Originally published at: http://appletalk.com.au/2017/10/friday-morning-news061017/
MacRumors also notes that there’s a fix for a Disk Utility bug which displays the passwords of APFS-encrypted volumes in High Sierra in plain text. The bug involves adding a new APFS volume, password-protecting it, unmounting it, and then attempting to re-mount it again, which results in the password being displayed in plain text as the password hint. Encrypted APFS volumes created using Terminal did not exhibit the issue, but either way, it’s fixed now (provided you’ve installed today’s update).
Ars Technica tells us about the perils of adopting a new filesystem on desktops and laptops, which have far more variables and things that could go wrong compared to iOS devices. Even with only SSDs converted to APFS so far, certain pro apps including Adobe Illustrator and Unity aren’t playing nicely with the new file system. These are all issues that will be fixed with time and enough updates on either side of the fence.
Microsoft has announced the Edge browser will soon be available for iOS and Android devices. It’s part of Microsoft’s plan to improve the cross-device experience for those that already use a Windows PC, with the Continuity-like feature of being able to pick up where you left off from your computer on your mobile device. While Edge for iOS is currently in a beta testing period via TestFlight (that you can sign up for), there’s a good chance it will be released to the App Store within the next few months.
Apple has stopped signing copies of iOS 10.3.3 and the initial release of iOS 11, meaning you can no longer downgrade your device to those versions. Time to chuck out any older IPSW files, folks, as that ship has sailed — you’re either stuck on the latest version of iOS that your device supports, or upgrading to iOS 11 if you ever need to restore.
AppleInsider has a great explanation on how the new slow-sync flash works in the iPhone 8 and 8 Plus, which allows you to take photos with flash in darker environments that makes the final image look more natural. Because less light is output by the flash during the capture of the image, the final result looks less like you simply blasted your subject with light, and more like if the lighting was more natural.
Meanwhile, 9to5Mac shows us long-press shortcuts in Mobile Safari. It’s not a long-press shortcut, but the most useful tip for Mobile Safari I learned recently was tapping on a link with two fingers to open it in the background — no long press required.
Tim Nahumck has ideas on how Reminders could be improved, and his concept of an overhauled Reminders app takes a lot of neat ideas from task managers and integrates them into Apple’s stock reminders app, adding a few iOS 11 new features, and even some simple ideas that could make a difference when you have umpteen different reminders to take care of.
Max Rudberg has more ideas on dealing with the iPhone X notch for those designing apps to work with the new edge-to-edge display. With a whole heap of new and interesting edge cases to deal with, designs will need to carefully rethink their UIs to ensure that they don’t show up where they’re not supposed to be. The good news is, most of that is pretty easy thanks to Apple’s guidelines and inbuilt APIs.
The Outline says Apple is really bad at design. Joshua Topolsky pulls no punches when he says the notch on the iPhone X is a visually disgusting element, and while he would like to describe it as an anomaly amongst Apple’s usual high design standards, somewhere along the way, bad design became the norm at Apple.