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Apple update looks like Czech mate for locked-out iPhone user

theregister.com

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Re: Apple update looks like Czech mate for locked-out iPhone user

#141

Post by abcd_f »

nirava wrote: post #131
vntok wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and "his obsessive drive for perfection" as you put it is what would make him "rolling in his grave if he could see the software quality of the products that Apple releases today" as the parent put it.

He famously shipped the original Macintosh with a keyboard without arrow keys to force buyers to use the mouse. His vision of perfection didn't always match common sense. There are quite a few examples of this. I always cringe a little when I read these "jobs would have rolled over in his grave" comments.

He would've not let the abysmal slop like iOS 26 UI to ship ever.

Some things he didn't appear to care much about, the polished UX was his schtick.

Re: Apple update looks like Czech mate for locked-out iPhone user

#142

Post by Matl »

nirava wrote: post #134
Matl wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you and don't really get what Apple gets from removing a valid Czech character, but how would you test if all existing passcodes remain inputable without knowing the passcodes of all iPhone users? The one way to do this that I could see is to include both the new keyboard and the old one and if someone fails to unlock with the new one auto report that to Apple (not the code, just that the unlock failed a…

There is a list of valid characters accepted for a passcode. That list was created, the characters debated, and a consensus reached by Apple engineers (I hope, for all our sakes. I don't want to imagine a world where this bare minimum level of engineering diligence wasn't done by a trillion dollar company) Just have an automated keyboard test for every new release to ensure those characters aren't broken.

Agreed, but just to be clear; I was asking how would you test that assuming you still wanted to remove a character that was previously present.

Re: Apple update looks like Czech mate for locked-out iPhone user

#143

Post by Matl »

gambiting wrote: post #124
Matl wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you and don't really get what Apple gets from removing a valid Czech character, but how would you test if all existing passcodes remain inputable without knowing the passcodes of all iPhone users? The one way to do this that I could see is to include both the new keyboard and the old one and if someone fails to unlock with the new one auto report that to Apple (not the code, just that the unlock failed a…

It's literally a matter of an automated test that sets a password using every character on every possible keyboard type, then tries to type that password in on the lock screen. There's not even that many keyboards, that test would take what, an hour to run?

Right, but this test basically means you can't ever remove a character if it was ever present. I was assuming that you still want to remove it (for some reason) and wondering how to safely test the change.

Re: Apple update looks like Czech mate for locked-out iPhone user

#144

Post by dfedbeef »

lxgr wrote: post #97
shawnta wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

If I'd get a dollar for every annoying bug that Apple misses due to being hopelessly Bay Area brained, I'd probably get at least a free official Apple cleaning cloth every couple of years.

This is a good comment

Re: Apple update looks like Czech mate for locked-out iPhone user

#145

Post by nirava »

anal_reactor wrote: post #63
PufPufPuf wrote: post #20

I think the biggest lesson here is to back up. The reason for losing access to the phone is amazingly dumb but it could have fallen down the stairs for basically the same effect. And do your could backups cross-provider. You never know what the "big players" are going to pull, and your lifetime customer value is less than the cost of a single support call.

This is exactly the reason why I keep all my shit on an SD card despite Google deliberately making the external storage experience as painful as possible: slow access, broken writes, failed unmounts, no filesystem repair. Literally every time I restart my phone I need to put the card to my PC and repair the filesystem. Also, same card works extremely well when plugged into PC via random cheap USB card reader. On PCs…

I just have a cheap second hand PC with a couple of good drives running LAN only Immich and a few other backup tools. This, in parallel to cloud backup, makes the setup both mobile and reasonably fault tolerant.

I'm quite wary of using SD card for backup. Too easy for me to lose.

Re: Apple update looks like Czech mate for locked-out iPhone user

#146

Post by jrmg »

somenameforme wrote: post #135
PierceJoy wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So don’t buy an iPhone if you don’t care about the security of your device and personal information. That would introduce a massive security hole that would negatively affect far more users than it would help.

I doubt that. The group of people you're talking about are those who have their phone maliciously stolen by people who are actively working to hack/exploit their way into the devices and then actively exploit the information stored on them. That is a utterly negligible percent of users, or even of users who have their phone stolen. The overwhelming majority of thieves of intent move the devices onto professional orgs…

In this world stolen iPhones are mostly worthless because they can’t easily be wiped without the password.

In your world, they could be.

I imagine iPhone thefts would go way up. They’re worth $1000 and we just carry them everywhere - if they were easily resellble it would be a very obvious quick-money theft opportunity.

Re: Apple update looks like Czech mate for locked-out iPhone user

#147

Post by sensanaty »

hexo wrote: post #68
Matl wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regardless, why should a Vietnamese person be forced to restrict their password to ASCII? If you want to sell your devices in a country, the least you can do is to adopt to the local market. I get that Western cultural dominance makes this hard for some, but I think it should be the bare minimum.

because it is common sense

Definitely isn't for non-technical users. I guarantee you if you asked basically any random Joe on the street what ASCII means they'd have no clue.

https://xkcd.com/2501/

Re: Apple update looks like Czech mate for locked-out iPhone user

#148

Post by j16sdiz »

Myzel394 wrote: post #13
lilytweed wrote: post #3

It’s an annoying workaround, but could he connect a USB keyboard (via a USB to lightning adapter) with the ability to enter the character? Does the passcode screen accept input from attached keyboards?

Why can't people read stuff before commenting?

Why can't people read the HN guideline before commenting?

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

> Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that".

Re: Apple update looks like Czech mate for locked-out iPhone user

#149

Post by nirava »

abcd_f wrote: post #141
nirava wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He famously shipped the original Macintosh with a keyboard without arrow keys to force buyers to use the mouse. His vision of perfection didn't always match common sense. There are quite a few examples of this. I always cringe a little when I read these "jobs would have rolled over in his grave" comments.

He would've not let the abysmal slop like iOS 26 UI to ship ever. Some things he didn't appear to care much about, the polished UX was his schtick.

I am 100% sure that Steve Jobs could have shipped a broken Czech keyboard if that was in pursuit of some random abstract like purity or minimalism. "iOS keyboard has too many keys. Reduce keys make them larger. People should not use these obscure symbols anyway". (extrapolated from a couple of biographies and a couple of books on 1980s Apple I read, this is very consistent with his character).

As for iOS 26, no reasonable person would have let it ship. From one source (John Gruber -> "Bad Dye Job") the previous head of Apple's UI design team who lead the UI team was just not a UX designer, he was just a visual designer or something. I think it shows.

Re: Apple update looks like Czech mate for locked-out iPhone user

#150

Post by mckeed »

Someone on twitter had the idea that he could use the camera to take a picture of the character (or his whole password) and copy/paste it using the built-in ocr feature.

I don't have a text password on my iphone so I don't know whether you can paste into that field.

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