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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

#301

Post by torstenvl »

I'm really surprised to see so many on HN defending this behavior change, when it objectively violates traditional UI/UX principles and Apple's own HIG. The principle of least astonishment is there for a reason: as Apple itself says, iOS interfaces must "incorporate[] features and behaviors in ways people expect."

The toggle is too close to previous versions to have a different behavior. I'm not opposed to the behavior itself, necessarily, and it seems like some people might find it useful. But implementing it as a bait-and-switch was the wrong call.

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

#302

Post by MBCook »

zaroth wrote: post #173
cassowary wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They actually have a way to show this. If you play around with the other buttons and modes they seem to use colored for on/connected, grey for on/disconnected, and grey with a line through it for radio off.

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

#303

Post by MBCook »

_jal wrote: post #298
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. Define 'normal'. After I educated my (retired, nontechnical) mother about wifi and bluetooth tracking, she started turning them off when she left the house. I think the folks who think this is just peachy are in their own bubble. 'Normal' (by my working definition) people do care about this stuff if they understand it. Thankfully…

Apple must have statistics about this (from people who opt in to it like me).

If they made this change I imagine the number of people who actually toggle the radios on and off a lot (manually, not airplane mode) must be very small.

I’m sure th know how many people have written them about the ‘I ran up my cellular bill and it’s your fault’ thing too. I know I’ve heard that from people.

It’s a change from what it’s been doing for 10 years but I think it makes sense.

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

#304

Post by MBCook »

cassowary wrote: post #132
nkristoffersen wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're missing out. 3D Touch is pretty powerful and provides access to more than "Useless Options" now.

How do I know when I can use it? and if my phone doesn't have 3D Touch, how can I access the same features? (I don't know if my phone has 3D Touch, but I guess it doesn't because I've never been able to make it do something different. Except once when I long clicked the control centre and it did something different. I don't know if that's 3D Touch though. My iPhone used to teach me how to use it, now it just hides th…

You don’t, which is one of the two big issues. You can only try it everywhere and try to remember what happens.

(The other problem is the light touch/hard touch thing)

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

#305

Post by MBCook »

KozmoNau7 wrote: post #245
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" To preserve battery. I don't know about iPhones, but on my Android phone, Wi-Fi is certainly the largest battery hog, if I leave Wi-Fi location scanning on.

I would LOVE to see someone run benchmarks about how much battery WiFi and BT use on modern iPhones (when disconnected). I would be amazed if the difference was more than negligable.

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

#306

Post by esMazer »

lumisota wrote: post #228
golangnews wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't use 3D touch to turn off wifi. According to Apple you have go into settings to do so. https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT208086 The problems with this change are: It is surprising - grey buttons usually mean disabled permanently, not disabled except for some uses or for some indeterminate length of time. It changes established behaviour without a clear warning to the user. It is inconsistent - disabling blue…

You can 3D Touch the Settings icon to jump to the WiFi settings.

not the point, the talk is about the control center options.

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

#307

Post by rmwaite »

KozmoNau7 wrote: post #246
djrogers wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not on my Android phone, a Motorola Moto X Play. Wifi is by far the largest battery hog.

lol man. thats because it is used the most. in order to determine which uses more energy you would need to run a series of controlled tests where you transfer specific amounts of data over time with one radio or the other.

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

#308

Post by badwolf »

MBCook wrote: post #302
zaroth wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They actually have a way to show this. If you play around with the other buttons and modes they seem to use colored for on/connected, grey for on/disconnected, and grey with a line through it for radio off.

If you put your iPhone in "Airplane" mode, the wifi shows "OFF" (with a slash through it) vs toggling the wifi button just grays it out and shows "not connected"

Seems fine for me /shrug

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

#309

Post by IBM »

KozmoNau7 wrote: post #256
IBM wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most users when turning "off" Wi-Fi, particularly from the control center, are doing so to get them off whatever network they're on. What their mental model is for what "Wi-Fi off" is doesn't matter because the user shouldn't be responsible for managing the radios in their phone. And any of them that do try to are probably under the impression that it saves them battery life, when it actually doesn't (unless connecte…

Nonsense. Literally every single smartphone before iOS 11 had a simple toggle switch for wifi on/off. This is now the expected behavior, this is what people expect to happen. They are conditioned by now, to switch off wifi by pressing the wifi button, and to have to turn it back on manually. If Apple wants to change this paradigm, they have to be very very careful about it. And they obviously haven't been.

Apple removed the Home button after 10 years in the iPhone X and replaced it with a little bar drawn in software at the bottom of the phone. Just like users will learn new behaviors to exit apps, they will learn that the control center behaves in a new way.

Nobody cares about this other than technical people, who really only care because they perceive it to be Apple Arrogance. Nearly 40% of the installed base is on iOS 11, if there were complaints about this we'd have heard about it by now (just like we hear about everything else).

Tech blogs and the EFF might write about it, but aside from the HN threads about it, no one in the real world will ever care because the change is an improvement over what it used to do.

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

#310

Post by an_account »

inferiorhuman wrote: post #263
golangnews wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree it's not a huge security vulnerability, just bad design by Apple. There are also a few other reasons for disabling wifi - battery life, tracking, debugging connections, and of course security as well (not in response to specific vulnerabilities, but on the principle of less attack surface being safer).

> I agree it's not a huge security vulnerability Until the next Broadcom WiFi radio vulnerability.

But people who know about that will disable it in settings, and the majority of the world will go on using WiFi fully oblivious.

Before the command center existed people weren’t saying having a WiFi toggle hidden in the settings app is a security vunurability.

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