f13.net

Haven't been paying attention, not what I was expecting ..

Erm?

(http://www.maclife.com/files/u330237/2013/06/0625_rr_ios7.png)

Seems pretty slick to me so far.

I can't even get the fucking thing to install on the ipad. Meh. All downloaded and says "Update not available at this time."

I didn't know that inside the Walled Garden was a garbage dump where poor Apple product went to die.

Maybe it looks a bit more modern, but it's not exactly overwhelming. No idea what I'm missing under the hood, but I suspect the incremental bits tossed into Chrome will mean more to my life than this will.

But I have Apple stuff from work. I'm not part of the cult and on some level I just don't get it.

Not sure what I'm looking at. Looks like a basic phone UI.

You must not have an iPhone.

You know, normally Apple does pretty slick UIs for things, but something about this one seems pretty ugly to me. Something about the icons I guess.

Flat and busy icons without clear boundaries makes it harder to read at a glance. It ugly IMO.

It looks much better on the ipad. But as far as I can tell, it's just a reskin.

Yeah, the esthetics of it don't matter much to me, but it appears to be running my devices noticeably faster than prior to the update. 

Apple discovered the 1-pixel stroke and decided to make menus more obnoxious. All the animations and shit are precisely what I turn off when I jump into any UI. 3x3 nested groups of icons is not better than one we had previous. The lack of unnecessary textures is pleasing.

All in all, this is just another case of Apple doing something I don't give a fuck about while they call it groundbreaking.

I will say, finally being able to turn off bluetooth from a single swipe menu (from any screen, even locked) is awesome. Whoever buried it in Settings should feel ashamed.

iTunes radio seems silly to me. First it warns of additional fees if you stream over cellular. Without any further explanation if they mean iTunes fees or cell carrier fees based on your data plan, nothing. So that's useless to me on the bus right there. Secondly, with Pandora I like making a dozen or so stations based on bands I like and then shuffle them. I can't seem to make iTunes radio shuffle the station selection and am stuck with one station at a time, so it looks like its back to Pandora for me.

Thats why I updated as well, it was past time they unburied those setting.

On the flip side I can only see 9 items at once in Folders anymore, even on my iPad. Was whoever thought that is a good idea high?

Also, it eats battery like mad on my iPhone 4s and is less responsive.

Not their finest hour.

Who knew Jobs would become a modern day Ozymandias.

I like that one.  Good show.

Any app that you attempt to do heavy streaming over cellular is supposed to have a warning these days.

iTunes radio for me just means one less thing. I haven't tried it on my phone yet, but enjoyed playing around with it in iTunes. The problem mostly is that it's in iTunes and iTunes continues to be terrible.

But, I really really like iOS 7 so far. I really like flat design. The only thing I don't like sos far is the how much "frost" is in the back behind folders. On a lighter background it's not as much of an issue, though.

I like the look, in as much as it's not five years old anymore and does include some nice UX things like the Command Center (which itself has some nice additiions, even if you can't configure any of it) and a much easy Task Manager (even if it still lacks an Android-like "cleanup" function which is, what, 2 years old now?).

It's most a reskin, but it's a substantial one. Makes most of my apps feel dated now.

It's pretty, clean, ditches the previous look which I'm pretty sure invented the word "skeuromorphic", but to schild's point, it's neither new nor innovative in ways they implied.

I also agree with Numtini that it looks better on the iPad, particularly my retina model.

The usage of space on the ipad is a trainwreck though.

Updated my iPad 2, it does look nice. I was hoping it'd fix my problem with saving pictures taken by the camera, but no they still don't save to the camera roll.

Yeah, I was gong to comment on this and the obnoxious way the bottom menu pops up at the slightest provocation after an evening at home with the upgrade.  The icons have such thin line work now they have to be 1.5x larger to be legible, which is terrible.

Ed: and can we get a goddamn apostrophe on the main screen board please!

Oh, also. The lock screen is shit.

Agreed, but you can turn that off.

They wanted the iPad to have an interface effectively identical to the iPhone/iTouch.  That means ignoring or not using the bigger screen.  Now, if it were an Android device that decided it wanted to completely control your UI presentation in ways you didn't like, you would have many options to fix it.  But iOS devices aren't yours, you are merely paying for the privilege of using them in permitted ways.  If you didn't want to take whatever Apple dishes out, why did you rent their stuff?

--Dave

Thats the kind of retardedness we laughed at Microsoft for all these years, though.

Really, for a company that was famous for its design decisions that is a complete trainwreck.

How did the lock screen change? We force unlock codes on our users so I might need to prep myself for some complaints.

It's no longer a little slide bar at the bottom.  You slide the entire flipping screen.  Lock code screen is still there and functions as normal.

iPad 1st gen?

One is 1st gen. one is 2nd gen. Finally got it installed ont he 2nd gen one. I know the first one can't get it. Which is dumb.

Considering the benchmarks I'm seeing between an iPhone 4 running 6.x and 7.0, I think you're better off without it on the 1st gen.  Hell, that shit won't even install PvZ2.

You can't even install ios6 on the iPad 1

I know, it blows.

Apple is about industrial design. Their software has generally been mediocre at best, and their UI kinda variable. They're fairly reliant on other people figuring things out for them UX wise and then just cribbing most of it. But they lack the centralization of UI and UX on the software side that is a hallmark of their hardware side.

It's been that way kinda always. They used to do it as Enlightened Despots. Then they did it because they got too big to give a shit. I actually think iOS7 UI is just another example of post-Jobs Apple trying to figure out how to play catchup though. There's more here that matches other convention than there is anything that other companies are going to try and emulate.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/09/senator-asks-if-fbi-can-get-iphone-5s-fingerprint-data-via-patriot-act/

WELL OF COURSE IT'S A FUCKING PROBLEM

No, it's not a fucking problem.

Also the whole screen doesn't fucking slide. The mechanism is the same, you still slide from the same place you always did, it's just that the whole graphic now moves with it.

Seriously guys, stop being fucking internet alarmists and read up on the technology. If I wasn't :nda: I'd go apeshit in this thread.

In this particular case, it's not really alarmist. The people who would know the intricacies of the technology or access to the data gained from it are few and far between. But it's not unreasonable to assume that if Apple can find and identify a phone (via opt-in to Find My iDevice or what have you), they can match a fingerprint for it. Regardless of weather or not the data is stored on the cloud.

It's OK for companies you like or are involved with to make incredibly poor decisions, it happens.

The design thing is subjective. I think it's a step backwards. Some people think it's a step forward. Whatever, none of that really matters.

Let me bottom line this for you.

We can't. That data never makes it to the cloud and never will.

We don't fucking want to get your fingerprint data. Literally. we'd have to physically take the phone and brute force it. We neither know, nor care enough about anyone to do that. And if we don't want to do it, anyone else that does is gonna be wasting a lot of resources to try.

I believe you, and I'm not arguing with you. It's just like one of those things. It's a solution to a problem that didn't exist, and that's weird to me. Very Xbox One of them. Though, the XBox One stuff served a bigger agenda, what precisely does fingerprint recognition do? Was phone theft and such that much of a big deal?

A problem definitely existed/exists.  You never forget your finger.  Problem solved, moving onto new problems now.

I give the FBI my fingerprints if I can have more than 9 icons on one screen in my Ipad folders for it. Because the first thing I don't give a shit about and the second thing annoys me enough that I even consider downgrading again.

If you're forgetting the password on your cell phone, I think you have bigger problems. Like early onset Alzheimer's.

1-2-3-4-5

blah blah spaceballs joke blah blah

Theft is a huge issue. As are people who forget their passwords, have their kids set them differently, etc..

My (limited) understanding was that this was more for the China market where smartphone theft is apparently a Very Big Deal. I don't know that it's a huge problem in the U.S. We got the iPhone on the market even before it became the big thing. But in China it's been kind of a big deal as one of those imports that gets continually knocked off, thus increasing the stealability value of any "authentic" one that appears there. Again, what I've heard, no data to back it up.

I'd imagine even if average American wasn't savvy enough to set up Find My Phone for remote bricking when it's stolen, they also didn't go right to the police (/woodywoodpecker) when it happened either.

I personally don't care about all the biometric stuff. The PC laptop I ditched three years ago had a fingerprint scanner when I got it two years prior. I think the outrage is because Apple is huge, they've had missteps with their location/PII data collection practices before, guvmint agencies keep focusing on them for things like COPPA, and because their tight lipped approach makes them terrible at making people feel comfortable about any service thing they do.

Meanwhile the iOS7 lock screen seems to have a number (http://arstechnica.com/apple/2013/09/new-ios-7-bug-lets-you-make-non-emergency-calls-from-the-lock-screen) of  exploits (http://arstechnica.com/apple/2013/09/ios-7-lock-screen-bug-allows-full-access-to-photos-app-contact-info) for it.

oof

http://www.ccc.de/en/updates/2013/ccc-breaks-apple-touchid

iOS 7 does one thing that's huge. One of my biggest annoyances with iOS devices is that there is no physical "Back" button. So apps place an on-screen "Back" button in the top-left corner of the screen. That is the single most important reason that you can't have a large iPhone - it isn't possible to reach your thumb up to that damned "Back" button if the phone is any bigger than it is now.

iOS 7 introduces "swipe-from-the-left" as a back gesture, which means we don't need the button in the top-left corner any more. It will take a while for all the apps to catch up and start using the gesture, but some do already. This is an awesome improvement that will finally give us the possibility of a larger iPhone.

 :oh_i_see:

Holy mother of god, you guys weren't kidding about iOS7 on an ipad.  WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY.  Even on my wife's ipad mini its so much wasted space.

Makes me a little less sad that my iPad 1 is stuck on iOS 5, at least I can see more than 15 items in a folder.....

I'm focusing more on the "Nailed It!" part of your post than the  :oh_i_see: part.

The  :oh_i_see: part is more apt though.

If I wanted a bigger phone, I'd buy a goddamn android monstrosity.

There's room for an iPhone that's another 0.5" diagonal. As an alternative, not a replacement.

You'll see, when you're a little older and your eyesight is not what it is now.

Apple wants the old people like Abercombie wants fat people.

Patently false.

No, Apple covets old people.  But they may not after the onslaught of old people that have updated to iOS7 and then promptly forgotten their 4 digit password. 

Old people set passwords?

unclench, it was a joke.

The set up process leads you to do one and it appears that you can't opt out. 

You can

Most people won't bother, though.

Yeah or you can turn it off after setting it up.  My daughter did the OS upgrade and didn't realize you didn't have to set one up.  If a moderately tech-savvy 15-year-old doesn't know it, I expect less of the general public and nothing of people over 50.

If you can't remember a 4-digit code then gtfo technology.

iPhones are not for the tech savvy anymore. Their average user knows enough to handle the four digit password. They'll bitch about it, but they'll also right it down so they don't forget. And if they do forget, they'll go to the Genius Bar, have the phone wiped and a tech will fix it for them.

Older people may not have the intuition of a 15 year old, but they have time and they are way more comfortable talking to actual humans who are there to help them fix stuff.

Apple may not MARKET to these people. And Samsung enjoyed a short run of making fun of them at the expense of Apple in their commercials last year. But they are a huge market, Apple's products are nominally easy enough for them to adopt, and those buying iPhones and tablets are in a class that has a heck of a lot of money to splurge on such stuff.

I'm sure Apple would like to only sell phones to the tech savvy. 

You've got to imagine that 90% of their 4 digit codes are the same as their pin number.  

Why are you being so fucking obtuse about this?

Also, when did four digits become tech savvy? You know shit like combination locks have been around a LOT longer than um...electricity?

It's about inconvenience not forgetting a password. 

My iPad doesn't leave the house or contain sensitive information, why does it need a lock?  It's also not a phone, so it's not getting forgotten in some public place or ass-dialing because it's tumbling around in a pocket.  Even if it was, why does Apple get to say I need a password.  Maybe I like ass-dialing.

I prefer not having a password on my home PC, too.  The horror. I'd rather it boot up and go to the desktop than sit at an arbitrary login screen when nobody else uses the PC but me.

 :awesome_for_real:

I don't password anything.  I also don't let anyone use my shit.

It was like in college, this guy who was potentially going to be my roommate: "So, I don't have a computer, can I use yours?"

"Hahaha.  NO.  Fuck no."

Didn't end up rooming with him. 

Scientists have discovered that even monkeys can memorize ten numbers.  Are you stupider than a monkey?

I think it's debatable whether or not a significant portion of the population is smarter than a monkey.   :awesome_for_real:  Just look at all the idiots that voted for W. 

It should also be repeated because people don't read. You DO NOT need a password.

Which was covered, to which you said:


Which prompted the current line of conversation you're now objecting to.  So you're just looking to argue then. Good to know.

The level feature in the compass is badass.  I'm running around checking to make sure everything is level around the office. ;)

"I forgot my password" is not a problem that Apple gave a shit about.

"Millions of paying customers are forgetting their passwords and then calling tech support", is a problem that Apple really really really wanted to fix.  Thus the finger-swipe thingee.  At the same time the change (theoretically) makes the phones less attractive to steal.

Seems like pure win from an Apple perspective.

TouchID Hacked (ArsTech article) (http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/09/touchid-hack-was-no-challenge-at-all-hacker-tells-ars/)

Obviously I'm not in the security business because I wouldn't describe this hack as trivial.

It's only an inconvenience if you couldn't turn it off after :-) Apple took a chance to make everyone comply, and the more comfortable users will know how to turn it off.

And yea this is a dumb post now that I've read the third page. But I can't delete, so instead I'll just add this paragraph :wink:

I'm getting used to ios7 but the latest version of itunes is broken for me, it hangs all the time even scrolling through lists, its pretty much unusable.

Reset all settings tends to fix a lot of that kind of stuff.

fuck you Apple.

Safari si a piece of shit, and our company's video sites (which work just fine in ios5 and 6) crash safari on iOS 7.  The crash logs are fucking worthless and we are stuck.

Burn it, burn it all. (I hate managing browser compatibility, what a colossal waste of time)

Its always been a mystery to me how Apple can be at the forefront of so many elements in OS usability yet wears its pants firmly on its head when it comes to browsers and media management systems.

I don't think Apple's behavior regarding their webrowsers is "pants on head".  It's pretty clear they are attempting to bully people into using the standards that they want to use. 

You can't bully your customers when the customer has at least two readily available and wildly more popular browsers, Chrome and Firefox, right there on the interwebs. And although I'm happy to be enlightened, I have no idea what standards you think Safari is pushing.

It's not that Safari has any language/programming standards, far from it.  The 'standard' is that "because 100M+ people have iPhones/iTouchs/iPads, and a good chunk of them don't have any clue about using a browser other than Safari on them, you must support Safari, regardless of how badly coded and unstable it is."

What is this? I don't even...

Sure you can. Apple's just pulling a 90s-era Microsoft, except they provide all parts of the ecosystem and quite possibly can't be sued for being a monopoly as a result. I use Chrome on my iPhone 5 and iPad Retina, but based on the data I've seen, the vast majority of people do not.

Further, given the amount of people who are using Chrome on desktops and laptops, I doubt they don't know about mobile browsers as much as they don't give a shit. Safari is fine for the vast majority of mobile browsing given how many sites either poorly implemented their mobile formatting, don't really offer much reason to use them mobilely, or shifted resources to creating an app instead of bother with a mobile site in the first place. My fucking local bar, of which there is precisely one location, has an app, and their website barely loads on my desktop.

We can thank Apple for the app convention too.  :awesome_for_real:

So in supporting one of my users I got to play around with the new version of iOS. It is pretty blah overall to me shrug. General comments from the older users is WTF is this crap and why can't I go back.

I'm not a fan of it visually.

I got my first iPhone about a week before iOS 7 came out, so I'm lucky.  I wasn't particularly attached to the old one enough to miss it.

Got an ipad mini for xmas w/ 7 on it. I'm not a huge fan of the visuals, and as far as i can tell the only great improvement is accessing all the stuff by flicking up on the bottom of the screen.

It was a subtle update.  Here's a big list:  http://www.iphonehacks.com/2013/09/ios-7-features.html

I'm ambivalent about the aesthetics.  However, performance on devices released in the last two years is much better.  My old iPhone 4 struggles with it, though. 

I love the aesthetics and would not go back even if it were possible. BUT I'm really getting hammered with battery life. I used to be able to get 1.5 days out of a charge in my iPhone 5, and now am only limping through to 5:00 PM unless I sneak in a charge during the day.

The poor battery life you mention is one of the reasons I think the tech industry should temporarily take a pause in making things ever faster and focus on creating new power sources.

I'm not sure how much you're using it, but I get like 3 or 4 days out of an Iphone 5.

I get three days out of my nearly 3yr old 4 on iOS 7.0.4. 

Be vigilant about shutting down apps you don't use and make sure to use wireless when you can.  Every app running that needs to know your location can potentially be updating, which drains fast too. 

ymmv.

I would just like to take a moment here to bitch about three things.

* The inability to roll back an OS on Apple machines
* Pushing out an OS that let the users decide to install in a corporate environment. (which subsequently broke all their programs)
* Manufacturers who still haven't fixed their driver problems, 4 months after Maverick was pushed. (I'm looking at you, Wacom.)

My bitch is that iOS 5.1.1 is the last update for iPad 1 and most apps don't support it anymore! Don't wipe your iPad 1 folks, or you won't be able to install your apps back on it! (such as Kindle Reader)

Tell me more about how wonderful it is to be in Apple's walled garden, where everything 'just works' (until Cupertino decides it shouldn't).

--Dave (I am allowed one 'in your face' to the cultists per calender year, I'm using it early)

Old bullshit argument is old. But you keep rockin' that "cultist" hate.

As for your battery life Baldrake, follow some of the instructions others have mentioned here about watching location-sensitive apps. If all else fails, wipe and restore.

Baldrake, how old is your phone?  If it was one of the first 5's, it's coming up on a year and a half old, and the LiPo battery pack is hitting the wall.  What you need to do is open up your phone and replace the battery...lol, sorry, couldn't resist.

Your phone is reaching the end of it's designed lifespan, you will have to replace it when it enters paperweight mode, which could be anytime in the next 9 months.  iOS 7 maybe accelerating that, but it's a built-in self destruct in all portable Apple products.

--Dave

iOS7 drove me to Android (at least on the phone), so I have not much good to say about it. But I can say battery life wasn't one of the problems I had with it.

My 4S is over 2 years old and while the battery does not last as long as it did when it was new, it still easily lasts a full day when I am not going in and out of service (which I do at work since I work in a basement). And good luck finding a high end one of your vaunted Android phones that has a replaceable battery now.

The last couple of phones I had all started having various issues around the 1.5 year mark, and I've used both Android and iPhone models.  None to the degree that they weren't usable, though. 

We recently switched to the 5s for our phones, and we're liking them just fine.  I can get anywhere from 1.5 days to 3 depending on where I'm going and how much I use it. 

I keep mine in a Mophie juice pack.  It's nice to have a built-in spare battery that I can't misplace or forget to charge.

The big downside for most would be that the iphone 5 won't (but should) cable sync to iTunes through the Mophie.  Since I never bother to do that, I don't really give a shit though.  It's more annoying to me that it's just slightly too tall for a shirt pocket now.

Edit: I've never updated it to 7, and haven't seen any compelling reason to do it.

The $10/month I pay to Rdio is well worth not having to use, buy or sync anything to iTunes again. 

I had a HTC Hero when they first released and had nothing but issues.  I know the Android platform has gotten better since then; maybe my next phone will make the switch back over. 

Dave, put down the fucking pipe, man. I'm still using a 5 and it's fine.

Baldrake, should you continue to run into battery issues, hit your nearest Apple store and let them run a diagnostic. If they need to replace the battery, they will. It may cost you if you're out of warranty, but it's not super painful.

Apple users use their phones past their lifespans whereas Android users can't even remember what phone they had nine months into owning it when they jump onto whatever the next one they stumble across on Sprint.com :-)

We cough up for Spotify because it's available on Roku and my phone. Before that it was Rhapsody. Despite my horror about what it would mean to me as an author, subscription services for music are fantastic as a consumer.

$80 or so was the last quote I heard from someone who needed it done.