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iOS 11 reviewed

arstechnica.com

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Re: iOS 11 reviewed

#141

Post by amatecha »

CJefferson wrote: post #88
ohfouroneone wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not that games from 2009 don't run, only games that haven't been updated since 2009 don't run. All a developer needs to do is recompile and push an update.

I made a game in 2009, it was quite popular, got a bunch of positive reviews, I gave it away for free. I had to keep giving Apple £100/year just to let people keep downloading the game for free. At some point I tried recompiling it for a newer iOS, and I get hundreds of message about depricated APIs that I had to change to get it accepted by Apple. Instead I let it drop. I can't even put a copy online for people to d…

This is a pretty fascinating anecdote to me, as I preserve software as long as I possibly can (still having boxes of games like Marathon, Myst, Spectre, SimCity for example). I had a strong feeling that the ultra-closed App Store would result in extremely ephemeral software. It's very difficult to preserve software that is so "encumbered" and reliant on the continued distribution by a 3rd party who sets all the rules.

Re: iOS 11 reviewed

#142

Post by jernfrost »

sgift wrote: post #58
013a wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it hilarious that every time Apple does anything like this, people complain and Apple still sets record sales. You're fundamentally wrong and Apple knows it. They can rip the headphone jack out. They can deprecate 32 bit apps. They can remove TouchID. They can block installing third party apps. Keep complaining; neither they nor their customers care.

Your comment reminds me of a time when the same was said about Microsoft. It will be interesting to see when/if Apple falls the same way MS did.

That is rubbish, Microsoft never acted like this. They allways favoured backwards compatibility. Apple OTOH has behaved this through their entire existence. Yet Apple still grew to a large company.

Quite the contrary it is this behaviour which has saved Apple. It made sure they could move forward with new technology quickly.

MS moves slowely because they accumulate so much cruft pulling them down. That is the flip side of always being backwards compatible and "nice" to the customers.

Re: iOS 11 reviewed

#143

Post by amatecha »

misnome wrote: post #94
_ph_ wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a ton of apps no longer supported on iOS 11. They come in 2 main groups: - apps which were abandoned - apps which were replaced by a successor. In the absence of update fees, this is the easiest way to generate new revenue for continuous updates. I am happy to pay for app maintenance, but this scheme means, that there is no automatic data migration from the old to the new apps.

> apps which were replaced by a successor Hello, Omnigraffle. I bought this on iPad, used this something like, three times before having a need to use it over a year later and "Sorry! There is a new version to buy and your version is no longer supported, or runs!". It wasn't cheap, as apps go. Never, ever buying anything from Omni, ever again. Edit: To add details, I bought this for £35 on iOS 7. When iOS 8 came arou…

Similar with Tweetbot, which seems to release a new version as a separate app every couple years or so? The version I reluctantly bought (knowing they do this) is no longer updated but had long-standing bugs even when it was being actively developed. The experience makes me reluctant to buy any apps at all on App Store, tbh.

Re: iOS 11 reviewed

#144

Post by masklinn »

scarface74 wrote: post #125
masklinn wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The latest processor doesn't support 32 bit code. Don't they, though? I've seen a few people assert that, but no hard facts yet. > Why should Apple waste time, resources, and space on the device to support 32 bit code? Because users paid good money for 32b applications and phones which could run them at the time, and this is going to hold back users updating on iOS.

Yes and I also paid good money for my Apple // software, my 68K Mac software and my PPC Mac software. How far back should Apple go supporting older platforms?

> my PPC Mac software

Rosetta was bundled with OSX for 4 years. That's for PPC mac software running on hardware which literally could not run it natively.

> my 68K Mac software

The Mac 68k emulator was only deprecated with the Intel transition, 68K mac software remained supported for about a decade.

> How far back should Apple go supporting older platforms?

Supporting software which runs natively on the hardware doesn't seem exactly reaching.

Re: iOS 11 reviewed

#145

Post by masklinn »

jernfrost wrote: post #142
sgift wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment reminds me of a time when the same was said about Microsoft. It will be interesting to see when/if Apple falls the same way MS did.

That is rubbish, Microsoft never acted like this. They allways favoured backwards compatibility. Apple OTOH has behaved this through their entire existence. Yet Apple still grew to a large company. Quite the contrary it is this behaviour which has saved Apple. It made sure they could move forward with new technology quickly. MS moves slowely because they accumulate so much cruft pulling them down. That is the flip si…

> Apple OTOH has behaved this through their entire existence.

Rosetta, Carbon and the Mac 68k Emulator are examples of the exact opposite.

Apple does not hesitate moving forwards, but historically they provided large amounts of backwards compatibility, just not as cruft inside the existing system.

Re: iOS 11 reviewed

#146

Post by scarface74 »

masklinn wrote: post #144
scarface74 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes and I also paid good money for my Apple // software, my 68K Mac software and my PPC Mac software. How far back should Apple go supporting older platforms?

> my PPC Mac software Rosetta was bundled with OSX for 4 years. That's for PPC mac software running on hardware which literally could not run it natively. > my 68K Mac software The Mac 68k emulator was only deprecated with the Intel transition, 68K mac software remained supported for about a decade . > How far back should Apple go supporting older platforms? Supporting software which runs natively on the hardware doe…

32 bit apps don't run natively on the new ARM chips. Heck many old apps don't run at all on iOS 10.

Apple was able to reduce the size of iOS by not having 32 bit support libraries in memory. Since iOS doesn't have paging, that saved memory benefits 64 bit apps.

Re: iOS 11 reviewed

#147

Post by bradlys »

24gttghh wrote: post #115
JustSomeNobody wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But, it's only one extra motion to force click settings, select wifi and toggle wifi off vs swipe up to control panel and click the wifi. I like the new wifi toggle because iPhones are AP sticky usually.

Except if you have the SE there is no force-touch and you are still forced into the main settings menu. I turn off the WiFi when driving or doing outdoors stuff because I don't want the battery to drain searching for a network for 6 hours...

I don't think you need force touch. From what I've seen people do, you can just long press and it'll be the same as force touching the item.

Re: iOS 11 reviewed

#148

Post by pjmlp »

oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #63
sgift wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment reminds me of a time when the same was said about Microsoft. It will be interesting to see when/if Apple falls the same way MS did.

I think Apple has a far greater advantage than MS did (if not quite the marketshare, although the markets are different). MS was never seen as 'cool' or an aspirational status symbol like Apple products are.

> MS was never seen as 'cool' or an aspirational status symbol like Apple products are.

Sure it was.

In Portugal during the 90's, there were lots of CS students applying to work there.

Apple not so much, specially since they were about to close, and except for the Interlog shops in Lisbon, it was almost impossible to get an affordable device in a country where the average salary was about 400 euros on today's money.

Re: iOS 11 reviewed

#149

Post by acqq »

masklinn wrote: post #4

> Practically speaking, do I need to be able to play phone games from 2009 on my 2017 iPhone? Not really. The problem is not that you can't play phone games from 2009 on your 2017 iPhone, tying 32b deprecation to a hardware revision would actually have been nice (regardless of the hardware still being able to run in 32b mode). But that's not what's happening, the problem is that you can't play phone games from 2009 o…

It's not just the games. I've paid some 45 USD for a dictionary which won't work on iOS 11 on the same phone where it worked three years.

The developer however wasn't able to renew the license, so he can't make a new version even if he would like to do it.

Re: iOS 11 reviewed

#150

Post by Veratyr »

013a wrote: post #46
JBReefer wrote: post #31

The new default image/video codec that no other browser supports seems like it's going to be ... interesting. Of course they couldn't use VP9, just like USB-C - this is marginally better, and completely fucks over everyone developing outside the tiny Apple ecosystem.

To be fair; HEIC and HEVC are industry standards. If browsers don't support them, that's on the browser.

Really? Which industries? Who, other than Apple, uses HEVC?

HEVC is a standard produced by industry, sure but it's not an industry standard as no industry that I'm aware of actually uses it. You can't put it on a Blu-Ray, you can't broadcast it and you can't stream it over the internet so that's pretty much the entire consumer content industry for one.

The HEVC patent holders _want_ it to be an industry standard but it's not yet and I hope it never is. I really want AOM to kick its ass with AV1 so we don't have to deal with patent encumbered video codecs again.

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