Please make sure you have an iCloud and iTunes backup of all the devices you are planning to update to iOS 12 today (the update should drop in a few hours). This will save you data loss and frustration, should anything bad happen.
You can find a guide on how to do this here, on Apple’s support page.
iOS 11.4.1 is a mainly a security update, which means you should install it as soon as possible.
My HomePod needed 5 minutes to update to iOS 11.3. My Series 0 Apple Watch is at over 5 hours now, and the end is nowhere in sight.
At this point, I’m tempted to try to force it to restart — it appears to be doing nothing.
All the cool kids are probably hungry for the new iOS 11.3 beta, but if you need the IPSW for a stable release, feel free to go crazy below.
Oleg Afonin:
The passcode. This is all that’s left of iOS security in iOS 11. If the attacker has your iPhone and your passcode is compromised, you lose your data; your passwords to third-party online accounts; your Apple ID password (and obviously the second authentication factor is not a problem). Finally, you lose access to all other Apple devices that are registered with your Apple ID; they can be wiped or locked remotely. All that, and more, just because of one passcode and stripped-down security in iOS 11.
This has been a very bad week or two for Apple.
Benjamin Mayo:
There are many reports to the YouTube customer support account on Twitter complaining about battery drain when running the app on iOS 11. The company is apparently ‘actively working to fix this’.
The YouTube app appears to have some bugs on iOS 11, affecting all iPhones and iPads, causing the devices to run very warm when watching videos.
This is happening on my iPad Pro 10.5”, but it doesn’t get warm at all — the battery drain is through the roof though. Using YouTube through Safari solves this problem though.
John Gruber:
What I’ve heard is that this is a machine learning problem — that, more or less, for some reason the machine learning algorithm for autocorrect was learning something it never should have learned.
This is a much deeper topic. Learning something it never should have learned.
Think about it.
iOS 11.1 and watchOS 4.1 is out now and focuses on bug fixes, improvements… and a lot of new emoji. The former also addresses a Reachability bug, brings back the 3D Touch App Switcher gesture on the edge of the screen, and sorts out the KRACK vunerability, while the latter adds Apple Music streaming and a Wi-Fi toggle switch to the Series 3 LTE Apple Watch, as well as GymKit for all other models.
Max Rudberg:
Regardless of your feelings for the notch, the reality is that to do a near edge-to-edge screen on a phone in 2017; you need to make place for sensors and speaker. The technology to hide them behind the screen simply is not here. We’ve seen different manufacturers choose different solutions to the problem. This is the one Apple chose, so let’s work with what we got.
People will get over the notch sooner or later, but I’ll bet the jokes will be piling on for years to come. Personally, I’m still undecided — I will need to see it in person first.
Oh! Make sure to check out Max’s post — lots of good, sensible design information there.
If you have an iPhone 8 and use it to make phone calls, you’ll want this update as soon as possible.
Joe Rossignol:
Apple software engineering chief Craig Federighi has revealed that a popular 3D Touch gesture for accessing the App Switcher will apparently return in a future update to iOS 11.
Federighi, replying to an email from MacRumors reader Adam Zahn, said Apple had to “temporarily drop support” for the gesture due to an unidentified “technical constraint.”
I was getting ready to voice my disappointment — I use this gesture multiple times a day — but now I’m just happy it’ll be back soon!
Max Rudberg:
Beforehand I was fond of the idea of blending the statusbar with the hardware, but seeing the mockups like this, I’m not so sure. Blending the statusbar with the hardware makes the screen seem smaller than it is and the result is less striking. I’m now leaning towards that Apple will embrace the notch.
I’m voting for embracing the notch, because it could play well into Apple showcasing how large the screen’s area really is. Then again, they could be conservative, so as not to alienate those who hate that look.
Photo credit: Max Rudberg
I haven’t had enough time to think about all the WWDC 2017 announcements yet — there were so many — so I’ll most likely voice my thoughts and perhaps even come to some conclusions on a future podcast episode, but in the meantime, I wanted to share some of my thoughts and worries.