E.g. if your number is (555)555-1234 it'll block anything from (555)555-0000 to (555)555-9999.
But then you mess up callbacks.
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.
In the age where most phones are mobile, this whole "scheme" is pitifully ignorant.
Huh.
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 missed a hospital calling about a family member. They should have left a voicemail, but they didn't.
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.
It’s a simple read and worth the minute or so if you use the feature.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
I don't mind how it looks/operates, and it's definitely nicer seeming than the notch it replaces.
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)
Clear Spaces https://apps.apple.com/us/app/clear-spaces/id1532666619
iEmpty https://iempty.tooliphone.net/
MAKEOVR https://www.makeovr.io/
(photo deduplication is nice too btw, been a long time coming)
[1] https://www.fastcompany.com/90755838/theres-a-big-problem-wi...
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.
The article does talk about how tools like 1Password could allow for PassKey sharing without vendor lock-in.
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.
That being said, I was hoping to see more touch ID webauthn so I'm not super hopeful. But we can hope!
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)
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.
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.
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.
Ergo I’d rather not have shared devices anyway. It was hell when we shared a family windows 2000 computer back in the day.
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.
At this point, any feature that exists on their laptops is lacking on the iPad only by choice.
I agree though, native multi-user support would be great. Though, I'd hope it's better than what we got on tvOS.
It is not a viable solution for either the average user or the advanced user.
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.
As they get closer, differentiating them becomes more challenging. And I am really curious about how this affects both markets.
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.
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.
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"
Still, it's too bad there isn't a 14 mini.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
iOS 14.8 was released on September 13, 2021, iOS 14.8.1 on October 26, 2021, and then nothing else.
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.
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.
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 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.
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?
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.
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.
Stage manager on iPadOS doesn’t do it for me though.
Would love to try it first, before buying the expensive Apple licensed one.
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
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.
Google Maps UI is a mess - only real advantage is (usually) better POI data. Routing quality is the same in my experience.
On my side I'm kinda excited about live notifications, it looks cool for food deliveries.
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.
https://appleinsider.com/articles/22/06/09/apples-2023-carpl...
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".
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.
And there’s nothing wrong with that.
From the list, I only see two features that don't have equals already in iOS - both related to Material You.
Six months on Verizon and I get more spam calls a week than those 8 years.
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.
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.
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-...
> Coming later this year
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.
I can count on one hand the amount of times I've FaceTimed someone because of fragmentation in my network with Android.