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Comment by walterbell | Hacker News Reader

Even worse, Control Panel buttons only "suspend" BT/WiFi, you have to go into Settings to turn them off again ... and again ... and again.

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It’s good UX - presumably most users want to turn off WiFi/bluetooth temporarily when using these buttons and this saves you from forgetting to turn it back on. I was delighted when they changed.

I agree it’d be nice to have a choice for how it works on your device, but current behavior would still be a good default.

> and this saves you from forgetting to turn it back on

Apple has since extended this helpful "innovation" to the power button, which no longer turns off iPhones, requiring a faraday bag to block WiFi/BT/UWB radios from communicating while iPhone is "powered off".

Do you mean to say that “slide to power off” leaves Wi-Fi radios active?

https://9to5mac.com/2021/06/07/ios-15-find-my-network-can-fi...

> With iOS 15, your iPhone is still traceable through the Find My network even when the device is powered off. It seems that with iOS 15, the phone is not really fully ‘powered off’, it stays in a low-power state and acts like an AirTag, allowing any nearby iOS device to pick up the Bluetooth signal and send back its location.

Oh my. Thanks.

Afaik if you care about that, you should be able to fully turn off Find My integration?

The idea does have some benefit though. For example, if you enable “Express Transit” for Apple Pay and your phone runs out of battery, you still will be able to tap-to-pay for a subway / bus ride home. The payment NFC subsystem is also separate and has its own battery reserve.

Apple could better describe the action that will be performed, e.g. "Slide to Suspend".

Try to turn off your iPhone. It says right on the screen it will be broadcasting its location even when it’s off.

> broadcasting.. when it's off.

So, not off then.

As a half solution: You can create a Shortcut that turns of BT/Wi-Fi completely. You can then add that Shortcut to your home screen for easy access. That's what I do and it's way nicer than going to Settings, though I wish it was just in Control Center.

Seconding this, I do the same thing. It turns turning everything fully off into one press.

how do you do this?

Go to the Shortcuts app that comes with the phone. You can create shortcuts to do just about anything, in this case you'd make one that sets WiFi to Off and sets Bluetooth to Off. Then that shortcut can be turned into an app icon that you can just press any time.

I called this a data grab from day 1 and stand by that. The amount of fellow iOS developers I've had argue for the "convenience" is astounding. There should be a settings toggle to control the auto-reenable behavior.

Yeah, this behavior sounds a bit anti-user to me. The action pretty much boils down to,

"Oh, you disabled Bluetooth and left it that way? Well, we know better so we're going to turn it back on without your knowledge or approval. You're welcome."

I don't buy the convenience excuse either otherwise the behavior could be disabled if desired.

You mean it’s anti user when it says in big letters “turn off Bluetooth until tomorrow” when you click on the button in control center?

It's an anti-user and anti-dictionary dark pattern when "turn off" doesn't mean Turn Off, but only stops new connections.

It’s anti dictionary when it actually says the words what it’s about to do when you press the button? How much clearer could it be.

The button no longer Turns Off the Bluetooth radio.

The same button in Control Center previously Turned Off the Bluetooth radio.

The button does not do what it (a) claims to do, (b) previously did.

And my car no longer comes with a cassette player. But it also says “CD Player” on it just in case you try to stick one in.

> I called this a data grab from day 1 and stand by that

Option 1 is a reasonable explanation based on the behavior that arguably works best for 99% of users .

Option 2 is a “data grab” with no evidence or theories about who is grabbing what data and for what purpose.

AirTags wouldn’t work as well if everyone’s phones weren’t constantly transmitting/receiving, for one thing, and grabbing data on all nearby WiFi SSIDs and beacons helps with location services and probably advertising.

> grabbing what data and for what purpose

One possible motive: a billion dollars of AirTag revenue, https://macdailynews.com/2022/06/20/apple-estimated-to-sell-...

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