Archive for September 12, 2022

Monday, September 12, 2022

iOS 16

Apple (feature list, MacRumors, tweet, Hacker News):

iOS 16 enhances iPhone with all-new personalization features, deeper intelligence, and more seamless ways to communicate and share.

Federico Viticci (tweet):

iOS 16, launching today for a variety of iPhone models dating back to the iPhone 8, marks Apple’s triumphant return to user personalization, with a twist: while in 2020 customization might have felt like a happy consequence of Apple’s engineering, this time the company has intentionally marketed iOS 16 as an update that will make an iPhone feel truly your own. As we explored in June and July, the first thing you see on your iPhone – the Lock Screen – is fundamentally changing in iOS 16. With the ability to create multiple Lock Screens, choose from a diverse collection of wallpaper sets, and customize each one with widgets, you’ll now have endless possibilities for the screen you always see when you pick up your iPhone.

[…]

In keeping with my theory that modern iOS updates always need to have a little bit of something for everyone, there’s a ton of other (some bigger, some smaller) features I’ll be covering in this review. Messages, one of my most used apps on iPhone, has received a substantial update with the ability to edit and un-send messages, making it, in some ways, even superior to WhatsApp for me now. Mail – of all apps – has gotten a major upgrade with modern features such as scheduled send and, almost unbelievably, a revamped search that actually works. Reminders has officially turned into a serious task manager with even more filters for smart lists and the ability to create and share templates with others.

Apple:

This document describes the security content of iOS 16.

Hartley Charlton (Hacker News):

There are usually multiple features that Apple is not able to finish before the first official release of a major new version of iOS, and this year looks to be no different, with a total of nine iOS 16 features now confirmed to not be present in the first public version of the new OS.

iPadOS 16 is also coming later.

Damien Petrilli:

Apple Books on iOS 16: open a book, start to read, flip your phone to landscape mode: your page is lost and you are back at the beginning of your current chapter.

Michael Love:

Finally installed iOS 16 on my main phone and the new iBooks is awful - page scrolling animation is distracting and way too slow, jitters and flashes on every page. I can overlook a confusing / inconsistent design and tiny buttons, but at least get the scrolling to look right.

Casey Liss:

MaskerAid users: it will not work on iOS 16; the bottom toolbar (where the share button is) is not there. I have a fix that Apple rejected to get clarifying info, and though I’ve replied to them, they’ve ghosted me for the last couple days.

Francisco Tolmasky:

First experience with iOS 16: Go to update apps, it puts up a new ‘Apple Media Services Terms and Conditions” modal dialog. I click “Agree”. It tells “There was an error. Please try later.” I can’t update apps.

Paul Haddad:

Great can’t update anything.

Juli Clover:

Apple has fixed the problem and apps are now able to be downloaded.

Previously:

Update (2022-10-11): Samuel Axon:

Given the increasingly iterative nature of iOS releases today—with many key features not arriving until months after the initial ship date of a new, whole-numbered version—we’re moving to leaner initial iOS reviews, with updates to come in additional articles over time. So today we’re going to look at the main new feature of iOS 16, but we’ll touch on a couple of other key features and changes, too.

Federico Viticci:

That being said, I compiled all my iOS 16-related complaints, organized them into sections, and you can find them below.

See also: Hacker News.

Alex Rosenberg:

The new iOS medications tracking feature is a really great idea, but feels beta quality.

Couldn’t import from the records it has, including EPIC-based records and the Apple Wellness Center. Missing colors/shapes and couldn’t do “half a pill.” Couldn’t ID my vitamins via camera. Had to translate “Vitamin D3 2000iu” into “Cholecalciferol 50mcg” to enter. Expected more.

No mention of interactions between my statin and CYP3A inhibitors like grapefruit (and pomelo and other citrus). Also no knowledge of CYP3A4 interaction with THC/CBD, despite having an explicit feature to check for alcohol/cannabis/smoking interactions. Actually dangerous.

Juli Clover:

During the iOS 16 beta testing period, MacRumors wrote a series of in-depth feature guides highlighting every new addition in the update, along with how that walk you through using the new features.

Sami Fathi:

We’ve listed 16 hidden features and changes from iOS 16 that you may not have known about below.

Marin Todorov:

The way that, after upgrading to iOS16, suddenly keyboard is showing up at random places, system text fields are freezing, apps hang unresponsive at first render and menus appear broken tells me iOS must be adopting SwiftUI at an ever accelerating pace 👌🏼

However, there’s one keyboard change that I love: haptics while typing.

Sami Fathi:

After major iOS updates, it’s normal for some users to report having issues with the new update, but such reports usually subside in the days following the release. This year, things have been different, as iOS 16 has seen quite a few bugs being reported by users on an almost daily basis.

Rob Griffiths:

Latest Mojave security update breaks iOS photo importing.

Not being able to import photos is a real pain.

Rob Griffiths:

OMG - it’s an iOS 16 bug! I installed the iOS 16.1 public beta, and the problem is gone! Photos imported perfectly, both JPEG and HEIC.

Xcode 14

Apple:

Xcode 14 includes Swift 5.7 and SDKs for iOS 16, iPadOS 16, tvOS 16, watchOS 9, and macOS Monterey 12.3. The Xcode 14 release supports on-device debugging in iOS 11 and later, tvOS 11 and later, and watchOS 4 and later. Xcode 14 requires a Mac running macOS Monterey 12.5 or later.

As with last year, the release version of Xcode removes the beta SDK for this fall’s macOS update.

Xcode Releases:

Xcode 14 is identical to the release candidate last week.

Previously:

Update (2022-10-10): Jesse Grosjean:

Love the idea of showing code structure while scrolling, but I’m having a hard time getting used to the reality of all the flickering. Anyone else have that problem? Did you get used to it?

Joe Groff:

One nice touch with the Xcode sticky headers is that it also rolls up multi-line function declarations into the header 👏🏻

Ed Sanchez:

In Xcode 14, if you select a block of text and type {, it embeds the block in a closure and puts the cursor in the beginning of the closure so you can define it. Works great for SwiftUI!

Natalia Panferova:

In Xcode 14 optional parameters don’t get autocompleted by default. And I only realized after watching the overview by @seanallen_dev that we can still get all the parameters by holding the option key or get only some by starting to type their names.

Leo:

Is it just me - or Xcode 14 is simply unusable at this point? Because new IBOutlet properties are not recognized in Interface Builder.

(Outlets created in pre-14 Xcode versions do appear in Xcode 14 but with a warning sign with a tooltip claiming that outlet doesn’t exist).

Marcin Krzyzanowski:

It’s been many years since I don’t understand what any of the options meant and the only appropriate action is “Force Quit”

Nick Lockwood:

The option you want is always “use version on Disk”, except that option doesn’t actually work so you need to close and reopen the project anyway

asdf_bro:

The following code works on iOS, but crashes on macOS. I believe this is because of SE-0338 combined with the lack of @_unsafeInheritExecutor in the macOS stdlib included with Xcode 14. In my view, Xcode 14 is unsafe to use for macOS until this is fixed (presumably when Xcode 14.1 includes the macOS 13 SDK with the 5.7 stdlib)

Ole Begemann:

If you don’t mind my asking, was this bug known inside Apple before the final release of Xcode 14.0? Or were Apple folks surprised because nobody thought through the implications of matching the Swift 5.7 compiler with the Swift 5.6’s standard library module interface? Or was it known but not considered as a serious issue?

[…]

I’m asking because the compiler generating code that breaks concurrency invariants is a serious problem, and I’m surprised by the lack of communication from Apple about it[…] In my opinion, something like this warrants a big red warning at the top of the release notes: “Don’t use Xcode 14.0 to build macOS targets that use concurrency!”

Update (2022-10-13): Ole Begemann (tweet):

Mac apps built with Xcode 14.0 and 14.0.1 may contain concurrency bugs because the Swift 5.7 compiler can generate invalid code when targeting the macOS 12.3 SDK. If you distribute Mac apps, you should build them with Xcode 13.4.1 until Xcode 14.1 is released.

[…]

Third-party developers had little chance of discovering the bug during the Xcode 14.0 beta phase because the betas ship with the new beta macOS SDK.

Swift 5.7

Holly Borla:

The Swift 5.7 language and standard library feature a number of improvements:

  • New shorthand syntax for common boilerplate code, including if let statements and multi-statement closure type annotations
  • Lifted long-standing language limitations to make generic programming more seamless
  • Enhanced data race safety with new annotations and opt-in diagnostics
  • Actor isolation in distributed environments
  • Improved usability of a suite of existing pointer APIs
  • Brand new language support and APIs for string processing

Most of these features were discussed at WWDC22 and were covered in a previous blog post, Swift language announcements from WWDC22. You can also find a complete list of language and standard library Swift Evolution proposals in the Swift Evolution Appendix.

Bruno Rocha:

In this article, we’ll explain the concept of type erasure, how it used to be done, what’s different in Swift 5.7, and how these changes work under the hood.

Previously:

iOS 15.7 and iPadOS 15.7

Juli Clover:

Alongside iOS 16, Apple has released new versions of iOS 15.7 and iPadOS 15.7. The iOS 15.7 update is aimed at those who are not able to upgrade to iOS 16 , while iPadOS 15.7 is available while we wait for the launch of iPadOS 16 in October.

Apple:

This document describes the security content of iOS 15.7 and iPadOS 15.7.

Previously:

macOS 12.6 and macOS 11.7

Juli Clover:

macOS Monterey 12.6 addresses a number of kernel vulnerabilities as well as issues with maps, iMovie, ATS, MediaLibrary, and PackageKit.

You can download the installer and IPSW (via Mr. Macintosh).

Howard Oakley:

Big Sur 11.7’s release notes report more fixes, including two kernel bugs which are thought to have been actively exploited, so this is also an urgent update for anyone still using Big Sur.

The installer is here.

Mr. Macintosh:

Apple did not release an associated security update for macOS Catalina.

macOS Catalina is no longer supported by Apple.

Previously:

Update (2022-09-14): Maynard Handley:

With macOS 12.6 Apple has adopted a cunning new strategy of not having to deal with errors that accumulate over a long time by

  • forcibly restarting the mac every day (twice since I installed 12.6)
  • preventing Safari from starting if “too many” pages were open when it was quit

Rob Griffiths:

macOS 12.6 is out, the 173rd release of macOS/Mac OS X since the initial public beta. And with Apple continuing to update macOS 11 as well, its release count now dwarfs all other releases—23 and counting, 10 more than the nearest competitor.

Update (2022-09-23): Lucas Curious:

latest update 12.6 causes Apple Studio Display to be unresponsive. I have to unplug each time and very delayed response to wakeup

I have not seen this problem myself.

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