Apple Unveils iOS 12 (apple.com) 77
Apple on Monday unveiled iOS 12, the major software update that is coming later this year to all the iPhones and iPad models the company has released since 2013. iOS 12 offers a handful of new features but the focus this year, said company's VP of engineering Craig Federighi onstage, is on performance improvements. Apps will launch up to 40 percent faster, and you can slide to take a photo at up to 70 percent faster than with iOS 11, Federighi said. Part of the major push this year is also on augmented reality. The company is introducing a Measure app, which will people to use their phone's camera to measure real-life objects accurately. There's also 3D graphics that you can place into the real world through AR. Apple made a new file format called USDZ, which was developed in conjunction with Pixar.
Apple is also introducing something called "personalised Memoji characters," ability to have a group FaceTime call, and minor new features and improvements to Siri, and Photos. There is also grouped notifications, a feature that Apple claims to have invented. (Android has had it for more than 8 years.) Additionally, Apple is also bringing new tools to iOS that will allow users to take better control of the time they spend interacting with their iPhones and iPads. Note from the press release: New modes in Do Not Disturb automatically end based on a specified time, location or action and Do Not Disturb during Bedtime helps people get a better night's sleep by dimming the display and hiding all notifications on the lock screen until prompted in the morning. To help reduce interruptions, iOS 12 gives users more options for controlling how notifications are delivered. They can instantly manage notifications to be delivered quietly or turned off completely. Grouped notifications make it easier to view and manage multiple notifications at once. Screen Time provides users with detailed information and tools to help them better understand and control the time they spend with apps and websites. Daily and weekly Activity Reports show the total time spent in individual apps, usage across categories of apps, how many notifications are received and how often iPhone or iPad are picked up.
Apple is also introducing something called "personalised Memoji characters," ability to have a group FaceTime call, and minor new features and improvements to Siri, and Photos. There is also grouped notifications, a feature that Apple claims to have invented. (Android has had it for more than 8 years.) Additionally, Apple is also bringing new tools to iOS that will allow users to take better control of the time they spend interacting with their iPhones and iPads. Note from the press release: New modes in Do Not Disturb automatically end based on a specified time, location or action and Do Not Disturb during Bedtime helps people get a better night's sleep by dimming the display and hiding all notifications on the lock screen until prompted in the morning. To help reduce interruptions, iOS 12 gives users more options for controlling how notifications are delivered. They can instantly manage notifications to be delivered quietly or turned off completely. Grouped notifications make it easier to view and manage multiple notifications at once. Screen Time provides users with detailed information and tools to help them better understand and control the time they spend with apps and websites. Daily and weekly Activity Reports show the total time spent in individual apps, usage across categories of apps, how many notifications are received and how often iPhone or iPad are picked up.
Re:Users (Score:4, Funny)
Android just copied this feature from iOS 15.
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Why is that?
Perhaps for iPads, but these are personal devices. Normally meant for one person.
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Your Apple computer can also support multiple users, using Unix user directories. iOS devices are for one person.
Re: Users (Score:1)
Because Apple wants to sell an Ipad to every member of the family.
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My laptop is as mobile as an iPad, yet it offers basic functionality just fine.
Try using your laptop while walking without looking even dumber than usual.
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But why is the concept of a 'family' iPad so problematic? A phone is personal, sure. But the best use case I have for a tablet is to use it as a laptop replacement.
I have an iPad and sometimes my wife uses it. It's so frustrating to come home to find lots of random notifications and her having logged into her accounts (and me out). I also wouldn't mind things like my emails being private, not that I have anything to hide.
Why is the only solution (short of banning her) to purchase a second device? I'm sure t
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It's problematic because they want you to buy a 2nd ipad. That's the real reason they've basically abandoned their computer lineup.
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these are personal devices. Normally meant for one person.
Not if you have MoviePass. Then you need to loan your phone to other people all the time so they can watch free movies.
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It would have been nice had they went with virtualization. That way, I can have my work stuff, personal stuff, and my side projects, all on separate VMs/containers...
And also that way, haters could gripe about everything having to be in the cloud.
Do not disturb! (Score:2)
New modes in Do Not Disturb automatically end based on a specified time, location or action and Do Not Disturb during Bedtime helps people get a better night's sleep by dimming the display and hiding all notifications on the lock screen until prompted in the morning.
Are Apple users really too stupid to be able to sleep because of their phone? Did this really need an OS update for them to cope?
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New modes in Do Not Disturb automatically end based on a specified time, location or action and Do Not Disturb during Bedtime helps people get a better night's sleep by dimming the display and hiding all notifications on the lock screen until prompted in the morning.
Are Apple users really too stupid to be able to sleep because of their phone? Did this really need an OS update for them to cope?
Are you implying that one has to be stupid to automate something on a computing device? Yeah, that's Slasdot for you.
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I can shove an iPhone X almost 75% up my asshole before the vibrating notifications cause acute pain.
For people like you, there is Do Not Disturb mode. The warden will not hear rings or notification tones from your concealed iPhone.
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I expect more multi-threading and background loading of information of data.
For the most part we as developers have been taught to think sequentially towards coding. A lot of developers even really good ones, just don't think about coding in parallel. Early versions of iOS didn't even support multi-tasking (It still doesn't do it so well). Now that these devices have multi-core chips, there is a lot of code that can be better parallelized.
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Nope, probably the removal of the code sandbags apple has been using over the years to get people to upgrade their phones.
Or, if one follows the Cockup before Conspiracy way of thinking, they've found and killed a nice collection of bugs that seems to have hit iOS starting with version 10.
'cause *damn*, 10 and 11 felt not quite "right".
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I expect they may be steps in launching an App to validate that it is the actual app, checksum the executable. that may take some time, which may be able to be done as a background check. Or outside the normal time.
You can also have parts of the executable set to be in the buses pipeline at a better time. The newer iPhone have a rather complex chip just for statistics. I bet you can use that to get a better fetching and storing algorithm.
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they probably optimized it for their CPU's instead of generic ARM
Waze on CarPlay! (Score:5, Interesting)
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Or you can just get an Android phone and use Waze with Android Auto, just like you've been able to do for over a year at this point.
Is there anything in iOS 12 that wasn't pioneered by Android first? Meemoji are just those Samsung selfie things, notifications are finally getting features that Android has had for years, the camera is getting a bunch of Snapchat and Instagram features - there's nothing new here.
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I guess Apple's going to have to sue NotificationHub for patent infringement then. Prior use must be gone as a defense by now.
Re: Waze on CarPlay! (Score:1)
Android attracts innovative developers. Apple attracts greedy developers.
And if Android didn't exist Apple would need to invent it, because Apple will never and could never support more than about 20% of a market segment. They rely on an elite cultish marketing method to overcharge a small segment of the market, and keep their overpaying customers inside a velvet rope.
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FWIW, Apple does copy many of the good points about Android. However - and this is why I switched from Android to Iphone - they don't require a bazillion confirmations and stuff just works. I've not once gotten a , "Unfortunately, the process com.android.<insert app here> has stopped working" type message on my Iphones. I also don't have to reboot them every few days because of memory leaks.
I do m
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iOS has had a task manager since at least 3.2.
Does Apple require pay to CarPlay? (Score:2)
Do app developers have to pay Apple to gain access to CarPlay?
I'm guessing that it's not merely a question of making your app meet CarPlay UI standards and meeting some "distraction free" criteria.
Or is it one of those cases where Apple has some weird opaque standard tied to internal strategies and you never have any way of knowing how to get CarPlay enabled?
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I think at first it was limited to a few developers - there were already a few apps using CarPlay so I presume it's just another framework you can use.
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Considering how retarded Siri can be, that's a really drag on development.
I mean pretty much 100% of cars with in-dash displays rely on touch screen touch interaction or at least its the preferred method.
I guess I could see serious limits on touch interaction (limited buttons, no text input, etc) but 100% voice isn't appealing to me as a user, either.
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Yes! Personalised Memoji Characters!! (Score:4, Funny)
Thank God Slashdot is returning to stuff that matters. No more articles with that curing cancer nonsense.
This is significant because... (Score:2)
Can I have "low power mode" all the time? (Score:3)
Because even with a fresh new battery from Apple I still want longer battery life over eye candy, up to the microsecond email delivery, and "hey siri" always listening.
How about the ability to connect to and disconnect from bluetooth devices from the swipe-up screen thingy instead of auto-pairing when I turn a spaker on and then having to poke around so someone else can connect to it?
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It's a real irritant that there's not at least a shortcut to the bluetooth portion of settings to easily start dealing with which bluetooth devices are connected.
Bluetooth is just annoying enough that I find myself constantly fucking around to see if the device I want to use has auto-reconnected, but this is less an Apple problem than the rolling trainwreck of bluetooth.
Re: Can I have "low power mode" all the time? (Score:1)
Apple needs to keep working on their propritary bluetooth extensions. They need a 'works better with Apple logo to slap onto the more expensive bluetooth gadgets.
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mac hardware is in dire need of upgrades (Score:2)
mac hardware is in dire need of upgrades
and 5400 RPM HDD's in 2017 much less 2018?
Also the mini why is that so out of date still?
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What? *Yawn* (Score:2)
iOS getting slow (Score:2)
It is kind of sad that my iPhone 6 is now slower than the iPhone 1...I hope this gets sorted out.
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So I found out about the battery health checker, and my was ay 87%, BUT the health reported that the iPhone shut down at some point because of lack of battery current (probably when I was abusing it), so I unchecked the box that slows it down!
And for any device before 2013: fewer apps (Score:2)
It looks like app developers are using the upcoming release as a good time to abandon IOS 9.74, which is the best you get for any device released before 2013. 2012 iPads are still pretty useful other than that problem.