I have sweet memories of spending many a rainy day in the computer lab during recess on the candy-colored imacs, creating art on kidpix, putting together a crappy HTML site that would link to a friend's crappy HTML site, and playing nanosaur, bugdom, and the oregon trail.
Computer education is huge, but I'm not sure if iPads are the right/necessary stepping stone into using an actual computer. They seem more like entertainment consumption devices than creation driving devices where things get messy and frustrating and force you to fool around to fix them, learning in the process.
I've never owned one and I don't have any insight into how much good vs. harm (distraction) they do in the classroom. Anyone have any anecdotes or thoughts to share on Apple's continuing push into the classroom w/ the iPad?
Incidentally, that's exactly what Russell Kirsch (invented the first programmable computer) told me when I ran into him in a coffee shop in Portland.
He said:
> “I’ve been against Macintosh company lately. They’re trying to get everyone to use iPads and when people use iPads they end up just using technology to consume things instead of making things. With a computer you can make things. You can code, you can make things and create things that have never before existed and do things that have never been done before.”
I agree in theory, but in practice a K12 student-facing Windows desktop is no more programmable than an iPad.
You are locked down to a small subset of site-licensed applications your domain administrator has deemed appropriate for the least common denominator in your age group. All forms of customization are disabled with Group Policy. Novell and Citrix application delivery are common, so you don't even have a Start menu but a proprietary launcher. Extremely aggressive Internet filtering bans large swaths of content about networking to prevent students from learning how to bypass the filter.
Our IT department enabled access to the hilariously antiquated QBasic environment only for students currently enrolled in a programming course and revoked it the next semester. You had to sign a special waiver saying you promised to only write code directly in fulfillment of course requirements and not do any independent experimentation or goofing around.
I get it, but K12 students on non-iPads aren't getting Linux, they're definitely not getting root, and they're probably not getting user-mode code execution either. You'd need to change the entire culture around K12 IT to make that happen.
The best way for kids to learn to be hackers is on their hardware, free from school or parental controls.
I think iPads in education are really aimed at replacing textbooks, which in their paper form never gave students any authoring/hacking capability either. In this context, consumption is the correct way to think of what the iPad enables. But instead of thinking of it like a broken computer, folks can think of it like a lighter, more up-to-date, interactive textbook.
In terms of evaluating Apple as a company, one has to look at their whole product line. iPads may be locked down, but Macs are great platforms for kids to tinker. They ship with a ton of programming languages and integrate with all sorts of free open source technologies.
And I agree that personal hardware is the best place to hack. Decades ago, school computers were the only place to hack because school was the only place to actually put hands on a computer. Today computers (even Macs) are much more affordable, especially used.
That sound interesting in principle, but I wouldn't trust a book by the current Polish government. That being said, there are already a number of great open teaching materials available, e.g. http://openlogicproject.org/
QBASIC? Lucky! We had COMAL, essentially BASIC but with structured programming constructs. Sounds not bad, except the COMAL editor (for DOS) operated like a home computer from the 80s. You had to type in lines in multiples of ten, renumber and relist!
I don't think the Pi is as brilliant for education as it pretends to be.
The Linux command line and the permissions system are incredibly unfriendly to adults, never mind kids. Have you tried to set up a web server with PHP on a Pi? It makes no concessions at all to beginners. You might as well be setting up Ubuntu Server LTS - only it doesn't give you any clues about security.
I'd be more interested in something that updated the experience of the old 8-bit micros, which dropped you straight into a simplified programming environment, and gave you a path to bare-metal machine code if you wanted to take it.
Maybe something like a Python IDE, with a way through to Linux for expert users, but with basic extras - a web server, a mail server, a VPS that could connect to other Pi users, a few other options - pre-installed and ready to go?
Bring back the old 8-bit (C=64, Apple][) machines? Seriously. I know all the above comments are valid - site license lockdowns, iPad 'unprogrammibility', etc - but there's something to be said for no permissions, no network, nothing where you can really make Something Bad(tm).
There's something to be said for those old machines. Basic was a good learning intro and assembly is still valid today. I remember Logo too.. I'm just chomping at the bit when my kids are old enough to dust off the C-64 and start diving in.
At the local hackerspace, there was an older man who came along to fiddle around with his Raspberry Pi and learn programming from a book he had bought.
He faced a problem one time where his Python program wouldn't execute, and I unfortunately had to explain to him what shebang lines do, how to use them, the UNIX executable bit, etc.
The Raspberry Pi is indeed not as educational as it is made out to be. It may have been envisioned as a tool for classrooms, but in practice the Pi is just a toy for hackers. It's not like it was ever going to do much for the classroom anyway. Instead of spending $40 to teach a kid to program using Linux on a Pi, you could spend $0 to teach them to program using Linux in a virtual machine.
The idea that you can't make things on iPads is kinda silly. There's all kinds of things you can make on iPads and iPhones. iMovie, painting apps and all that are creative outlets.
Yes, you need a computer to compile code, but I think k-12 is not really the code compiling scene-- maybe 9th-12th graders, sure, but that's not what the teachers are going to teach (high school teachers that can teach programming are very rare.)
It's a nice thought, but in practice I doubt it matters all that much. I remember when I was a kid, for most of the class computers were meant for one thing and one thing only:
Playing Oregon Trail.
But there are always one or two kids (I was one of them and I bet you were too!) who wanted to play with code or build something. For those interested in computers, we'll find how to get our hands on them!
I made choose your own adventure games using Hypercard on the only Macintosh in the school in like, third or fourth grade. I'm an outlier though, I know. I also played a lot of Oregon Trail, Number Munchers, and Gertrude's Secrets at school.
It's mostly consumption, but there are some opportunities for creativity.
For example, "Hopscotch" - http://www.gethopscotch.com - looks promising. It's a visual programming language (plug and socket) with graphics primitives that includes tutorial videos/lessons and a social networking aspect for sharing your creations. It looks like they've gotten some engagement, with people creating little games.
In 1951 Kirsch joined the National Bureau of Standards (NBS) as part of the team which ran SEAC, the Standards Eastern Automatic Computer.[2] SEAC was the U.S.'s first stored-program computer to become operational.
"""
The University of Manchester's Small-Scale Experimental Machine (SSEM)[15] is generally recognized as world's first electronic computer that ran a stored program—an event that occurred on 21 June 1948.[16][17] However the SSEM was not regarded as a full-fledged computer, but more a proof of concept predecessor to the Manchester Mark 1 computer, which was first put to research work in April 1949. On 6 May 1949 the EDSAC in Cambridge ran its first program, making it arguably "the first complete and fully operational regular electronic digital stored-program computer".[18] It is sometimes claimed that the IBM SSEC, operational in January 1948, was the first stored-program computer;[19] this claim is controversial, not least because of the hierarchical memory system of the SSEC, and because some aspects of its operations, like access to relays or tape drives, were determined by plugging.[20]
"""
From what I understand, the iPad has had substantial impact in how certain students with special needs are taught. It enables communication with some low functioning students who otherwise could not communicate due to impairments.
Remember computers are not just limited to educating students about computers -- they can function as alternatives to pencil and paper in some cases. For example, they can help students compose papers who otherwise would not be able to write (a student might have a disorder that interferes with the ability to translate thoughts/words into handwriting motion, but otherwise the student might be perfectly capable of composing sentences and logical thoughts -- so dictation is groundbreaking.) They can also help teachers explore understanding of concepts in a way that's uncoupled from traditional representations -- for example letting students answer questions by pointing at pictures instead of speaking.
I don't really know the full extent of it, but from special education teachers I know, the iPad seems to have become an essential tool because it makes these alternative interactions so much easier than they were before.
Do you really think we're going to continue into the future using only paper books? Visual aids were immensely helpful for me in school. Computers are the ultimate visual aid, and tablets are just mobile computers, except for the fact that they actually allow you to manipulate the UI directly with your fingers, making the learning curve significantly lower.
My two year old can work an iPad, but has no idea what a mouse or keyboard is. It's crazy when you watch a child that young manipulating technology like they know what they're doing (turn on, swipe open, find YouTube Kids app, watch Thomas the Train, press home button when done to find a new app).
To think that this can't be applied to educating children of any age seems a bit naive.
I've seen several two year olds use a mouse and keyboard (well, the arrow keys anyway) just fine. They're not cats. I do think it's a bit easier for them to use a touch screen but it's by no means rocket science to use a mouse and keyboard.
My company does some volunteering with a local elementary school using Hour of Code[1]. I worked with kids from grade 2-5 and they used iPads to complete the web-based "puzzles". The projects teach programming basics by dragging-and-dropping sets of instructions and using loops, etc. When they couldn't solve a puzzle, I talked to them about testing and building their solution incrementally.
The teachers seemed very excited about it and about building on the experience.
If I give my 10 yo son a 15 year old Dell laptop with OpenBSD and wifi over a USB dongle, and a book (1), he learns python.
Give him a 27" iMac and he learns to find and play meaningless random crappy Flash games, watch Minecraft videos, and occasionally play minecraft or do something else, like looks something up, checks his homework assignments, et
Give him an iPhone or an iPad, he just learns to find and play meaningless random crappy iOS games.
I honestly think letting my daughter buy her own ipad was poor parenting on my part.
Be careful not to turn them off of computers. One of the reasons I was so interested in technology growing up was because of games. I started playing them, then wondered how to write them. My Nintendo was constantly in pieces around my room, and still worked :)
I begged for a computer and finally got a C64. Typing basic was soooo slow going then...
Great point. Another anecdote. When I was in 4th grade, we had a class that had 4 TRS-80 Color Computers in the back. The teacher told us, "You guys can play all the games you want on them. You just have to write them first.". That kicked off my love of technology and computers. We learned how to code in ColorBasic, and since we only had 4 computers for 20 kids, we did most of our coding on paper. To this day I still feel most comfortable sketching algorithms or system flows out on paper before firing up the IDE.
In Australia in the early 80s, we had MicroBee computers in our primary schools. I spent a good proportion of a whole year of out of normal lessons, and holed up in the computer room, as I was the only one in the class who had figured out how to operate the machine (including the teacher).
The default MicroBee install came with games, but they were all written in basic, with source code included. My proudest earliest computing memory for the age of 10 is editing the game code to "Cricket" to get it to spout profanities when you hit a 4 or a 6. At this stage I didn't even know what the word hacking meant.
Several years later I got my first PC, a 386 with Windows 3.1. I was thoroughly confused that I couldn't find the source code to change anything. Eventually I found Gorillas and Snake in gw-basic, but it wasn't the same.
I'm forever grateful that the creators of the MicroBee chose to provide games in interpreted basic. I am certain that I wouldn't have pursued a career in programming if not for that initial spark of wanting to understand how things work underneath the hood.
> Eventually I found Gorillas and Snake in gw-basic, but it wasn't the same.
Pointing this out because (from this comment) you seem like the kind of person who'd want to be correct: Gorillas and Snake were qbasic (and they were DOS programs, even though you could run them in a window on Win 3.x (from MS-DOS 5.x or 6.x)). gw-basic was the old, numbered-line interpreter that ran on DOS 3.x (or maybe even earlier).
Again, no trying to be "well-actually guy"; just trying to help preserve some nostalgia. (-:
Don't I know it. The problem is getting him to stay on task. There's just too much to do there. Xterm, tmux, python, and mg (emacs-y editor he prefers) limit how much willpower he has to exert to stay on task. And like I said elsewhere in this thread, all three objects are in the same room. But only once combination leads to him learning. gcr's comment below is very insightful: why learn python if you have minecraft?
Of course it is; the GP is pretty biased. they could just as simply give their kid the same book on an iMac. Equally, their kid could play the equally crappy flash games on a Windows PC, and pick up some nice malware along the way because flash is a disaster.
Part of it is asking whether learning Python on an iMac is close to the path of least resistance.
I credit much of my childhood computer engineering learning to having to hack on an old cruddy laptop, where either I got nothing or had to learn to make do with what I had. If Minecraft were more readily available to me back then, I wouldn't have much of a reason to learn Python or anything else.
Look, I'm made an observation: put a kid in a room with three objects, 2 computers and 1 book, and in only one combination does he in fact learn python! He knows the terminal is on the iMac. I know he knows, because he knows how to ssh to another server to launch our Minecraft server. I've shown him python is there. But he doesn't use it.
He frankly seems quite proud of his "hacker laptop" that boots to console. He logs in, starts X, and gets a full-screen xterm running tmux. It even has an antenna sticking out. He thinks it's cool.
Fine. Whatever floats his boat.
But, seriously, if you're writing code, you are quite literally not doing any of the other things that you could be doing with that computer. E.g., browsing the internet, writing a document, drawing, etc, etc.
It's like saying "When I'm writing with this pencil, I'm not doing any of the other things I could be doing with this pencil." E.g., throwing it in the air, braking it in half, pulling the eraser out, sharpening it, whittling it down with a knife, splitting the wood to get the whole lead out, etc, etc.
I'm just stating a fact. There's no argument to be made there. If you want an argument, there are other things to argue about.
Fact? No. Confirmation bias, certainly. The 'fact' that you are trying to assert is that kids can't learn to 'code' on an iMac, which is wrong (and also has nothing to do with the article). Before you argue that words being put in your mouth
> Give him a 27" iMac and he learns to find and play meaningless random crappy Flash games, watch Minecraft videos, and occasionally play minecraft or do something else, like looks something up, checks his homework assignments, et
I think that shows a remarkable lack of imagination. As a counter point, my nephew is happily learning Python on an iPad using both CodeAcademy online and the Pythonista app. When he wants to tinker, his dad will hook up the RPi he has.
What I suspect happened here is the crappy laptop and BSD (iMac is also essentially running a BSD) was give as a "here, learn Python" and the iMac wasn't mentioned.
I think there's a ton of potential, TBH. Look at Pythonista, for example. My 12yo is having a ton of fun with that. I don't see why such environments couldn't exist for other pedagogically interesting languages such as e.g. Racket.
I'm mixed mainly because I feel like their enthusiasm for what the product can do outstrips what it is often used for, and I don't know that what they're pushing actually matches up with what Education users need.
As other users said, I think they're trying to replace the textbook rather than replacing the computer lab. But alot of what we've seen so far shows that students may actually retain info better from a physical book. Also, netbooks with keyboards are probably better for typing &co. than much of the interface (while being quite a bit cheaper).
So it feels more like a shiny, expensive, early adopter/guinea pig program than this revolution in education. OTOH, there is a huge potential upside once the tech matures, and maybe it can't mature without starting somewhere.
You watch star-trek, and other films/shows set in the future that show classrooms with tablet like devices?
There is something pretty special with the tablet, and the only thing that is changing is really the way input (and less so-output) is done.
As a kid, I also remember the power strips for the Apple lab were so janky, that if you accidently kicked it, it would reset the entire bank of computers.
Or those old 5 1/2 floppy disks that had exposed magnetic media that tended to get screwed up.
Logo-writer, kidpix (omg so great), Hypercard, were foundational to me.
But todays children have access to minecraft, and very soon Virtual Reality. There is no way I'd want to force the tools of my education on kids today.
I totally agree that tablets suck for creation. But I think you're assuming that programming is the only thing to learn via a device.
In my day job we make educational HTML games for kids learning english and math. A heap of schools use this as part of lessons, and we get a lot of extremely positive feedback from teachers.
As to whether an iPad is better than a computer? From a kid's UX, and IT infrastructure POV, tablets are generally seen as better/easier to use and maintain.
At home, I try to keep my kids off screens whenever I can though...
iPads in schools serve the exact same purpose macbooks did in the past, and its the same thing Google is doing with Chromebooks, albeit its not as bad.
Its buying new customers. If kids are literally raised on your products, you take them as yours before they even have money to buy computers in the first place. I went to a high school that used macbooks, and I'm probably the only person staunchly anti-Apple from my graduating class I know out of 50+ people - the vast majority of them are now primary Apple users over Windows, Android, Linux, etc.
Its not philanthropy, that's for sure.
I personally think its extremely important to get open, hackable hardware in the hands of students instead of some of the most locked down proprietary consumer devices to ever be pushed so aggressively on kids. For selfish reasons, because I don't want a proprietary world of tonka class computers and corporate controlled software - I want open platforms using open standards so I can use what I want and not be strong armed into some proprietary control by a business entity. The only way to get that is with an understanding and appreciation for hacker / open culture, and kids using ipads in class are definitely not getting exposure to anything like that.
While blue light has the most impact, it's all light that has this effect. For anyone interested, I'd recommend reading this concise 4 page study on the subject.[0]
The synopsis is that there's no substitute for shutting off screens 1-2 hours before bedtime. This coming from someone who not only uses f.lux but sometimes when needing to use the computer late, will adorn an old pair of sunglasses to further cut down on light from 3 monitors.
Also, I've looked at f.lux'd screens set to the reddest possible setting through a 470nm narrow band filter. There's still light at the worst color band which gets through. If you are exposing yourself to light over an extended period of time, it doesn't take much to suppress melatonin secretion. (One study found suppression at levels low as 0.5 lumen or lux -- one of those two. Either way it's not much. About commensurate with the light from a brightly lit hall coming in through the gap under your door.)
The reddest possible setting for f.lux (almost?) entirely wipes out the blue channel, but the green primary on LCDs is also going to cause some effect.
If you want you can turn f.lux into "darkroom" modes, which inverts the display and uses only the red channel.
The light coming from LCD displays is different than single-color LEDs; that picture you linked isn’t a good representation of your phone/laptop. LCD displays use a “white” LED backlight (= blue LED + broader-spectrum yellow phosphor), and the various subpixels have band-pass color filters for particular wavelengths.
Not really all light, but certainly at least the green and blue primaries of our computer/phone displays.
In the experiment you linked, they used looking through orange-tinted safety glasses as a control, because such glasses basically filter out all of the relevant wavelengths.
Not sure I’d recommend regularly using your laptop with orange safety glasses though.
I'm so happy to see Notes getting attention and new features. Since the update to support attachments and basic text formatting, it has become my digital notebook of choice. I basically use it for everything, from todo and shopping list, to collecting images about a topic, planning trips, work notes, and many more.
Notes has many features that I considered well implemented: a simple interface, native integration with the OS including sharing from and to the app, seamless iOS & OSX syncing over iCloud, decent search, PDF export.
I hope Apple keeps investing in it adding relevant, useful features, but without allowing it to become too big, like it happened to Evernote.
Personally I still much prefer OneNote, but not everyone (especially iOS users) want to tie themselves down to Office/OneDrive - so it's always nice to see built in apps get more functionality.
I'm much happier to tie myself down to the one that runs on Mac, Windows, iOS, Android, and Windows Phone. It's nice to see Notes getting more features, but if people start keeping a lot more stuff in there it's one more bit of nasty platform lock-in.
It's not ideal, but aren't notes accessible via the iCloud website? I agree with everything you said, especially as someone who uses Windows, Windows Phone and iOS side-by-side.
I have been wanting to switch to OneNote over EverNote recently but have had really weird problems on OS X.
Every single time I open the app it requires me to sign in again. Spent several hours Googling and trying different "Fixes" but can't narrow down why it wont stay signed in.
Hoping this is some edge case bug and they will release an update so I can use it. From what I hear it's actually a really great app.
Notes with iCloud backup has been incredibly handy to me. I have notes going back to 2007. iCloud seems to have difficulty backing up a database with so many notes, but it's been way better than nothing. (Gmail doesn't work on my iPhone, maybe because it's such an old account? But logging in never worked on my primary Gmail account.)
Improved stability would be appreciated. Almost every time I try to sync my collection of 5k+ notes, the mac app crashes (even the icloud.com version!). The iOS version isn't too much better, as it frequently hangs when I edit notes.
I agree it's quite nice, the only thing I would like is an easy way to mark up images. You have a bunch of tools for doodling, it just would be nice to use them on top of an image instead of having the doodles be strictly their own image.
That would be fantabulous. Because Notes has been so reliable I've been afraid to ask for more features, but you're right, the tools are already there. Would love to be able to add arrows and caption photos.
I doubt it. All the newer features (those introduced in iOS 9 like formatting) only work for notes stored in iCloud. The IMAP stuff seems to be deprecated/in transition.
Not only that, but the private APIs f.lux was using led to a really awkward implementation, complete with huge gotchas like the phone waking up every time the color profile changed.
It is odd that it is a binary blob, but it isn't dangerous in the same way as binary driver blobs on Linux. Everything you install via Xcode is sandboxed in exactly the same way as the binary blobs you download from the App Store.
Well, Apple didn't treat Flux any differently than other developers who used private APIs or tried to distribute binary blobs to iOS users.
Software running in the background is something Apple tightly controls in iOS (battery life and security being major concerns). They also don't let apps make changes to the OS appearance. That may be the wrong approach, but Apple is at least consistent in it. This was either an OS level feature or a no go from Apple's perspective. As a user I'm happy it's a feature!
Yes, that's the whole point of private APIs - they're not supported, and they can be changed or removed whenever.
It's just access control at the framework level. Apple could embed a copy in each application using the framework, but that's inefficient, so they install it at the system level.
It totally sucks that Apple prohibits third-party apps from offering useful functionality that requires deep integration with the system. So no, it is not exactly "OK."
However, it has nothing to do with rejecting apps because of it, and offering their own version of the functionality. Apple has always reserved this domain for themselves from day one, and f.lux would have had the exact same problems even if Apple hadn't been doing their own version of it.
Apple didn't have an API ready for that for external devs - not due to malice, but due to the lack of need. There are virtually no other use cases for such API, so no wonder they didn't release it.
Within a context of one app it's not that difficult to change the colour balance. What kind of an app would want to change the balance of colours system-wide?
It probably also means it will be built-in to Andriod next and then probably Windows itself. That could negatively impact Flux the product, which sucks for him.
F.lux is free software and they've said outright that as devices / systems implement color shifting as built-in systems, they've accomplished their goal.
> f.lux is patent pending. Do you make a cell phone, display, lighting system, or other cool sleep tech, and want to talk about collaboration? Email us: support@justgetflux.com
Licensing from a fellow giant who will absolutely take you to court if you don't and repurposing the ideas of small indie developers are entirely different things.
I could be wrong, but I don't think Apple has a history of violating patents from practicing small software developers. Seems like they're pretty much only sued by patent trolls.
Yes, but it's much better that this stuff is built in natively to the OS. F.lux and equivalents I have used on Android often are gltichy given that they interact with the video system.
It's not just Android: on both Windows and Linux, F.lux seems to interact badly with certain Intel video chipsets, and often just turns on and off continuously until I reboot the system. It's great software, but having it native to the OS would be even better. I hope the other vendors follow Apple's lead here.
Hopefully then, OSX as well. I probably spend as much time (sadly) on my macbook as I do in front of my iPhone at night. F.lux is a lifesaver, but I'd prefer it builtin to the OS.
There's some annoying glitches in the Mac OS implementation. In particular, the profile gets reset to normal for a second or two when certain applications (particularly OpenGL games) start up or exit, and when the screensaver is unlocked.
While that's true, f.lux handles edge cases in important ways -- letting you disable it for certain apps or time periods, as well as "movie mode." As much as I'd like to see this feature be built into the OS, Apple tends to simplify away a lot of fiddly preferences by choosing what they hope are sensible defaults, and as much as I appreciate that in theory, in practice this might be one of those areas where fiddly preferences are superior.
You can compile and sideload any software yourself using XCode and an AppleID. I run Gamma Thingy (a f.lux alternative) on my non-jailbroken iPhone. You can compile and run emulators, use any private API, whatever. Those apps will just never be in the App Store.
It is a good point. I recently got a company provided phone and I strongly considered getting an iPhone, especially since it's the dominant platform at my company and most internal apps are developed for it exclusively. However, I started tallying up what functionalities I would have to give up and decided against it, a flux like program being one of them.
Holly crap I want 90% of those "Education Only" features in an enterprise environment. Managing AppleIDs, shared iPads and training scenarios are even worse when dealing with adults.
Oh and could they spare a thought for managing devices in remote locations? Oh you've forgotten your AppleID so now you can't update the MDM client and have been disconnected from Exchange? Too bad all we can do is waste 30 minutes on the phone talking you through it. Even basic things like allowing iOS updates over 4G (as well as forcing/postponing updates) would make such a big difference.
Too bad I'm sure it'll be 2018 before half of the features make it to businesses in the US, then 2019 for the rest of the world. :/
Total speculation on my part, but my first thought was that the education market would be accomplished by hosting a MacOSX Server instance to support multiple IDs. I'm most undoubtedly wrong on this, but that was my first instinct, anyway.
It'll all be iCloud. Caching server I'm kinda surprised they haven't done P2P content distribution. or at least sold caching servers 'Appliance'-style.
I can't believe that's [1] the best low-light picture they could find for their flagship mobile OS preview page.
It doesn't even add anything to the story:
Night Shift uses your iOS device’s clock and geolocation to determine when it’s sunset in your location. Then it automatically shifts the colors in your display to the warmer end of the spectrum, making it easier on your eyes.
Is it just me, or does that seem like a surprising set of features for a mid-cycle release. Typically it's just bug fixes for anything other than a major OS launch.
Yes and no. Looks like many of these changes are just at the app level - Notes, Car Play, Health. However, because Apple doesn't separate these apps from the system (ie., you can't update them from the app store) they get bundled into the OTA. If these apps were civilian apps, I doubt anyone would be surprised by these updates.
Moving education features to September/October release essentially dooms them to not be used until the next school year, or at least the second semester.
Testing and implementing new technology midstream is tough in education. Most of that gets done over the summers in the US.
I agree - I thought the reason this was posted to HN was the fact this is a fairly significant update with its own announcement page, which doesn't appear to have been the case with .1 releases in the past. Perhaps iOS is moving to a faster update cycle?
I hope Safari gets more meaningful updates as well - the once-a-year updates sometimes with not much new (looking at you Safari 9) is real slow progress for web developers, especially compared to Chrome and Firefox.
The education preview [0] looks like the first step toward supporting multiple user profiles per iPad. iPhones typically are one-person devices (on Android you can switch users, I've never tried it though), but iPads are often shared. I've seen lots of families where there's one iPad shared between the whole family. The kids are constantly logging in and out of their Facebook/Instagram/Twitter/E-mail accounts. The fact that they have to log in and out often usually leads to them using very weak passwords. I hope this feature makes its way to general consumption.
Does anyone have more info on the colour warmths available in nightshift? One nice feature of f.lux is that you can select colour warmths using a slider.
Does nightshift allow a variety of night colours, or just one setting?
Either way, this is great news. For years I had been jailbroken merely in order to have f.lux on my phone. I have mild insominia, and flux has greatly reduced that.
It is worth noting that during the day you should NOT use night mode even in a dark environment, the whole point of the color shifting is to reproduce how the sun interacts with the world around you, turning on night mode during the day won't do your internal clock any favours.
That being said, there might be good arguments for having manual night mode control, like if you're a night shift worker and want day mode at night, and night mode during the day. And a lot of international travel scenarios.
I hope they bring this Night Shift to OSX as well, just for consistency. I've used Flux for years, but it does have some quirks like when waking from sleep.
Very interesting. Apple has replicated f.lux's functionality and removed access to the key ingredient used in the authors original implementation. All in one felt swoop.
They were definitely paying close attention to that whole "side load our proprietary blob using Xcode" debacle on HN 2 months ago.
Private frameworks have never come with headers (on either OS X or iOS). This change only affects linking, and it only means that you have to create the .tbd files (just a list of available symbols) for ld to use manually - or use dlsym or other workarounds.
The most important thing that I hoped to see was a simple "we fixed Apple Music". Honestly, I've used iTunes for music for years, paid for iTunes Match before, pay for Apple Music now, so I'm nothing if not a loyal customer — but this app is just a complete clusterfuck.
Dear Apple, it's time to stop putting out new features. Instead, bring back the "it just works" again.
Agree. I am still having difficult times to locate music i favored. after i switched off data for apple music, it didn't warn me when I start it and i thought it is down. i switched back to spotify now
Nightshift is nice, but I don't understand why CarPlay, Edu, Health are not just app updates. I don't see how they warrant a whole OS update when really it's just a few extra features added to existing apps (none of which I use or plan to use, unfortunately).
I guess it's just convention by this point. Feature updates across the board periodically, then security updates in between
The Education stuff seems to require OS modifications to support multiple accounts. The rest is probably marketing ("hey, look at these new features of apps you probably don't regularly use").
This is unusual for Apple to release this many features in a point update. If I had to guess, I think this will launch with the rumored 4" iPhone around late February or March
My clipboard can still be gleaned with an arbitrary API call in other apps. Please leave my clipboard alone in other apps. They have no business being able to grab it without my permission
Good to see Notes with a lock (fingerprint). It would be great if Apple decided to add fingerprint app locks as a feature for any app that one may want.
Fairly sure that this is indeed doable for an app developer. I use 1Password on OSX and multiple iOS devices and many of my passwords can be unlocked with my fingerprint instead of requiring my main & lengthy master password.
IIRC it does require the master password once, perhaps each boot, but after that I'm able to unlock with only fingerprint (this is customizable globally or on a per-password basis pretty sure).
I agree but Apple has been known to pay for solid patent licenses. I.e. Amazon's 'one click to pay' patent. If f.lux lands the patent, I think Apple could work out a solid deal with f.lux. Or they will find a distasteful legal loophole. One of the two.
Has Apple been known to pay to license patents from small startups? The fact that they've licensed from Amazon isn't quite analogous, since Amazon clearly has the ability to enforce their patents in court. A small startup may not have the resources to do this.
Being "patent pending" is meaningless without further context, i.e., the application proper. "Patent pending" spans a range of meaningless crud and novel inventions that share the common trait of having not yet received a final rejection office action.
Ahhhhh... interesting. I read so many stories and comments on HN about how it's bad to be too rich. But apparently well like companies can have an exception.
Surprisingly to many people used to the hiveminds on other forums, HN is not homogeneous in the opinions of the denizens. Many of us are fine with the idea of making money, and don't see it as an all-encompassing evil to be slandered at every turn as if it were an argument unto itself.
Some problems cannot be easily solved with money. Paying patent lawyers and patent royalties is an example of a problem that can be very easily solved with money.
It's just a much easier way to get the beta installed which doesn't require iTunes. Just open the profile on your device and next time you check for updates in the settings, the beta will be offered to update to.
Do you still have to have a developer account to get the profile file? Or is it publicly accessible? I was the beta to try out flux (or whatever they call it) but I don't write apps so there is no point in spending the $99 just for that.
There are rumors of new devices coming in the March timeframe (iPad Air 3, new 4-inch iPhone). I wonder if 9.3 is also going to be the release that adds support for those new devices.
This might be my favorite update since iOS 7 added the slide up menu to toggle wifi. The flux and notes locking capabilities have been on my want list for years now.
Still waiting for the ability to close a browser tab by swiping.
AFAIK, the fastest way to close a tab is to push on the screen to get Safari's bar on the bottom, push on the multiple tabs, then swipe right to left or click the X on the tab I want to close.
On my mac it's Command-W. Which is a lot easier and probably why I prefer to browse a lot on it.
From the left is "go back to previous page", from the right is "go to next page" or "open side app on iPad", from the bottom is control center, and from the top is notification center.
The Notes update looks great! I use Notes for shopping lists and also to store passwords/personal info - so the TouchID security feature is nice.
Another native iOS app I use a lot is Reminders - great for appointments and todo reminders (like calling someone back). It would be great to see if that got a bit of an upgrade.
It could be immensely useful for the enterprise as well if they marketed it right. But apple hasnt seemed to care about business uses for the past few years.
I'm owner of an ios, windows phone and android device.
With that said most of the innovation happening lately is just something carried over from others, e.g. the add block feature, or the night shift, both features already present for example on Cyanogenmod with an adblock installed.
Now my point is... (and I'm not pointing my finger to apple, I like my ipad more now than before, with the exception of the music application), seems like we have started to reach the point where enhancements are only marginal.
I'm not sure how much more cpu power can fix that situation (apple can still play the quad-core card), or if this is a development language restriction issue, or a problem with compilers-languages that cannot make use of multi-core cpus or maybe there is nowhere else to go because everything has been made.
If my previous statement holds true... maybe this is the beginning of the "pc era" of the smartphones with lower sales and no more features worth upgrading to the latest and greatest.
There is still so much more to do that won't require gargantuan cpu/storage/io/screen/etc. resources, that I don't think we are in an "end of history" phase yet with the current conceptualization of these devices. Just a few personal itches off the top of my head that have yet to be scratched:
* There is still not a good solution for group-transactional data over the devices as a first-class citizen feature in the system. Live, collaborative editing with versioning of just a list, for starters, is considered an app'able feature worth $50 USD per year per person.
* Internationalization still takes a back seat. Calendar apps still don't pick up that if you set an appointment for someone in a different time zone than you, you are likely scheduling to a time convenient for them. There should be an option to auto-detect and display applicable time zones as you create the appointment.
* Customization still takes a back seat. When I add custom phone types ("concall", "support", "after-hours support", etc.), it ends up UNSORTED in the list of custom phone types when I go to choose one. That's just the tip of the iceberg of enhancements. For address records of people in a specific organization, I want to be able to set only a certain list of custom phone types for anyone in that organization.
* There still is no sense of tracking versions of information. I have thousands of contacts, and I keep track of old addresses for example; it helps me orient myself to the possible cultures someone has experienced. But only the here-and-now data is recognized.
* Linking data between apps takes an explicit act of coordination between app developers; the Newton data soups were particularly good with breaking down this artificial barrier.
* Deep-linking into your own data from within an app in general is not very well-recognized as a use case. Not to speak of deep-linking from an external laptop.
I'm personally gravitating back towards making my information in my Emacs Org mode buffer the primary system of record, and the phone is just a thinly-sliced perspective of that.
I didn't thought about the history/versioning possibilities, they sound very interesting.
The rules per contact for phone numbers is also interesting.
I would say maybe avoiding adding more complexity to the os is part of the reason those things won't get implemented while others as the time/zone calendar issues means inter-zone is broken.
As a side note: It's really cool that you can finally update to the beta directly from the device by just installing the configuration profile offered on the SDK download page. No more connecting to iTunes.
Let's hope they keep that trend for when the iOS 10 betas start
I wonder if this Night Shift feature has anything to do with the rumors of Apple switching to OLED displays for future phones. Reducing the amount of blue light emitted dusk to dawn would help extend the overall life of the panels.
That is true, however the only 3rd party apps allowed on CarPlay right now are music apps (using a very basic hierarchical/tree API). The lack of CarPlay support isn't Google/Waze's fault.
It's also worth noting that Android Auto only allows 3rd party apps that do music and messaging. No 3rd party navigation apps, not even Waze.
It will be interesting to see how password/touch id lock for Notes works. Will they be end-to-end encrypted? Will they be searchable? Or is this simply a UI feature to protect against someone looking over your shoulder?
One thing I found rather amusing was the fact that there are visible passwords in the picture although it hasn't been unlocked. Hopefully it's at the very least blurred before you input your password.
Reading the text on the screen this appears to be in the action of 'encrypting'. i.e. they just hit a button to say 'hide this data behind my fingerprint' and you just have to authenticate and then it will be encrypted. A poor choice though perhaps. I think they wanted to demonstrate the type of data you would want to store.
Apple says it is encrypted on the server, but it's not clear if it is end-to-end encrypted with the keys staying on your devices. Likely the keys are encrypted with your iCloud password for multi-device use.
agreed very curious to know whether this means apple does not have access. I have a passcode on my phone/computer/icloud so casual snooping is not really an issue (and i don't hand my phone to people to play with or share a computer) so that would really be the only benefit to someone like me
It'll probably include a WebKit version bump as usual, but according to the WebKit Feature Status page, Service Workers are only "under consideration" (not "in development" or "done"), so I wouldn't expect them anytime soon.
I hope they finally fix the bug where the ipod player will start playing a song from the middle (even though it says its at the beginning). It's happened to both me and my wife on every iOS9 version so far.
carplay looks like the worst apple feature/product to come out in 9.3. (it feels like they are lending out their UX to the whims of <insert car manufacturer>'s buttons and opening up compatibility issues.
http://imgur.com/b3OTMJO
Now available with 13 apps, in 36 brands of cars, 3 different brands of aftermarket solutions on 7 different models of iPhones.
Compatibility with all the things means the experience is going to vary widely across the board.
CarPlay isn't new, and it's head-and-shoulders better than the OEM environment on my car.
It's got some bugs (9.2 seems to have introduced one where it messes up system audio playback at times), but interface wise it works very well.
Car manufacturers can't mess with it. Apple pre-maps certain buttons and supports a scroll wheel, but they can't customize it at all, Apple has control.
I guess any sort of trouble with the iPhone is an extremely minor thing in the grand scheme of things.
What to do about it? I can't presume to know what they tested and rejected, but screen orientation control needs to be independent of screen orientation.
It should always be at the "bottom" of the screen. If the "bottom" doesn't match whatever the bottom of your app is, that's likely because the app is configure to only appear in landscape or portrait so it only responds to a large enough position change to trigger a 180-degree flip. Basically, this isn't as simple as it appears because of the potential interactions between app types and what the OS supports.
TL;DR: If you have a landscape only app, trigger the lock before you launch the app and it should stay in place.
The iOS 9 beta had an option in Settings to change the side switch's functionality between silence and orientation lock. Unfortunately, this was pulled before stable release.
iPhone screens look blueish in a warm light environment. I wish Apple would implement real-time dynamic white balance by using data from selfie cameras. So that screen white would blend with white phone enclosure the same way they try to blend black with black.
Finally I gave in & upgraded to iOS 9.x (on iPad 4). Suddenly Safari has started freezing on lightweight simple websites. Is that better experience part of "planned obsolescence" ? It's more or less the same story with any mobile device after 2-3 years.
iOS 9.2 made the iPad Pro nearly unusable (dropping keystrokes) with the Logitech Create Pro keyboard, and no fix has been forthcoming in iOS 9.2.1 betas. Will this be addressed in 9.3? It worked perfectly with iOS 9.1.
Is apple using this to get more apps integrate with HealthKit? Many developers feel integration with HealthKit turns their app into a commodity. Categories such as Weight, Workouts, and Sleep have a new slider menu that reveals great apps you can easily add to your Health dashboard
They need to loosen the grips on that background services stuff. Would love to have apps like Dropbox and Owncloud not have to use the stupid location services workaround just to background sync my pictures.
Edit: Seriously? This gets down voted? How would this NOT be a helpful feature? It works wonderfully on my Android devices. Would love to see it on my iOS devices. Wow, Just wow. Bunch of fanboiz or something?
This is an excellent example of how not to respond to being downvoted.
Take a step back and a nice deep breath and consider why you might have been downvoted. It may have more to do with the tone of your delivery than the actual content of your message.
Lashing out at those who disagree with you with baseless accusations is counterproductive.
Downvoting needs to go away. Upvoting a good comment is a positive action. Downvoting is a power trip, and in many ways protectionist and exclusive. I've seen too many comments downvoted based on unpopular opinions which were perfectly constructive and appropriately toned.
People are very happy to exercise their ability to punish others when given that power. It's gotten out of hand here.
Can you give us links to "perfectly constructive and appropriately toned" comments that are in a downvoted state?
What you're saying doesn't match what I typically observe on HN, which is (a) that most downvoted comments have something wrong with them, not just an unpopular opinion, and (b) inappropriate downvotes usually get canceled out be users who see a good comment faded faded and give it a corrective upvote.
I agree, actually. One thing I like about Windows Phone is the scheduled background agents - you can request the OS run a background agent on a schedule, and it will allow your application to update or sync data on a fairly regular basis even while running on battery, though with limits - and if the device is plugged in and connected to WiFi you get increased limits to do some more intense tasks. I don't need my photos to sync automatically draining battery and wasting data while I am on the mobile network, but when I'm at home for the night and my phone is charging is a perfect change for things to do big syncs like that.
EDIT: Apple kind of added some similar functionality with background app refresh, but the fact that the system tries really hard to "guess" which apps you want updated and which you don't doesn't work so well - I am constantly having to launch SyncSolver to get it to post my Apple Watch steps to fitbit. Just let the apps I set to refresh run on a regular schedule, I can control what I don't want to update.
Didn't downvote you - but generally complaining about downvotes is unclassy. I'll venture a guess and say that you might've been downvoted because "loosen the grips on that background services stuff" sounds a bit flippant - the restrictions exist for very good reason.
That said, there is probably a good case for the case of background uploads to be added to the existing backgrounding framework as an additional use case, with its own set of governing rules (another user brought up: Wi-Fi only, while charging, while battery is high, while reception is good, etc).
The solution to inconvenient background syncing IMO isn't opening the floodgates to everyone running their own daemons and sucking down battery power like it's their last day on Earth. It's a valuable use case, but not a good reason to "loosen the grips" so to speak.
RE: Background services. It's a pocket computer. I want my devices to do more for me. When I set them down, I want them to continue to work for me so I can be productive. Just because something runs in the background doesn't automatically make it a battery suck nor does it make it a security risk.
> RE: Background services. It's a pocket computer.
It's not (per Apple). It's an appliance, and they use that as guidance in the decisions they make. It may be capable of acting like a computer, technically it obviously IS a computer, but Apple treats it as an appliance.
Not so black and white, really. Remember the recent Phil Schiller (I think) quote discussing how Apple sees their devices as a continuum, with more and more functionality going to more mobile, more personal computers? They see the Watch as replacing some amount of iPhone functionality, iPhone being able to do much of what iPad can, iPad largely replacing a laptop, and a laptop almost entirely obviating the desktop? So, in a sense, Apple does view the iPhone as a small and somewhat limited but very real "pocket laptop."
I think the relevant distinction between iOS and OS X is that, with iOS, there is sort of an understanding that the user is granted less direct control, in exchange for a near-guarantee that they won’t have to worry about certain things (like malware, or to a certain extent, battery life) anymore.
True. The iPhone is very appliance like. The iPad is clearly capable of much more, but in many ways is limited by iOS, even if solely when it comes to the interface.
But it's pretty clear to me that that Apple is not selling the iPhone as a general purpose computer, and that's fine with me.
They advertise the virtually comprehensive nature of the App Store. To a non-programmer, what’s the difference between a general-purpose computer and one that features apps?
I doubt it. That's my impression as an iPhone/iPad user of many years. Apple seems to make choices that ensure basic functions work reliably and without wasting resources (like battery) as opposed to a more computer like approach of giving more integration points and configuration options.
Android has allowed things (widgets, alternate keyboards, different launchers/lock screens, background processes) that expose more power but rely on the 3rd party developer to ensure the experience still works well without wasting resources or crashing.
Apple only provides such things after careful study and lockdown (such as keyboards). Much more careful, much more sealed up unmodifiable box.
So its a computer then. I am not sure of the Apple careful approach. I am using latest OS on my old Mac book pro. Each new release has made it slower, draning more battery.
Not OP but he's probably referring to the Education Preview updates. They're referenced at the bottom of the linked page with more info at https://www.apple.com/education/preview/.
I have sweet memories of spending many a rainy day in the computer lab during recess on the candy-colored imacs, creating art on kidpix, putting together a crappy HTML site that would link to a friend's crappy HTML site, and playing nanosaur, bugdom, and the oregon trail.
Computer education is huge, but I'm not sure if iPads are the right/necessary stepping stone into using an actual computer. They seem more like entertainment consumption devices than creation driving devices where things get messy and frustrating and force you to fool around to fix them, learning in the process.
I've never owned one and I don't have any insight into how much good vs. harm (distraction) they do in the classroom. Anyone have any anecdotes or thoughts to share on Apple's continuing push into the classroom w/ the iPad?