iOS 17 review: StandBy for more features
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Google is using its own messaging app! It is saving the best "RCS" features exclusively for internal, Google Messages user to Google Messages user conversations only.
Guess what? That means it's still a walled garden app, masquerading as an open protocol. "Google RCS" features won't be available for users who elect to use the Samsung texting app, unless Samsung and Google broker a special deal (for example).
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Yup, same way. I'm old enough to be cantankerous, finally, and so help me god I will cantanker.
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Don’t forget predictive AirPlay target sorting, a feature yours truly takes credit for inventing and submitting to Apple as a suggestion several months ago. So satisfying to see 
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That happened, five years ago:
https://news.samsung.com/global/samsung-and-google-collaborate-on-rcs-messaging-for-android
EDIT:
... but it took them another two years to arrive:
https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/12/16/samsung-messages-starts-adding-support-for-google-rcs-chat/
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Non-US Maps are still terrible for some countries. I found it used street names which are >30 years out of date (colonial names).
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Standby - Night mode: can it be automatic when the room gets dark? It doesn't seem very sensible to leave the phone always in night mode or always in day mode.
Is that all it takes? That seems easy to abuse if you don't have to tap or unlock anything.
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Yes, when I look at my phone I also despair that Apple hasn't surrendered control over how I communicate with my friends back to the telecom duopoly that insists $70 for four gigs of data a month is a fair price.
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You enable this in the Home app. Home Settings > Listen for “Hey Siri”. You have the option to leave it as is, or enable Listen for “Siri” or “Hey Siri”.
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Which matters because…
Seems like a dumb issue on which to make a choice of phone OS.
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Pro tip. If you want to see your co worker’s photos or events, etc. on their locked iPhone, just plug in a charge cable and turn it sideways. Scroll the widgets.
Yay StandBy mode…
Yay StandBy mode…
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If things like E2EE that are bolted on by Google are not standardized and hence no support is expected from Apple, what are then exactly the meaningful benefits over SMS?
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Curious as to the downvote; I'm in the same situation. Is there a way to have the iPhone 13 and older stay always-on when in Standby mode (so, plugged in) but not otherwise?I was excited for Standby, but since I am still on iPhone 13, I don't get the always on feature, so basically useless to me.
Looks good though! Will get there eventually.
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This is a funny one. A lot of people that are not familiar with iOS updates have misconceptions that
a) system program feature updates has nothing to do with core OS updates. (Apple actually bakes a lot of things into the OS, and have the system apps use that API.)
b) no feature updates but only fixes happen with point version updates. (Apple actually often has meaningful updates the year long.)
If those two were true, it’d be indeed dumb since one’d wait a whole year for any improvements.
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I'd ask the question: what exactly are the meaningful benefits of RCS over MMS?
SMS and MMS both work without using data; they'll send content over the voice network sideband. RCS requires the data band, so it's no different than any other messaging protocol. Being a data protocol, RCS expands on the size of the data you can have in a message compared to MMS. It's also fairly basic and extensible.
And nobody supports RCS. Google has their own solution served up by the carriers that they call RCS, but the bits that make it useful are proprietary extensions. If someone doesn't have those extensions, it falls back to regular RCS. The other benefit of RCS is that if it doesn't go through, it falls back to MMS, which is its real benefit over other data-based messaging protocols.
But wait... Apple's iMessage is also E2EE like RCS+Google, and also falls back to MMS! In fact, Apple has implemented everything useful that RCS+Google implements, and there's no real reason for supporting vanilla RCS without the extras. So they don't. If Apple DID support RCS, they'd still have to fall back to MMS to message anyone on Android, because they wouldn't be implementing the Google extensions.
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The only real reason to my eyes that Google is on the RCS train is that they can sell their bespoke version with feature parity to other chat platforms as an open standard and do a PR stunt to redirect the pressure of their mismanaged messaging strategy to Apple. And a lot of people, even tech outlets, gobbled it up.
The thing is, however, bolting things onto an open standard doesn’t make the entirety an open standard. Otherwise you can say iMessage (or anything online really) is open since it’s bolted on TCP/IP.
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iPadOS 17 allows widgets to be freely placed anywhere on a Home Screen without having to deal with filling empty space in the grid. That’s pretty huge, IMO, as it’s the first time Apple has allowed users to ignore their left-to-right, top-to-bottom Home Screen fill requirements. Unfortunately, this flexibility was neither extended to app icons nor to iOS 17. I do think it warrants a mention in the iPadOS 17 section.
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Don't you think it's more than a little bit sad that these people come here just to point out all the flaws of Apple and iOS?
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OK, I know you all are in the middle of advancing each of your long-held personal vendettas against this or that mobile device company, but...
I don’t usually get very excited about iOS updates, so I installed iOS 17 on my iPad Pro just sort of because it was there. And I was surprised to find that I really like it. For an iterative update, they seem to have iterated a lot of the right things. Most of all Stage Manager, which many of us originally hated and turned off. It works so much better now that one YouTuber said he hasn't turned it off, and I haven't either. The way you size and arrange multiple app windows is so much more natural now, with fewer stupid limitations.
The improvements to Lock/Home Screen customization make them widgets more productive and informative for me. And I can't put my finger on it but the total experience just seems smoother and (dare I say it) snappier.
Perhaps there are some subtle niceties to debate regarding spacebar widths and messaging protocols and such, but since I installed iPad OS 17 all I can say that I just enjoy using my iPad a whole lot more than before I did the upgrade. Maybe it's more like iPad OS finally does not get in my way as much as it used to. Whatever it is, it's been great.
I don’t usually get very excited about iOS updates, so I installed iOS 17 on my iPad Pro just sort of because it was there. And I was surprised to find that I really like it. For an iterative update, they seem to have iterated a lot of the right things. Most of all Stage Manager, which many of us originally hated and turned off. It works so much better now that one YouTuber said he hasn't turned it off, and I haven't either. The way you size and arrange multiple app windows is so much more natural now, with fewer stupid limitations.
The improvements to Lock/Home Screen customization make them widgets more productive and informative for me. And I can't put my finger on it but the total experience just seems smoother and (dare I say it) snappier.
Perhaps there are some subtle niceties to debate regarding spacebar widths and messaging protocols and such, but since I installed iPad OS 17 all I can say that I just enjoy using my iPad a whole lot more than before I did the upgrade. Maybe it's more like iPad OS finally does not get in my way as much as it used to. Whatever it is, it's been great.
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Or maybe it’s that people who have chosen to use iOS might not actually want it to be more like Android? It’s perfectly fine to prefer the Android way of doing things over the iOS way. That doesn’t make the iOS way a “flaw”.
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I'm looking forward to the offline maps for drives through places that have terrible cell service.
One thing I'd love to see in future versons is not a rectangular download region but rather, say 20km on either side of a route from one city to another.
One thing I'd love to see in future versons is not a rectangular download region but rather, say 20km on either side of a route from one city to another.
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I don’t know how lobotomized iPadOS is, but my iPad Pro is a suitable sub to carrying an M1 MBP.
1. It has a 4/5G modem. (To me this is a huge advantage over a tethered MB.)
2. Ethernet works really well. I’ll log into a power plant and run SW and FW updates while a PC is on another network.
3. Lr is integrated pretty well.
4. There are great apps, Carrot Weather, Day One, PDF Editor etc. Ok all of my apps are paid for.
5. The display is a lot nicer than my MBP.
At the end of the day I can watch MLB.tv on the way home.
So I don’t think it’s entirely fair to say it’s not a laptop replacement. It has its strengths. It is fair to say the bang for the buck is lacking. Mine is an M1, WiFi/cell, 16Gig, two TB. And the Magic Keyboard Is usually attached.
For me, it’s a great laptop replacement.
1. It has a 4/5G modem. (To me this is a huge advantage over a tethered MB.)
2. Ethernet works really well. I’ll log into a power plant and run SW and FW updates while a PC is on another network.
3. Lr is integrated pretty well.
4. There are great apps, Carrot Weather, Day One, PDF Editor etc. Ok all of my apps are paid for.
5. The display is a lot nicer than my MBP.
At the end of the day I can watch MLB.tv on the way home.
So I don’t think it’s entirely fair to say it’s not a laptop replacement. It has its strengths. It is fair to say the bang for the buck is lacking. Mine is an M1, WiFi/cell, 16Gig, two TB. And the Magic Keyboard Is usually attached.
For me, it’s a great laptop replacement.
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I wondered if they actually made that mistake, but they didn't. It actually just says "Unlock to view Photos" in the middle of the screen.
It does show you an extremely abbreviated bit of their calendar. Three items, with just the time and the first ~12 characters of the event name. However, I have calendar notifications enabled for the lock screen, and I didn't check whether disabling that (or some other setting) changes how or if calendar events show up. Of course you can disable Standby, but it does default to on.
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Unless your co-worker is your identical twin that won’t work. StandBy is locked by FaceID/Passcode.
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What difference does that make? The only reason Google did it is because they're trying to work around all of the difficulty associated in updating Android - a problem of their own making. Apple doesn't have that problem.
More info on why Google had to do that and why Apple doesn't: Google's Iron Grip on Android.
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And just in case you're curious, the downvotes are because the second you say fanboys, all you're saying is that you have nothing meaningful to say.
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For me, the killer app here is the "Siri..." request. We have acquired a few Homepod Minis. They're useful, but for one chief weakness: they're so extraordinarily sensitive to "Hey Siri" that one in another room will answer the request, preempting my phone that's two feet away from my mouth. It will then have a 50% success rate comprehending the request that follows. Now I can set my phone to respond to "Siri" and leave the Homepods with "Hey Siri". Problem solved! (Sure sounds pretty insane when you write it all out like this, though.)
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The sharing is also great because it’ll stop my wife from getting notifications about an AirTag following her when she borrows my car.
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Why would you think you need a specific Magsafe dock? I just stuck my phone sideways on my normal Qi charger and it's fine. Same with just plugging it in and turning it on its side.
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RCS is a GSMA messaging protocol. Google just happens to be a vendor and a service provider (for telcos) and a terminal provider. Apple implementing it has nothing to do with Google. It's just that carriers are a shit-show, Google works around them, and Apple can't even be bothered engaging because they don't need to.
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They're openly documented (and just piggy-back on standard RCS so the gateways don't need to know or care, it's a client-side feature), but they do require using Google for key exchange.
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This is such a sad "stop liking things that I don't like" kind of comment. Have you tried being comfortable with other people's choices that don't affect you? It feels really good once you get used to it.
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Which essentially makes it useless. It also seems to be exceedingly flaky; I have my iPhone 12 Pro laying on its side, on charge, and about one time in 10 will a tap make the Standby mode come on. I'd be interested whether others have this issue.
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When it's described as E2EE, it really is. The clients encrypt things and stuff it into normal RCS messages. Google has to do the initial key exchange to identify devices (same way Apple does for the iMessage protocol, nothing new there), but after that it's done with it.
Conflating RCS in any way with Google is an easy mistake, but it is a mistake. That's because Google offers all the parts to vendors, but they all can interact with other standard components.
They offer the client on terminal devices. That's Google Messages
They offer as a vendor the RCS gateway software. That's what carriers can (and do) license. They can go to other vendors. They all interoperate.
They offer as a vendor the RCS gateway as a service (they cloud host their software). Again, carriers care. Or not. They can go elsewhere.
They offer a RCS gateway as a service to terminal devices using their client. That's because carriers are a shit-show. Again, that same gateway interoperates with other gateways fine. Samsung's RCS client also supports it too now, but it's not a requirement. It's a value-add feature for the client.
The E2EE part is a client feature and has nothing to do with the rest - and it falls back in the absence of a matching client at the other end.
Apple could at any point they feel like add standard RCS above MMS but below the iMessages protocol, and no big deal. Except it would rely on carriers not being a shit-show, and wading into that pool isn't worth their time - it would add a fragile point in the middle that doesn't have to exist.
When carriers finally get their act together (and there's 800+ of them), and then make the case to Apple that RCS is necessary, Apple will just add it like anything else.
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