<https://9to5mac.com/author/benlovejoy/> Ben Lovejoy
I wouldn't have predicted I'd be giving my first impressions of iOS 14 on
the first day of the public beta. My previous policy on iOS and macOS betas
could be succinctly yet comprehensively summarized in a single word: no.
Where macOS is concerned, that remains my policy. My Mac contains my life.
Photos, novels, screenplays, blogs, plans, you name it. And because I live a
paperless life, it has scans of everything from boring stuff like bills to
sentimental things like cards and letters. Of course, I have multiple
backups, but those are for use when something has gone wrong; I don't want
to willfully encourage that to happen.
I have, though, become more relaxed where my iPhone and iPad are concerned.
Anything important on those lives in the cloud or is mirrored on my Mac.
Restoring an iOS device from backup doesn't scare me the way having to
restore a Mac does. Absolute worst case, I could set one up from scratch
without too much stress.
So with iOS 13, I tried the beta on interesting dot releases. However,
<https://9to5mac.com/guides/ios-14/> iOS 14 and iPadOS 14 are such huge
deals that I couldn't wait to try those.
I still didn't go as far as trying the developer betas. While problems with
my iOS devices wouldn't be a major problem, issues like very high battery
drain would still be inconvenient. The first public beta strikes me as a
reasonable compromise between early access and risk.
Widgets
One of the most visible changes with iOS 14 is, of course, widgets on the
Home screen. This is something I've been calling for now
<https://9to5mac.com/2014/03/14/opinion-when-will-ios-evolve-beyond-the-stat
ic-grid-homescreen/> for more than six years!
Think about all the times in the day when you pick up your iPhone. Of those,
how many times are to check something and how many times are to do
something? I'd suggest we pick up our phones to check a message or
appointment or the weather way more often than we do so to open an app.
So if checking live data is the primary usage, and using apps secondary,
shouldn't that be reflected in how the OS works? Shouldn't displaying live
data be the initial view, swiping that away to access our apps?
There aren't many widgets available yet. I started with three: calendar,
weather, and Siri Suggestions.
This immediately revealed a bug: that suggestion to call my barber was for
something in my calendar two days ago. Since then, I'd not only called him
but had the haircut. (Managing to get a haircut appointment is what passes
for excitement during a pandemic - I managed one on Tuesday, my girlfriend
on Friday.)
The next Siri suggestion was a totally random one: that I might want to call
an individual I have perhaps called three times in my entire life. Clearly
this one needs some work.
Even the smallest widget size uses up the space of four apps, so having
three widgets resulted in 12 of my Home screen apps being relegated to a new
screen 2.
My apps were very carefully organized by screen, so I'd now have to rethink
how I did this. One thought immediately occurred: why not have my entire
Home screen be widgets? Then my phone would open to live data, and my
original Home screen would be just a swipe away. I decided to give that a
try. This revealed a second issue.
The reason Photos appears twice is that the bottom-left widget is a Smart
Stack, and iOS 14 decided to display this even though it already appears
elsewhere on the screen. Like Siri Suggestions, Smart Stack could also
benefit from being, well, smart.
Oh, and the Photos widget is buggy too. It started by surfacing a 2014 trip
to Vancouver, which was a very enjoyable memory, but the next album it
highlighted was called London 10 May 2020. When I tapped on it: It did later
populate with that with what turned out to be one of a series of
<https://9to5mac.com/2020/04/06/iphone-11-pro-camera-2/> early-morning cycle
rides through <https://londonwithoutpeople.com/photos/> lockdown London.
Oh, and it's annoying that you get a choice of three sizes of widgets, but
cannot resize them once selected: You have to delete and then re-add the
widget in your preferred size.
So yeah: It's a beta; it's buggy.
Perhaps it's just the novelty of it, but I do kind of like the idea of an
all-widget home screen. I didn't make much use of widget screen in earlier
versions of iOS, in part because it was "out of sight, out of mind," and in
part because the whole point of widgets is at-a-glance info: If I have to
swipe to see one, I might as well just tap on the app instead.
However, as much as this idea is interesting to me, the reality is that
there just aren't enough widgets available yet, so I'll likely end up with a
mix of widgets and apps for now.
Pinned messages
Next, I tried message pinning. This makes it much easier to find your most
frequently used chats. Although Messages already places the most recent ones
at the top, it's pretty easy for your main chats to get buried if you
receive a lot of texts. You can have more than one row of pinned chats, but
I decided to start with three, to keep things to a single row.
Music app
The Music app gets quite a notable refresh in iOS 14.
I'm not a fan of the For You tab being renamed Listen Now - the former name
seems to me a more descriptive one - but I do like the new content.
The first thing you see now is your personal radio station. This does exist
in iOS 13, but is rather hidden. I at first thought this had replaced
Favorites, but that still exists further down. I haven't had a chance to
listen to it enough to see how it differs from Favorites, and like other
radio stations, you can't tap on them to open them and see the contents.
I'll report back on that later.
The New Music Mix is still next, along with Chill and - for me, at least - a
new Romantic playlist. I may be giving away too much about my musical tastes
here .
Stations For You mostly made sense, though there was one rather random
artist I hardly listen to - but I'll check out the station anyway.
One oddity is that the Made For You repeats both the New Music and Chill
playlists. I guess it keeps them all together, so perhaps duplication is the
lesser evil here.
It's always hard to remember a previous UI for a direct comparison, and my
girlfriend doesn't use Apple Music so I couldn't check against her phone,
but my overall impression is that it's more visually pleasing and surfaces
more content.
App Library
I like the idea of this, but I'm not sold on Apple's categories. For
example, a category that mixes in BBC News, Apple Maps, and Kindle? Ok, I
guess the "Reference and Reading" label fits them, and it does at least
include the Guardian app and Books in the same folder, so my news and ebook
apps are together, but it's a bit of a random grouping overall.
Similarly, Lifestyle. This mixes Powerview and Eve, two smart home apps used
only at home (and indeed rarely used at all since I usually use Siri or the
Home app), with Santander, Lime, and Uber - three apps used only when out.
Amazon and Alexa also end up in there. This one is as random as could be.
Utilities and Health make sense, but then we have two folders with only one
app each.
However, for me App Library is entirely redeemed with a feature
<https://9to5mac.com/2020/03/10/ios-14-home-screen-list-view/> we first
revealed back in March: a single tap in the search bar gives you an
alphabetic list of all your apps.
For me, there are two benefits to this. First, there are times when I know I
have an app to do something I do very infrequently, but it's been so long
since I last used it that I can't remember what it's called. This is mostly
an issue with companion apps for hardware I've tested, where the app name
differs from the product name. The scroll list shows the icons as well as
the names, and I'm likely to recognize it by quickly scrolling through the
list.
Second, I like to do periodic clearance of unused apps, just to keep things
tidy, and a single scrolling list of all installed apps is a very easy way
to do that. For example, I could see immediately that I still have a parking
app still installed despite the fact that I no longer own or need a car.
First impressions of iOS 14
My first impressions of iOS 14 are good. You have to give the bugs a pass in
a beta, and I'm sure those will be worked out.
The Home screen feels far fresher with widgets, and once there are more of
them available, I think this will make a huge difference to usability.
The revamped Music app looks great, and surfaces a lot of tailored music
suggestions that were previously either absent or well-hidden.
I'll play with iOS 14 more over the weekend, but what I'm really looking
forward to trying is iPadOS 14 on my iPad. Watch this space.
iOS apps crashing on opening - here's a fix
<https://9to5mac.com/author/benlovejoy/> Ben Lovejoy
We noted earlier that we're again seeing a number of
<https://9to5mac.com/2020/07/10/app-crash-facebook-sdk/> iOS apps crashing
as soon as they open, thanks to a bug in the Facebook SDK. Even if you don't
have the Facebook app installed, apps which use this SDK access it when they
open, and then promptly crash.
Fortunately, there is an easy fix for now .
The secret is to block apps from accessing the Facebook domain. There are a
number of ways of doing this, but
<https://www.theverge.com/21319817/facebook-ios-sdk-bug-fix-spotify-pinteres
t-tinder-crash-iphone-ios> The Verge spotted a really easy one.
Lockdown Apps, a firewall and privacy protection app on iOS, uses a VPN to
block trackers and things like Facebook's iOS SDK from loading in
third-party apps. It will allow apps like Spotify, Pinterest, and Tinder to
launch during a Facebook iOS SDK outage, and it's completely free to use.
It takes just a couple of minutes to set up, most of which is simply tapping
through the app walkthrough.
* Install <https://apps.apple.com/us/app/lockdown-apps/id1469783711>
Lockdown Apps
* Launch it, and tap through the tutorial
* Decline any trials offered - these aren't needed for our purposes
* Tap the big Firewall button
* Agree to install a VPN profile
As soon as this is done, you should be able to once again open apps like
Spotify.
We explained earlier what causes the crashes.
For a little more insight on what is happening behind the scenes, the
Facebook SDK communicates back and forth with a data server. The client app
code expects the data returned by the server to be in a particular format.
But when the server suddenly starts sending data in a different format, the
framework code is not prepared to handle the invalid response. So, the app
code tries to access values that don't exist - which leads to a fatal error
and the app crashes.
We're expecting Facebook to fix the problem within a few hours. You can
check for this by switching off the firewall and then trying to open
Spotify. As soon as that succeeds, you can delete Lockdown App and that will
automatically remove the VPN profile at the same time.
<https://9to5mac.com/2020/07/10/how-to-pin-text-messages-iphone-ios-14/>
iOS 14: How to pin text messages on iPhone for quick access
<https://9to5mac.com/author/michaelpotuck/> Michael Potuck
A really useful new feature included in iOS 14 is the ability to favorite
conversations for easy access at the top of the Messages app. Follow along
for how to pin text messages on iPhone and iPad.
The Messages app gets a few notable upgrades with this year's major iOS
update including mentions, an
<https://9to5mac.com/2020/07/01/how-to-use-iphone-emoji-search-ios-14/>
emoji search bar, the ability to pin conversations, and also add a photo for
the icon of group messages.
The pin message feature is quick and easy to use and places your favorited
conversations at the top of the Messages app with large icons. You can pin
up to 9 messages on <https://amzn.to/2LS5Io4> iPhone and iPad.
iOS 14: How to pin text messages on iPhone and iPad
1. Open the Messages app
2. Find a conversation you want to pin, long-press on it
3. Tap Pin ____________
4. Now you'll see the pinned message at the top of the app
5. To undo a pin, long-press on a message or the pinned icon and tap
Unpin ___________
Here's how the process looks:
You can add up to 9 pinned messages, including both iMessages and standard
text messages and messages to individuals or groups.
How to unpin messages on iPhone and iPad
Once you've hit the maximum of 9, you'll see an alert to unpin a
conversation to add a new one.
Here's what it looks like to unpin a message:
* Long-press the pinned message icon or the message thread from the
list below
===========================================================
The fb-exchange mailing list
Manage account, subscribe or unsubscribe:
//www.freelists.org/list/fb-exchange
Archives: //www.freelists.org/archives/fb-exchange ;
Administrative contact: insight@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
===========================================================
