Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

eff.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 342 posts

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

#171

Post by josteink »

clouddrover wrote: post #43
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…

> 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 this works in iOS 11 is now inconsistent and confusing

I really don't see how the apologists can deny this.

In iOS every UI control to toggle something on or off toggles things on or off... They all have the same UI presentation, and shows the same affordances, leading the user to expect the same behaviour.

And that they have. Everywhere except for wifi. Who in their right mind though this was a good idea?

How is it possible to argue this inconsistency is not a source of confusion?

I can't wait for my next flight, to hear how the in-flight personnel are going to explain this to Apple users.

"If you have electrical equipment with a radio transmitter, please turn it off now. If you have a Note 8, please let us know now, so we won't have to call the bomb-squad. And lastly if you have an wifi-only iPad running iOS 11, please make sure you turn wifi off using the special settings app because flight-mode doesn't work".

This is getting ridiculous. I bet the airliners are really happy about this change.

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

#173

Post by zaroth »

cassowary wrote: post #120
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…

A hidden feature isn't communicated. I don't know why features are going to do something weird if I short click vs long click. There's simply no communication. Maybe some shadow (3D) effect on something which you can 3D touch would make a huge difference. (It's probably ugly, but the feature itself is ugly, so you'd expect the UI should reflect that.) A right click menu was considered a hidden feature by Apple in the…

My thought was the WiFi icon should turn into a progress indicator to show that its snoozing, maybe like how apps show they are installing by graying it out in a circular sweep.

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

#174

Post by AlfeG »

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…

Windows phones has ability to turn off for a hour/2/4 . Really miss this thing on android

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

#175

Post by cassowary »

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).

Yes. Apple used to be about empowering people. That's what ease of use was about. You can keep doing the same thing and you get the same result, but when you're ready you can finally press that button you've always ignored. You'll discover something new which you might want to undo. But that's fine too, because it's clear and obvious how to.

This meant they got a reputation for building easy-to-use tools.

This meant they got a reputation for building things for people who want their stuff to just work.

This meant that they believed their role should be to remove things that are ugly or powerful, hiding features.

This means that they're no longer building easy-to-use tools. You don't know what your phone is going to do any more. You can't predict if wifi is off or not. There's two ways to turn wifi off, one of them doesn't work. One of them allegedly works. There's no way to know this without reading documentation or relying on word of mouth.

There's a good reason to want wifi to only be pseudo-off, but there's other ways they could have implemented this feature that would have been empowering. They opted for this one not because it's the right option, but because they've given up on the spirit that made them great in the first place.

RTFM. It's the new motto of the Apple apologist. Soon we'll be saying "next year will be the year of Apple on the desktop".

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

#176

Post by josteink »

raimue wrote: post #25

It is interesting to see how this is now suddenly perceived as an issue with iOS 11, while Android already introduced the same behavior with 4.3 in 2013. The "off" setting these days only indicates that the device will not associate with any WiFi network, but it keeps the radio on for location services. Without commenting whether this is actually bad for security, articles on the matter should point out that Android…

> It is interesting to see how this is now suddenly perceived as an issue with iOS 11, while Android already introduced the same behavior with 4.3 in 2013.

> The "off" setting these days only indicates that the device will not associate with any WiFi network, but it keeps the radio on for location services.

That's not true. This is provenly and factually false.

On All Android devices I've had (and I've had all version from 2.2. through to 8.0), turning wifi off causes lots of apps to nag you about turning it back on, exactly because of they wish to use location services.

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

#177

Post by josteink »

MBCook wrote: post #16
Perceptes wrote: post #10

This has bugged me too since upgrading to iOS 11. I understand the motivation for the change, but it was not necessary to make the UI misleading. It should very clearly indicate between "off" and "off-ish," and allow switching to a true off state, perhaps by long-pressing the icon to get additional options, like how several other control center panels work.

The messages the display at the top of the screen when you tap the icons were the labels below the icons if you expand the panel clearly show whether the radios are off or just disconnected.

> clearly show whether the radios are off or just disconnected.

I guess you and most of the rest of the planet have very different opinion about what "clearly" means then, otherwise we woulnd't be having this discussion now.

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

#178

Post by blub »

comex wrote: post #79
morganvachon wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

You can? On my phone, deep pressing on the 'block' in Control Center containing the Wi-Fi icon gets me to a submenu, which adds text labels to the existing toggles and adds two more toggles (AirDrop and Personal Hotspot). However, pressing the Wi-Fi button from that submenu seems to have the same effect as outside of it, and deep pressing it (as well as long pressing it) has no effect. edit: but you can definitely tu…

I can't, it's complete bullshit as I don't even have any devices paired. The long press is useless, it does nothing.

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

#179

Post by josteink »

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).

> hn_throwaway_99

Is really HN so hostile to statements critical of anything Apple does that you actually need to create a throwaway for it?

To me, that seems a bit extreme.

Edit: Not so throwaway after all then. Didn't consider checking.

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

#180

Post by beedogs »

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…

The security motivated user probably wouldn't be using an iPhone in the first place. Or any smartphone for that matter.
Post reply on HN