Joe Rossignol:
In the latest iPadOS 16 beta seeded earlier this week, developer Steve Troughton-Smith and MacStories editor-in-chief Federico Viticci highlighted various user interface issues they continue to face from time to time while using Stage Manager, including the dock disappearing when rotating the iPad, content failing to scale properly when a window is resized, keyboard input failing to register in certain apps, and more.
Steve Troughton-Smith:
Today’s iPadOS beta: still able to bring down SpringBoard in the first 5 minutes
[…]
No joke, if Stage Manager ships the way it is in this build, it will break iPadOS. I only put a fraction of the stuff I come across on Twitter, but so many little things across the OS and system apps break in weird ways.
Federico Viticci:
I understand that some folks think “this is good enough” for them. If so, great.
Personally, if I open an app and can’t type, or use keyboard shortcuts, or can’t click into a text field, that’s a problem that prevents me from working with my iPad.
Jason Snell:
When I try to use Stage Manager on my iPad Pro, I almost end up with a single configuration: two windows, more or less equally sized, next to each other. I end up so frustrated with Stage Manager that I essentially re-create Split View!
[…]
I’m troubled by the fact that Apple doesn’t seem to have a real vision for Stage Manager–or, if what we have right now is its vision, that it’s decided on some weird halfway step.
Steve Troughton-Smith:
I don’t understand why I can create a much more complex/powerful app w/ UIKit on macOS than I can on iPadOS. They built all the APIs, means to make this stuff great — then utilized none of them for Stage Manager. It’s not that they haven’t done the work — they chose to ignore it.
Damien Petrilli:
Stage Manager requires more power than a real windowing system like on desktop OSes, is ultra limited, unstable and with confusing / bad UX.
It’s a disaster engineering and design wise.
Previously:
Update (2022-10-14): Federico Viticci:
Within the first 10 minutes of the latest Stage Manager beta:
- Magic Keyboard input does not work unless I disable QuickType suggestions
- Got app windows being randomly thrown into a different workspace after ⌘-Tab
- App windows still randomly decide to cover the dock
🫠
Sean Heber:
The ongoing Stage Manager drama has been something to see. I can’t remember any major iOS feature of this size in the entire history of the operating system having so many problems for so long so close to a release. 😬
Steve Troughton-Smith:
From another perspective, Stage Manager has delayed every other team on iPadOS from shipping by at least a month, and has barely had any tangible improvement to show for it. It’s still rough and not ready to ship, even if you wave away all of its fatal design issues.
Bug iOS Multitasking iPad iPadOS iPadOS 16 iPadOS Beta Stage Manager
Florian Albrecht (tweet):
Kaleidoscope 3.7 marks the beginning of a new chapter: you can now share your text diffs with other people. It’s as easy as clicking the common Share button in the toolbar and selecting a service, like Messages or AirDrop.
It supports PDF, HTML, and patch files.
Sometimes you don’t want to share entire files. No problem! Copy relevant parts into a new comparison and share that, without needing to save.
Previously:
Developer Tool HTML Kaleidoscope Mac Mac App macOS 12 Monterey PDF Programming
Hartley Charlton (Hacker News):
The European Parliament today voted overwhelmingly in favor of enforcing USB-C as a common charging port across a wide range of consumer electronic devices, including the iPhone and AirPods, by the end of 2024.
[…]
Exemptions will apply for devices that are too small to offer a USB-C port, such as smart watches, health trackers, and some sports equipment, but the legislation is expected to be expanded to other devices over time.
As I’ve said, I wish Apple had come to this decision on its own years ago. There are certainly potential downsides to a legal mandate, and if Apple had truly been worried about them it likely could have forestalled the EU by acting before it was obligated to. Instead, many extra cables and dongles had to be manufactured, we’ve been carrying them around all these years (while getting slower transfers), and Apple’s future product designs may be unnecessarily constrained.
Benedict Evans:
The fun thing about these kinds of rules is you won’t actually see the innovation they kill, because ‘this is illegal unless you submit it to an unpredictable multi-year bureaucratic approval process’ means projects will be abandoned at birth. You can’t see the counter-factual.
Alex Stamos:
Apple could have prevented this years ago by making the move to USB-C and announcing that they would work with other manufacturers via USB-IF to synchronize ports from now on. That would have kept the process in the standards body instead of Brussels.
Tony Fadell:
This is only happening because Apple hasn’t been doing the right thing. Period. This is about a monopolist like position not about technology. I hope after Apple is forced to change the regulations will be removed to allow innovation to continue.
Tony Fadell:
Frankly forcing Apple to make this brain dead change for the planet through regulation is a much lot easier than a monopolistic legal trial. Again, Apple is abusing their market position & this is coming from the guy who made the 30 pin connector happen!
Previously:
Update (2022-10-07): Sami Fathi:
Following in the footsteps of the EU, India is now in the early stages of considering imposing regulations on consumer products sold in the country that force a universal standard charger, including USB-C, by as early as 2024, Mint reports.
Update (2022-10-13): Matt Birchler:
Gonna be honest, I think I’ve had Lightning tell me “this accessory is not compatible with your device” when doing things like plugging into a Mac than any “ah man, this USB-C cable doesn’t work how I expected” situation.
This sometimes happens to me when connecting iOS devices to Macs using Apple Lightning cables.
Scott:
What gets left unsaid often in this USB Type C vs Lightning saga is that, eventually, ALL users lose.
Because the double-sided Lightning connection is the mechanically superior system with sufficient electrical signaling lanes (if you dump USB2).
Apple screwed up by greedily keeping the Lightning connection proprietary, vs handing it over to the USB-IF for standardization.
The male tongue in the port of the Type C connector is an engineering nightmare, that Apple and others have already capitalized upon thru repair costs.
Riccardo Mori:
Some technophiles are quick in labelling the EU politicians as being idiots, ignorant bureaucrats that don’t know how technology works. Given the examples above, are we so sure tech companies really know what’s best for their customers?
[…]
And what sort of benefits would bring keeping Lightning around, exactly? What’s the ‘innovation’ there? In theory, the Lightning specification would allow for more uses than just charging, but even Apple itself has been under-utilising Lightning. So, if Lightning is essentially reduced to just being an alternative, proprietary charging solution, then I think it makes pragmatic sense to want to standardise charging solutions.
[…]
In other words, I think charging isn’t exactly a fast-moving aspect of technology that warrants being immune from standardisation attempts.
Nick Heer:
I would love for my iPhone to be “stifled” by USB4 speeds when I sync my music library. If Apple thinks replacing Lightning with USB-C will make the iPhone worse for its users, it should more clearly articulate why. For example, one test found USB-C connectors left more material in the port in the case of the cable tip breaking, which could damage the device. Alas, Apple does not even offer that explanation, just some nonspecific worries.
Matt Birchler:
I don’t agree with the USB-C regulation, but I do think it’s fundamentally funny to hear people using iPhones with USB 2.0 connections go “what if a better connector comes out and the iPhone can’t switch to it?!”
Update (2022-10-27): Hartley Charlton:
Outlined in an official press release, the European Council today gave the European Parliament's common charger directive approval, finalizing the legislative procedure that will make a USB-C port mandatory across a wide range of consumer electronic devices, including the iPhone and AirPods, by the end of 2024. The directive has now been officially adopted and is set to be published in the official journal of the European Union.
AirPods European Union India iOS iPhone Legal Lightning Tony Fadell USB USB-C
Joe Rossignol (tweet):
Cydia parent company SaurikIT, LLC has filed an appeal with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit after U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers dismissed the company’s antitrust lawsuit against Apple last month, according to court documents.
Jay Freeman (via Kosta Eleftheriou):
We filed a lawsuit. Apple filed to dismiss it, and we had a hearing over it. At that hearing the judge seemed to agree the case should continue but that we needed to clarify our filings. We were thereby “dismissed with leave to amend”, specially so we could go amend the documents, on a timeline decided during that hearing. Of course, it was reported as “oh no! saurik’s case was dismissed, and maybe he’ll bother to amend”.
[…]
Then the case was allowed to continue, but… was “dismissed in part”, which means there was one part of the lawsuit which the court decided to dismiss. This happened to be a claim we liked, and where we would like to get a second opinion sooner; it was also claim that Apple wants to feel really sure about, so we all agreed to a “stipulation to dismiss”, where, with permission from the other side, we ASKED the judge to dismiss our own case (in what might be a risky gambit) SO we could immediately go into appeal.
Previously:
Antitrust App Store Apple Business Cydia iOS iOS 14 Jailbreak Lawsuit Legal
