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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

#401

Post by cosmotic »

II2II wrote: post #52

While it sounds like the College Board may be at fault for some of the issues, like the test timing out when HEIC images were sent or the initial communication of the issue, I wouldn't be so quick to place all of the blame on them. Part of the problem is how we more-or-less glorify an ignorance of technology. This can be seen in both students trying to change the file type by changing the file extension and JPEG bein…

It's also elitist for Apple to change the default file format to one that's patent encumbered and not compatible with basically any other software aside from their own.

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

#402

Post by giantrobot »

cycomanic wrote: post #377
mrlala wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just a guess, but it seems like you work in theoretical lala land and never have to deliver something that works. I'm not saying you are wrong- sure you can argue that it's the iPhone that is broken, from a non-standard format. However, if you are designing an app that needs pictures to be taken and about 45% of your customers (the students) can't just take a picture without going through some conversion while on a t…

Well I could turn that around and say if you develop a phone and the image format it exports to is not accepted by 99% of websites maybe then you majorly fucked up.

But the phone does the right thing when told to do the right thing. If the input tag has a proper accepts attribute set the iPhone will transparently and automatically transcode a HEIC image to JPEG.

A file input tag with no accepts attribute when you're expecting a particular type of file is broken. Would Android phones be "majorly fucked up" if they stored images as WebP by default?

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

#403

Post by danso »

derefr wrote: post #342
danso wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would it be correct for iOS Safari to quietly reencode to jpeg when a HEIC file is uploaded via a webform? How would Safari know that the site's backend didn't want an HEIC file? I agree the HEIC thing is very confusing (having set up my parents' phones recently), but I can't see how Apple is to blame. For starters, the College Board could've done a much better job emphasizing this step for iOS users in its instructi…

> they provided a demo in which the photo upload function appears to have been stubbed (e.g. "if 'PNG|JPG|JPEG' is filename, print "Success"), giving students and teachers false assurance that photo uploads would work on test day. I don't think it was exactly that it was stubbed out, per se; I would guess it was that the whole "backend" process involved either a human or an async batch process opening the file; and s…

Yeah, I agree with you that the production app likely had an async process, i.e. queuing submissions and processing them first-come-first-serve, which would help explain why Dave didn't get the failure email until well into the next day. Seems safe to assume there was no process for (good) input validation upon upload.

And now that I reread the passage about Dave, I realize it's not necessarily true that Dave tried to upload HEIC, then got an error message, which led him to then rename the file. But he may have actually read the instructions about PNG/JPG being required, then thought he could just rename his file, then uploaded it as his first and only upload to the demo app. And whether the demo app actually did the upload, it apparently didn't do the parsing (I still think that was stubbed out; I can imagine an engineer thinking it'd save a headache if they disabled the parsing module for the demo server)

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

#404

Post by voisin »

tedunangst wrote: post #398
azinman2 wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First of all, as many others have pointed out by specifying the accepted file formats in the tag, they would avoid HEIC entirely as the phone would simply convert to one of the accepted formats. It's also not clear to me that this patent license is actually an issue in terms of decoding and converting file formats on the backend. Even if that were the case, I'm certain there is some commercial license software they c…

Wait. There's a way to get safari to upload HEIF without conversion? All my photos, which are HEIF on my phone, turn into jpeg when I upload them. I've been trying to get the original HEIF off for months.

Dropbox and OneDrive allow you to sync HEIF instead of JPEG.

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

#405

Post by megablast »

pwthornton wrote: post #111
xienyc wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"Our system broke, you're screwed now, sorry" is never an acceptable answer. That's not what happened at all. The college board admitted their fault and are letting students take the test again. Even without that, they mentioned in their FAQ that JPEGs and PNGs are the only file types acceptable and even sent out a tweet (which should have been an email) a week before especially for iPhone users to let them know how…

If they had enough time to warn people ahead of time, they had plenty of time to push a fix to their system for this. We are literally talking about adding support for one more image format. Emails, tweets, texts are no excuse for broken products. The iPhone is the best selling model in the United States. It is on College Board to support its default image format. Good product design is owning your users' success. It…

Oh yes, let’s update our tested and working system, a week before live? Don’t be stupid.

There were probably no dev changes for the entire month before hand.

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

#406

Post by bdcravens »

azinman2 wrote: post #299

It’s amazing to me that so many are blaming Apple. Despite the fact that this site is all about new technology (so ironic!), uploading a photo from an iPhone isn’t exactly an edge case. They should have tested this, and apparently they did enough to send a tweet about it.. as if that’s enough. Clearly the college board dropped the ball in adequately informing people of their not-great workaround, instead of either sp…

Many places don't handle those files properly. For selling on eBay/Mercari/Poshmark, if I AirDrop from my iPhone to upload from my computer, they don't convert the file properly. (Typing descriptions etc is far easier from the computer than on a mobile app) I can setup an Apple Script to do conversions, but I've found uploading to Dropbox and pulling from the desktop version works better (Dropbox does the HEIC-JPG conversion)

I believe the onus should be on the trillion dollar company that chose to use a non-standard file format.

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

#407

Post by bdcravens »

azinman2 wrote: post #328
lone_haxx0r wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using HEIC apparently [1][2] requires a license and is patent encumbered[3], so I actually blame Apple for using a closed format by default. [1] https://forums.developer.apple.com/thread/97036 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17587923 [2] http://www.hackerfactor.com/blog/index.php?/archives/833-HEI...

First of all, as many others have pointed out by specifying the accepted file formats in the tag, they would avoid HEIC entirely as the phone would simply convert to one of the accepted formats. It's also not clear to me that this patent license is actually an issue in terms of decoding and converting file formats on the backend. Even if that were the case, I'm certain there is some commercial license software they c…

If you don't use your phone to upload, but transfer the file to your computer, it won't do the conversion.

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

#408

Post by projektfu »

gbear605 wrote: post #366
projektfu wrote: post #249

I suppose either they didn’t call Apple up for help or it’s no longer possible to do so in any meaningful way. This is bad press for Apple, too.

The only change they needed to make was one line on their upload form (according to comments elsewhere on the post). This wasn’t an Apple support issue, this was a lack of trying and sufficient testing on the College Board’s part.

Afterward, when they have thousands of images they can’t access, it’s a support issue. It’s time sensitive so they can’t just have people re-upload the images, but retesting is a bad solution.

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

#410

Post by kyle-rb »

azinman2 wrote: post #299

It’s amazing to me that so many are blaming Apple. Despite the fact that this site is all about new technology (so ironic!), uploading a photo from an iPhone isn’t exactly an edge case. They should have tested this, and apparently they did enough to send a tweet about it.. as if that’s enough. Clearly the college board dropped the ball in adequately informing people of their not-great workaround, instead of either sp…

> uploading a photo from an iPhone isn’t exactly an edge case

From what I've heard in articles and other sources, uploading directly from the iPhone works fine. The issue is only when students try to upload an HEIF file from a computer, instead of directly from an iPhone, which requires:

1. The student has an iPhone, which they use to take a picture of their work.

2. The student chooses not to upload directly from their iPhone, and instead wants to use their computer (presumably they're already logged in there).

3. The student's computer is a Mac, and they choose to use AirDrop (or another method that doesn't do conversion) to transfer the file instead of email (or another method that does convert to JPG).

4. The student is using Chrome/Firefox or another browser that doesn't do automatic conversion to JPG.

I would argue that this qualifies as an edge case. Presumably, CollegeBoard did their due diligence testing the basic single-device flows, but didn't cover multi-device flows, or just missed possibilities like AirDrop instead of email for transferring images.

I agree that they should have done a better job informing students; there probably should be more info on the upload page itself.

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