All of the New Features in iPadOS 16.2 and iOS 16.2: Freeform App, Stage Manager External Display Support, Accidental Emergency SOS Reports and More

[_Spinn_]

Excited for the Freeform app and the new HomeKit architecture.

 

[name99]

"New Home App Architecture"
Oh thank god! Our long national nightmare (HomeKit shipped in 2015) may FINALLY be over!

Or not... Let's see if the issues were ACTUALLY fixed...
Most important are
- better (ie not COMPLETELY BROKEN) support of homes with multiple hubs
- not killing the WiFi connection every month or so (burning up some resource?)
- retrying failed connections
- reliable Automation (at the very least, eg not randomly disabling Automations)

Of secondary importance are
- better detection that the user has arrived home. (The current scheme is especially useless for users of wireless CarPlay who cannot detect that the home WiFi is available until wireless CarPlay ends.)
- some sort of ADULT debugging facilities for Automation, for example logging.
- better UI for indicating actual known state vs unknown state. The current UI is far too eager to display items the way they were twelve hours ago, with no update in the display for a minute or more till the new state comes in.
- indication + notifications of items that are no longer reachable

Of tertiary importance (but still a unified location would be nice)
- displaying (for ALL items) maintenance features like updates and low batteries

 

[name99]

No, that is a bad solution, as has been explained countless times across the internet ALAC is a poor choice for anyone intending to actually store audio and not at all an appropriate substitute for FLAC

And yet I have TONS of material stored in ALAC.

Maybe it's inappropriate for INTEROP, I have no idea, but it works just fine for storage (and playback on the full range of Apple devices).

 

[ErikGrim]

- some sort of ADULT debugging facilities for Automation, for example logging.

‎HomeLog for HomeKit

‎HomeLog is the best way to track and find issues in your HomeKit homes over time. Log changes in your HomeKit accessories, track when a device is unreachable and Features: • On the Mac, you can log changes even when the app is hidden with our specially crafted powerful logging system. • A...

apps.apple.com

 

[fieryaleeco]

Stage Manager is useful for many people, including myself. Sure, it has quirks and bugs but I don’t agree that it’s fundamentally wrong. Fundamentally wrong against what? Against traditional computer navigation concept?

I use my iPad Pro M1 12.9 for work as an E-Commerce Manager and Stage Manager has made my workflow better. I have my emails, notes, slack and browser as one group, MS Excel, our ERP and other related work apps in another and switching is much easier. I set the display to More Space, autohide the task switcher and the dock for maximum space and I’m happy with it. I and my colleagues find Stage Manager really helpful.

Only the people who want the iPad to behave like a traditional computer think Stage Manager is bad, but the iPad is not. Why are we forcing the iPad to be one? I have a desktop for things I cannot do with the iPad.

Apple just needs to perfect the external display support, fix the resizing landscape/portrait resizing bugs, find a solution as to how the task switcher treats opened windows when the are more than 4 sets running, improve how existing windows are move around when adding another app or window, implement a top bar for each app, etc.

People love the iPad as an iPad, let’s not make it a traditional computer.

My issue is just that there are so many bugs that I reported in the first 16.0/16.1 betas that still haven't been addressed. When closing apps in the multitasking page, the remaining windows fly across the screen. It's like the most recent app is in the top right, second most is the top left, third is further to the left, off the screen.

If I have a stage with say Notes, Spark & Safari, then remove one of the first two from the stage, Safari also leaves and joins a stage containing every other Safari window I have open in a big pile. You can't tap and hold then move apps in the multitasking view anymore so all those Safari windows are stuck in said pile, with no way I have found to add them to another app and create a stage.

On top of those issues, there are many little weird things that Stage Manager does which to me seem like bugs, but to Apple may seem like features.

It was unfinished a month ago and hasn't really changed since then. But now that iOS 16.1 is out to the public, does that mean all these issues are here to stay?

 

[dalestrauss]

Apple just needs to perfect the external display support, fix the resizing landscape/portrait resizing bugs, find a solution as to how the task switcher treats opened windows when the are more than 4 sets running, improve how existing windows are move around when adding another app or window, implement a top bar for each app, etc.

AKA MacOS...let's face facts here (according to Apple)...the vast majority (which I say is a small majority) want the clean pristine oneness of iPadOS. If Apple is right, why not just let those of us in the tiny minority dual boot into MacOS as needed and deal with the interface consequences ourselves. Problem solved for us without disturbing the "iPaddiness" of the pure iPad experience.

 

[Solver]

Hoping this new faster more reliable home app architecture has some compatibility mode for devices that are not 16.2 by the time it's released to the public. Currently in this beta release it does not.

 

[name99]

‎HomeLog for HomeKit

‎HomeLog is the best way to track and find issues in your HomeKit homes over time. Log changes in your HomeKit accessories, track when a device is unreachable and Features: • On the Mac, you can log changes even when the app is hidden with our specially crafted powerful logging system. • A...

apps.apple.com

Does this actually record anything useful for debugging Automations? Neither the screenshots nor the reviews suggest that.
For example I have an Automation that is supposed to fire at 5pm. It doesn't. Why not? WTF knows, but I don't see anything in the app that would help with that.

I'd LOVE a solution that did the job, but whatever problem this is trying to solve, it's unclear to me that it solves the debugging problem. Am I wrong?

 

[name99]

Does this actually record anything useful for debugging Automations? Neither the screenshots nor the reviews suggest that.
For example I have an Automation that is supposed to fire at 5pm. It doesn't. Why not? WTF knows, but I don't see anything in the app that would help with that.

I'd LOVE a solution that did the job, but whatever problem this is trying to solve, it's unclear to me that it solves the debugging problem. Am I wrong?

Well I decided to give it a try since anything is better than nothing! Let's see how helpful it is in trying to track the various Automations I have that simply refuse to fire as appropriate. Thanks for the recommendation.

 

[ww1971]

What about an option to change time font in Lock Screen in ipad os 16.2? The current Lock Screen time font is very hard to read

 

[name99]

Well I decided to give it a try since anything is better than nothing! Let's see how helpful it is in trying to track the various Automations I have that simply refuse to fire as appropriate. Thanks for the recommendation.

So now I've had a chance to work with the app for a day.

HomeLog is definitely not yet where it should be (filtering is non-existent, especially the most important feature, to filter by time!; and it's far too clunky to move from piece of data to another [eg when I click on a time, I should see material filtered by that time, when I click on a device I should see all the changes to that device]).

Even so it's enough to validate that HomeKit is unbelievably broken, in ways that are hard to understand and believe :-(


What we already knew was that HomeKit will
- randomly switch Automations to disabled (so of course they don't run)
- randomly toggle the UTTERLY USELESS run-once switch (so they run once then are disabled)
- randomly move devices between rooms (so that an Automation no longe works because a target device no longer appears to exist)

What was less obvious was that (at least right now)
- pretty much anything TIME-related seems not to execute. You can look at the appropriate times (absolute time or sunrise/sunset relative) and NOTHING. No scenes happening, NOTHING!!!

- if an Automation makes any reference to a "sensitive/security" item (like a door/lock) that does not appear to be able to execute over "the internet". Which is fine and justifiable except, as I said, it means that such items CANNOT execute when you leave/return to the house and have Wireless CarPlay active because your connection to the house will be by 5G and so will not appear to be local. While the idea is fine, every detail about this seems not to have been thought out, starting with the zero error/warning messaging.
For example (this is just part of the idiocy) I have a smart garage door, and CarPlay automatically shows this when I enter the car to leave, or get close to, the house. Sounds good. And it worked fine with WIRED CarPlay, but stopped working (no explanation, of course) with WIRELESS CarPlay...


There may well be HomeKit issues with radio connections, and there may well be bugs in 3rd party devices. But HomeLog confirms what I was suspecting years ago – there's a level of sheer incompetence in HomeKit that's impossible to grasp if you have not worked with it. How can you fsck up a TIME-BASED Automation? It simply does not get easier than that. And yet, right now, no Time-Based Automations of mine are executing - not a single one.

 

[Celtic-moniker]

Stage Manager is possibly the worst UI/UX software design I've seen.
Can't think of anything this bad on all the versions of Windows, Linux, mobile OS.

It's clear their process was "We absolutely don't want to give people movable windows like on a traditional OS but what else can we do to make it computer like?"
How about instead of showing single apps at once we show a like overview of all apps in use. Yeah that sounds computer like.
Then came up with showing multiple windows.. but that's already there with split view. So let's make it different where it's like a blob of more than 2 apps overlaying each other.. but now you can't even see 2 apps at once so you've removed the entire purpose.
Then at the same time tried to add task switcher like thumbnails of apps but that are always on the screen because why not. We've already wasted most of the screen real estate.

It's so terribly done I can't believe more people aren't calling it out.

Worst you have seen? I guess you were born this century. You’ve also not justified this statement with anything other than a subjective view that demonstrates you feel uncomfortable working outside a traditional windowed environment.
Everything from your second paragraph onwards doesn’t make sense either - as though you just expect everyone to have the same view as you, and forgot to contextualise it. Are you talking stage manager on Ventura? Here’s a shock, it hasn’t replaced the usual windowed environment and you can choose to use it.
ipad? Again… huge shock... if it isn’t improving your workflow you again… *gasp* don‘t have to use it.
You seem to be circling around a different issue while being confused that others aren’t reacting the same way as you. You are critical because it’s not giving you something else you were wanting, as though Apple’s key job is to read your whims.

 

[Junior Amboy]

AKA MacOS...let's face facts here (according to Apple)...the vast majority (which I say is a small majority) want the clean pristine oneness of iPadOS. If Apple is right, why not just let those of us in the tiny minority dual boot into MacOS as needed and deal with the interface consequences ourselves. Problem solved for us without disturbing the "iPaddiness" of the pure iPad experience.

It seems you are what Apple wants to stick to MacOS only. The rest can enjoy the iPad. Apple is never ever going to put MacOS on a iPad. Because “business”.

 

[Krazykev]

I too am nonplussed by Stage Manager. I will persevere with side by side windows and multiple workspaces. Also, there's no reason why you shouldn't be able to use external monitors in clamshell mode. Other than intentional hobbling of functionality to avoid self cannibalism.