Try quickly typing 1+ 2 + 3 into the iOS 11 Calculator(reddit.com)
reddit.com
Try quickly typing 1+ 2 + 3 into the iOS 11 Calculator
https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/782250/try_quickly_typing_1_2_3_into_the_ios_11/
500 comments
Your solutions are a little off the mark. Treating the animation as the problem is merely treating the symptoms.
What needs to happen here is pressing the button needs to immediately register the press elsewhere in the code. The UI animations and the button tap should be decoupled entirely.
Then the user can tap away as fast as their heart desires and only the animations are going to continue on. That’s an easy problem to solve... by doing as you say and aborting them or shortening them.
But you should NEVER have UI animations and effects block your logic path. They should be parallel operations not serial.
What needs to happen here is pressing the button needs to immediately register the press elsewhere in the code. The UI animations and the button tap should be decoupled entirely.
Then the user can tap away as fast as their heart desires and only the animations are going to continue on. That’s an easy problem to solve... by doing as you say and aborting them or shortening them.
But you should NEVER have UI animations and effects block your logic path. They should be parallel operations not serial.
Exactly. This is a very general pattern of error in software design - the use of a non-causal pathway to model causality. It is an especially exasperating problem, as it is both more complicated and more prone to failure than doing it right.
This goes well beyond UI design, and there are even physical analogs - for example, the crash of Turkish Airlines flight 981 in Paris could have been prevented if the device to prevent the cabin being pressurized if the cargo door was not properly closed had been operated by the door locking pins sliding home all the way, rather than by a side-linkage off the linkage that was supposed to drive in the pins.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_Airlines_Flight_981#Ca...
This goes well beyond UI design, and there are even physical analogs - for example, the crash of Turkish Airlines flight 981 in Paris could have been prevented if the device to prevent the cabin being pressurized if the cargo door was not properly closed had been operated by the door locking pins sliding home all the way, rather than by a side-linkage off the linkage that was supposed to drive in the pins.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_Airlines_Flight_981#Ca...
My "lazy" solution was absolutely treating the symptoms, yes. Which is why I classified it as a lazy one, even.
But I feel my first suggestion was exactly what you're suggesting -- immediately register the input and apply the operator -- I just phrased it in terms of what happens to the animation.
Also! I certainly feel there are times when letting an animation block your logic is valid. That would be any time when an animation has the UI in a potentially confusing state, such that the meaning of an input is ambiguous. (You should avoid these states as much as possible, of course. And this sort of button-flash comes nowhere even near that category.)
But I feel my first suggestion was exactly what you're suggesting -- immediately register the input and apply the operator -- I just phrased it in terms of what happens to the animation.
Also! I certainly feel there are times when letting an animation block your logic is valid. That would be any time when an animation has the UI in a potentially confusing state, such that the meaning of an input is ambiguous. (You should avoid these states as much as possible, of course. And this sort of button-flash comes nowhere even near that category.)
Isn't 'never' an oversimplification? Sometimes there is a feedback loop between UI effects and user input, or the user input changes the way the UI registers hits, which means subsequent input depends on complete processing of prior inputs. On a static view like a calculator grid, you should default to non blocking animation, but sometimes blocking is the desired behavior.
What's a concrete example of this?
An example that comes to mind is a slider switch (iOS is famous for them)
You don’t want the switch activated until it’s all the way left or right.
You don’t want the switch activated until it’s all the way left or right.
Slider controls might be a better example, I think. In that case, the position reached by the moveable element is the data, and it is appropriate to take the value from the UI element (of course, if it lags noticeably, that is a UI design issue.) With slider switches, you could argue it either way, so long as program and UI remain consistent, but again there is a problem if the UI response lags the gesture.
Video games use animations as easy to project information to a player. If your character is “stunned” and can’t move, the animation should play for the duration of the status effect.
Sure. But that’s an inherent feature of the animation. In this case the “never” rule doesn’t apply. If animations are a side effect, you want to treat them as such.
The never rule not applying what what I was giving an example of!
But should any buttons pressed during that time be queued? Command queueing and cancellation is an important part of game design.
Tetris
My professor likes to tell this story about keyboard buffers that I never quite understood. Basically, in this old time terminal setup he would start typing the password before the prompt showed up or something and when it did, it would just sail through. Sort of like how I can apt upgrade while apt update is still running but fancier and a couple of decades before...
The computers at my old job working as a cashier did that. It made working with produce so much faster because as soon as I heard the beep, I could move on to the next item, even if the screen hasn’t updated yet.
That "old time" hurts a bit.. I haven't tried this recently, but I distinctly remember doing this in the early versions of Ubuntu.
That's what happens when you read from a keyboard buffer. Since the buffer is not being read (and not cleared) until a prompt is in the screen, you can type whether you want and it'll get dumped and processed whenever needed. Not that long ago really, that's how it worked in DOS and most other terminals.
It still works. I can ssh into a machine and start typing commands before the shell prompt appears. The commands will appear in the terminal once the connection is established and the shell is ready.
Isn't the keyboard buffer a part of the physical keyboard circuitry and interface? Hitting enter triggers an IRQ to flush the buffer, so if the CPU is too busy to handle the IRQ then things queue up until the CPU can get around to handling it. If that's the case, for this "feature" not to work would require a very low level architectural change to keyboards. (it's been many years since i've thought about this though)
Keyboard buffers are decidedly not on the physical keyboard. The keyboard might have a very small one, but the IRQ is triggered on every input.
The buffer in question is, for a tty, a driver-level buffer that holds on to the data until something reads it. If a command doesn't read it (which things like apt-get update don't) then it'll get read as the next command.
Of course, most terminals these days are ptys accessed via emulators, so the buffer is actually part of the emulator, but the same idea applies.
The buffer in question is, for a tty, a driver-level buffer that holds on to the data until something reads it. If a command doesn't read it (which things like apt-get update don't) then it'll get read as the next command.
Of course, most terminals these days are ptys accessed via emulators, so the buffer is actually part of the emulator, but the same idea applies.
ah, the more you know :) I would have been shocked if i remembered all that correctly
For some reason my brain still finds it important to remember that the BIOS keyboard buffer is 15 bytes by default, but that you could load tiny little devices drivers in CONFIG.SYS in MS-DOS to make it a whole 31 bytes.
You can still do this in at least some shells. PowerShell buffers input if the running program doesn't capture it. If I have a build and execute commands in the history, I can hit up-up-enter twice in a row to start the build and queue the execution command.
I remember people doing that on an AS/400 ramming keystrokes for 5 seconds and then waiting 15 seconds for the system to arrive in the right screen, sometimes even already filling the fields from muscle memory. The first five lines of address data were already entered before the screen loaded.
When I was in high school I had a job after school where they still had a PDP/11 w/real DEC VT-100 terminals. The kid next to me used to do data entry and would get far ahead of the input screen. Except when he made a mistake, and he often did, it would beep. But because he was so far ahead when he made a mistake it would beep for 2 minutes straight. Every time. Max-volume.
Soo.. When he left his desk, I went in and hit SHIFT-SETUP, turned the audible BEL off in the VT-100 setup menu and enjoyed the silence.
When I came back in the office the next day, there was a technician from Digital with the terminal in what looked like 100 pieces on the desk trying to "fix" it. He was pretty upset when he realized it wasn't the speaker and the setting was just turned off (why he didn't check that first, I'll never know). Needless to say as a teenager, I kept quiet about the whole thing.. until now..
Soo.. When he left his desk, I went in and hit SHIFT-SETUP, turned the audible BEL off in the VT-100 setup menu and enjoyed the silence.
When I came back in the office the next day, there was a technician from Digital with the terminal in what looked like 100 pieces on the desk trying to "fix" it. He was pretty upset when he realized it wasn't the speaker and the setting was just turned off (why he didn't check that first, I'll never know). Needless to say as a teenager, I kept quiet about the whole thing.. until now..
Oh wow. That is awesome.
> Sort of like how I can apt upgrade while apt update is still running but fancier
You can link two commands together with the "AND IF" operator
You can link two commands together with the "AND IF" operator
sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade
I see that buffer effect all the time still.
It is not as easy as that. UI and logic should run in parallel , yes, but they should also be able to synchronise.
This shows how important UX really is. UI can be all glam and shiny, but the software with the most accessible of UX wins, more often than not.
I always come back to the example of WhatsApp and how it took on SMS, IM, and emails and won. People claiming WhatsApp went in mobile first are getting it only partially right. WhatsApp defined itself as a replacement for SMS: No login passwords, no chat history, cross platform and that led to them being cheaper, better, faster, frictionless. Later added MMS-esque capabilities like media and then email-esque features like Groups with super nice execution on the UX front.
Similar thing for AMP pages: It just works and it is blazing fast.
I always come back to the example of WhatsApp and how it took on SMS, IM, and emails and won. People claiming WhatsApp went in mobile first are getting it only partially right. WhatsApp defined itself as a replacement for SMS: No login passwords, no chat history, cross platform and that led to them being cheaper, better, faster, frictionless. Later added MMS-esque capabilities like media and then email-esque features like Groups with super nice execution on the UX front.
Similar thing for AMP pages: It just works and it is blazing fast.
A really important element of WhatsApp's global success is that they had a Java ME app for featurephones.
US-centric competitors would only support iOS and Android, whereas WhatsApp was running on the hundreds of millions of 2003-2010 vintage Nokia/Samsung featurephones that were in daily use in India, Indonesia, Nigeria, etc.
That is also part of UX. When it comes to messaging apps, Snapchat is one extreme of the spectrum -- iPhone-focused, cryptic UI, teen-oriented, majority of users in USA -- and WhatsApp is the very opposite. Both are successful examples of UX focus.
US-centric competitors would only support iOS and Android, whereas WhatsApp was running on the hundreds of millions of 2003-2010 vintage Nokia/Samsung featurephones that were in daily use in India, Indonesia, Nigeria, etc.
That is also part of UX. When it comes to messaging apps, Snapchat is one extreme of the spectrum -- iPhone-focused, cryptic UI, teen-oriented, majority of users in USA -- and WhatsApp is the very opposite. Both are successful examples of UX focus.
> cryptic UI, teen-oriented
These things go hand-in-hand by the way. And that's not a complaint, it's just funny how "only teens bother to figure this out" can be an honest-to-goodness feature under specific circumstances. Especially if you (basically) need to be "introduced" to a program and all of its quirks through your friends.
These things go hand-in-hand by the way. And that's not a complaint, it's just funny how "only teens bother to figure this out" can be an honest-to-goodness feature under specific circumstances. Especially if you (basically) need to be "introduced" to a program and all of its quirks through your friends.
I hated it at first, but I've come to really appreciate being able to swipe around through almost all the screens, vs. having to stretch across my phone to hit menus on the far corners in other apps
Agreed. They still need to put in more subtle cues to do things though. Most people don't know you can use multiple filters/stickers or touch a location to change it.
WhatsApp also won because it did what most tech companies seem to consider antithetical to their purpose: put international customers on equal footing to US customers. So many companies either don't serve or completely gimp their product outside the US, often for no good reason.
Unfortunately AMP pages don't just work. I've had problems with them, especially with the top menu that is hard to bring back when scrolling up sometimes. Also sometimes the page doesn't load and I have to go back and reopen the page. No consistency on functionality... (Some sites are missing links to important things like comments)
> cross platform
Only mobile, the web version is shitty because it hosts a web server on your phone which is unreliable. And even with that you can only access the web version from one computer and it does not work well on tablets.
Only mobile, the web version is shitty because it hosts a web server on your phone which is unreliable. And even with that you can only access the web version from one computer and it does not work well on tablets.
Not to mention you get banned from trying to use any unofficial client if your device/OS happen to not be supported.
> People are talking about "lag" and performance, as if this was a "the system can't handle it!" issue. This is a misleading description.
Lag doesn't necessarily have anything to do with performance. I really don't think people are talking about performance at all. No one would seriously think that a modern smartphone could be dwarfed by a 35 year old calculator in terms of raw performance.
Lag doesn't necessarily have anything to do with performance. I really don't think people are talking about performance at all. No one would seriously think that a modern smartphone could be dwarfed by a 35 year old calculator in terms of raw performance.
Well everything nowadays is slowed down by the 20 abstraction layers, so I wouldn't be that surprised if someone managed to make one slower than a 35 year old calculator.
Maybe we should start worrying about "animation creep" as much as we do feature creep or other kinds of unnecessary complexity.
One of the main reasons I don't use iOS or macOS anymore is because of the animations. Even very, very short animations make the whole experience excruciating for me. It feels slow and unresponsive.
One reason I moved from Android to Windows phone was because of the massively unpredictable performance (lag due to background stuff happening).
One reason I moved from Windows phone was the massive delay in switching apps.
Now on iPhone the animations are annoying, yes, but they are at least consistent in length, meaning I expect them and know how long to take a (tiny) pause. I know some work is happening that’s being disguised and that’s why they can’t (all) be turned off.
One reason I moved from Windows phone was the massive delay in switching apps.
Now on iPhone the animations are annoying, yes, but they are at least consistent in length, meaning I expect them and know how long to take a (tiny) pause. I know some work is happening that’s being disguised and that’s why they can’t (all) be turned off.
So what do you use instead? FYI you can reduce animation in the accessibility menu of both iOS and OSX
When I had a choice, I used Fedora + XFCE for a long time, then Xubuntu. I've been on Windows 10 since it came out, and it's been incredibly liberating not to constantly have to think about my OS and Google my way through its quirks and bugs.
It also takes about 20 seconds to disable all animations in Windows, which makes it feel as snappy as XFCE (even on my 5-year-old machine).
For what I do now (Office, email, programming using IDE hooked into Docker containers), it really doesn't hinder me to be on a non-*nix OS.
It also takes about 20 seconds to disable all animations in Windows, which makes it feel as snappy as XFCE (even on my 5-year-old machine).
For what I do now (Office, email, programming using IDE hooked into Docker containers), it really doesn't hinder me to be on a non-*nix OS.
Every day I experience lag typing something into glitzy web apps because someone made the text box wait for something it doesn't really need to. It's definitely slower than word processors I've used twenty years ago.
True, there are so many layers things aren't up to par. Maybe get back down to basics with languages like Rust and rewrite a few things? But then we'll end up with 20 layers or so of abstraction after 20 more years...
I could seriously think that. A pocket calculator has a ~200KHz processor and an LCD with an update time of maybe 10ms. A single digit calculator operation like addition would be a few clock cycles, so say a total time of 15ms with output buffering. A 60Hz monitor refresh rate is already worse than that without considering the framework stack.
Do you have a source on that clock speed? I've been trying to dig up info on pocket calculators for a while.
(The last time I brushed-but-didn't-quite-hit some interesting info was in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15136939, which I quoted (very tangentially, as a footnote) in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15153262.)
(The last time I brushed-but-didn't-quite-hit some interesting info was in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15136939, which I quoted (very tangentially, as a footnote) in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15153262.)
An even easier fix would be to drop the "Animate all the things!!!" mentality.
I think animations are pretty useful in this context. It reassures you that your sausage fingers didn't hit the wrong number.
I agree with you. Why not be more utilitarian and build things for function and not for looks.
I commented to the same effect on reddit: This doesn't ring true to me at all.
The numbers have the same animation, but it's both shorter and interruptible, so the people who built the app seem perfectly aware of the problem and how to "fix it".
This seems deliberate, as if somebody figured that, while it's a legitimate use case to rapidly tap digits to input a longer number, tapping an operator multiple times is likelier to be an input error, so they purposefully block it. Clearly a mis-feature, but a feature nonetheless, rather than a bug.
The numbers have the same animation, but it's both shorter and interruptible, so the people who built the app seem perfectly aware of the problem and how to "fix it".
This seems deliberate, as if somebody figured that, while it's a legitimate use case to rapidly tap digits to input a longer number, tapping an operator multiple times is likelier to be an input error, so they purposefully block it. Clearly a mis-feature, but a feature nonetheless, rather than a bug.
>Conveniently, this should be a trivial fix
trivial to fix the bug in the calculator app. not trivial to deploy that fix. this would be a full system update, right?
trivial to fix the bug in the calculator app. not trivial to deploy that fix. this would be a full system update, right?
Yeah, it'd have to be a proper OS update, because it's one of the core apps.
But, also conveniently, iOS 11.1 is in beta at the moment. They just released beta 5 today, so it's not like they couldn't slip a fix for this in before the final release if they wanted to.
Whether they will or not, well...
But, also conveniently, iOS 11.1 is in beta at the moment. They just released beta 5 today, so it's not like they couldn't slip a fix for this in before the final release if they wanted to.
Whether they will or not, well...
Since iOS 10 the system apps have been on the App Store, and as far as I know, they can now be updated that way, too.
They‘re listed on the App Store but they‘re fake listings. Removing a core app from the home screen does not remove it from the device. Installing it from the App Store restores that link.
That means updates still need to be a part of a system update.
That means updates still need to be a part of a system update.
In iOS 10, reinstalling the News or Calculator apps was instant. In iOS 11, the App Store list sizes for these apps, and reinstalling them takes a few seconds (on my phone and connection).
I haven’t measured data usage, but I suspect this means that removing Calculator’s icon actually removes its code from the system. If that is true, it is potentially upgradeable independent of the iOS system, at least from a technical perspective.
I suspect Apple’s QA and release processes cannot take advantage of this, though.
I haven’t measured data usage, but I suspect this means that removing Calculator’s icon actually removes its code from the system. If that is true, it is potentially upgradeable independent of the iOS system, at least from a technical perspective.
I suspect Apple’s QA and release processes cannot take advantage of this, though.
How this works in Android for system apps: One can only disable a system app. This disable button replaces the uninstall button. It deletes any updates to the app from your phone, since it will obviously still have the original version baked into the ROM, and removes it from the app list. It might also disable any service registrations for the app... Unsure on whether that's true.
Re-enabling the app will basically restore the ROM version. You can then install updates from the store, which I think is basically a full install and the ROM version is ignored again, based on the consumed space of such apps.
Re-enabling the app will basically restore the ROM version. You can then install updates from the store, which I think is basically a full install and the ROM version is ignored again, based on the consumed space of such apps.
That's interesting! I hadn't noticed the change. As you say, it's probably not relevant until Apple can actually release a single-app update through that channel, but it might be a glimpse at a future where that's an option.
Like IE in Win XP
You are probably correct. Maybe if the developers decided that their precious prefab apps didn't need to come prebaked into every release of android and iOS and instead let the consumer pick, the market would be a bit less full of app bloat.
Does iOS runtime not use evented I/O? Coming from web, I would expect tap events to queue up while the thread is busy with an animation.
CoreAnimation runs animations on a background thread using state snapshots.
The event loop is processing events during the animation. It is up to the programmer to decide if events are ignored or processed during animations because what that means depends on what you want to happen: is the animation interactive and reversible? Does tapping reset the animation or does it start animating to the new state from its existing state?
CoreAnimation does the work based on the policies you select (eg: interpolating between a half-complete animation and the new desired end state).
The event loop is processing events during the animation. It is up to the programmer to decide if events are ignored or processed during animations because what that means depends on what you want to happen: is the animation interactive and reversible? Does tapping reset the animation or does it start animating to the new state from its existing state?
CoreAnimation does the work based on the policies you select (eg: interpolating between a half-complete animation and the new desired end state).
Correction—CA animations process and render in a render server process. This is why even when the main thread is blocked, animations can continue.
While the button is animating, it simply doesn't respond to touches. There's no thread that's stuck. 1 + 2 - 3 consistently produces the correct result because + and - are different buttons.
It’s a simpler matter of not passing “allowuserinteraction” to the UIView animation options.
> People are talking about "lag" and performance, as if this was a "the system can't handle it!" issue.
No they're not. The linked thread is literally discussing what you describe as "the actual issue".
> The actual issue is that some developer at Apple screwed up their animation configuration when implementing the calculator redesign, and nobody tested adding more than two numbers together quickly. Multiple failures, none involving system performance.
Unless you were talking about the discussion here on HN? I haven't read most of the discussion here yet. I just wanted to point out that the Redditors get it right just fine, since there's a lot of unheeded shitting on Reddit on HN (has always been the case and I think it's sad. HN has got its own community smells, but at least I hardly ever see Reddit dumping on HN and when they do it's in good natured fun poking and not vitriol like here) (btw your remark wasn't vitriolic, but others are very much so).
No they're not. The linked thread is literally discussing what you describe as "the actual issue".
> The actual issue is that some developer at Apple screwed up their animation configuration when implementing the calculator redesign, and nobody tested adding more than two numbers together quickly. Multiple failures, none involving system performance.
Unless you were talking about the discussion here on HN? I haven't read most of the discussion here yet. I just wanted to point out that the Redditors get it right just fine, since there's a lot of unheeded shitting on Reddit on HN (has always been the case and I think it's sad. HN has got its own community smells, but at least I hardly ever see Reddit dumping on HN and when they do it's in good natured fun poking and not vitriol like here) (btw your remark wasn't vitriolic, but others are very much so).
For the layman the "system" in this context is the calculator, which can't, indeed, handle it.
> tap an operand, tap a number, then tap the operand
The numbers are the operands.
The numbers are the operands.
[deleted]
No, just don't block input during animations.
I can't come up with a good UX reason for that restriction, so either it's an oversight or a technical limitation.
I can't come up with a good UX reason for that restriction, so either it's an oversight or a technical limitation.
Speaking of lag, I wish turning on/off cellular data didnt have that 2 second lag. why cant it be instant?
My thoughts exactly.. You are correct
Just checked the Android calculator implementations from Google and Samsung on my phone. They correctly handle button press animation asynchronously. Look like Apple doesn't dog-food their software anymore after Jobs.
Let's just be frank: If Jobs was in charge, everyone that remotely touched that app would pulled into a room, berated and told how fucking dumb they are, and told to pack their shit and find another job. Remember, he was obsessive about the first calculator app and hand-tuned it to his liking, so it's not hyperbole to suggest that he would be fucking livvid. [1]
Asshole, but perfection requires assholes. Apple is regressing. Their products are too expensive to tolerate regression.
[1] http://www.businessinsider.com/macintosh-calculator-2011-10
Asshole, but perfection requires assholes. Apple is regressing. Their products are too expensive to tolerate regression.
[1] http://www.businessinsider.com/macintosh-calculator-2011-10
>Let's just be frank: If Jobs was in charge, everyone that remotely touched that app would pulled into a room, berated and told how fucking dumb they are, and told to pack their shit and find another job.
Let's just be frank: there were TONS of BS issues like that under Jobs all the time, regardless of whether he was obsessive about this or that particular app.
Let's just be frank: there were TONS of BS issues like that under Jobs all the time, regardless of whether he was obsessive about this or that particular app.
TIL some people think berating your employees when they do a mistake is a good way to run a company.
WOW!
It's just so wrong at so many levels, I don't even know where to start.
I'll leave a link to this video: https://www.ted.com/talks/brian_goldman_doctors_make_mistake...
WOW!
It's just so wrong at so many levels, I don't even know where to start.
I'll leave a link to this video: https://www.ted.com/talks/brian_goldman_doctors_make_mistake...
Grandparent isn't trying to condone the practice of berating employees but to demonstrate how Apple under Steve Jobs would've been much more likely to catch these kinds of screwups before production and much less likely to tolerate them once they occurred. The means of correction are less important than the standard of quality which was effectively enforced.
I don't think that's what he's saying, but c'mon; it's a pretty dumb mistake. QA should be hauled in as well.
So against we have Brian Goldman, MD. And for, we have Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and pretty much every other tech/entrepreneur darling of the 20th century. I'm pretty sure the results speak for themselves here.
I don't think firing people is berating.
This is pretty unforgivable. It's like ok great, I'm paying 50 people to make an app and NONE OF THEM EVEN USED IT?!
He is not condoning it just mentioning how under Jobs this would have been a big deal.
I don't think Job's way was a good way, but it's certainly better than whatever the hell they are doing now.
Didn't the iphone 4 antenna issue happen under Jobs? With him claiming you're holding the phone wrong or something like that.
You mean the iPhone 4 antenna non-issue?
Lots of bugs and issues happened under Jobs, but this was the usual press BS.
The iPhone 4 went on to sell 50 millions of devices or so with that antenna and nobody in the real world had much of an issue with it.
Lots of bugs and issues happened under Jobs, but this was the usual press BS.
The iPhone 4 went on to sell 50 millions of devices or so with that antenna and nobody in the real world had much of an issue with it.
A relative's phone calls got disconnected very regularly until she covered the antenna with tape.
If nobody in the real world had any issues with it nobody would have discovered it in the first place.
>If nobody in the real world had any issues with it nobody would have discovered it in the first place.
If only media worked that way and never discovered problems where they don't exist or are totally marginal...
By the same logic, if nobody listened any difference with $1000 "hi-fi cables" they wouldn't be buying them...
If only media worked that way and never discovered problems where they don't exist or are totally marginal...
By the same logic, if nobody listened any difference with $1000 "hi-fi cables" they wouldn't be buying them...
No it definitely existed. I got a 4, and it was not uncommon to go from a perfectly fine phone call, to a dropped phone call until I got a case.
And it was such a perfect phone to use without case.
Considering they gave away free bumpers, I have to disagree.
That link is an incomplete version of the the original story here:
https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&stor...
https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&stor...
Are you a programmer? If so, is not getting yelled at what motivates you to write good software?
I am a programmer. And if I shipped a crap like this, I would agree that I deserve to be yelled at.
But the problem is probably not at developer level, it's higher ups who don't care about quality control, which permeate downwards.
But the problem is probably not at developer level, it's higher ups who don't care about quality control, which permeate downwards.
You didn’t answer the question, but I’ll go ahead and suggest that you are motivated to create good software, not by a fear of being yelled at, but rather something else. Maybe you think the product you are making is of actual value, and are proud of it. Maybe you want to impress your boss with the quality so you can get a raise. Maybe you don’t want to be fired.
In any case, I would be shocked if there was anyone, anywhere that thought: “you know, I would have put in the effort, but I knew even if I screwed up, no one would verbally abuse me, so why bother?”
Just my opinion, but I would reckon no software has ever been made better by verbal abuse. Jobs succeeded in spite of it, not because of it. Going on a tirade is something egomaniacs do when they can’t control their temper, not an effective motivational strategy.
In any case, I would be shocked if there was anyone, anywhere that thought: “you know, I would have put in the effort, but I knew even if I screwed up, no one would verbally abuse me, so why bother?”
Just my opinion, but I would reckon no software has ever been made better by verbal abuse. Jobs succeeded in spite of it, not because of it. Going on a tirade is something egomaniacs do when they can’t control their temper, not an effective motivational strategy.
A rhetorical question that has only one answer doesn't really require an answer.
Do you seriously think anyone would answer "yes i love getting yelled at"? If yes, then I'm done here. If no, then ask yourself why you asked that question. it's a rhetorical question to control your narrative, which has nothing to do with what GP said. GP never said it's a good thing to yell at others, and neither did I. You're the one who turned it into this narrative for the sake of your argument.
Do you seriously think anyone would answer "yes i love getting yelled at"? If yes, then I'm done here. If no, then ask yourself why you asked that question. it's a rhetorical question to control your narrative, which has nothing to do with what GP said. GP never said it's a good thing to yell at others, and neither did I. You're the one who turned it into this narrative for the sake of your argument.
If I'm at the sort of job where I get yelled at for doing my job as I saw fit, I will be motivated in the future to find a better manager.
But then again, I'd never block user input to play an unnecessary animation on my own initiative, so I must have been doing that because my manager told me to do it, or because I wasn't given enough time to do the job properly. So if I got yelled at in that situation, I'd wait to see if I was fired, and quit if I was not. Management by loud, abrasive, dominance-displaying histrionics is not something I can work with, ever.
Every company gets one freebie, where I go above and beyond the call of duty to make the kind of software that I am proud to stand behind. If that effort is not rewarded or recognized, and explicitly encouraged to continue, I fall back into line and do exactly as I am told thenceforth--no more, no less. I won't offer my opinion unless it is requested, and I won't go looking for extra things to do to improve the code base. If that freebie is actually punished or reprimanded, I start looking for other jobs. What I have found is that few companies are interested in doing anything well, or even technically correct. They desire extremely consistent mediocrity. They don't want a hand-crafted hamburger made from fresh-ground chuck and crisp, juicy vegetables; they want a McDonald's hamburger with exactly two pickle slices and one pinch of minced onion.
Anyone that yells at a grill cook for making a gourmet burger instead of the McDonald's standard probably shouldn't be hiring trained chefs and assigning them to the grill. But worse, anyone that yells at their grill cook because they put a third pickle slice on the burger--an extra pickle that was asked for, or even demanded--probably should not be in charge of anything, much less a bunch of grill cooks.
Fear of getting yelled at is actually fear of having to navigate the awful interview process all over again, while pretending to care about my current job long enough for an offer to come in. I avoid doing my work badly mostly because I don't want to be a person who does bad work. If I ever do bad work, it's because I was told to do it that way--or maybe yelled at to do it that way--and I hate every shortcut and kludge, even as I am typing them into existence. At that point, I am already mentally out the door, only sticking around until that paycheck can be replaced by a check from somewhere else. Yelling is bad management, and bad management motivates me to leave.
But then again, I'd never block user input to play an unnecessary animation on my own initiative, so I must have been doing that because my manager told me to do it, or because I wasn't given enough time to do the job properly. So if I got yelled at in that situation, I'd wait to see if I was fired, and quit if I was not. Management by loud, abrasive, dominance-displaying histrionics is not something I can work with, ever.
Every company gets one freebie, where I go above and beyond the call of duty to make the kind of software that I am proud to stand behind. If that effort is not rewarded or recognized, and explicitly encouraged to continue, I fall back into line and do exactly as I am told thenceforth--no more, no less. I won't offer my opinion unless it is requested, and I won't go looking for extra things to do to improve the code base. If that freebie is actually punished or reprimanded, I start looking for other jobs. What I have found is that few companies are interested in doing anything well, or even technically correct. They desire extremely consistent mediocrity. They don't want a hand-crafted hamburger made from fresh-ground chuck and crisp, juicy vegetables; they want a McDonald's hamburger with exactly two pickle slices and one pinch of minced onion.
Anyone that yells at a grill cook for making a gourmet burger instead of the McDonald's standard probably shouldn't be hiring trained chefs and assigning them to the grill. But worse, anyone that yells at their grill cook because they put a third pickle slice on the burger--an extra pickle that was asked for, or even demanded--probably should not be in charge of anything, much less a bunch of grill cooks.
Fear of getting yelled at is actually fear of having to navigate the awful interview process all over again, while pretending to care about my current job long enough for an offer to come in. I avoid doing my work badly mostly because I don't want to be a person who does bad work. If I ever do bad work, it's because I was told to do it that way--or maybe yelled at to do it that way--and I hate every shortcut and kludge, even as I am typing them into existence. At that point, I am already mentally out the door, only sticking around until that paycheck can be replaced by a check from somewhere else. Yelling is bad management, and bad management motivates me to leave.
Would getting yelled at make you perform better?
Define "getting yelled at".
Nobody is defending management which abuses employees for failing to meet quality standards. But yelling at employees is not the only way to indicate disapproval of work which does not meet quality standards, and the fact that Apple has not been maintaining quality standards is a black stain on current management that Steve Jobs never would have allowed in his company.
Apple shouldn't model Jobs's management style and go back to yelling at workers, but its entire corporate ethos depends on keeping Jobs's quality standards. If those standards are gone then Apple's brand will surely die.
Nobody is defending management which abuses employees for failing to meet quality standards. But yelling at employees is not the only way to indicate disapproval of work which does not meet quality standards, and the fact that Apple has not been maintaining quality standards is a black stain on current management that Steve Jobs never would have allowed in his company.
Apple shouldn't model Jobs's management style and go back to yelling at workers, but its entire corporate ethos depends on keeping Jobs's quality standards. If those standards are gone then Apple's brand will surely die.
Apple software has been buggy since they invented the freaking bomb icon.
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> perfection requires assholes?
Wait, wat? How?
Wait, wat? How?
To get the shit out, I presume.
Its a miss on qa end. so if the qa in my company is good they are assholes ?
To enforce critical assessment of one's work with people who are not inclined to do that on their own.
Dude, it's Apple. Hold your tongue. ;)
Does nobody have a sense of humour or the ability to literally hold their tongue and say Apple?
Steve left Forstall in place to fill that role. Guess he made the wrong people cry. Maybe he’ll make a grand return someday.
If Jobs was in charge this wouldn't have happened
Antenna-gate (the iPhone antenna not working well enough if you held the phone) happened while Jobs was in charge.
Not the best example.
Lots of bugs and issues happened under Jobs, but this was the usual press BS.
The iPhone 4 went on to sell 50 millions of devices or so with that antenna and nobody in the real world had much of an issue with it.
Lots of bugs and issues happened under Jobs, but this was the usual press BS.
The iPhone 4 went on to sell 50 millions of devices or so with that antenna and nobody in the real world had much of an issue with it.
Seems you are cutting and pasting, but Apple gave away free bumpers with the 4, so yes, it was an issue.
You also seem to be repeating your reply.
And the bumpers aren't proof of anything except perhaps marketing; they could have just decided that the cost of giving everybody free bumpers was cheaper than any brand damage they might otherwise have sustained.
And the bumpers aren't proof of anything except perhaps marketing; they could have just decided that the cost of giving everybody free bumpers was cheaper than any brand damage they might otherwise have sustained.
>Seems you are cutting and pasting
You wanted a totally original rephrase for a response to the exact same topic on a different subthread?
>Apple gave away free bumpers with the 4, so yes, it was an issue
Which few really used in the wild, so no, it wasn't.
You wanted a totally original rephrase for a response to the exact same topic on a different subthread?
>Apple gave away free bumpers with the 4, so yes, it was an issue
Which few really used in the wild, so no, it wasn't.
>Which few really used in the wild, so no, it wasn't.
Are you saying the average iPhone user doesn't have a case?
If Jobs was in charge, he would still be living and people are worried about calculator.
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Or he might berate the users, like he did with the antenna.
Steve Jobs died in 2011. Let it go.
As soon as I upgraded my 6s to 11, I saw performance seriously degrade. It takes -seconds- to bring up the iMessage editor.
My immediate thought was that Apple had liberally sprinkled wait() into the iOS 11 code base so that I'd feel like my ole A9 CPU just wasn't cutting it any more and I'd realize, as they do, it's time to upgrade.
Or... maybe they are running every key stroke through the new Azure-enabled Cray computers to better predict what I am going to type so that overall, my typing is more efficient and I'm actually spending less time typing...
Yeah. Yeah, that's it!
My immediate thought was that Apple had liberally sprinkled wait() into the iOS 11 code base so that I'd feel like my ole A9 CPU just wasn't cutting it any more and I'd realize, as they do, it's time to upgrade.
Or... maybe they are running every key stroke through the new Azure-enabled Cray computers to better predict what I am going to type so that overall, my typing is more efficient and I'm actually spending less time typing...
Yeah. Yeah, that's it!
> My immediate thought was that Apple had liberally sprinkled wait() into the iOS 11 code base so that I'd feel like my ole A9 CPU just wasn't cutting it any more and I'd realize, as they do, it's time to upgrade.
That was actually recently debunked by Futuremark https://www.futuremark.com/pressreleases/is-it-true-that-iph....
Important excerpts found at the bottom of the page:
> Our benchmarking data shows that, rather than intentionally degrading the performance of older models, Apple actually does a good job of supporting its older devices with regular updates that maintain a consistent level of performance across iOS versions.
and
> That said, there are some factors that might affect people's perception of performance after updating an older device with a newer version of iOS. An update might add new features that use more resources or require more processing power. New apps developed for the latest models might not run as smoothly on older devices. Conversely, apps designed for an earlier version of iOS might not take full advantage of optimizations in the latest version. And then there is always the psychological effect of knowing that there is a new and improved model available, which can make your own device seem outdated.
That was actually recently debunked by Futuremark https://www.futuremark.com/pressreleases/is-it-true-that-iph....
Important excerpts found at the bottom of the page:
> Our benchmarking data shows that, rather than intentionally degrading the performance of older models, Apple actually does a good job of supporting its older devices with regular updates that maintain a consistent level of performance across iOS versions.
and
> That said, there are some factors that might affect people's perception of performance after updating an older device with a newer version of iOS. An update might add new features that use more resources or require more processing power. New apps developed for the latest models might not run as smoothly on older devices. Conversely, apps designed for an earlier version of iOS might not take full advantage of optimizations in the latest version. And then there is always the psychological effect of knowing that there is a new and improved model available, which can make your own device seem outdated.
What is debunked? That the CPU has not changed during the upgrade? No shit sherlock. Synthetic benchmarks tell nothing of the end-user experience.
Does Apple sprinkle wait()? No. Does the system become more and more complex and Apple taking less time to optimize because it runs “fine” on the [latest - 1] hardware? Yes.
Does Apple sprinkle wait()? No. Does the system become more and more complex and Apple taking less time to optimize because it runs “fine” on the [latest - 1] hardware? Yes.
> What is debunked?
I'll help you a bit.
> > [...] Apple had liberally sprinkled wait() into the iOS 11 code base so that I'd feel like my ole A9 CPU just wasn't cutting it any more
From the article
> Are older iPhones being deliberately slowed? [...] maintain a consistent level of performance across iOS versions
Sure, as you snarkily remark, your CPU/GPU hasn't changed, but neither has the iOS version inherently made your phone slower. Apps on the other hand might be assuming more power nowadays, but that is a whole other question... Or, you could also just have read the end of my comment...
I'll help you a bit.
> > [...] Apple had liberally sprinkled wait() into the iOS 11 code base so that I'd feel like my ole A9 CPU just wasn't cutting it any more
From the article
> Are older iPhones being deliberately slowed? [...] maintain a consistent level of performance across iOS versions
Sure, as you snarkily remark, your CPU/GPU hasn't changed, but neither has the iOS version inherently made your phone slower. Apps on the other hand might be assuming more power nowadays, but that is a whole other question... Or, you could also just have read the end of my comment...
Tired of people bringing up that "article" and the sensationalist media headlines. All that articles shows is that the CPU, given 100% utilization, does the same result as it did on iOS 10. Really surprising for sure. So what was the point of you posting that article? People saying "Apple is slowing my device" don't actually mean "the CPU has become slower". There goes the entire premise that benchmark. The CPU is the same—the software is less optimized for older hardware. The net effect? The software runs slower (and in some cases much slower) than older versions of the OS.
The real rebuttal of "slow" claims should be to look at the added features and security and discuss whether such trade-offs are worth the reduction in performance. For example, to make the user's data much more secure, Apple puts a lot of mechanisms behind XPC, which is inherently slower than mere API calls. These slow the system. Are they worth it, for the security benefit? That's the productive discussion we should be having.
The real rebuttal of "slow" claims should be to look at the added features and security and discuss whether such trade-offs are worth the reduction in performance. For example, to make the user's data much more secure, Apple puts a lot of mechanisms behind XPC, which is inherently slower than mere API calls. These slow the system. Are they worth it, for the security benefit? That's the productive discussion we should be having.
>Tired of people bringing up that "article" and the sensationalist media headlines. All that articles shows is that the CPU, given 100% utilization, does the same result as it did on iOS 10
But that is LITERALLY what people were accusing Apple of doing, actually slowing their devices to make them buy newer models. There might have been less conspiracy-esque claims, but jesting they were "sprinkling wait() calls in the code to make me upgrade" is not in that category - so I disagree with your claim that people weren't meaning that.
Anyways, this discussion has derailed, so I'm just gonna leave it at that.
But that is LITERALLY what people were accusing Apple of doing, actually slowing their devices to make them buy newer models. There might have been less conspiracy-esque claims, but jesting they were "sprinkling wait() calls in the code to make me upgrade" is not in that category - so I disagree with your claim that people weren't meaning that.
Anyways, this discussion has derailed, so I'm just gonna leave it at that.
No—even at face value, "sprinkling wait()" does not slow the CPU, it slows the software running on the CPU; if you then manage to obtain 100% for your thread, that does not disprove that Apple has not added `wait()` anywhere in their code. In their code—software.
Technically the 6s is now [latest - 2] hardware. X/8/8+ have the A11 Bionic; 7/7+ have the A10 Fusion; 6s has the A9.
Exactly what I said. It runs "fine" on 7, while it runs slow(er) on 6S.
iOS 11 runs fine and just as fast as iOS 10 on my SE. It sounds like you are experiencing a bug.
Aren't there, like... 3rd-party chat or emoji apps or something now? I don't use any of that stuff, but if only some people on 6-series iPhones are experiencing a multi-second delay opening the iMessage editor, my first guess would be they have some of those installed and one or more of them have shit the bed.
Ah, my mistake, I was taking the scare quotes to mean you were complaining about it on your hardware.
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>>As soon as I upgraded my 6s to 11, I saw performance seriously degrade. It takes -seconds- to bring up the iMessage editor.
THIS! My exact experience and sentiment. The lag frustrates me every time I open almost any app (and then I get frustrated with myself for letting myself succumb to such a first-world-problem)
Is there any recourse? Can we disable some animations or other unnecessary features in settings?
Can we expect 11.0.4 or 11.1 to fix?
THIS! My exact experience and sentiment. The lag frustrates me every time I open almost any app (and then I get frustrated with myself for letting myself succumb to such a first-world-problem)
Is there any recourse? Can we disable some animations or other unnecessary features in settings?
Can we expect 11.0.4 or 11.1 to fix?
Just googled, found this...
"Some reddit users claim that resetting their settings (Settings --> General ---> Reset --> Reset All Settings) fixed all of the app issues, while others have restored their devices and set it up as new to solve the problem. Others have backed up and restored and had better results."
https://www.macrumors.com/2017/09/25/ios-11-app-slowdowns-pe...
"Some reddit users claim that resetting their settings (Settings --> General ---> Reset --> Reset All Settings) fixed all of the app issues, while others have restored their devices and set it up as new to solve the problem. Others have backed up and restored and had better results."
https://www.macrumors.com/2017/09/25/ios-11-app-slowdowns-pe...
I did a backup and complete restore. It went from completely unusable to annoyingly usable. Still considering downgrading to 10.3
Signing window has closed on 10.x.
Not for 6S. It has some issues and Apple still lets users downgrade.
not to mention you can't restore a backup of 11 on 10.x...
is it possible to downgrade to 10.3 ? I thought you can't do that anymore once you upgrade. I upgraded my old iPad to 10 and the experience is horrible. I wanted to downgrade back to iOS 9 but I can't find a way to do it.
I can confirm. Tried the same - wipe and reinstall. Phone is slightly better but still lags for Camera, forwarding images to WhatsApp and to open iMessage.
And this when I have yet to restore from iCloud or restore an entire 25GB Music cache!
What's happening, Apple?
And this when I have yet to restore from iCloud or restore an entire 25GB Music cache!
What's happening, Apple?
Same problem, tried this and did not work. The only solution for me was to downgrade to 10.
You can disable animations in Accessibility settings along with other things. Check it out!
EDIT: Should probably mention it's called Reduce Motion.
EDIT: Should probably mention it's called Reduce Motion.
On iOS 10, it does not disable animations but replaces them with fade-ins/fade-outs. I don't know the behaviour on iOS 11, but I suspect it is going to be the same.
It is, but it does feel a bit speedier. Interestingly I’ve had Reduce Motions on for quite some time and just turned it off. Feels kinda newish now, but I guess I sometimes just like change for changes sake.
I had it off. Just turned it on — feels no change on iPhone 5s.
Resetting all settings seems to have done the trick. But I am not 100% sure.
Resetting all settings seems to have done the trick. But I am not 100% sure.
I uninstalled my 3rd party keyboards because the lag to bring it up got much worse with iOS 11.
So why do you update to the latest version? iPhone 6 is quite old by now, and the updates have historically caused reduced performance. I didn't put Windows 7 on my old 1GB Windows XP machine because it's dumb, you should think about the same when updating your phone.
If Apple says you should update then it must be knowing what will work in that hardware.
>>Or... maybe they are running every key stroke through the new Azure-enabled Cray computers to better predict what I am going to type so that overall, my typing is more efficient and I'm actually spending less time typing...
The typing on iOS 11 in all apps is absolutely abysmal. What the hell is going on?
The typing on iOS 11 in all apps is absolutely abysmal. What the hell is going on?
On an iPhone 6, if you type quickly, AUTOCApitalization lags and doesn't switch off until after 4-5 characters, which is absolutely mindboggling. The system obviously knows you've typed more than one char, is this thing multithreaded in the extreme?!
> What the hell is going on?
The same that has happened for every iOS .0 release for YEARS.
They focus on showstoppers (P1) only then focus on usability (P2) during the next year's worth of point releases. Then iOS 12 will come along and the process repeats.
The same that has happened for every iOS .0 release for YEARS.
They focus on showstoppers (P1) only then focus on usability (P2) during the next year's worth of point releases. Then iOS 12 will come along and the process repeats.
For .0 releases they’re furiously coding against a daunting fixed deadline. For .0.1 warranty releases, lingering showstoppers. The .1 releases get all the care. If I were smart, I’d wait around for dot-ones and eat my broccoli.
The giant is pulling apart at the seams.
It would take an obsessive, aggressive, near manic product personality to stay on top of something that large and keep it running at an extremely high level of quality. Tim Cook isn't that leader (which pretty much everybody understood on day one).
Apple is seeing very serious problems across numerous aspects of their business, from product decisions to supply chain.
It would take an obsessive, aggressive, near manic product personality to stay on top of something that large and keep it running at an extremely high level of quality. Tim Cook isn't that leader (which pretty much everybody understood on day one).
Apple is seeing very serious problems across numerous aspects of their business, from product decisions to supply chain.
This is revisionist drivel.
Every year it's always "Apple is dying" as they continue to siphon money from every industry they touch. They are about to push a tonne of users into a higher price point with the iPhone X. The Apple Watch is an unquestionable success. We are on the precipice of seeing an ARM based MacBook based on their incredible work with A-series chips. They are also strategically very well placed with their Health and AR initiatives.
Anyway look forward to your position in a few weeks when iOS 11.1 is released given the betas are looking pretty good.
Every year it's always "Apple is dying" as they continue to siphon money from every industry they touch. They are about to push a tonne of users into a higher price point with the iPhone X. The Apple Watch is an unquestionable success. We are on the precipice of seeing an ARM based MacBook based on their incredible work with A-series chips. They are also strategically very well placed with their Health and AR initiatives.
Anyway look forward to your position in a few weeks when iOS 11.1 is released given the betas are looking pretty good.
Do we even have sales figures for the apple watch. All I see is made up numbers and guesses.
I never noticed anyone anywhere wearing an apple watch.
Not that I spend any time looking at people's wrists, but you'd think if it was a massive success everyone would notice.
Not that I spend any time looking at people's wrists, but you'd think if it was a massive success everyone would notice.
Interesting. Where do you live? Here in London they are really commonplace - you see them on people on the tube all the time and I notice them being used fairly regularly by all ages and sexes for contactless payments, running, etc. In fact they seem so widely adopted that it’s not uncommon to see even people with them who you would not necessarily expect to be wearing them.
They are given out for free to anyone signed up to Vitality health care (and stay 'active'). A lot of companies in the city use them as the health care perk.
I wonder how much that has bolstered the amount of people using one.
I wonder how much that has bolstered the amount of people using one.
They're pretty rare in my UK city; I expect being able to use them for the Tube provides a useful rationalisation for the purchase - the are a lot more richer people in the greater London area too.
Plural of anecdote isn't data.
I think they were referring to "I never noticed anyone anywhere wearing an apple watch."
They are very common here in Austin. The woman working at the counter in the Post Office wears one and the last couple of doctors I've visited wear them. How common are they? I'm not sure. The fact that they have a distinctive appearance makes them much easier to identify than other watches since the other watch companies make so many models.
It would be interesting to see the geographic distribution; I was in Delaware a two years ago and used mine to pay for my purchases at a Bookstore and everyone was quite surprised--they were unaware of the active Apple Pay feature on their own point of sales terminals.
It would be interesting to see the geographic distribution; I was in Delaware a two years ago and used mine to pay for my purchases at a Bookstore and everyone was quite surprised--they were unaware of the active Apple Pay feature on their own point of sales terminals.
I travel to a good number of middle America small towns and consistently see small business / middle manager upper middle class men wearing them. No women, fwiw.
The people wearing them aren't techie types at all which is why I'd guess the sentiment in tech circles is so negative on the watch's success. I think we're used to seeing our colleagues being the earlier adopters of gadgets like these, but the Apple watch early adopters include a diverse set of non-tech people.
The people wearing them aren't techie types at all which is why I'd guess the sentiment in tech circles is so negative on the watch's success. I think we're used to seeing our colleagues being the earlier adopters of gadgets like these, but the Apple watch early adopters include a diverse set of non-tech people.
> The people wearing them aren't techie types at all
Most of the Apple-using techie types I'm friends with have a Watch.
Although as a counterpoint, at $WORK, most of the techie types don't (but also don't use other Apple stuff.)
Most of the Apple-using techie types I'm friends with have a Watch.
Although as a counterpoint, at $WORK, most of the techie types don't (but also don't use other Apple stuff.)
I shouldn't have implied adoption is necessarily low in tech circles. What I meant is that I've seen a surprising adoption by non-tech people, making the proportion of the adoption out of the ordinary and harder to jduge using past experience with tech devices.
I think it's one of those things you notice once you're looking for them. I certainly see them fairly regularly, in my smallish MidWestern city.
As a random example, yesterday I bought fast-food fried chicken for lunch. The woman who took my order was wearing an Apple Watch. The barista at my regular coffee shop wears one.
They're definitely showing up on non-tech people. I've also never seen a woman wearing a smartwatch that isn't an Apple Watch.
As a random example, yesterday I bought fast-food fried chicken for lunch. The woman who took my order was wearing an Apple Watch. The barista at my regular coffee shop wears one.
They're definitely showing up on non-tech people. I've also never seen a woman wearing a smartwatch that isn't an Apple Watch.
Apple claims that sales are up 50% since last year with an estimate total of 33 million watches sold. Apple is even calling itself the "nr 1 watchmaker in the world", even though technically I believe Swatch Group is still larger if you include all of its brands.
The last wristwatch I wore regularly was a Swatch. That was back around 1994. After that, I either used stationary clocks, the time display on the computer I was using, or a cheapo toy-quality digital timepiece thrown into a pocket of my backpack--the sort of thing you might get in a cereal box or a Happy Meal.
Starting around 2001, that last one got replaced by my mobile phone.
I'm not really seeing the use case for smart watches. But then again, I was never a fan of purses or fanny packs or any kind of jewelry either, and never understood fashion, so I'm probably never going to see the point of smart watches either. If I'm going to strap anything to my body all day, it has to be clearly useful for the entire duration, to overcome the discomfort and inconvenience. I'm just not seeing that yet in any of the available options. In every case, I'd rather put a wrist strap on my phone.
Starting around 2001, that last one got replaced by my mobile phone.
I'm not really seeing the use case for smart watches. But then again, I was never a fan of purses or fanny packs or any kind of jewelry either, and never understood fashion, so I'm probably never going to see the point of smart watches either. If I'm going to strap anything to my body all day, it has to be clearly useful for the entire duration, to overcome the discomfort and inconvenience. I'm just not seeing that yet in any of the available options. In every case, I'd rather put a wrist strap on my phone.
Apple said they're bigger than Rolex in revenue.
My iPhone 7 - the latest iPhone at the time iOS 11 came out, and with the fastest single threaded mobile CPU for some time - can no longer play locally downloaded audio and be used at the same time without stuttering constantly. Everything is broken on iOS 11. Extremely frustrating. I will buy a new phone, but not an iPhone.
I have an iPhone 7 and I do not experience this at all.
On the other anecdotal hand, I have an iPhone 7 and do experience this - normally through Overcast but sometimes Music will stutter and jank.
HOWEVER I am running the developer preview betas which are notorious for being UX janky and logging insane amounts of crap on every action the OS takes. Which probably explains it for me at least.
HOWEVER I am running the developer preview betas which are notorious for being UX janky and logging insane amounts of crap on every action the OS takes. Which probably explains it for me at least.
I'm on the 6, two years older than that, and experience lag but never a single stutter on anything audio related.
It sounds like an issue that a reset or reinstall may fix.
I'd be similarly pissed off like you if even my much older phone did that.
It sounds like an issue that a reset or reinstall may fix.
I'd be similarly pissed off like you if even my much older phone did that.
The worst thing for me is the Camera. If I want to take a photo of something that's just happening I don't even bother anymore since I can expect it to take 10 seconds to wake the phone, get into the camera, and have the shutter button respond and have it actually take a photo (sometimes it looks like it took a photo but it actually didn't save!).
Interesting. Bored before bed so ran a quick test using my iphone7 and Ios 11.x, Google's stopwatch.
The time from wake to photo was ~2seconds (using the lockscreen short cut).
The time from wake to home screen photo app to photo was ~5 seconds.
*
I had to start the timer myself then go back to using the phone so I believe I could cut ~500ms.
Since I have Live Photo enabled, the 2-second shots actually have a few frames that are sub 2 seconds.
Going to the homescreen was accidental. In each attempt, I attempted to use the lock-screen camera shortcut.
As a whole, the experience using the iphone is too unpredictable to be reliable for quick reaction shots (< 3 seconds). A number of times I either: bypassed the lock screen, didnt get passed the lock screen, unlocked my phone to a different app, and on one occasion, the camera app paused for a few seconds before focusing.
The time from wake to photo was ~2seconds (using the lockscreen short cut).
The time from wake to home screen photo app to photo was ~5 seconds.
*
I had to start the timer myself then go back to using the phone so I believe I could cut ~500ms.
Since I have Live Photo enabled, the 2-second shots actually have a few frames that are sub 2 seconds.
Going to the homescreen was accidental. In each attempt, I attempted to use the lock-screen camera shortcut.
As a whole, the experience using the iphone is too unpredictable to be reliable for quick reaction shots (< 3 seconds). A number of times I either: bypassed the lock screen, didnt get passed the lock screen, unlocked my phone to a different app, and on one occasion, the camera app paused for a few seconds before focusing.
If I try it several times in a row it's quick, since presumably everything is cached in memory. If I've been doing other stuff and pick my phone up hours later (exactly when I want that split-second shot of my kid or the license plate of the car that almost ran over me), that's when the phone and camera take ages to get ready.
I really miss Samsung's 'double-click home button to use camera' on the Galaxy S6 and S7. Probably the most convenient implementation of a camera shortcut I've seen.
I like the Motorola double twist for camera gesture, you can start the gesture just as you take it out of your pocket.
I miss my Sony Ericsson that had an actual shutter button you could hold down to activate the camera from sleep.
OnePlus (five here) uses double power button for that and it feels quite fast/is very reliable.
Double-power on the Nexus 6P on Oreo - it's very nice.
Yes! Especially if what I'm wanting to do is take a video of my kid. By the time I get the photo app to respond well enough to swipe over to video and let it readjust itself, I have missed the moment by seconds.
This is one of the major pains that tore me away from Android (where I had several ‘flagship’ phones and kept them free of crap). If iOS keeps heading this way, what’s left?
Back in the 90s I decided we needed a real-time UX - hard real-time guarantees. I had no idea how to even start with this, especially as the only OSes I knew well were UNIX-like, none of which did real-time. There was QNX(?) but I didn’t have access to play with it.
So do we need an effort to make a new real-time phone OS? Kinda like the Firefox phone OS project but built on an OS that allows guarantees?
Back in the 90s I decided we needed a real-time UX - hard real-time guarantees. I had no idea how to even start with this, especially as the only OSes I knew well were UNIX-like, none of which did real-time. There was QNX(?) but I didn’t have access to play with it.
So do we need an effort to make a new real-time phone OS? Kinda like the Firefox phone OS project but built on an OS that allows guarantees?
This. My 6 Plus is barely usable now, to the point where it is annoying the hell out of me. On iOS 10 i was fine with the 6 Plus and thought i could easily use it another year, but right now it's barely usable. I compared loading a banking app on my 6 and my colleagues 7 (closed it before) and the difference is astounding (2-3 seconds slower). Also everything is just laggy including typing and taking photos.
I have the 6 and benefited from uninstalling 3rd party keyboards and doing a settings reset. Might have also done a fresh install.
For a 3 year old phone, it's frustrating but still miles ahead of the last Android phone I kept for 18 months. It's still frustrating that the iOS update is basically forced on us instead of being an optional upgrade like on desktop. (Of course it's technically optionally, but the constant nag annoyance makes it effectively forced, imo.)
For a 3 year old phone, it's frustrating but still miles ahead of the last Android phone I kept for 18 months. It's still frustrating that the iOS update is basically forced on us instead of being an optional upgrade like on desktop. (Of course it's technically optionally, but the constant nag annoyance makes it effectively forced, imo.)
Odd, I have a 6s Plus and I haven't had any issues after upgrading. Sounds like it's hit and miss. I wonder if they changed the hardware during the production lifetime.
6S has the A9 processor, the 6 has the A8, maybe that makes enough of a difference for it to not be that bad. I will also try the complete reset though.
It takes 14 sec to open maps and load a screen of tiles, 4 sec to open messenger on a my 6 plus. I’d love to see timings for this on the newer models.
Also, I swear the rear-facing camera has lower color saturation and higher sensoe noise after the upgrade. I’d love to see A-B camera tests for iOS 10 and 11 on old hardware.
Also, I swear the rear-facing camera has lower color saturation and higher sensoe noise after the upgrade. I’d love to see A-B camera tests for iOS 10 and 11 on old hardware.
5s for maps, 11s for messenger (3s for messages). But, this is on a plain 5, no "S" or any of that fancy stuff new stuff.
My latest annoyance is when I'm using the keyboard and it just visually freezes for several seconds. It appears locked-up, but it's really not. It's silently recording every button you press in anger, and finishes with the throwing of the entire buffer contents at you all at once, which, to add insult to injury, you now have to also delete.
My latest annoyance is when I'm using the keyboard and it just visually freezes for several seconds. It appears locked-up, but it's really not. It's silently recording every button you press in anger, and finishes with the throwing of the entire buffer contents at you all at once, which, to add insult to injury, you now have to also delete.
Opening iMessage on a 6s Plus running iOS 11.0.3: Two seconds
This kind of thread generally piles up on rants of frustrated users, so here's another data (counter-)point: both are <1s for sure, possibly even less than 0.5s on my 6S w/ iOS 11, from a cold start. Everything is snappy and responsive, enough that I'd have to film this on slow mo and time it to be sure of any delay metric. Overall iOS 11 has been a solid performer for me ever since the second public beta.
I wasn't complaining at all. I love iOS 11. Just wanted to give some input.
Sorry for the misunderstanding, this wasn't aimed at you at all, I just responded to yours because you mentioned timings on a same gen device as mine and it seems mine is significantly faster. As for the rest, it's just that the sarcastic, conspiracist, passive-aggressive tone of many of the sibling comments is unnerving.
What exactly my tone should be?
I bought a very expensive phone that was unable to launch apps (50% of the time, when it did, it took several seconds) and unable to make calls (the receiving end would be mute and would not hear what I was saying).
The phone was bought on an official apple store and had one day of use. Problems persisted for over a week. Tried all the possible solutions. The only one that worked was downgrading to 10.
I bought a very expensive phone that was unable to launch apps (50% of the time, when it did, it took several seconds) and unable to make calls (the receiving end would be mute and would not hear what I was saying).
The phone was bought on an official apple store and had one day of use. Problems persisted for over a week. Tried all the possible solutions. The only one that worked was downgrading to 10.
Unfortunately, this is a sad but regular scenario now. It doesn't matter whether Apple does it on purpose or simply doesn't care, but new versions of iOS degrade the performance of older devices (an in this case "older" doesn't necessarily mean "very old"). Some people simply choose not to upgrade, but this may have security implications - and in any case sooner or later you'll come across an app you need that doesn't work on an older version of iOS. You will upgrade, the performace will be degraded, and your previously "good enough" device will suddenly feel sluggish and old.
Is there any definitive evidence for this? Has anyone benchmarked devices before and after upgrades to prove it?
Edit: I don't mean CPU benchmarking which has been discussed elsewhere in this thread. More like usability testing, sequences of actions not invoking new OS features where possible, and also a second set of tests using new OS features because that's what most people's experience would be.
Edit: I don't mean CPU benchmarking which has been discussed elsewhere in this thread. More like usability testing, sequences of actions not invoking new OS features where possible, and also a second set of tests using new OS features because that's what most people's experience would be.
It's difficult to achieve because one cannot downgrade a device to some older version. So when 3GS became insanely slow with updates, no one could at random get a device with an old OS version.
This is a weak argument.
It takes literally zero planning to do a test now and then do another after the update.
I've found a few examples here:
https://www.youtube.com/user/kabriolett
These don't support the argument that devices are slower after updates.
It takes literally zero planning to do a test now and then do another after the update.
I've found a few examples here:
https://www.youtube.com/user/kabriolett
These don't support the argument that devices are slower after updates.
Android (along with most Android applications) is profiled and tested on lower spec devices in a given year. If you buy a high-spec device this year, you could reasonably expect the system to become faster with updates rather than slower.
My biggest gripe is the flashlight delay - swipe up for control center, tap flashlight, and the actual light takes easily a third of a second to turn on. I suspect that's also waiting for the stupid animation to complete.
Honestly I feel like the people in charge of iOS have stopped using the devices personally. I have no other explanation for so much annoying crap slipping through (ok, other than some idiot exec being in love with the animations, and shutting down any attempt to correct this behaviour, like what happened with Forstall's obsession with skeuomorphism).
Honestly I feel like the people in charge of iOS have stopped using the devices personally. I have no other explanation for so much annoying crap slipping through (ok, other than some idiot exec being in love with the animations, and shutting down any attempt to correct this behaviour, like what happened with Forstall's obsession with skeuomorphism).
The flashlight behaviour is odd, I just tried it and I got the same delay the first time I turned it on, but no delay after turning it on multiple times. It's almost as if the code was swapped out to a slow disk and you have to wait for it to be swapped back in before the first use. There's still no good reason why it should take such a noticeable time, though.
There's no swapping on iOS. The delay is probably caused by iOS lazily waking up some hardware. The same happens when you use haptic feedbacks:
>Calling the generator’s prepare() method puts the Taptic Engine in a prepared state. To preserve power, the Taptic Engine stays in this state for only a short period of time (on the order of seconds), or until you next trigger feedback.
https://developer.apple.com/documentation/uikit/uifeedbackge...
>Calling the generator’s prepare() method puts the Taptic Engine in a prepared state. To preserve power, the Taptic Engine stays in this state for only a short period of time (on the order of seconds), or until you next trigger feedback.
https://developer.apple.com/documentation/uikit/uifeedbackge...
More annoying than performance is the ever increasing nagging for apple paid services, apple pay, apple icloud, etc. The platform is literally becoming a junk adware platform. It feels like an infected PC that pop ups ads randomly.
This is precisely why I will not buy an iPhone again. Every single time I open my photos to show someone something I have to wait through two popups that are extremely slow to close. Also now I'm getting nagged to upgrade to ios 11 whenever I just want to use the phone. Abysmal.
What's the alternative? Android, especially Samsung infested bloatware, is substantially worse. The touchwiz upgrade prompts are WAY more annoying than ios ones. Plus the constant Samsung login junk. And then there is the heavy google integration that requires a google account for almost everything.
Except it isn't worse. Not anymore anyway. Any and all notifications just go up top and don't prevent you from using the phone -- even if someone calls you. My 3 year old Sony Xperia Z1C that I only use to for testing lets me jump into whatever app I want as soon as it starts immediately even though I can see there's like 50 notifications to go through. But I can do that when it's convenient for me.
My main problem is that if I simply want to do something on any iOS now as soon as I unlock it I'm blocked by pop ups for things like making a back up and buying more iCloud storage and upgrading to iOS 11 -- things I never intend to do. There's no way to switch these off either. And they happen constantly, multiple times a day.
Last time I used my iPad I dismissed a popup, opened up an app and the same pop up came a few minutes later completely interrupting me. I have no tolerance for these annoyances.
Samsung phones were complete trash back in the day with their bloated interface but I've since switched to a Note 8 and the experience has been very good. UI is very clean and the performance/features on the phone are outstanding.
My main problem is that if I simply want to do something on any iOS now as soon as I unlock it I'm blocked by pop ups for things like making a back up and buying more iCloud storage and upgrading to iOS 11 -- things I never intend to do. There's no way to switch these off either. And they happen constantly, multiple times a day.
Last time I used my iPad I dismissed a popup, opened up an app and the same pop up came a few minutes later completely interrupting me. I have no tolerance for these annoyances.
Samsung phones were complete trash back in the day with their bloated interface but I've since switched to a Note 8 and the experience has been very good. UI is very clean and the performance/features on the phone are outstanding.
Samsung OS is always slick until a year later when they drop all support for it, and the force installed apps start to install adware. This has happened on every Samsung I’ve owned.
All of those have a free tier and/or no paid levels. I've never not had Apple pay setup, so I don't know what the nags look like though.
The iPhone is a rather one size fits most device. If you don't want to go along with Apple's idea of how to use the device, you will be unhappy with it.
Right now I'm fighting the practically forced upgrading of a particular app for which the update will remove functionality. But in order to not update one app, I'm forced to manually update every other app individually. Which is about 40-50 updates a week that I have to approve.
Using the phone forces me to realize the extent to which I don't really own it. I'm just sort of renting services from it with an all-or-nothing set of features.
The iPhone is a rather one size fits most device. If you don't want to go along with Apple's idea of how to use the device, you will be unhappy with it.
Right now I'm fighting the practically forced upgrading of a particular app for which the update will remove functionality. But in order to not update one app, I'm forced to manually update every other app individually. Which is about 40-50 updates a week that I have to approve.
Using the phone forces me to realize the extent to which I don't really own it. I'm just sort of renting services from it with an all-or-nothing set of features.
Same here. I had bought my 6s after my 6 got stolen, so it was my first time using iOS 11. My two-day old phone was absolutely unusable, freezing for over a minute every once in a while. Apps wouldn't open at all! I couldn't change the volume while the phone was locked. I couldn't listen to musics, or use the lock screen music handler, while the phone was locked.
You have something really wrong when your smartphone can't open apps...
After one week I got tired of this shit and downgraded to iOS 10, which for now is working as expected. I really hope apple won't force me to update to iOS 11. (So here's what I did: I intentionally filled my phone space. Good luck fitting iOS' 1GB here).
Frustrated disappointed and utterly angry at Apple. This is definitely the last iPhone I'll own.
You have something really wrong when your smartphone can't open apps...
After one week I got tired of this shit and downgraded to iOS 10, which for now is working as expected. I really hope apple won't force me to update to iOS 11. (So here's what I did: I intentionally filled my phone space. Good luck fitting iOS' 1GB here).
Frustrated disappointed and utterly angry at Apple. This is definitely the last iPhone I'll own.
I was using a 6 Plus up until a few weeks ago. Every upgrade caused serious performance decreases and I avoided iOS11 entirely (anticipating an upgrade to a new device). My partner upgrades yearly and I gave up all phone tasks to him when we were out together as my performance was so bad. Unlock? slow. Open chrome? 2-3 seconds. Open safari? 2-3 seconds. Fancy webpage? Forget it. We use google keep a lot, it basically didn't work on the 6 Plus. Sometimes the app would load quickly, sometimes it would take minutes or not load (or maybe if I kept waiting, it would eventually?). Scrolling in the app hardly worked. Screen touches became more hit or miss. Reflexively, I built in a 2-3 tap routine for most screen touches as it took that many for them to register. Scrolling any sort of content was difficult, stutter-y, and inconvenient. Siri didn't work - but I'm not sure if it does now either. I also had all animations off in an attempt to squeeze some performance.
Anyway, whatever apple did or didn't do, worked. I upgraded to an 8 Plus and couldn't be happier.
I run in to others who have version 6 phones and have no problem, so I don't know why I'm an outlier. Part of it is probably my storage habits, I was almost always within 5-10% of capacity. Now I have 256gb version and am hoping I don't get near the limit so that this phone will last me 3 years.
Anyway, whatever apple did or didn't do, worked. I upgraded to an 8 Plus and couldn't be happier.
I run in to others who have version 6 phones and have no problem, so I don't know why I'm an outlier. Part of it is probably my storage habits, I was almost always within 5-10% of capacity. Now I have 256gb version and am hoping I don't get near the limit so that this phone will last me 3 years.
iOS releases typically get a nice performance boost on the x.1 release. I wish it wasn’t that way (I’d like better optimization at launch), but this has been true since at least iOS 4.
Edit: to respond to another comment elsewhere in this thread, Apple also tests on all of the supported hardware when prepping iOS.
Edit: to respond to another comment elsewhere in this thread, Apple also tests on all of the supported hardware when prepping iOS.
Strange, I see little to no difference on my 6S. I was considering getting an X, but since my phone still handles iOS 11 perfectly, I don't see any reason to upgrade.
I'd try restoring my phone if I were you - that fixes these issues for a lot of people.
I'd try restoring my phone if I were you - that fixes these issues for a lot of people.
My first smartphone, an iPhone, slowed to a crawl after some OS update about 2 years in. It's the last piece of Apple hardware I ever bought. The 3 non-Apple smartphones I've bought since then were all perfectly usable after 2 years.
My Samsung started dying unexpectedly at about 10% battery left. I bought another battery, popped the back cover and replaced it.
For $10 it's as good as new.
> My immediate thought was that Apple had liberally sprinkled wait() into the iOS 11 code base so that I'd feel like my ole A9 CPU just wasn't cutting it any more and I'd realize, as they do, it's time to upgrade.
Which would affect the 2017 iPad also. Why introduce a new iPad with the A9 if you're going to limit the performance. Is it to get people to buy... what exactly? An iPad Pro? Why not simply ONLY make iPad Pros?
This line of reasoning is immature and beneath the type of discourse that should occur on any tech leaning site.
I really hope you're just being sarcastic and mocking everyone who really thinks this.
Edit: I, personally, have a 6S and it's fine. Of course I DFU and set up as new for new OSs. It's even better on 11.1 beta 5.
Which would affect the 2017 iPad also. Why introduce a new iPad with the A9 if you're going to limit the performance. Is it to get people to buy... what exactly? An iPad Pro? Why not simply ONLY make iPad Pros?
This line of reasoning is immature and beneath the type of discourse that should occur on any tech leaning site.
I really hope you're just being sarcastic and mocking everyone who really thinks this.
Edit: I, personally, have a 6S and it's fine. Of course I DFU and set up as new for new OSs. It's even better on 11.1 beta 5.
I probably own more Apple devices than most people here (even considering this is HN we're talking about) because I do a lot of iOS programming and I have to use them as test devices. I also own the latest devices.
But this problem is not some stupid complaint coming from uninformed people. This calculator thing was a perfect symbolism for all this bullshit that's been going on since iOS 11 release because the bug is so easy to replicate, but there's much more going on than just this calculator bug.
Before I go on, note that I have the latest iOS installed, and I do iOS development. I'm not a clueless newbie.
Anyway here are some examples:
1. my iPhone apps crash 50% of the times when I bring them back from sleep.
2. Even the ones that DO load, takes around 8 seconds on average to start up. This includes Email and iMessage. Yes, I have to wait 8 seconds for my mail app and messages app to "boot up" before being able to check a message I just received. This is ridiculous. I have talked to several of my friends who have been experiencing the same thing.
3. I had to turn off animations. Otherwise I couldn't my screen will freeze when i try to type into imessage, etc. Remember, all of the above are happening WITHOUT the animation turned on.
4. I started getting emails from "No Sender" with empty content, couple of times a day. I'm just assuming this has something to do with some fucked internal clock (I have double checked and my iCal and preferences are correctly set) but who knows.
5. Yesterday I was trying to take a picture and opened the camera. And YES, I mean the native camera app that ships with iOS. I saw the camera UI launch, but there was no "camera". It was just a black screen. I've become accustomed to this type of lag in app loading so i waited for my camera to "boot up". It never did. The camera app was open and there were all the UI components, but it wasn't capturing anything. I have never seen anything like this before.
Please stop saying "haha it's funny how these idiots think some calculator problem means Apple's future is doomed" because last time something like this happened was when I switched from Windows to Mac.
But this problem is not some stupid complaint coming from uninformed people. This calculator thing was a perfect symbolism for all this bullshit that's been going on since iOS 11 release because the bug is so easy to replicate, but there's much more going on than just this calculator bug.
Before I go on, note that I have the latest iOS installed, and I do iOS development. I'm not a clueless newbie.
Anyway here are some examples:
1. my iPhone apps crash 50% of the times when I bring them back from sleep.
2. Even the ones that DO load, takes around 8 seconds on average to start up. This includes Email and iMessage. Yes, I have to wait 8 seconds for my mail app and messages app to "boot up" before being able to check a message I just received. This is ridiculous. I have talked to several of my friends who have been experiencing the same thing.
3. I had to turn off animations. Otherwise I couldn't my screen will freeze when i try to type into imessage, etc. Remember, all of the above are happening WITHOUT the animation turned on.
4. I started getting emails from "No Sender" with empty content, couple of times a day. I'm just assuming this has something to do with some fucked internal clock (I have double checked and my iCal and preferences are correctly set) but who knows.
5. Yesterday I was trying to take a picture and opened the camera. And YES, I mean the native camera app that ships with iOS. I saw the camera UI launch, but there was no "camera". It was just a black screen. I've become accustomed to this type of lag in app loading so i waited for my camera to "boot up". It never did. The camera app was open and there were all the UI components, but it wasn't capturing anything. I have never seen anything like this before.
Please stop saying "haha it's funny how these idiots think some calculator problem means Apple's future is doomed" because last time something like this happened was when I switched from Windows to Mac.
Was going to upgrade to an iPhone X. After this iOS 11 nonsense, I'm honestly considering going back to Android. It's absolutely unforgivable how terrible my iPhone 6S has been running since the update. Same as you: constant crashes, random freezes and reboots, abysmal battery life, not to mention an insane bug where when someone calls you (or you call them), they can't hear you and you can't hear them. This bug persists until you reboot your phone. Like, wtf?
This feels like Apple has crossed the Rubicon. The Steve Jobs era is officially over.
This feels like Apple has crossed the Rubicon. The Steve Jobs era is officially over.
Just for your information, take it for what you will, but I recently purchased a Pixel 2 to try out.
I think Android 8 has some flaws atm that are really kneecapping things. I had constant app crashes. Loading problems. All sorts of little things that seemed to be super buggy. Windows appearing behind other windows, adds not properly being put into their space. I went back to my iPhone 6s.
That said, you might have a better experience, those things might get fixed. I am sure they will be fixed both on iOS and Android. I am just saying, the latest and greatest on Android kind of sucks too.
I think Android 8 has some flaws atm that are really kneecapping things. I had constant app crashes. Loading problems. All sorts of little things that seemed to be super buggy. Windows appearing behind other windows, adds not properly being put into their space. I went back to my iPhone 6s.
That said, you might have a better experience, those things might get fixed. I am sure they will be fixed both on iOS and Android. I am just saying, the latest and greatest on Android kind of sucks too.
+1 on the silent call bug (and the others too).
Apple managed to make a smartphone unable to launch apps and make calls. Not sure if incompetence or malice. Regardless, I'm never looking back.
Apple managed to make a smartphone unable to launch apps and make calls. Not sure if incompetence or malice. Regardless, I'm never looking back.
Same here. My 6S quite often freezes. I also sometimes have a network problem that I never had before, no internet connection at all even when I have a full 4G signal, and I have to reboot the phone. Does anyone else experience this issue?
I have a 6S. I suggest doing a DFU and set up as new.
I'm in this boat, was excited about the X but after 11 and the confusing 8 vs X lineup, I'm just not sure what do anymore. At this point, it's a wait and see game
>5. Yesterday I was trying to take a picture and opened the camera. And YES, I mean the native camera app that ships with iOS. I saw the camera UI launch, but there was no "camera". It was just a black screen. I've become accustomed to this type of lag in app loading so i waited for my camera to "boot up". It never did. The camera app was open and there were all the UI components, but it wasn't capturing anything. I have never seen anything like this before.
On iOS 10, I noticed, if I swipe the lock screen left and right really fast where it brings in the camera, it eventually gets stuck. Like half the screen is now black and nothing happens until I hit the reset button. This is reproducible. It seemed to me like a really weird little bug to have on maybe the most popular mobile OS on earth but brushed it off as me being anal about something not even Apple considers a problem. This calculator story is a bit of a waking call that Apple UX quality genuinely did get worse in recent years. It's little things that add up. It's the little annoyances with Android that keep me coming back to iOS but now it seems like they're introducing all kinds of new issues with iOS. Ugly.
On iOS 10, I noticed, if I swipe the lock screen left and right really fast where it brings in the camera, it eventually gets stuck. Like half the screen is now black and nothing happens until I hit the reset button. This is reproducible. It seemed to me like a really weird little bug to have on maybe the most popular mobile OS on earth but brushed it off as me being anal about something not even Apple considers a problem. This calculator story is a bit of a waking call that Apple UX quality genuinely did get worse in recent years. It's little things that add up. It's the little annoyances with Android that keep me coming back to iOS but now it seems like they're introducing all kinds of new issues with iOS. Ugly.
"on maybe the most popular mobile OS on earth"
You can't be the most popular if your competitor's market share is ~85%.
https://www.idc.com/promo/smartphone-market-share/os
You can't be the most popular if your competitor's market share is ~85%.
https://www.idc.com/promo/smartphone-market-share/os
You can if you mean "most popular" in terms of customer satisfaction - http://www.theacsi.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=art...
In the USA, which is a pretty small part of the Earth, and where iOS has 45% of the market, compared to 15% worldwide.
Sure, it was just an example of how "most popular" might have nothing to do with market share at all.
I’ve been having the same experience with iOS 11. I often open the phone app to call someone I recently talked to, see their name at the top, click it to call them, only for the phone to call someone else. What’s happening is that someone else had called me in the meantime and iOS showed me the cached image of the screen but registered my touch on the “real”/live view of the screen. Safari does the same thing on both iOS and OSX when you swipe back and interact with the page, and I’m sad to be seeing that behavior leak elsewhere. Super frustrating.
Also, the amount of lag when loading basic apps has increased significantly with this update (I have an iPhone 6s).
Also, the amount of lag when loading basic apps has increased significantly with this update (I have an iPhone 6s).
Safari on the desktop is very, very bad about doing this. The browser benchmark tests really should include this metric: the average time to ready after navigating back. Showing a cached image but registering a click on a different image just seems like such an obvious thing to avoid.
Having exactly the same issues on my iPhone 6S. Camera randomly takes forever to load, and sometimes doesn't load at all (black screen).
Since iOS 11 it's a 50/50 chance that accepting an incoming call works. I press the green button but it keeps ringing until the other person hangs up.
Even physical home button becomes unresponsive, many times a day I have to do a forced restart (home button + sleep wake button pressed).
This is infuriating!!
> I have the latest iOS installed
If you mean one of the developer betas then that's the cause of ... > [apps take a long time to load]
If you mean one of the developer betas then that's the cause of ... > [apps take a long time to load]
No, i have tried all versions and currently have the public version. I have given up on developer betas already, I don't trust them anymore. But I expected public OS to work as expected.
So no, the developer beta is not the cause. It happens to me and a lot of my "normal" friends who just upgraded their iOS because it kept bothering them with push notification to upgrade.
So no, the developer beta is not the cause. It happens to me and a lot of my "normal" friends who just upgraded their iOS because it kept bothering them with push notification to upgrade.
With iOS 11 at this moment the developer betas are better than the released alphas.
Many of your problems are not the common ones that people are having with iOS 11. And even ones like 2. which many people are having sounds more extreme for you.
I think you might want to debug this like a problem rather than assume it’s all due to Apple errors. With all that’s going on I’d probably just jump all the way to a full restore.
I think you might want to debug this like a problem rather than assume it’s all due to Apple errors. With all that’s going on I’d probably just jump all the way to a full restore.
Come on man, you don't have to go that far. just read rest of the thread and you'll see tons of people complaining about the same thing.
As I mentioned I have multiple devices and I observe these problems everywhere. And I have heard the same from friends too. And all these people on this thread are complaining about it.
Now where is your source on how my problem is just some extreme case and my own fault?
As I mentioned I have multiple devices and I observe these problems everywhere. And I have heard the same from friends too. And all these people on this thread are complaining about it.
Now where is your source on how my problem is just some extreme case and my own fault?
The 50% crash rate on your apps is what made me feel like your experience is the exception not the rule.
On my iPhone 6 I see maybe a crash rate of 2-5% (one in 20-50). There are apps with higher crash rates from time to time that usually get fixed with updates. I don't try to run the latest demanding 3d games and such on the phone, since I don't expect them to be usable on a 3-year-old device.
Maybe you're pushing your devices harder than I do or something but I second the parent's sentiment that your experience is out of the ordinary. But that doesn't mean it's your fault at all, just unusual.
All that being said, I'm overall less happy with iOS 11 than 10 on my phone. But love it on the iPad.
On my iPhone 6 I see maybe a crash rate of 2-5% (one in 20-50). There are apps with higher crash rates from time to time that usually get fixed with updates. I don't try to run the latest demanding 3d games and such on the phone, since I don't expect them to be usable on a 3-year-old device.
Maybe you're pushing your devices harder than I do or something but I second the parent's sentiment that your experience is out of the ordinary. But that doesn't mean it's your fault at all, just unusual.
All that being said, I'm overall less happy with iOS 11 than 10 on my phone. But love it on the iPad.
Well, I have iOS 11 on multiple devices and have friends with iOS 11 and I’m seeing (and hearing about) launch lag and the calculator button problem but not your other issues. So this isn’t simply an iOS 11 problem you can do nothing about besides complain on the internet.
I mean, if that’s what you prefer to do, be my guest. I don’t mind at all. I’m just pointing out you might be able to do something about some of the problems.
Also, I didn’t say it was your fault. I get that you’re frustrated, but it doesn’t help to get angry, especially with people who are trying to help you.
I mean, if that’s what you prefer to do, be my guest. I don’t mind at all. I’m just pointing out you might be able to do something about some of the problems.
Also, I didn’t say it was your fault. I get that you’re frustrated, but it doesn’t help to get angry, especially with people who are trying to help you.
I've been getting the camera black screen at least since ios9 on 5s and 6s.
As the thread says, I can confirm this bug, the answer: 24
:(
iOS 11 must be the buggiest piece of s I've ever tried. Stuck animations, apps that take ages to load, widgets not working, more stuck animations, text overlapping everywhere.
Related: Flat design was supposed to make things leaner...
EDIT: Worst of all, every single operation is wrong: 7+8+9 = 96 4+5+6 = 60
:(
iOS 11 must be the buggiest piece of s I've ever tried. Stuck animations, apps that take ages to load, widgets not working, more stuck animations, text overlapping everywhere.
Related: Flat design was supposed to make things leaner...
EDIT: Worst of all, every single operation is wrong: 7+8+9 = 96 4+5+6 = 60
Ugh, can also confirm this happens on my phone. This feels like more of UI event/timing issue than a logic issue.
Also, if this turns out to be a performance based bug that will be pretty frustrating considering Apple is always bragging about how they build the hardware, the software, have grand-central dispatch, have Metal and have multi-core custom built CPUs...yada, yada.
It’s not just that number sequence...it’s any rapid fire typing of numbers that cause these gross miscalculations.
Rollback the calculator app, if that doesn’t fix it...rollback the OS.
Yes I’m frustrated.
Also, if this turns out to be a performance based bug that will be pretty frustrating considering Apple is always bragging about how they build the hardware, the software, have grand-central dispatch, have Metal and have multi-core custom built CPUs...yada, yada.
It’s not just that number sequence...it’s any rapid fire typing of numbers that cause these gross miscalculations.
Rollback the calculator app, if that doesn’t fix it...rollback the OS.
Yes I’m frustrated.
btw, has anyone has tried deleting a note in Reminders?
yes it's so broken and if you delete a selected event the app crashes.
I'm with you. Updated my 6+ and everything is tragically slow. 4-5 seconds just to get the Settings or Messages apps to open. Typing anything is unbearable - every time, the first word capitalises and then botches everything from then on. Basic functions within apps or opening the camera take so long as to render them near-useless.
I have switched off any animations and performance tweaks that I thought might help, but no luck.
If you have a 6, I'd recommend avoiding iOS 11 as much as you can.
I have switched off any animations and performance tweaks that I thought might help, but no luck.
If you have a 6, I'd recommend avoiding iOS 11 as much as you can.
iPhone 6 Plus here. Can confirm exact same issues.
I ended up backing up everything and reinstalling from fresh. It's only just bearable now. Still noticeable 2s+ delays to open iMessage & and to get into Settings. Using the device for me has become completely joyless. In fact I have incipient resentment just looking at this p.o.s. It was once a great device. It's now hamstrung with bloat. I have stopped using it much now - I haven't yet installed Twitter & GMail or any of the many apps I had again. An entire 25 GB cache of Music library has yet to be re-installed. The phone sits almost the entire day unused. Battery life at end at night for a recharge? 80%!
If Apple doesn't fix these issues quickly and restore confidence in the already dwindling user base, they will suffer greatly at the hands of the Huawei's of the market. You don't need a fascist type of Jobs to get these types of issues fixed.
Come on Apple!
I ended up backing up everything and reinstalling from fresh. It's only just bearable now. Still noticeable 2s+ delays to open iMessage & and to get into Settings. Using the device for me has become completely joyless. In fact I have incipient resentment just looking at this p.o.s. It was once a great device. It's now hamstrung with bloat. I have stopped using it much now - I haven't yet installed Twitter & GMail or any of the many apps I had again. An entire 25 GB cache of Music library has yet to be re-installed. The phone sits almost the entire day unused. Battery life at end at night for a recharge? 80%!
If Apple doesn't fix these issues quickly and restore confidence in the already dwindling user base, they will suffer greatly at the hands of the Huawei's of the market. You don't need a fascist type of Jobs to get these types of issues fixed.
Come on Apple!
Vageuly related: Menuet ships with a perfectly functional calculator
https://youtu.be/fpEwOXzYBi8?t=5m34s
https://youtu.be/fpEwOXzYBi8?t=5m34s
I did some research and avoiding iOS 11 is exactly what I've done as there are too many unpleasant changes for me to want to upgrade yet. Besides, there are several apps I use that haven't put out updates to work with iOS 11.
Yes! Especially the new ios 11 podcast app. I use it regularly and the lag is getting extremely frustrating!
YEp. Thought it was me.
1+ 23 = 24
7 + 89 = 96
4 + 56 = 60
The second "+" isn't registering because the animation tied to the operator buttons for some reason only blocks other non-numerical inputs for the duration of the animation.
I don't even own an iPhone or have experienced the bug, just guessing at the cause.
7 + 89 = 96
4 + 56 = 60
The second "+" isn't registering because the animation tied to the operator buttons for some reason only blocks other non-numerical inputs for the duration of the animation.
I don't even own an iPhone or have experienced the bug, just guessing at the cause.
The plus animation always takes the same amount of time to complete, so it shouldn't be surprising that every number sequence is affected.
I'm able to reproduce the bug on iOS 10.3.3 on an iPhone 6 so it appears the bug has existed before iOS 11.
Just tried this on my iPhone 4 (yes 4!, iOS 7.?) and I get 4 when adding 1+2+3 quickly, and sometimes 10 or 11(!?).
Looks like this is a feature, not a bug, or else it would have been fixed sometime in the last 8 years! /s
Looks like this is a feature, not a bug, or else it would have been fixed sometime in the last 8 years! /s
Is 4 your daily? I miss my 4S and I'd replace current 6S with it but if I could bring performances. Beautiful phone.
I have a newer iPhone through work, so my 4 is only used for calls, sms and music. I'm keeping it until it dies and then moving away from Apple. What I really want is a true GNU/Linux phone.
Another datapoint: iPhone 4, iOS 9.3.5 does not exhibit the bug.
> iOS 11 must be the buggiest piece of s I've ever tried.
that might be true in general, but this calculator bug exists since iOS9 and only surfaced now.
that might be true in general, but this calculator bug exists since iOS9 and only surfaced now.
I got 24 sometimes and 6 the other times. Possibly a race condition?
I think button touches aren't triggered until animations finish so if you do 1 + 2 + 3 real fast, the second "+" won't register.
Hmmm it could be but who knows? Almost there entire eco-system is closed off so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I guess we’re at the mercy of an update so we can get back to calculating things with at least a few order of magnitudes of accuracy...
It's not hard to know what it is. Watch the screen. You can see the animation.
The animation doesn’t mean anything. You should be able to have many animations happening in parallel and their completions should not block keyboard events from being handled...
keyboard events are fine — with a Bluetooth keyboard, you get the right answer no matter how fast you type.
The animation shouldn’t prevent the + button from being pressed again, but it does. That’s the bug.
The animation shouldn’t prevent the + button from being pressed again, but it does. That’s the bug.
Or try typing it slower and you'll see that the result is correct
You type it the wrong way. Do not worry, Cook will explain how to type correctly.
Almost all of the animations on iOS are about 2x-3x as long as they should be.
First off, they look terrible, the slooooooow change from one thing to another. Secondly, they severely impede usability because you have to wait wait wait for 1000ms here, 1000ms there, and another 1000ms there after every action.
It's enough to make me want to give up privacy and switch to Android.
Soooo pissed at slow animations. 500ms, TOPS devs. NO MORE, and ideally something like 200ms. /rant
First off, they look terrible, the slooooooow change from one thing to another. Secondly, they severely impede usability because you have to wait wait wait for 1000ms here, 1000ms there, and another 1000ms there after every action.
It's enough to make me want to give up privacy and switch to Android.
Soooo pissed at slow animations. 500ms, TOPS devs. NO MORE, and ideally something like 200ms. /rant
> It's enough to make me want to give up privacy and switch to Android.
It's sadly no better on the Android side of the fence either. How many times I've had to wait for the keyboard app to decide to load…
It's sadly no better on the Android side of the fence either. How many times I've had to wait for the keyboard app to decide to load…
I think that might be dependent on the keyboard your flagship provider ships with, and some are better than others. Thankfully, you can switch out the keyboard handler. That is, Android suffers from similar problems, some sometimes Android's modularity and allowing for choices comes through to save you.
But still, the perverse incentives of Google make privacy a real question. Then again, if I was willing to put up or shut up, I would probably be running a de-googled AOSP based version of Android. :/
But still, the perverse incentives of Google make privacy a real question. Then again, if I was willing to put up or shut up, I would probably be running a de-googled AOSP based version of Android. :/
Gboard here. I have a Motorola, which I've found tend to be pretty stock.
Your are short on memory and the keyboard is being unloaded. The fact that you never have to close apps because the OS will dynamically unload unused apps and restore them is sort of a lie.
Reboot every few days, delete bullshit phone games that just for fun ensure they start quickly by loading every time you start your phone starts along with any other worthless apps you don't actually want or need.
You will no longer have this problem.
Reboot every few days, delete bullshit phone games that just for fun ensure they start quickly by loading every time you start your phone starts along with any other worthless apps you don't actually want or need.
You will no longer have this problem.
I have no "bullshit phone games". It is not the end user's responsibility to maintain performance of basic functionality of a phone.
Give up privacy? I thought it was with Android that I could root and remove all proprietary services (using e.g. F-Droid, LineageOS). Plus, you can set the window/transition animation scale to anything you want. The only thing iOS had for me was reliability and that seems to have gone out the window recently.
Being able to use an exploit to get root on your Android device is every bit as annoying as being able to use an exploit to get root on an iOS device (particularly as "getting root" isn't even enough on either device: you need to disable a bunch of random OS-level protections with a kernel exploit). There are a small number of Android devices with an unlocked bootloader, but in reality that just means "the Nexus devices from Google that people on Hacker News often complain about the shitty customer service regarding" as the other devices with this property aren't worth buying (and the flagship devices from Samsung--the ones people want to buy with the epic cameras and the great screens--are of course all locked and while they still aren't quite as competent at it they are at least trying hard at their anti-user "security" measures).
Nearly all the Sony phones have bootloaders to my knowledge, and I have personally always loved their build quality too. Not to mention they're one of the few manufacturers that still allow you to have a microSD instead of paying through your nose for extra onboard storage, so they're my personal recommendation.
You can buy certain OEM android devices not only rooted, but with unlocked bootloaders.
It'll be a cold day in hell when Apple does anything remotely similar.
It'll be a cold day in hell when Apple does anything remotely similar.
The only thing iOS had for me was reliability
[1] https://www.startpage.com/do/dsearch?query=android+ios+crash...
[2] http://www.technologizer.com/2012/02/06/which-phone-os-crash...
[3] https://www.forbes.com/sites/tomiogeron/2012/02/02/does-ios-...
[4] http://fortune.com/2016/08/25/apple-ios-failure-rate/
You can disable animations in Accessibility settings (called Reduce Motion), but I still notice a slight delay on pressing my Home button and it actually doing the action for it :(
While it isn't annoying enough to make me consider Android, you're right - animation takes precedence over interaction everywhere in iOS. It's most notable when using the 4 finger swipe to switch between apps on an iPad: The device won't register any taps until the bounce animation is done. I may sound dramatic, but all these small delays add up and make the experience less enjoyable, particularly if you're trying to work fast.
Note that under Android developer options, you can change the window animation scale and other animation scales to shorten/lengthen animations; no need to root.
Start at 300ms and gradually reduce it in 10ms increments until UX test subjects stop saying they like the animation. If people notice it, it's too slow.
The weird thing the constants for animation times in iOS are between 200ms and 350ms depending on what you do (segue, show keyboard) and I don't think they have changed.
You know, you may be right, but it looks like they are more frequently chained together. For example, unlocking the phone means both a fade up from black of 300ms plus a screen swipe away of 300ms plus however long the print recognition takes.
Also, the animation happens after whatever loading needs to take place, so if you just saw 500ms of still image while loading was going on in the background, the animation starts after all that.
Others definitely feel a lot longer than 300ms, such as opening the home screen when in an app. (I have reduced motion turned on, perhaps they have been slowed slightly for that).
Also, the animation happens after whatever loading needs to take place, so if you just saw 500ms of still image while loading was going on in the background, the animation starts after all that.
Others definitely feel a lot longer than 300ms, such as opening the home screen when in an app. (I have reduced motion turned on, perhaps they have been slowed slightly for that).
You can turn off animations under the accessibility options menu
"Jony wants you to take time
and appreciate the simplicity
of the slowly dimming animations.
Or we’re just using it wrong."
This is a pretty sad bug, though.
My (very expensive, "high-end") Japanese induction stove has a similar issue. Its capacitive touch controls take just an extra beat to register, so you have to turn on the stove, pause 700ms, turn on the burner, pause another 500ms or so, then turn the burner up to max to boil your kettle.
I'm totally used to it by now, and never get it wrong any more, but it still bugs me every single fucking morning.
Another example, which has existed for as long as I have known, is the spinning number selectors on iOS, used in apps such as Clock for setting alarms or selecting times/dates. The new value doesn't register until the animation completes, so if I set my alarm too fast, it doesn't save: Let's say the alarm is set to 09:00 and I change it to 09:30. So I spin the minute field up to 30 and hit Save. If I do it too quickly, the spin animation isn't completely done (even though we're talking just a few pixels), and the alarm reverts back to 09:00. Interestingly enough, the bug doesn't cause the saved value to be 09:29, which is what one might expect it to be, given that that's the last value passed before Save was clicked.
I find the spinner interface is a bit clunky in the first place as well. I haven't found anything as fast to use as the N9-style circle[1].
[1] http://www.nition.co/2014/08/the-nokia-n9-alarm-clock
[1] http://www.nition.co/2014/08/the-nokia-n9-alarm-clock
That seems quite similar to Android's/material design's current time picker, https://material.io/guidelines/components/pickers.html#picke..., which is such an improvement over scrolly scrolly scroll scroll style mobile time pickers
Android 6+ has something like that: no need to spin there tough, all the numbers are already available for tapping.
A screenshot at the beginning of https://stackoverflow.com/questions/37809848/can-we-use-some...
However IMHO it's a big usability regression from the old time picker widget, which was a number pad to enter the four digits a time is made of. I know the time I want to set and instead of typing it straight away I have to look for numbers on a dial. It takes longer.
Design teams are losing their way. Too much eye candy is making them blind to efficiency, pun intended.
A screenshot at the beginning of https://stackoverflow.com/questions/37809848/can-we-use-some...
However IMHO it's a big usability regression from the old time picker widget, which was a number pad to enter the four digits a time is made of. I know the time I want to set and instead of typing it straight away I have to look for numbers on a dial. It takes longer.
Design teams are losing their way. Too much eye candy is making them blind to efficiency, pun intended.
I still find a number pad to be the fastest. Why am I spinning something around and trying to position it right when I just just press three buttons 9-3-0?
For alarms and clock times, my guess is data validation. The app could correct or block invalid time entries (e.g., accidentally hitting 2500), or it could restrict the entry set.
It also means the number will be in the correct format. your example, 930, could mean many things (930 seconds? 9:30am or 9:30 pm?)
It also means the number will be in the correct format. your example, 930, could mean many things (930 seconds? 9:30am or 9:30 pm?)
If all inputs are in hh:mm format, then there is no ambiguity of 930 as 9:30 am/pm. There could be a toggle for AM/PM.
Who puts seconds as an input for setting their morning alarm? MAD!
Who puts seconds as an input for setting their morning alarm? MAD!
What's the unambiguous setting of 73:45 in hh:mm format?
3 days, 1 hour, 45 minutes. Simple.
The Android clock app silently corrects 73 minutes to 1 hour 13 minutes.
So for 1:13:45 (hh:mm:ss) you can input "7345" on the keypad and It. Just. Works.
The Android clock app silently corrects 73 minutes to 1 hour 13 minutes.
So for 1:13:45 (hh:mm:ss) you can input "7345" on the keypad and It. Just. Works.
But an alarm clock sets a relative point in time that happens every day. Putting "3 days" into a calendar is fine, but for an alarm clock it makes no sense.
So you add basic input validation.
Yes, but the person who originally proposed this argued that there was no ambiguity.
Invalid input, just as the empty string or a single digit would be.
This is where the alarm would be a grey colour instead of green? I missed alarms this way too in iOS 10. It’s worked so far in iOS 11. A shocking bug. I reported it to apple on twitter. Instead of saying yes we’re incompetent, they wanted to set me up a call with a ‘Senior Advisor’. I just gave up. I don’t want to waste time talking to someone who will tell me I have to set my alarm slower and double check it’s set correctly. It’s not like I paid nearly 1000 USD for the phone or anything...
I missed an alarm yesterday because of this. I can't be believe they still haven't fixed it! If the spinner is still moving AT ALL, nope, it silently fails.
I hate to be this guy but Steve Jobs would have fucking eviscerated the team that produced this. The first time he used the calculator and got 24 instead of 6, he would’ve walked straight to whoever wrote the software and gotten it fixed. There’s no one at Apple who can do that anymore.
> I hate to be this guy but Steve Jobs would have fucking eviscerated the team that produced this.
I'm pretty sure the very similar numeric spinner issue on iOS has been around since Jobs was alive and running the show, so the idea that he would have reacted swiftly and decisively to an issue like this is not merely unverifiable speculation, but contrary to what (inconclusive, to be sure) evidence is available.
I'm pretty sure the very similar numeric spinner issue on iOS has been around since Jobs was alive and running the show, so the idea that he would have reacted swiftly and decisively to an issue like this is not merely unverifiable speculation, but contrary to what (inconclusive, to be sure) evidence is available.
The numeric spinner issue is much less severe. Calculators are often used in higher speed for a lot of calculations. That bug makes the calculator unusable for many people. The spinner is not used that often and waiting for an extra second there doesn't add up as much time.
That's assuming you know about it and all you have to lose is time.
Since it's an alarm, as another comment has exemplified, you may actually miss an important event in your life because you didn't know to wait for an animation to complete before saving your alarm.
I would say that this is severe given the potential outcome.
Similarly, the calculator bug is more of an annoyance for people who know about it, which is already bad, but the problem really manifests to those who do not know about it and may end up, say, wiring the wrong amount in a money transfer because their phone calculator didn't finish the animation in time to register actual key presses.
This is UI making the outcome of user operations actually wrong, not just laggy.
Since it's an alarm, as another comment has exemplified, you may actually miss an important event in your life because you didn't know to wait for an animation to complete before saving your alarm.
I would say that this is severe given the potential outcome.
Similarly, the calculator bug is more of an annoyance for people who know about it, which is already bad, but the problem really manifests to those who do not know about it and may end up, say, wiring the wrong amount in a money transfer because their phone calculator didn't finish the animation in time to register actual key presses.
This is UI making the outcome of user operations actually wrong, not just laggy.
And I get to be that guy in response. I don’t like the sanctification of Steve Jobs. He oversaw plenty of bugs - “antennagate” being the most famous, but there were plenty of others as well.
Antennagate surfaced in 2010. Jobs had been ill with cancer for many years by then. In April 2009 he had a liver transplant. He resigned in early 2011. I think we should probably give him a break on Antennagate.
And Antennagate resulted in Jobs demanding the head of SVP Mark Papermaster - which actually proves your point: he took swift and decisive action (no, I'm not talking about the public-facing discussion trying to minimize the issue - obviously, internally, there was agreement that this was a very real issue, hence the free bumpers and the redesign in the following model, but most importantly the canning of the SVP who oversaw a fuckup this egregious - it's not like it was a subtle or super unlikely corner case).
Agreed. No one sits at the top adamant about quality control and everything “just working.” I don’t really see that anywhere in hardware anymore.
It’s a damn shame. I loved the Apple of old.
It’s a damn shame. I loved the Apple of old.
I happened to find an iPod nano (3d gen) lost by someone in a street, and always hated it. It looks so cute, but the wheel interface is scarcely usable, event the physical lock button is hard to reach without taking the damn thing out of your pocket, and what's this story about needing a special application to load songs into it? And it replaces the file names with GUIDs, even! If Microsoft did anything like that...
Capacitive buttons are a plague, man. Even the cheap new stoves have them now. Monitors and TVs have had them for a while. Cars are going for touch displays. There's a delay, they don't work every time, and you can't feel them out.
Are they cheaper? I don't understand the point of them in the cases where they're literally just replacing a real button. The worst is when they don't even indicate clearly where the buttons actually are.
Are they cheaper? I don't understand the point of them in the cases where they're literally just replacing a real button. The worst is when they don't even indicate clearly where the buttons actually are.
> Are they cheaper?
Not generally, by neither are they more expensive generally.
However, there's a large section of consumers that see that sort of thing and somehow assume it means the product is of higher quality, or that's what comes up in the marketing meetings I've had to sit through whilst advocating for mechanical switches.
Not generally, by neither are they more expensive generally.
However, there's a large section of consumers that see that sort of thing and somehow assume it means the product is of higher quality, or that's what comes up in the marketing meetings I've had to sit through whilst advocating for mechanical switches.
They are definitely cheaper most of the time. They are often just a trace on a PCB.
Product designers hate mechanical switches because they are almost always the first thing to wear out. Including a switch robust enough to last as long as the rest of the product is generally too expensive for consumer electronics.
Capacitive buttons can be made much better with some kind of instant feedback to replace the tactile feedback of physical buttons.
The problem is that adding that kind of feedback costs money. Even if it's just a few pennies per device, most manufacturers won't do it for consumer devices. That kind of penny pinching is the reason I avoid consumer grade products if at all feasible.
Product designers hate mechanical switches because they are almost always the first thing to wear out. Including a switch robust enough to last as long as the rest of the product is generally too expensive for consumer electronics.
Capacitive buttons can be made much better with some kind of instant feedback to replace the tactile feedback of physical buttons.
The problem is that adding that kind of feedback costs money. Even if it's just a few pennies per device, most manufacturers won't do it for consumer devices. That kind of penny pinching is the reason I avoid consumer grade products if at all feasible.
Yeah, a lot of microcontrollers have integrated capacitive sensing (Atmel calls it QTouch, other manufacturers have similar). In that case a capacitive button is very near free, as you only need an extra trace that is reliable to fabricate and requires minimal extra soldering.
Capacitive buttons have some distinct advantages too, primarily being waterproof and nearly infinite durability. A lot of UI issues like OPs stove are likely poor software, there is no real reason why a capacitive button would need a 700 ms pause between actions. Now, the lack of tactile feedback is a more fundamental problem sometimes, but capacitive buttons can be great when implemented well.
Capacitive buttons have some distinct advantages too, primarily being waterproof and nearly infinite durability. A lot of UI issues like OPs stove are likely poor software, there is no real reason why a capacitive button would need a 700 ms pause between actions. Now, the lack of tactile feedback is a more fundamental problem sometimes, but capacitive buttons can be great when implemented well.
Capacitive also has some drawbacks. Like with this oven... They tend to be temperature sensitive, depending on shielding. Delays with QTouch aren't unusual above 120F.
I'm pretty confident the problems with the oven are software related and nothing to do with the inherent limitations of capacitive inputs.
The problem described occurs before the oven even has time to heat up at all much less heat the input panel to 120F.
The problem described occurs before the oven even has time to heat up at all much less heat the input panel to 120F.
Our supplier delivers capacitive switches at about $80 per thousand, resistive at $75 per thousand, and tactile at $95 per thousand.
However resistive needs fine-tuning, and really shouldn't be used in dusty or hot environments. Which adds design time and shielding costs.
In our internal research, they end up costing about equal. But we are small, so it might change at a larger scale, though I'd expect those differences to shrink.
However resistive needs fine-tuning, and really shouldn't be used in dusty or hot environments. Which adds design time and shielding costs.
In our internal research, they end up costing about equal. But we are small, so it might change at a larger scale, though I'd expect those differences to shrink.
You can include capacitive inputs on a PCB in many cases for essentially zero cost.
You also don't need to engineer attachment points into the product chassis, and assembly is easier.
In addition, they can improve the lifespan of the product because they don't wear out nearly as fast, and they don't provide ingress for dust and water.
Capacitive inputs have many downsides, but at scale they are certainly cheaper on average.
In your particular case they may not be cheaper due to other design considerations.
You also don't need to engineer attachment points into the product chassis, and assembly is easier.
In addition, they can improve the lifespan of the product because they don't wear out nearly as fast, and they don't provide ingress for dust and water.
Capacitive inputs have many downsides, but at scale they are certainly cheaper on average.
In your particular case they may not be cheaper due to other design considerations.
It definitely looks more sort of futuristic, I have to concede that. Too bad we have to actually use these devices instead of just admiring them in the shop. Thank you for advocating mechanical buttons.
In the 70s my family bought a microwave oven. It had one knob with a dial, which you would turn clockwise to the number of minutes. The microwave would immediately start (if closed, of course) and count down. The gradations had a logarithmic scale. If you wanted to stop early, you turned the knob counterclockwise to zero.
That interface was genius. These days I sob and cry every time I have to figure out how to use an unfamiliar microwave.
That interface was genius. These days I sob and cry every time I have to figure out how to use an unfamiliar microwave.
Those are still easy to come by. I was buying one for an 83-year-old relative last christmas, and there was plenty of choice even. We ended up with a Whirlpool model that even dings a physical bell once when it finishes.
As for regular oven tops, we spent some time finding an induction model with physical buttons. It's wonderful and I enjoy using it every day. It's very tactile. Throw a kettle on and slam it to "P" in 30 milliseconds, aah I love it.
As for regular oven tops, we spent some time finding an induction model with physical buttons. It's wonderful and I enjoy using it every day. It's very tactile. Throw a kettle on and slam it to "P" in 30 milliseconds, aah I love it.
Those are still readily available. I dislike the knob only design (with no time display) since it makes having something in for 15 seconds or w/e harder, but that might just be me.
They still make dial microwaves, I got one, I think it's a Pana --but unlike the previous one I had (don't recall the make) once set, you can't readjust time. Either terrible design, or maybe a patent preventing the adding of time while the microwaving continues. For example, if It think that instead of 30 secs, I want to readjust it to 40 when it's down to 20 to make a total of 50, I have to wait till it winds all the way down (or stop and set a new clock) -bummer
I don't think is a patent ( maybe it was ). I have a relatively new one, german made, that works exactly like that: two knobs, one for setting the power and one for setting the time.
Both are on the fly adjustable, both power and time. I find it really good design.
Both are on the fly adjustable, both power and time. I find it really good design.
That's good to hear. I miss my on-the-fly adjustable one. When it broke down, I looked but could not find a small one (<=.9fcu), so I went with a Pana that had a dial since I rather dislike the touchpad ones.
If you're ever looking for a toaster, check out Dualit (the classic, not whatever cheap plastic one they peddle to price-segment). I use mine every day and interface-wise, it's pretty much the most satisfying moment of every day.
my whole Bosch line of washing machines and dryer have these buttons where i have to press my fingers awkwardly, sometimes slide it side to side for it to register a simple thing as "Start". Cool looking? i dont know but hey, put some LEDs on normal plastic buttons man.
My Bosch dishwasher's buttons drive me nuts. They need a firm press for a second or more and then beep half a second after I lift my finger. I won't know whether the touch registered until after I let go. Don't even think about the next button you need to press until you're sure the last one took or you'll be holding the reset buttons for an eternity and starting over.
They don't work any better or worse with wet hands, so I have to figure they kind of sacrificed overall usability in exchange for capacitive touch working with wet fingers.
They don't work any better or worse with wet hands, so I have to figure they kind of sacrificed overall usability in exchange for capacitive touch working with wet fingers.
My Bosch dishwasher has pretty cool mechanical buttons. My wife says it looks like a cassette deck from the '80s. I love the buttons. Too bad the dishwasher is unreliable.
They certainly must be cheaper - no mechanical components, just a single wire (instead of two) connecting the pad to the micro-controller. And they are "fancy"/"futuristic".
My lab placed fancy touch-screens in the place of the light switches. Now turning the lights on or off takes at least 15 seconds but we get to pretend to be luxurious :(
My lab placed fancy touch-screens in the place of the light switches. Now turning the lights on or off takes at least 15 seconds but we get to pretend to be luxurious :(
Switches are usually connected to digital inputs with one wire as well. The other wire is connected to either power or ground. The wire to the microcontroller is either pulled up or down with a resistor to power or ground, respecively.
Yes, but capsense does not require that power/ground wire.
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Do they work with gloves? Why not just a motion sensor with a manual override?
I find them extremely practical on my induction stove: it's a single perfectly smooth glass surface, which makes it a joy to clean.
Physical buttons (or any 3-D feature really) and food preparation make cleaning a hassle.
I prefer physical buttons, or better yet knobs I can remove and soak to clean. My range has capacitive buttons for its oven controls, and every time I wipe it down with a damp sponge every button is triggered along with a cacophony of beeps. It could disregard inputs when multiple are registered in quick succession, but then each button would have to have a delay before action to see if it was pressed individually, and of course rapid legitimate use would pose a problem (as in the iOS calculator issue).
They are smooth. Seductive. Subtle. Slow and intimate, you like to touch them and they like it back. A soft sexy red glow that fades in and fades out as you massage your commands into it's willing display.
You don't make sales based on how much people like using it, you make sales based on how attractive it appears while on display.
You don't make sales based on how much people like using it, you make sales based on how attractive it appears while on display.
Well, I'm hoping that effect dwindles after one generation of products once everyone's learnt their lesson.
They seems to break less than (low quality) mechanical buttons.
Twitter's search is similarly annoying. I most often use it to search for a person. I type in my search, the person shows up and in the time it takes me to move my cursor/thumb to the person and click, Twitter inserts some useless hashtags above the people it found. Now I have to search, wait for the replacing to happen, then click on the person I'd already found but was moved out of the way.
> Apple has lots of issues like this, in iOS and macOS, where they choose visual appeal over functionality, or where animation impedes usability.
My favorite example comes from the aptly named "Asshole Design" subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/assholedesign/comments/78b0di/apple...
My favorite example comes from the aptly named "Asshole Design" subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/assholedesign/comments/78b0di/apple...
Sounds like the well-known local forum that I used to visit, somehow they implemented anti-DDOS function that prevents you click a link too fast. Like if you open a page then immediately open other page you'll be redirect to warning page that tells you no human can click that fast. So one has to wait about 1 sec. to continue open other link. Fuck their design.
I'm totally with you there. The HEPA air purifier that I just bought registers input on keyup instead of keydown. This makes you push harder on the buttons, which are just icons, not real buttons, and hence have no tactile feedback. On one hand this is too trivial a thing to be annoyed by, but they could've so easily made it work on keydown and it would've been better! It makes me go "why man, why!"
Does your air filter at least retain its state when unplugged? I take it for granted that if the hard dial on mine is set to an on position, it will be on in that position when I plug it in (or today, when the power comes back on from an outage).
Now that I've taken steps to automate the vast majority of my house I put an extremely high value on state restoration. 9 out of 10 times a decent mid range device with state restoration and a smart plug is a much better solution then the high end connected equivalent, and at a lower price point as a bonus.
Same! I have a Honeywell airpurifier that has a physical switch, wouldn’t risk “upgrading” it as it’s perfect with a smart outlet (turns on only when no one is home!)
Good question; it didn't occur to me. I checked now and looks like they thought of that. I'm a little happier about the purchase, thanks! :-)
Every microwave I’ve used since about 2000 (an admittedly small sample) has this really annoying thing where you have to wait before hitting start after you enter the time. Not sure if it’s some safety feature or just bad design decisions but it’s really annoying compared to the time lost.
One of the biggest reasons I stopped paying for cable is the major lag in digital tv set top boxes.
Isn't that just a safety feature, so a child's quick fingers won't do anything?
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I don't feel like Apple is overdoing animations. They are mostly only used where they make sense, such as showing you where something disappears to, allowing you to find it it later.
There are also options to reduce animations in both macOS and iOS, although I'm not sure if the calculator responds to that.
But you're absolutely right about these non-responsive 2D stove controls. I have o multiple occasions given up on trying to use stoves at friends' places because I was actually unable to turn them on. The worst sin is obviously that there's no affordability indicating a touch has been registered. But on top of that, they somehow tried to sixth-normal-form these buttons. So you have one button rotating through functions (up, down, off, fire fire fire!), and one other button to choose the burner. Or something like that.
I really wouldn't know anything to make them worse. Maybe Clippy.
There are also options to reduce animations in both macOS and iOS, although I'm not sure if the calculator responds to that.
But you're absolutely right about these non-responsive 2D stove controls. I have o multiple occasions given up on trying to use stoves at friends' places because I was actually unable to turn them on. The worst sin is obviously that there's no affordability indicating a touch has been registered. But on top of that, they somehow tried to sixth-normal-form these buttons. So you have one button rotating through functions (up, down, off, fire fire fire!), and one other button to choose the burner. Or something like that.
I really wouldn't know anything to make them worse. Maybe Clippy.
At first I found smartphone screens really intuitive. You tap the thing you want, swipe the direction you want to go and such.
But with the added layer of animations post interaction it can feel really cumbersome and disconnected. Imagine if each key on the keyboard had an associated delay and animation and you can see how it might impede a user's progress in other scenarios as well.
I think it is a case of the rule of cool winning during design and development, and then because the devices and sites we use become daily use items we end up growing tired of the mounting small inconveniences.
Imagine if every time you opened your wallet you had to wait a few seconds for it to slide open from a button press, rather than it just opening as you manipulate it.
You lose a slight bit of control over the situation and it's timliness and that adds up over the course of long time use until eventually you throw out the wallet and buy a more rudimentary one that "just opens for crying out loud".
But with the added layer of animations post interaction it can feel really cumbersome and disconnected. Imagine if each key on the keyboard had an associated delay and animation and you can see how it might impede a user's progress in other scenarios as well.
I think it is a case of the rule of cool winning during design and development, and then because the devices and sites we use become daily use items we end up growing tired of the mounting small inconveniences.
Imagine if every time you opened your wallet you had to wait a few seconds for it to slide open from a button press, rather than it just opening as you manipulate it.
You lose a slight bit of control over the situation and it's timliness and that adds up over the course of long time use until eventually you throw out the wallet and buy a more rudimentary one that "just opens for crying out loud".
The applications make the interface feel slower, and it seems like they must make the interface slower, as it is extra work for the processors. I wish the could be shut off entirely!
I absolutely abhor the new Calculator app on the iOS 11. The old interface was way more elegant, the buttons were squares (and had a larger touch area), and it worked even when you typed fast.
Sometimes I wonder why individuals working for these multibillion dollar companies, who affect the lives of millions of people, decide to change things for the worse. Imagine having spent all those hours overhauling the calculator app, on I don't know, fixing things that actually are broken.
Sometimes I wonder why individuals working for these multibillion dollar companies, who affect the lives of millions of people, decide to change things for the worse. Imagine having spent all those hours overhauling the calculator app, on I don't know, fixing things that actually are broken.
I agree that the described bug is a very frustrating bug. As for old squares vs the new circles, that's an aesthetic choice I'm sure some will like and some won't. My impression is that the old UI is more in keeping with the HP calculator it emulated. Personally it's not something I'm overly concerned about but I can understand how some may be. (Don't get me started on the Contacts icon which I can never seem to be able to find.)
> "and had a larger touch area"
Your comment regarding touch area made me curious. While the button image area is smaller, in my very simple and admittedly limited tests I seem to be able to activate the button with touching the button only tangentially. Even with my pinky I can't not activate a button when attempting to avoid them by pressing in the space between them. This leads me to believe either the active area extends beyond the button image area, or, more pragmatically, fingers are large enough that they're going to end up activating the buttons regardless. Would you mind going into more detail in how you determined that the touch area is reduced in the iOS 11 calculator?
> "and had a larger touch area"
Your comment regarding touch area made me curious. While the button image area is smaller, in my very simple and admittedly limited tests I seem to be able to activate the button with touching the button only tangentially. Even with my pinky I can't not activate a button when attempting to avoid them by pressing in the space between them. This leads me to believe either the active area extends beyond the button image area, or, more pragmatically, fingers are large enough that they're going to end up activating the buttons regardless. Would you mind going into more detail in how you determined that the touch area is reduced in the iOS 11 calculator?
Here's how I see it:
I look at a button as defined by its shape as "perceived touchable area".
A circle enclosed in a square has a smaller area than the square enclosing the circle. You're seeing the new buttons as circles (thus smaller area), even though behind the scenes (as your little experiment has demonstrated) the buttons are still squares (real touchable area) on a grid.
I would also argue the eyes have a harder time parsing the layout, as the visual boundaries between the circular buttons have more complex shapes than the old UI, where the boundaries were very thin lines.
If you want to run another "experiment" – albeit theoretical – imagine we shrink the "perceived touchable area" of each button even further, say we get rid of the circular background and keep solely the digit displayed on the button. Your eyes will now perceive the visual representation of the button, as only the digit, and I would say our initial impulse is to touch what we see and not some imaginary boundary we know exists.
I look at a button as defined by its shape as "perceived touchable area".
A circle enclosed in a square has a smaller area than the square enclosing the circle. You're seeing the new buttons as circles (thus smaller area), even though behind the scenes (as your little experiment has demonstrated) the buttons are still squares (real touchable area) on a grid.
I would also argue the eyes have a harder time parsing the layout, as the visual boundaries between the circular buttons have more complex shapes than the old UI, where the boundaries were very thin lines.
If you want to run another "experiment" – albeit theoretical – imagine we shrink the "perceived touchable area" of each button even further, say we get rid of the circular background and keep solely the digit displayed on the button. Your eyes will now perceive the visual representation of the button, as only the digit, and I would say our initial impulse is to touch what we see and not some imaginary boundary we know exists.
I see what you’re saying, but I don’t think at the end of the day this ends up mattering much, if at all. For example, when trying to press the buttons quickly to reproduce the bug, I didn’t feel the slightest need to be precise. Similarly, if the buttons were physical, I believe they’re large enough that people wouldn’t feel much (if any) need to be more precise due to the inherent “slop” buttons have. Though, if you have reference to UX tests that show otherwise, I’d be interested in reading it.
I'm perpetually surprised that any competent software developer would go to work for a company that swears them to secrecy about almost everything they do. I can count how many developers employed at Apple I've had any contact with or seen a talk from on one hand.
I'm thinking maybe that has something to do with why their system software is riddled with shallow bugs that would be (should have been?) detected by casual at-the-desk testing.
I'm thinking maybe that has something to do with why their system software is riddled with shallow bugs that would be (should have been?) detected by casual at-the-desk testing.
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The calculator in Windows 10 got a similar "upgrade". It now has a loading screen that eats keystrokes. The Windows 7 just launched instantly and took 10% the RAM and threads (seriously, the Win10 calc.exe has 28 threads!)
It would be one thing if these companies were making greenfield apps and choose Electron to make their calculator app. But both Apple and Microsoft had perfectly functional calculator apps before, why spend the effort to make them worse?
It would be one thing if these companies were making greenfield apps and choose Electron to make their calculator app. But both Apple and Microsoft had perfectly functional calculator apps before, why spend the effort to make them worse?
I was very annoyed with this. Then I chanced to use my wife's laptop. And Win10 was absolutely flying on it. No keystroke misses, no launch lag. I have since concluded that Win10 is impossible to run properly on a spinning drive. You must have an SSD. I once r4ead that the reason Vista was such an utter dog on old machines was because Microsoft dev machines were too highly spec'd. I guess the same has happened with Win10.
Can confirm. I run W10 on my gaming machine, which still has a spinning drive. I cannot believe how frustrated I get every single time I use it. An operation as simple as opening the Windows menu and searching for an app can take up to 20 seconds.
What a waste of time.
What a waste of time.
I think there's some network access in there too. When I was tethering to my phone on public transport (where the connection drops out periodically) I've had the windows menu freeze for a minute (or whatever the timeout is).
I moved back to linux for a computer where basic things like this would work reliably. A good move for the most part, but for some reason the calculator in gnome doesn't do anything when you hit the '=' key, I have to reach for the mouse. Seems like no one can make a simple calculator app anymore.
I moved back to linux for a computer where basic things like this would work reliably. A good move for the most part, but for some reason the calculator in gnome doesn't do anything when you hit the '=' key, I have to reach for the mouse. Seems like no one can make a simple calculator app anymore.
Enter used to work in the GNOME calculator.
Both the lock screen and the start menu have loading delays that eat keystrokes. It seems to be acceptable to the Windows team that this happens.
I agree that this behavior is terrible, and arguably even worse when menu animations are disabled, yet the Start menu delay remains more or less the same.
What appears to be happening — I have no idea what's actually happening, but my guess as to what the problem may be, is that there's no special handling of Start menu keyboard input, just a set of systemwide shortcuts that tell Explorer to open the Start menu and then to steal keyboard focus.
My fear is that the reason that no special effort appears to have been made to fix this is not some significant technical difficulty, but out of some explicit or implicit management decision that time spent fixing a bug that's only visible to the very few users who even realize the Start menu accepts keyboard input in the first place would be better spent on "important stuff", like, um, making the taskbar "more social"[1].
[1] https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/26/windows-10-gets-more-socia...
What appears to be happening — I have no idea what's actually happening, but my guess as to what the problem may be, is that there's no special handling of Start menu keyboard input, just a set of systemwide shortcuts that tell Explorer to open the Start menu and then to steal keyboard focus.
My fear is that the reason that no special effort appears to have been made to fix this is not some significant technical difficulty, but out of some explicit or implicit management decision that time spent fixing a bug that's only visible to the very few users who even realize the Start menu accepts keyboard input in the first place would be better spent on "important stuff", like, um, making the taskbar "more social"[1].
[1] https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/26/windows-10-gets-more-socia...
I used to be able to unlock my computer before the monitor even finished turning on but now there's an annoying delay where I have to press a button, wait for the screen to turn on, then sometimes press another button to activate the password input box, then type in my password. Also I can't for the life of me get rid of "Schedule a Restart" notifications from appearing (and hijacking focus), despite trying all the group policy/registry edits in the book. Yuck.
Summary:
It animates the + button when you press it, and blocks any further touches till the animation is done.
Video: https://streamable.com/4xsh9
It animates the + button when you press it, and blocks any further touches till the animation is done.
Video: https://streamable.com/4xsh9
Correction: It doesn’t block any further touches, just operator button touches. So 1+234 won’t miss the 3, but 1+2+3 misses the second +.
Similar issue (seen in iOS 10 as well): when setting an alarm, swipe the am/pm selector and then hit "Done" before the animation completes...
Yeah I missed a meeting once.
Yeah I missed a meeting once.
This one gets me all the time - if the system thinks the "wheel" is still moving, it doesn't update the value. So I am always having my alarms go off at the wrong time for the same reason - I set them in a hurry and click Done while the "wheel" is still animating but my selected time is in view, and the time I wanted doesn't register.
I'm not sure why it doesn't just set the time to the number that is mostly in the selection box and is being "snapped" to, instead of waiting for the animation to stop
I'm not sure why it doesn't just set the time to the number that is mostly in the selection box and is being "snapped" to, instead of waiting for the animation to stop
I'm feeling extremely uncomfortable looking at these kinds of regressions. There's probably some Boeing/NASA engineer pulling out his iPhone and making "simple" but potentially dangerous back-of-the-envelope calculations like this. We already solved the calculator many decades ago, then brought it into many portable devices, the first iPhone and now we see a broken version of it on iOS 11.
That is what really astonishes me about technology: Stuff can get worse. As you said, it is a solved problem, but unless someone somewhere is pushing hard, it will keep getting worse. People in charge make stupid decisions and the creators probably don't care because calculators are unsexy. Next thing we know, there is a billion dollar startup with a calculator app because the current ones are so shitty.
Do people really need that kind of accuracy? Are you launching rockets or something? The answers are close enough for regular people and more importantly, the animation is beautiful. If you want such insane accuracy, perhaps you're not Apple's target market. /s
If you type 1+2+3+4, it comes out to be 470. Still, it is in the range that should not matter to most unless you are launching rockets.
Remember: this comes from a company that is obsessed with design and has guidelines how other people must design their apps for their store.
Messing up their own apps leaves a bad taste.
Messing up their own apps leaves a bad taste.
it's within a magnitude.. good enough for most.
"Do people really need that kind of accuracy?"
Yes, Steve.
Yes, Steve.
Just tried on my 2011 HP veer which ran webOS.
https://twitter.com/mempko/status/922673699752308737
I like to fire up older tech (2011 is not that old) to remind myself all the forks in the roads society had to take that led us to where we are today. RIP webOS.
https://twitter.com/mempko/status/922673699752308737
I like to fire up older tech (2011 is not that old) to remind myself all the forks in the roads society had to take that led us to where we are today. RIP webOS.
Remember when Steve Jobs introduced Snow Leopard as a stability/maintenance release without much in the way of new shiny features? Maybe Apple can revisit that idea.
Aside from bugs, don't even get me started on the giant fucking labels in the iOS 11 mail app telling me which folder I'm in....
Aside from bugs, don't even get me started on the giant fucking labels in the iOS 11 mail app telling me which folder I'm in....
That's what both El Capitan and High Sierra have been sold as on the Mac, so it's not as if Apple has forgotten the tactic. On iOS they have too much competition from Android to take a step back like that.
Android's last couple releases have been more focused on internals and performance as well - For Android 8 the standout user-facing features are new emoji and they changed the notification shade colour from dark grey to white.
I always thought that iOS 10 was actually that. One of their high-profile features presented at WWDC 2016 was emoji in Messages. But my hunch was that 10 was a stealth stability release, as well as prepping for APFS in 10.3
I'd been considering switching to iOS from Android due to Android's horribly laggy UI. Glad to hear it's just as miserable on the other side of the fence.
Android's horribly laggy UI? Which phone are you using? My Pixel 1 is smooth as silk, no performance degradation at all after one year of use.
In Developer Options, set the animation duration to 0, which kills the animations. It's like having a brand new phone not having to wait for stupid animation fluff to complete.
Take care though, because I've used an app in the past which was broken with animations disabled. I can't remember which one it was, but it relied on an animation completing to trigger an event when a soft button was held down for a certain interval.
Take care though, because I've used an app in the past which was broken with animations disabled. I can't remember which one it was, but it relied on an animation completing to trigger an event when a soft button was held down for a certain interval.
Good advice but I did that long ago :)
This is the first version of iOS I have actually held off on installing on day one, simply because of all the problems Apple has had on macOS and previous versions of iOS. The last update my iPad 3 got basically killed it.
Doesn't seem to be getting any better and I plan on holding off on updating for as long as I possibly can.
Doesn't seem to be getting any better and I plan on holding off on updating for as long as I possibly can.
This very problem is also an eternal struggle in game development when it comes to player character animation.
There's some people who wish to start blending into the next animation the moment a new player input comes in. This is great for responsive gameplay, but causes wonkey looking animations, feet sliding etc.
Then there's the people that simply want to always let an animation complete. It looks great, but obviously is very frustrating as your inputs get ignored and you can't react to things when you want to. Buffering inputs is not viable either.
Sadly, it seems in modern games the latter group is winning more and more. For example, in the Witcher 3 (which is otherwise an amazing game) orienting your character such that it is looking at (and the right distance from) a pickup is almost a minigame, since every time you tap a directional key to move in the a direction, an animation plays, which inevitably moves you too far.
I can't really resist playing games like The Witcher 3 anyway, but if I could I would "vote with my wallet" and not play any games that prefer animation fidelity over good player controls. Sigh.
There's some people who wish to start blending into the next animation the moment a new player input comes in. This is great for responsive gameplay, but causes wonkey looking animations, feet sliding etc.
Then there's the people that simply want to always let an animation complete. It looks great, but obviously is very frustrating as your inputs get ignored and you can't react to things when you want to. Buffering inputs is not viable either.
Sadly, it seems in modern games the latter group is winning more and more. For example, in the Witcher 3 (which is otherwise an amazing game) orienting your character such that it is looking at (and the right distance from) a pickup is almost a minigame, since every time you tap a directional key to move in the a direction, an animation plays, which inevitably moves you too far.
I can't really resist playing games like The Witcher 3 anyway, but if I could I would "vote with my wallet" and not play any games that prefer animation fidelity over good player controls. Sigh.
If anyone at Apple is reading this, can you please look into the WindowServer memory leak in High Sierra... every 3 days my Mac crashes because WindowServer decides to consume >26 GB of virtual memory.
Apple has really degraded with regards to the quality of their products with Tim Cook at the helm.
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Very simple fix: all they need to do is pass UIViewAnimationOptions.allowUserInteraction to UIView.animate(...) when animating the flash of the buttons. Simple oversight.
I've not worked at Apple before, but it wouldn't surprise me that a lot of these quality issues come from their supposed culture of secrecy and compartmentalization where no one knows what anyone else is doing for the most part. This makes it hard to test things end-to-end as an integrated whole before things get released.
At my employer, our culture is almost the polar opposite -- everything is open unless there's a need not to. Every employee dogfoods the latest builds of our apps/website/hardware before it goes out to the public, and culturally, internal feedback is encouraged. This is invaluable QA signal (in addition to automated testing and traditional manual testing) and a key part of why we can release as fast as we can.
At my employer, our culture is almost the polar opposite -- everything is open unless there's a need not to. Every employee dogfoods the latest builds of our apps/website/hardware before it goes out to the public, and culturally, internal feedback is encouraged. This is invaluable QA signal (in addition to automated testing and traditional manual testing) and a key part of why we can release as fast as we can.
They did just fine while Steve Jobs was around. It's not the secrecy (although it does help to have transparency), it's complacency.
It's not just about animates, Apple's software quality is getting worse those days. Not only the iOS,macOS is getting worse too.
Seems they fired all software QA engineers, and hire more ppt engineer, stop saying awesome and check your code.
Seems they fired all software QA engineers, and hire more ppt engineer, stop saying awesome and check your code.
There was — and I think it's still present — a similar bug in OS X's WM. ^→ and ^← switch spaces; the active (keyboard focused) window is not switched until the end of the animation, and subsequent keyboard input isn't withheld in the meantime. Meaning that if you type:
This gets doubly fun when both windows are terminals with ssh to production machines open…
123 ^→ abc
This gets doubly fun when both windows are terminals with ssh to production machines open…
I know I’m pretty late on this, but can I have my iOS 6 back? You know, it still fits all my needs the same way buttoned phones did (except the internet, which is a distinct program) and looks not like modern crap.
Not on apple, but I remember for an old job interview I had to do an online timed basic math proficiency test. You were allowed/expected to use a calculator.
Thank god they had practice questions. Because here was silly old me thinking "well I've got a smart phone, I can just use that".
One iteration through the practice questions using my smartphone calculator, and off I went to the newsagent to pick up the old version for the real thing...
Of course,the rant for why they were testing me on manually-done math for a data analytics job can be saved for another thread :)
Thank god they had practice questions. Because here was silly old me thinking "well I've got a smart phone, I can just use that".
One iteration through the practice questions using my smartphone calculator, and off I went to the newsagent to pick up the old version for the real thing...
Of course,the rant for why they were testing me on manually-done math for a data analytics job can be saved for another thread :)
Try disabling "Smart Invert", then toggling invert mode by triple-clicking the home button .. iOS11 goes back to "Smart" Invert, it cannot be turned off.
Maybe product regressions are inevitable at highly successful conpanies, becoming victims of their own success.
Important people leave companies sometimes, which can be a real pain but probably not a disaster.
On the other hand, this company overworks people, and the stock that employees have is probably worth a small fortune. They may have lost lots of good people, and cracks are starting to show.
Important people leave companies sometimes, which can be a real pain but probably not a disaster.
On the other hand, this company overworks people, and the stock that employees have is probably worth a small fortune. They may have lost lots of good people, and cracks are starting to show.
It's not only Apple that is regressing. calc.exe crashes at startup my Win 10 machine 50% of the time. It needs a remote procedure call to work now.
Activation of application Microsoft.WindowsCalculator_8wekyb3d8bbwe!App failed with error: The remote procedure call failed. See the Microsoft-Windows-TWinUI/Operational log for additional information.
Activation of application Microsoft.WindowsCalculator_8wekyb3d8bbwe!App failed with error: The remote procedure call failed. See the Microsoft-Windows-TWinUI/Operational log for additional information.
I just bought my first iPhone in four years after a run on Android. Obviously neither are perfect but the experience so far has been startlingly underwhelming. I’m chalking it up to new release OS bugs as the hardware (8 plus) doesn’t seem different enough to warrant any issues.
This kind of thing just seems like par for the course. I don't get it.
This kind of thing just seems like par for the course. I don't get it.
I felt the same way when I switched from Windows Phone to iOS.
I’m still bummed they killed it. There are a few IOS apps I use that it was missing, but no dealbreakers.
I really wish someone would undercut the big three (on laptops and mobile) with an OS that was bulletproof, covered 90% of use cases well (and is ~10% as complex as the competition), and didn’t rely on ads/telemetry for revenue.
Screw platforms + ecosystems; just make it not suck.
I’m still bummed they killed it. There are a few IOS apps I use that it was missing, but no dealbreakers.
I really wish someone would undercut the big three (on laptops and mobile) with an OS that was bulletproof, covered 90% of use cases well (and is ~10% as complex as the competition), and didn’t rely on ads/telemetry for revenue.
Screw platforms + ecosystems; just make it not suck.
For anyone that want to see this in action, but doesn't have immediate access to an iOS 11 device, here is an quick video that shows what happens:
https://twitter.com/yarnichat/status/922051344185348096
https://twitter.com/yarnichat/status/922051344185348096
Was about to get depressed and write a real nasty, down and dirty sarcastic comment, I mean, 1 + 2 + 3 = 24 , WTF?!?! Woz! What's your thoughts?
But then chilled out. I didn't even pay for my shiny new iPhone.
Kids, theres plenty of software to be (re)written, be grateful to be employable for a very long time.
But then chilled out. I didn't even pay for my shiny new iPhone.
Kids, theres plenty of software to be (re)written, be grateful to be employable for a very long time.
Why is there no way on iOS to disable all animations? It isn’t just the calculator, usually when an animation is playing, there’s no input. My phone feels so slow all the time, I hate it.
Reduce Motion helps a bit, but honestly I’d disable all animations that aren’t absolutely non-blocking.
Reduce Motion helps a bit, but honestly I’d disable all animations that aren’t absolutely non-blocking.
Maybe the iPhone X will have enough power to add three numbers together without lag.
Seriously what are Apple doing. The fundamentals are gone. I literally don’t know what day it is anymore in iOS 11. I use google calendar which is stuck on 31 because apple don’t let third party devs have updatable icons. I used to swipe left to find the date, but that no longer works. Now I have to pull down from the top, which I find a rather cumbersome experience. I am not an expert on android but the latest pixel phones promo shots show the date on the home screen (or can be configured to do with widgets I guess). It’s getting tempting to jump ship.
Seriously what are Apple doing. The fundamentals are gone. I literally don’t know what day it is anymore in iOS 11. I use google calendar which is stuck on 31 because apple don’t let third party devs have updatable icons. I used to swipe left to find the date, but that no longer works. Now I have to pull down from the top, which I find a rather cumbersome experience. I am not an expert on android but the latest pixel phones promo shots show the date on the home screen (or can be configured to do with widgets I guess). It’s getting tempting to jump ship.
>the latest pixel phones
>It’s getting tempting to jump ship.
Well it looks like the new Pixel has much worse issues, so don't jump just yet. Phones in general, from all companies, are in a weird spot right now.
>It’s getting tempting to jump ship.
Well it looks like the new Pixel has much worse issues, so don't jump just yet. Phones in general, from all companies, are in a weird spot right now.
If I swipe down from the top of the screen I see the clock and the date, do you get that?
Yes. But it’s cumbersome. With a plus model I can swipe left one handed. I need two hands to swipe down from the top.
Do you have the reachability feature enabled? It should allow you to reach the top for gestures while still using the phone one handed.
There's also assistive touch, which can help with gestures and other settings.
There's also assistive touch, which can help with gestures and other settings.
The software quality of Apple products that I use has fallen significantly in the past few years.
Updates slow down my phone, every single update, as well as introducing errors like this or where I double tap home to change applications and instead get a blur on the screen. Desktop OS updates have incrementally slowed down the computers, notably since Mavericks (and even earlier), so ever-slower desktops are actually expected by now.
I've used iOS products for years, refusing for example to use Android, but the issues I am encountering on the phone have become ridiculous. It may be time for an old school flip phone with a week long battery.
Updates slow down my phone, every single update, as well as introducing errors like this or where I double tap home to change applications and instead get a blur on the screen. Desktop OS updates have incrementally slowed down the computers, notably since Mavericks (and even earlier), so ever-slower desktops are actually expected by now.
I've used iOS products for years, refusing for example to use Android, but the issues I am encountering on the phone have become ridiculous. It may be time for an old school flip phone with a week long battery.
I still use Mavericks for personal stuff. Ditched iOS for MIUI (more polished than iOS these days).
I know some people who refuse to go past Mavericks in their business. They perform video processing and streaming.
Thanks for letting me know about MIUI.
Thanks for letting me know about MIUI.
Given that they managed to break volume control for iPhone 7 users like me (other versions too?), this isn't surprising in the least. Volume control mostly works now (11.0.3). However, half the time now it'll show the volume changing, but the actual audio output will be unchanged (may be an app issue, happens mostly with WhatsApp voice calls, but have had it happen some with the built-in Music app, not as reliably flawed there).
I'm still rebooting every couple days to keep bluetooth working reliably with my car. Maybe by 11.1 I can tell my sister and parents that it's safe to upgrade.
I'm still rebooting every couple days to keep bluetooth working reliably with my car. Maybe by 11.1 I can tell my sister and parents that it's safe to upgrade.
I'm on 11.1, still sucks
Original source: https://twitter.com/dangerdave/status/921790333905641472
Another UX issue I've seen with the iPhone calculator:
My wife is a nurse and uses the iPhone calculator to calculate doses. She performed a calculation like
My wife is a nurse and uses the iPhone calculator to calculate doses. She performed a calculation like
2.25
/
1.5
=
I just tested this and it does animate (a brief flash). This is on iOS 11, so maybe you have a different version?
yes, this was iOS 9 or 10
I am more scared of professionals using a phone calculator instead of a dumb calculator that should work all the time. I always carry around my scientific calculator not because my phone can't do it but because it is more reliable.
I see so many people here saying that their performance in older iPhones has declined with iOS 11.
I would like to point out that most (if not all) the lag issues and other performance related issues can be reproduced on a current iPhone 8. I have one. The flashlight has a noticeable delay when turning it on, the calculator is broken as described, the UI gets stuck a lot, apps crash a lot etc.
This is not a money grabbing scheme by apple. iOS 11 is just really bad software. Not the calculator though, this problem is older and has been there in iOS 10 aswell.
I would like to point out that most (if not all) the lag issues and other performance related issues can be reproduced on a current iPhone 8. I have one. The flashlight has a noticeable delay when turning it on, the calculator is broken as described, the UI gets stuck a lot, apps crash a lot etc.
This is not a money grabbing scheme by apple. iOS 11 is just really bad software. Not the calculator though, this problem is older and has been there in iOS 10 aswell.
Form over function sucks.
I’ve also been able to reproduce this bug. I found that if you pause and wait for the animation to finish before hitting the next number it will work as expected.
iOS usually launches with a bunch of bugs and issues. But this particular release has been one of the buggiest I can remember. There’s so many UI inconsistencies and other issues that feel incredibly rushed. I really hope the next minor patch addresses these, especially the battery issues. I’m charging my iphone7 2-3 times a day.
iOS usually launches with a bunch of bugs and issues. But this particular release has been one of the buggiest I can remember. There’s so many UI inconsistencies and other issues that feel incredibly rushed. I really hope the next minor patch addresses these, especially the battery issues. I’m charging my iphone7 2-3 times a day.
I do have to say, it was refreshing that it wasn't what I expected. I expected a floating point bug. This is in some ways worse and in some ways better.
Every time I see a race condition like this the only thing I can think of is the Therac-25: https://blog.bugsnag.com/bug-day-race-condition-therac-25/
This isn't that, obviously, but it underscores the importance of testing. This clearly should have been caught in QA.
This isn't that, obviously, but it underscores the importance of testing. This clearly should have been caught in QA.
Animations are the worst part of every single UI I use.
Also constantly hiding basic functions behind more menus and adding way too much white-space.
Also constantly hiding basic functions behind more menus and adding way too much white-space.
Thank you !
I have been getting really annoyed with the ios 11 UI. podcast feels like molasses - click the play button on a downloaded podcast - literally count 3 seconds before the UI responds and another before I hear anything
I just assumed it was my phone.
The excellent Working Copy is now non-functional for me.
I just assumed it was my phone.
The excellent Working Copy is now non-functional for me.
This type of thing isn't new. Even on the latest hardware with up to date software. Countless times I've searched for an app, seen it popup, stop searching, and go to tap and something else comes up and I've now tapped on that.
That problem is frustrating but not unique to Apple. Many asynchronous search interfaces break usability in this fashion. I have never understood how any front-end developer can tolerate this behaviour.
Android is guilty of this too. So annoying. About to take a button and it moves and I press something else. Frustrating.
iOS 11 is buggy as hell. I'm quite disappointed that I upgraded. That, and there already was two patches that I went through. That fixed stuff and brought other buggy stuff.
This is Apple flagship device and milk cow. This is not what I paid for.
This is Apple flagship device and milk cow. This is not what I paid for.
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Animation of the plus button is blocking touch events. What a bad apple example.
... ;)
... ;)
I dont understand why there’s no calculator on the iPad included....
Just tested out on iOS 10.3.2 with iPhone SE and it has exactly same bug. Trying to add 1+4+7 will result in answer being 48. So it's more than a year-old bug.
For the record, I’ve never touched the native calculator. I’ve been using an RPN tool called CALX. It’s great. I’d more than happily pay to use it, but it’s free!
Isn't it pretty basic to run animations in background, without blocking anything else? Sad that we're going backwards with basic user interface stuff.
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Old Swedish joke: What's the result of entering 1+2 into a Norweigian calculator? >> "Please wait"
I really like my iphone because the hardware is so damn reliable. I haven't had my iphone 6 fail on me in over 2 years. It's also pretty tough, I treat it like crap and it still works.
The software definitely blows.
Does anyone know of another smartphone brand where the hardware is close to being as good as the iphone?
The software definitely blows.
Does anyone know of another smartphone brand where the hardware is close to being as good as the iphone?
two years ago I used for a couple months a sony xperia, very nice and solid.
Try evaluating 2^3^4 on some native Android calculators ;)
So, quickly hit 1+2+3 = 24, if I do it slowly, I get 6.
3.11-3.1 ? LOL Apple.. Get your sh*t together!
It does this in iOS 10 too (just tested)
Try 1<<63 on macOS calculator.
I seem to get 23 when I try this.
I'm a little upset that every one is getting 24, and I only get 23. Am I doing this wrong?
Press equals. You're seeing the 23 you entered, not the sum. If you enter it very slowly, you'll see 3 until you press =.
Same, I am getting 23 too.
I think the problem is due to the UI is lagging and thus the second addition click event is not registered. e.g: 4+5+6 will return you 56.
Edit: Did it without using the "=" as other has pointed out.
I think the problem is due to the UI is lagging and thus the second addition click event is not registered. e.g: 4+5+6 will return you 56.
Edit: Did it without using the "=" as other has pointed out.
Are you pressing ”=” to get the actual result?
Apple is now Microsoft.
Use Wolfram Alpha.
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What's happening is: the operator buttons have an animation on them, and they don't register inputs while the animation is running. The animation is pretty long, so it's quite easy to tap an operator, tap a number, then tap the operator again and have your input be missed.
Conveniently, this should be a trivial fix. Just abort the animation when a second input is received while it's still running and register the touch. (Or, lazily, make the animations a lot faster.)
Edit: I got operator/operand mixed up while writing this. :P