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Students are failing AP tests because the College Board can’t handle HEIC images

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Re: Students are failing AP tests because the College Board can’t handle HEIC images

#11

I thought iOS was supposed to convert HEIC images to JPEG automatically behind-the-scenes in any file transfer situation where HEIC isn't supported. The article itself even says: > iPhones convert HEICs to JPEGs automatically when they’re attached to emails in the Mail app I'm just curious technically why the same didn't happen with the testing portal? If you have a webpage that accepts image uploads, is iOS Safari n…

Tried a standard input tag with the proper accept attribute

  
Selected a HEIC file from Photos in Safari, the selected image was automatically converted to JPEG.

Ten bucks says College Board programmer(s) failed to do the most basic and standard filtering.

Edit: Like a sibling comment said, the accept attribute actually isn't necessary; even PNG images (e.g. screenshots) from Photos are converted to JPEG automatically. This is true on both macOS and iOS Safari (latest). To be clear, on macOS you need to select from Photos instead of the filesystem for this to take effect.

In case anyone's interested, source code you can use to test for yourself (a Flask app):

app.py:

  import flask
  
  
  app = flask.Flask(__name__)
  
  
  @app.route("/", methods=["GET", "POST"])
  def index():
      if flask.request.method == "POST":
          image = flask.request.files["image"]
          return f"uploaded {image.filename!r} ({image.mimetype})"
      return flask.render_template("index.html")
templates/index.html:

  
    
      
      
    
    
      
        
        
      
    
  

Re: Students are failing AP tests because the College Board can’t handle HEIC images

#12

I thought iOS was supposed to convert HEIC images to JPEG automatically behind-the-scenes in any file transfer situation where HEIC isn't supported. The article itself even says: > iPhones convert HEICs to JPEGs automatically when they’re attached to emails in the Mail app I'm just curious technically why the same didn't happen with the testing portal? If you have a webpage that accepts image uploads, is iOS Safari n…

> If you have a webpage that accepts image uploads, is iOS Safari not smart enough to do the same conversion?

AIUI, Mobile Safari always re-encodes the image. However, if you transfer the image to a device that supports HEIC (e.g., recent macOS) then you'll find out that (desktop) Safari never re-encodes an image when uploading a file.

Re: Students are failing AP tests because the College Board can’t handle HEIC images

#13
post #3

This is the latest in a string of incidents where critical software systems, facing new pressure due to the pandemic, are catastrophically failing their users. I think what's happened in the past is that most public-facing software systems either a) were not really critical (because people had the alternative of doing things in-person), or b) (as in the case of all the ancient COBOL systems underpinning the US gov) h…

I think you're correct in your assessment that top-down bureaucracies really struggle with software but I don't think the solution is to inject a top-down bureaucratic gatekeeper in the path of every software career.

Re: Students are failing AP tests because the College Board can’t handle HEIC images

#14

I thought iOS was supposed to convert HEIC images to JPEG automatically behind-the-scenes in any file transfer situation where HEIC isn't supported. The article itself even says: > iPhones convert HEICs to JPEGs automatically when they’re attached to emails in the Mail app I'm just curious technically why the same didn't happen with the testing portal? If you have a webpage that accepts image uploads, is iOS Safari n…

> A national testing portal ought to support the default image format taken by the world's most popular phone, period.

What if it can't because the format is proprietary and Apple wants to charge for its use? As I understand it, MS and Google have to pay licensing fees to enable support for it in Windows 10 and Android.

Re: Students are failing AP tests because the College Board can’t handle HEIC images

#15

I thought iOS was supposed to convert HEIC images to JPEG automatically behind-the-scenes in any file transfer situation where HEIC isn't supported. The article itself even says: > iPhones convert HEICs to JPEGs automatically when they’re attached to emails in the Mail app I'm just curious technically why the same didn't happen with the testing portal? If you have a webpage that accepts image uploads, is iOS Safari n…

Historically, Safari always converted to JPEG and I don't think that required something like setting the accept attribute (e.g. ). It's not clear whether they're using something like the JavaScript blob APIs to get the file contents without some implicit conversion.

Re: Students are failing AP tests because the College Board can’t handle HEIC images

#16
post #3

This is the latest in a string of incidents where critical software systems, facing new pressure due to the pandemic, are catastrophically failing their users. I think what's happened in the past is that most public-facing software systems either a) were not really critical (because people had the alternative of doing things in-person), or b) (as in the case of all the ancient COBOL systems underpinning the US gov) h…

I think you're correct in your assessment that top-down bureaucracies really struggle with software but I don't think the solution is to inject a top-down bureaucratic gatekeeper in the path of every software career.

I'm only talking about creating a certification, not enforcing which orgs do and don't use it. A lot of software isn't important enough for such a thing, but a lot of it is. The point is that even when decision-makers do want software to be highly reliable, they have nothing but very blunt instruments for attempting to enforce that, because they're working in the dark.

Re: Students are failing AP tests because the College Board can’t handle HEIC images

#17

I thought iOS was supposed to convert HEIC images to JPEG automatically behind-the-scenes in any file transfer situation where HEIC isn't supported. The article itself even says: > iPhones convert HEICs to JPEGs automatically when they’re attached to emails in the Mail app I'm just curious technically why the same didn't happen with the testing portal? If you have a webpage that accepts image uploads, is iOS Safari n…

Probably not. If I Airdrop photos taken on my phone to my Macbook they arrive in HEIC format. I have to use an external tool (iMazing HEIC Converter) to manually convert them for a bunch of places.

I've experienced that with AirDrop too, but that's because the iPhone knows the Mac can view them.

Also you don't need an external tool -- Preview will convert HEIC to JPEG for you relatively instantly, even in batch. (Though I really do wish the phone would ask first if you want to convert, when Airdropping.)

Re: Students are failing AP tests because the College Board can’t handle HEIC images

#18
post #3

This is the latest in a string of incidents where critical software systems, facing new pressure due to the pandemic, are catastrophically failing their users. I think what's happened in the past is that most public-facing software systems either a) were not really critical (because people had the alternative of doing things in-person), or b) (as in the case of all the ancient COBOL systems underpinning the US gov) h…

> We need some sort of standard for software engineering quality. I don't think this is an academic question anymore. Real people's lives are being impacted every day now by shoddy software, and with the current crisis they often have no alternative. Software that you or I could probably have executed better, but that the people who were hired to do it either a) couldn't, or b) didn't bother. It's nearly impossible for non-technical decision makers in these orgs to evaluate the quality of the systems they've hired people to build. We need quality assurance at an institutional level.

Even if you were to put this in place today (which I don't necessarily agree with) you would still need bean-counters to sign off on paying for replacement services for their sweat, tears and duct tape solution. A good half of the electorate and the politicians, give or take, whip up into a frenzy if a bureaucrat so much as looks at a dollar bill the wrong way, so I doubt this would gain any traction.

Re: Students are failing AP tests because the College Board can’t handle HEIC images

#19
> Due to the photo’s size, the conversion took over five minutes.

This seems unlikely. What is the largest possible size phone photo coupled with the slowest reasonable Windows computer and Internet connection? There's just not that much data or processing involved in converting a 12 megapixel image.

Re: Students are failing AP tests because the College Board can’t handle HEIC images

#20
post #3

This is the latest in a string of incidents where critical software systems, facing new pressure due to the pandemic, are catastrophically failing their users. I think what's happened in the past is that most public-facing software systems either a) were not really critical (because people had the alternative of doing things in-person), or b) (as in the case of all the ancient COBOL systems underpinning the US gov) h…

> We need some sort of standard for software engineering quality. I don't think this is an academic question anymore. Real people's lives are being impacted every day now by shoddy software, and with the current crisis they often have no alternative. Software that you or I could probably have executed better, but that the people who were hired to do it either a) couldn't, or b) didn't bother. It's nearly impossible f…

New sweat, tears and duct tape solutions are being created every day. Let's start by focusing on the ones coming down the pipe.
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