Ask HN: Why is iOS 11 such a mess?
> Hitting airplane mode now drops connected bluetooth devices
> Swiping right to open a text or app from the lock-screen will cause touchID to fail
> Battery life has absolutely collapsed (pretty much have to have low power mode enabled to make it through the day with moderate usage)
> iMessage bug corrects "I" to some unrecognizable symbol [1]
> Siri App Suggestions now appears to suggest most recently used apps, not frequently - defeating the purpose of the home-button double-click (I assume this was done to support functionality on iPhone X since that doesn't have a home-button).
This is just what I've experienced before noon today. Why the decline in software quality?
[1] https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/304153/ios-11-autocorrect-bug-typing-the-letter-capital-i
Edit: More since lunch
> Using bluetooth headphones to control Spotify music app...sometimes, but not always, pressing the button to restart paused audio will start iTunes music, even though I never use it anymore.
> I don't know what happened in the Podcast app, but my saved podcasts are not there anymore and the library is difficult to navigate.
106 comments
[ 2.2 ms ] story [ 133 ms ] threadI've had an iPhone since 3GS and this is the first time I can remember I've really regretted an update. I've NEVER experienced my iPhone completely locking up for 5-10 minutes right in the middle of me trying to get work done, not allowing me to even force-reboot it.
I have to power cycle it at least a dozen times a day now because it gets into a state where apps will no longer launch until I do it.
I'm not really a whiny user, but this is a whole new level of suck I've never seen before. It's a Windows ME grade of garbage release. Very disappointing as I felt iOS 10 was bulletproof and I relied on my phone to have my back as I was traveling and working, and now I'm constantly hoping the next app I switch to doesn't disable it for 10 minutes right in the middle of me doing something important.
Though this gets to another problem with Apple's maintenance of iOS: If you don't upgrade to iOS 11, you don't get their fix for krack attacks. Microsoft, on the other hand, did have the common decency to continue issuing security patches for older major releases.
Our Android devices on the other hand... not so much. Six months of updates seems to be about the max!
I suspect the family is still getting security updates because you are running iOS 11 on the 5S. I bought a 5S too back in 2013, it came with iOS 7. If you were still running iOS 7 (or 8, or 9, or probably even 10 now) on the device, you would not be getting updates any more.
I don't need an OS update to get the latest Chrome or Gmail or Maps, for example, unlike iOS.
It's a pathetic solution, but it worked when nothing else would including "set up as a new phone". The apps had to break, then be deleted and reinstalled a second time, to finally work.
The other issues with 11 remain however.
Edit: it's as if they tried to make the interface less efficient than before - it makes it much more difficult to find subscribed to podcasts you haven't listened to in a while
Overcast, on the other hand, works fine.
For a one-time fee service, it's pretty amazing!
You want to be on the cutting edge? This is what you get! I didn't even have to tell my mother not to update, she knew to wait a few months.
That's what betas are for.
Specially since Sierra/High Sierra got Siri and many iOS features.
It does seem a particularly messy release, perhaps akin to iOS 7. But many things also seem snappier and more useful. Like another commentator, I put it down to teething problems.
It has been what, 2 months?
Huh, doesn't happen to me
https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/4pwv0l/i_finally_f...
Personally I find that iOS recently has really fallen behind, the hardware coming from Apple is still best in class, software is terrible. Notifications are abysmal, the UI in places feels pieced together, some of the UI just doesn't make sense, functionality is lacking in a number of areas. That doesn't even start on the bugs.
To be honest the software and the software alone is pushing me more and more to Android as I'm really disliking the lack of traction from Apple on improving iOS.
1) I turn off wifi only to notice internet stuff not working later, only to realize wifi has turned itself back on and connected to a random open network.
2) Almost any time I try to update any app(s), all apps freeze and won't function until I force restart my phone.
3) Random freezes and crashes all the time.
4) Much worse battery life on iPhone 7
AFAIK airplane mode should kill all radio signals.
What are you doing on your phone for that type of battery life? My phone (iPhone 6 Plus) has definitely been slower, but my battery life seems to be the same post upgrade. My phone is mostly idle throughout the day.
There were definite performance and battery life issues with 11.0 most of which were fixed with 11.1 and improvements are coming as well with 11.2. For me personally it's on par with iOS 10 for battery life.
You can get a replacement battery for your phone for €25. If you don’t want to do the replacement yourself, any 3rd party repair shop will replace it in 15 minutes. You can also go to an authorized service provider, but that will cost €100 and take much more time.
And, as I said, you are not forced to upgrade. A battery replacement is cheap and quick and will solve all your problems and your phone will feel like new.
I also have the iPhone 6S, and I've also been having trouble with the battery. I've had to replace it twice. (First time Apple replaced the whole phone because of a manufacturing defect, second time I went to a 3rd party repair shop)
Sure, it would be nice if Apple products lasted forever without service. Unfortunately they don't. But servicing iPhones has become extremely cheap and extremely quick -- as long as you stay away from authorised service providers.
What is odd is that is seems to be related to rendering; sometimes when I scroll on either direction on Tweetbot or on Safari, the iPhone will stall for maybe 500ms and the battery will drop by 20% or so instantly. Other times, I will app-switch to Slack and it will do the same. Reading content in black background/white text on the other hand, doesn't seem to be draining the battery. So I think its safe to assume this is an upgrade related problem. Also, I have disabled spotlight indexing and pretty much everything else I could, and it's also been quite some time since the upgrade for any upgrade tasks to be running to completion still.
I’m pretty sure that there is no way to fix your phone with software. It’s a hardware problem. Just replace the battery, and it’ll work fine again.
I don’t know where you live in Crete, but typing “iphone repair cityname” in google should quickly get you to a place that can replace your battery in 15min.
My first thought was that "iOS is the new Windows where the primary recommended solution to a problem is to restart the device."
Indeed, and it no doubt passed all the unit tests and was marked as good to ship.
But I suspect what they were lacking was an aggressive, adversarial QA specialist with the mindset of "how would a user break this in daily use".
Isn't the point of a beta release to make sure that the OS is battle-tested with users who would use it like they do in real life?
Would have thought it might have covered most of the typical real-world use cases. Especially since it probably has one of the highest number of users/testers of any beta software programs.
We will never know, but I'm guessing this is the reason.
I've just picked up the habit of restarting my phone before I go to bed at night. I am just shocked that so many existing features got broken in odd ways.
I also subscribe to Apple Music and it is driving me crazy. Since the upgrade it randomly starts over with my songs in alphabetical order and not on shuffle so even if I'm ok with it I have to touch my phone to shuffle them.
All that worked just fine in before the upgrade. Now if I don't restart the phone frequently it breaks a couple times a week.
My phone is bought and paid for, but when the time comes for a new one if this is still happening I am likely going Android and using google play for music.
I am beyond annoyed with it. I've always used iphones since smart phones came out, but I have nothing against android and if this keeps up I'm gone. At that point I'll keep using Androids until it does something incredibly annoying and causes me to look elsewhere.
Apple is very close to losing a customer for generations of phones to come if they don't figure things out.
Edited to add: also now my song list has random songs grayed out. I haven't taken time to look into it but this was not an issue before I upgraded to 11. The same song will play fine if it naturally gets queued or I search for it, but touch it to play... nope!
Maybe caused by some weird interaction with my car head unit (Nissan/Infiniti) or something because it always reports shuffle as off even when it is on!
I think giving iOS design to Ive was an error, but even if they don't agree with that, they need to focus on software very clearly and very publicly, making iOS 12 a release like the old Snow Leopard MacOS release. Focus on quality and performance, not new features.
Changing the physical proportions is a very big deal when you look at the long term impact on the development and app ecosystem.
iOS developers can test their design on the SE, the Plus and the regular size and it will cover over 4 years of phones in the hands of users.
And for what? Have people's hands changed shape or size? Once you've reached something that makes your customer base happy, you would want to have a new design that is substantially better. Novelty isn't a better selling point than knowing you'll be happy with what you get.
There's an old Wired article on the making of the iPod, where they reveal that they made over 100 prototypes, down to weights internally to check the balance and feel of the device. It's likely that there are thousands of iPhone prototypes they have tested out, and the models we have are the survivors of a much larger and longer process than is publically visible.
wait, isn't that expected behavior anyway? You're getting on an airplane and turning off all the radios; bluetooth operates via a radio.
What happened was that Apple switched from Waterfall development to Agile. And what came from this was more regular and frequent releases at the cost of less polished releases. The way it works is Apple releases 11.0 with only P1 issues fixed, then from 11.1 -> 11.6 the focus is on P2 followed by P3 etc. Then a seperate team continues to work on 12.0.
11.1 was just released and 11.2 just went public beta and is another few weeks away. And none of the bugs you have listed are even all that serious.
And Apple had to release 11.0 as it was ready to coincide for iPhone X launch.
> And none of the bugs you have listed are even all that serious.
If the standard we're now using to critique Apple is now "well these bugs aren't that serious no big deal" the company is in trouble.
1. iOS 7: Major overhaul of the UI means the entire system is going to be in flux (to this day UI doesn't feel as polished as iOS 6, whether you prefer that style or not). Either way, the focus was monopolized by remaking every UI widget. Also, Swift announced.
2. iOS 8: Apple Watch year. Major amount of work getting iOS to run on a third platform (iPhone, iPad, Watch). Surely lots of attention drawn away to get the Watch shipped, plus associated iPhone support for the Watch. This was also the year a new screen size was introduced with iPhone 6 Plus (arguably the downscaling shouldn't have affected mainline iOS stability too much, but just to highlight ever increasing support for different stuff). Also, third party keyboards.
3. iOS 9: Support for the latest gimmick "3D Touch" which required every app to add a bunch of (IMO) useless new undiscoverable affordances as well as long overdue major overhaul of iPad features: multitasking, etc.
4. iOS 10: Entire new class of apps for Messages and associated entire new App Store. Basically a mini-OS in Messages. Also, surely while all this is going on iPhone X is being worked on in the background.
5. iOS 11: Another major UI overhaul with tons of old affordances replaced, replacing Touch ID with Face ID, ANOTHER new screen size added with iPhone X.
iOS 1-3 were great because they did LESS. Its easy to forget that for example Apple used to outsource its mapping to Google. Now Apple needs an entire huge team JUST to have all the data it used to simply get access to. iOS used to also be more elegant because it did LESS -- remember, we couldn't even copy-paste before. These things add up, you can't go from supporting 1 device to 3 classes of devices with at least 4 variations on each and doubling the amount of apps you spit out and maintain without something having to give. And it's not just from a QA side either, the very nature of the phone has gotten more confusing: with every year, we've shoved more and more of the desktop's features into the phone, and as it turns out, there was no magic - if you want to be able to do 100 things, you may very well need 100 new code paths and a 100 overloaded hard-to-learn gestures. Maybe there existed an alternative path to the "dream" of a device as simple to use as iPhone 1 that let you do everything a desktop can, but we certainly won't know anytime soon.
Just think about it, you basically get 6 months of iOS N.0-N.6, then a WWDC where iOS N+1.0 Beta is announced, which of course has to entice people with M "new!" features, and the cycle begins again.
3D touch also adds weight, complexity and cost to the screen, for a feature most users completely ignore. I consider it one of Apple's biggest feature misfires.
This time, using the camera on my SE from the lock screen randomly causes my phone to become un-unlockable and forces me to reset. It's really annoying not knowing which goofy thing my kids do I won't be able to photograph.
iPhones without Jack? No thank you. MacBooks with no USB? No thank you. iOS that keeps on crashing all the time? No thank you. Built-in apps that are just so bad that you HAVE to get replacements (Music, Podcasts,..)? No thank you.
And the list goes on and on. I literally have to reboot my phone 2-3 times a day. And all for what? Animated Emoticons. Who the F came up with that?
At this point, even Samsung might be better. That's what you get when a company that used to be run by a visionary then gets run by an operations guy.