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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

#521
This is enterprise software, which by definition means the people who approved and purchased it are not the people forced to use it. That alone usually makes it garbage.

"Enterprise software" also frequently implies it was supplied by the lowest bidder, and that means it was poorly-designed, poorly-implemented, and poorly-tested by inexperienced programmers.

And hundreds of students are at its mercy. This is probably actionable.

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

#522
> Everly Kai, a senior in British Columbia, had the same problem with Computer Science A last week — she attempted to rename the file to JPEG and received the same email a few hours after submitting her test.

If you're taking a CompSci test and you think that renaming a file changes it from one image codec to another, you probably don't have a bright future in CompSci. just sayin'

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

#523
post #414

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…

This whole blame game is weird. Could the college board have handled this better or have a better upload mechanism? Sure. Could apple be more clear about the way they are storing and transferring photos? Sure, finder on my macbook actually does worse in handling .heic files than my windows 10 desktop unless I sync using photos. But if I got this right the upload page stated the accepted file formats, why should they…

I'm pretty damn technical and I never heard of HEIC before today. Maybe I would have if I had an Iphone, but in general if I take a photo with my phone I assume it writes a JPEG to the file system somewhere. If that's not the case, the software -- not the students -- should have been able to handle the issue. Computers are the servants of people; not the other way around.

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

#524
post #134

I do not understand this huge criticism against college board for this. My daughter took 5 AP exams this time and we got multiple remainders from her teachers and AP board that HEIC will not work. Here is the relevant FAQ: Can student submit an HEIC file of a photo of their handwritten work? Recent iPhones and iPads save photos as HEIC files. HEIC photo files can’t be submitted “as is” in the online exam. They must b…

I think that in the new era of homeschooling, of tracking new information, etc, that we all find our inboxes a bit inundated. I think it's fair that a high-strung, anxiety-ridden student that's missing their senior year memories might miss some 'remainders'.

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

#525

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Perhaps Apple should make it easier or automatic to convert into a format that's universally usable. Further down this thread you’ll see that the board have messed up and they aren’t accepting images they should due to poor implementation. “ oefrha 1 hour ago [–] 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…

I'd posit that Apple ought to assume the worst (ie nothing but JPEG and PNG is supported) if no format is specified. That's how we've built most of the web, to ensure backwards compatibility and avoid these kinds of problems. That said, come on College Board. Fix your crap. What a stupid bug.

I agree with it, at least for a few years.

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

#526
post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this for comment real? Why should being tech savvy enough to jump through esoteric technical requirements be part of the test?

Ever see a student get scolded for not using a #2 pencil? Can't use a pen. Can't use a marker. Can't use a #9 pencil. Must be a a #2 pencil. Ever fill out a government form that must be done in non erasable black or blue ink. A pencil is unacceptable. A red pen, green pen, purple pen is unacceptable. An erasable pen is also unacceptable. Not saying users should have to know what a .JPG from an .HEIC but just saying t…

ok but what if you're told this 'technical requirement' in a tweet while taking the test? and you don't even use twitter?

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

#527
post #519
post #505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you do that, Safari will convert the HEIC image to a JPEG automatically when you try to upload it. That’s quite impressive actually and much more than I would expect from a browser’s control.

It's also not what a browser should do. JPEG conversions will vary in quality and size. On some sites (e.g. a CMS), quality can be sacrified to stay within file size limits. On other sites, like photo printing services, quality is much more important. These may be unusual cases, but silent browser assumptions are still an overstep.

There's nothing stopping the user from doing a conversion themselves if they want to (and know how, which is asking a lot).

The server is saying it can't read the other file type, so the alternative is to fail.

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

#528
post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

ImageMagick supports HEIC to JPG conversion. It would take at most a few hours to hack together an interim solution.

I don't think you would be comfortable pushing this few-hours-hack to a system of such high importance. A mistake, be it stupid or complex, could break far more than the issue at hand does. And you would be at fault. Would you like to receive the response of all the students then? Would you really dare to risk this scenario?

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

#529
post #527
post #519

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also not what a browser should do. JPEG conversions will vary in quality and size. On some sites (e.g. a CMS), quality can be sacrified to stay within file size limits. On other sites, like photo printing services, quality is much more important. These may be unusual cases, but silent browser assumptions are still an overstep.

There's nothing stopping the user from doing a conversion themselves if they want to (and know how, which is asking a lot). The server is saying it can't read the other file type, so the alternative is to fail.

There's a medium option: have an alert popup saying

    Convert the image to a format the site accepts (jpg)?

    [ ] Don't show this message again

    [OK] [Cancel]

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

#530
post #476
post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But I understand how this might be a foreign concept for someone from the US. What? In the US, knowing how to operate your vehicle and the laws around operating a motor vehicle IS the drivers test. Your argument is not reasonable. Knowing the nuances of file formats is irrelevant to AP exams in US History, Calculus, Physics, etc. This is a failure of the administrators to make a proper test. The College Board speci…

[flagged]

Please don't cross into personal attack, regardless how wrong another commenter is or you feel they are. It just makes the thread even worse.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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