1] on How Apple could improve the VPNs experience on iOS. I hope someone at Apple finally decides to improve it on the next update.

It surprises me how Apple continues to add a lot of fancy feature and ignore basic day to day usability features like these.

[1] https://medium.com/@contact_54652/how-can-apple-improve-the-...

VPNs are not an everyday feature for the vast majority of users.

Not for the "vast majority", but they are quite popular even for non-techy users, thanks to commercial VPN providers buying ads on YouTube and even offline. Narrative: if you don't use a VPN, hackers will steal all your data and your money. The apps from these providers are easy to set up. Even my mom asked me about it, it's surreal.

True, but I wager they’re vastly more popular than you think, considering the amount of VPN advertising of the last few years. We’re not talking about PGP here.

> Freeform. Freeform is a productivity app where you and your collaborators can bring ideas to life. Jot down notes, share files, and insert web links, documents, video, and audio.

> Coming later this year

Apple going to start offering email too?

> Apple going to start offering email too?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MobileMe

Replaced by iCloud later. So it’s not something they will do, but something they have been doing for over two decades.

With iCloud Plus you're able to add custom email domains (really nice and tight integration with Cloudflare DNS for all the MX records) -- was a breeze to set up. Haven't put it through it's paces yet, though.

It's frustrating, because this likely won't be usable on Desktop, Windows, or the majority of workspaces. I actually don't mind the Reminders app, but like iMessage, I can't use it on my main Windows desktop, so I don't.

I can count on one hand the amount of times I've FaceTimed someone because of fragmentation in my network with Android.

Teams. Apple is going to start offering Teams.

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