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iOS 11's Misleading "Off-Ish" Setting for Radios Is Bad for User Security

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Re: iOS 11's Misleading "Off-Ish" Setting for Radios Is Bad for User Security

#81

Post by comex »

prawn wrote: post #78
MBCook wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It IS communicated. If you just pull up control center and tap the button is says “Disconnected from ‘WiFiNetwork’”. If you expand the panel with 3D Touch or a long press under the WiFi icon it either says WiFiName or Not Connected. On the other hand the cellular radio says Off if you toggle it. This isn’t completely hidden. The information is there. And I agree with the other posters that this is a far better settin…

"At this point I’m not sure there’s a need for normal users to actually turn off Wi-Fi." I do it all the time when my home wi-fi is slow and I want to use 4G to quickly access something. My home internet is crap; my phone 4G is fast but with a low bandwidth cap.

That use case is satisfied by the iOS 11 toggle, which disconnects from the current network and disables connecting to new networks for the next few hours.

Re: iOS 11's Misleading "Off-Ish" Setting for Radios Is Bad for User Security

#82

Post by walterbell »

wildmusings wrote: post #46
clouddrover wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> resolve the real loss of money experienced by everyday users who turn off WiFi The way I've run every smartphone I've owned is to turn off mobile data, WiFi, and Bluetooth and only turn them on as and when I need them. I prefer it to work that way. The way this works in iOS 11 is now inconsistent and confusing. I can turn mobile data on and off via Control Centre. But, while I can turn WiFi on in Control Centre, I…

> The way I've run every smartphone I've owned is to turn off mobile data, WiFi, and Bluetooth and only turn them on as and when I need them Okay, but you have to accept that this is a ridiculously small minority use case.

Everyone benefits from longer battery life.

Re: iOS 11's Misleading "Off-Ish" Setting for Radios Is Bad for User Security

#83

Post by vacri »

morganvachon wrote: post #74
jonahx wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No. It is in an attempt to resolve the real loss of money... Naked apologism. So unthoughtful, and delivered with such a righteous tone. If this was their intention, they could have implemented the feature honestly, informing users about what was happening, and offering a clear choice, such as an immediate popup, between "turn off for this location" and "turn off completely." That would have been fine. But the exis…

"offering the option to actually turn the services off." I'm not getting into the rest of your discussion, but I think you completely missed that you can indeed actually turn them off via 3D touch. Even on non-3D touch devices like the iPad mini, you can get to the "actually off" toggles by long-pressing the icons. Sure, it's somewhat of an extra step, but it's misleading to claim that the option doesn't exist when i…

Apple changed the behaviour of something that people have been using since the first smartphone (before, even), without indicating that to the user. Saying that the option is there when it's poorly-discoverable doesn't really counter the GP's point.

Re: iOS 11's Misleading "Off-Ish" Setting for Radios Is Bad for User Security

#84

Post by djrogers »

CDRdude wrote: post #64
MBCook wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It IS communicated. If you just pull up control center and tap the button is says “Disconnected from ‘WiFiNetwork’”. If you expand the panel with 3D Touch or a long press under the WiFi icon it either says WiFiName or Not Connected. On the other hand the cellular radio says Off if you toggle it. This isn’t completely hidden. The information is there. And I agree with the other posters that this is a far better settin…

>At this point I’m not sure there’s a need for normal users to actually turn off Wi-Fi. The only real case would be something like airplane mode which already has its own setting. I ran into a use case for turning off wifi the other day. My ISP was having problems and the wifi network could not reach the internet. Turning off wifi saved me the trouble of forgetting my wifi network, and then looking up / typing in the…

The current behavior would do the same thing for you. You didn’t have to turn WiFi off, you just needed to do on next from the flaky WiFi.

Re: iOS 11's Misleading "Off-Ish" Setting for Radios Is Bad for User Security

#85

Post by flukus »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #67
mikeash wrote: post #56

All they had to do was implement it to cycle between three states: on, off-temporarily, and actually off. Or label the damned things. But no, they fundamentally changed how an important UI widget worked with no obvious indication that anything is different.

This decision seems so fundamentally "anti-Apple". What happened to "it just works"? Heck, they could have even promoted a third option as being super innovative (not like it is, but marketing "Now with 'WiFi Safe Sleep!' or something like that would have been the old Apple way).

Even the work around is far from what I'd expect, so much hidden functionality behind long presses, 3D presses, swipes, etc from the company that used to think the right mouse button would confuse people. That's about as useful to the average person as putting the setting in an ini file.

Re: iOS 11's Misleading "Off-Ish" Setting for Radios Is Bad for User Security

#86

Post by djrogers »

Nition wrote: post #52
MBCook wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It IS communicated. If you just pull up control center and tap the button is says “Disconnected from ‘WiFiNetwork’”. If you expand the panel with 3D Touch or a long press under the WiFi icon it either says WiFiName or Not Connected. On the other hand the cellular radio says Off if you toggle it. This isn’t completely hidden. The information is there. And I agree with the other posters that this is a far better settin…

Having WiFi greatly increases the battery drain on my iPhone 5C, so I always turn it off when I'm not using it. I'm not using the phone all the time so there are long periods where it doesn't need to be on, but I still want to receive messages etc (and hence can't use Airplane mode). Edit: I originally said that having wifi on "at least doubles" the power drain on my phone but since I haven't actually taken hard stat…

The WiFi radio uses less power than the LTE one, so if you’re in range of WiFi you save battery by leaving it on.

Re: iOS 11's Misleading "Off-Ish" Setting for Radios Is Bad for User Security

#87

Post by colejohnson66 »

clouddrover wrote: post #76
ryanobjc wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

no, the old behavior was better for you. I hate to point this out, because it seems pedantic and patronizing, but honestly you might need the reminder, that there are other people out there, and no, they aren't all like you.

It is patronizing and I need no such reminder.

Then stop acting as if your use case is what the majority of users want. If you really care about a toggle that actually turns off the radio, get an Android

Re: iOS 11's Misleading "Off-Ish" Setting for Radios Is Bad for User Security

#88

Post by vacri »

ryanobjc wrote: post #75
clouddrover wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, not good. The old behaviour was better. If there was a setting to have the option of the old behaviour then it would be all good.

no, the old behavior was better for you. I hate to point this out, because it seems pedantic and patronizing, but honestly you might need the reminder, that there are other people out there, and no, they aren't all like you.

Here is a common enough non-techie use-case where this new behaviour is clearly a regression: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15413902

Re: iOS 11's Misleading "Off-Ish" Setting for Radios Is Bad for User Security

#89

Post by colejohnson66 »

odammit wrote: post #38
Terretta wrote: post #6

> In an attempt to keep you connected to Apple devices and services, iOS 11 compromises users' security. No. It is in an attempt to resolve the real loss of money experienced by everyday users who turn off WiFi when it’s flakey and then forget to turn it back on, costing them cash on their cellular data plan. (And the very real frustration when things don’t work they expect to work, and they don’t know why.) Meanwhil…

Is that really a concern anymore? (Anecdote alert) I roll over several gigs a month that I don’t use ... This feature has been driving me NUTS because I’m surround by about a 1000 google Starbucks and TCWifi hotspots at home and at work and I connect to them magically and suddenly my phone stops working because I haven’t logged into their service.

Go to the Wi-Fi submenu in the Settings, tap the chevron on the Starbucks network and tap “Forget this network”

Re: iOS 11's Misleading "Off-Ish" Setting for Radios Is Bad for User Security

#90

Post by jackvalentine »

ajkblue wrote: post #77
MBCook wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It IS communicated. If you just pull up control center and tap the button is says “Disconnected from ‘WiFiNetwork’”. If you expand the panel with 3D Touch or a long press under the WiFi icon it either says WiFiName or Not Connected. On the other hand the cellular radio says Off if you toggle it. This isn’t completely hidden. The information is there. And I agree with the other posters that this is a far better settin…

It seems to be pretty clearly communicated to me when disconnecting... https://imgur.com/oh7diHn

That looks to me like it is communicating that the network was disconnected as a result of turning off the wifi.

This is backed up by people's previous experiences with the toggle, which did actually turn off the wifi.

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