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Apple Touts Faster Core Software Features Across Devices
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oh ya thats a good case, yeah it is annoying to have to wait on icloud sync
TinyMito
macrumors 6502a
Not really, the faster the task finished the less strain on the performance and battery.
NT1440
macrumors P6
I actually only noticed it in the latest few updates. I’m constantly listening to podcasts throughout the day so I just want it back where it was 🤷♂️
Maybe a little bit of storage/memory pressure off, but you don't get these kinds of speedups by just dropping binaries that are unused and sitting on the disk. Most of the speed comes from rearchitecting the scheduler and better balancing what's needed in the moment. Did some of that benefit from not needing to think about x86 macs, maybe. But I also thought that segment was focused on iOS/iPadOS, not sure how many of these were in the mac section?
The iPad for one they said the files app is now as fast as mac, so no speed up for mac etc.
NT1440
macrumors P6
I think what the market wants, and what people want are two different things.
I think Apple’s privacy focused approach, and focus on useful things to REGULAR people (read:not tech nerds) is the right approach. They built AI *infrastructure* that will still exist after the bubble pops. The same cannot be said about OpenAi or Anthropic who will be gobbled up in bankruptcy soon enough.
It’s bold because they were explaining how faster it is. They did the same for a couple other speed improvements as well.
ikramerica
macrumors 68020
Yep. I airdrop from phone to MBP all the time. It also doesn’t clog up your messages with large files like the “text myself” poster.
That's exactly what I'm wondering. I thought the rumor was we were getting battery improvements?
Someone needs to test if it’s back to ios 18 levels or just faster than 26 but still slower than 18.
Mac Fly (film)
macrumors 68040
Don't know if I'm in the minority, but I'd like this to be a feature of every OS release—each time they find ways to make things smoother and faster and list all of the new ways they've found to do that. Make every release a Snow Leopard.
Low power mode was outright broken in 26, it was never that bad before but even pulling down the notification shade sometimes locked up the OS response for a while
octopi
macrumors regular
One of Apple's biggest mistakes was moving to a major OS update every year. The development is always rushed with way way too many bugs. This just goes to show how much better they can get things if they just slow up a little. A major OS every 2 years with incrementals in between is way better for the end user.
dwaite
macrumors 65816
it was a feature called out, and MacRumors used a screen capture at that moment as the artwork.
dwaite
macrumors 65816
Likely approximately the same amount of work - but if you can do more work in a period of time, your battery will deplete sooner.
FeliApple
macrumors 601
Historically, on iOS and iPadOS, the previous updates that touted performance improvements were true (barring iOS 9), but they came at a cost of battery life like always.
Performance hasn’t even been the overwhelming issue with 64-bit iOS updates, it’s been battery life. It has been obliterated, see A9 devices on 11 onwards, A10 devices, A12 devices on iOS 18, and a long list of etc.
With no hardware drop in support, I’m scared of the oldest few supported models. Will they get 1.5 hours like 1st and 2nd-gen iPad Pros and the iPhone 6s and 7?
So far, like I said, Apple hasn’t really lied with performance improvements, so that’s good. We’ll see.
Performance hasn’t even been the overwhelming issue with 64-bit iOS updates, it’s been battery life. It has been obliterated, see A9 devices on 11 onwards, A10 devices, A12 devices on iOS 18, and a long list of etc.
With no hardware drop in support, I’m scared of the oldest few supported models. Will they get 1.5 hours like 1st and 2nd-gen iPad Pros and the iPhone 6s and 7?
So far, like I said, Apple hasn’t really lied with performance improvements, so that’s good. We’ll see.
This is very, very good news. Shiny and new is nice and all, but mostly I just want what's already there to work better. Windows has been aggressively not doing that for decades, and the Mac has been doing the exact opposite recently.
But honestly, speed is not a thing I've complained about for years. What I want is reliability. The coincidental AirDrop emphasis in that screenshot in particular: AirDrop is awesome. I love it. I want to use it all the time to get stuff between various devices in my home. But the reality of it is that it just does not work reliably, and there's never an explanation--devices just fail to appear, or files fail to send with no error message.
Going from my phone to Mac, in particular, I'm pretty sure I have to reboot one or the other device to get it working at least every other time I try. The feature is awesome when it works, but that when is so uncommonly "on the first try" that it feels less like magic and more like a lie.
It does seem to have gotten better very recently, so perhaps there's already some work happening under the hood, but basically I would be far happier to see improved reliability of existing features than any other thing Apple could offer.
And don't even get me started on the Mac-side UI backsliding recently. Take Maps as a simple option, latest version, 26.5.1:
Click a location. Click Directions. Click "My Location" to change it to some other starting point. When the panel switches to entering a new location, the "My Location" text in the entry field is selected and it has focus, so you can start typing and it will replace whatever is there, which is exactly what you expect and has been the case since the '80s. Except due to the last place you clicked, the mouse is now hovering over the top of the suggestions list, and if it moves even a single pixel before you get your hands to the keyboard, focus switches to the list and the text in the box gets de-selected.
So not only can you now not just start typing--you get a bunch of error pop sounds instead of text like you expect--but if you now click the text entry box again, nothing is selected, so you have to triple-click or click and command-A in order to select the text and delete it to get whatever you actually wanted.
But it gets worse! You see the item you want in the list below, so your instinct is to hit down-arrow to select it. Except down-arrow does nothing, you need to hit tab to switch focus to a list that has no indication it's a different region in the popover instead of an auto-suggest drop-down like it should be, and then you can arrow down. Or you can mouse over the list and have it instantly steal focus from the text entry again, at which point the arrow keys work, but typing the first letters in the list item to hop to it does not. But even that's a lie, because while you can use the arrow keys to move the highlight down the list, hitting return... does nothing. Doesn't populate the box above, doesn't confirm the selection and go back to the previous page, nothing. So the highlight controlled by the arrow keys is an utterly useless placebo, the only way to actually do anything with the selected item is to go back to the mouse and click on it.
All of those UI things were solved decades ago, and have worked well for my entire professional life using a Mac. Yet here's a first-party major app from Apple that can't even get text-box entry correct.
Fix the broken windows and leaking pipes before you start remodeling the Kitchen or adding a whole new wing to the house.
But honestly, speed is not a thing I've complained about for years. What I want is reliability. The coincidental AirDrop emphasis in that screenshot in particular: AirDrop is awesome. I love it. I want to use it all the time to get stuff between various devices in my home. But the reality of it is that it just does not work reliably, and there's never an explanation--devices just fail to appear, or files fail to send with no error message.
Going from my phone to Mac, in particular, I'm pretty sure I have to reboot one or the other device to get it working at least every other time I try. The feature is awesome when it works, but that when is so uncommonly "on the first try" that it feels less like magic and more like a lie.
It does seem to have gotten better very recently, so perhaps there's already some work happening under the hood, but basically I would be far happier to see improved reliability of existing features than any other thing Apple could offer.
And don't even get me started on the Mac-side UI backsliding recently. Take Maps as a simple option, latest version, 26.5.1:
Click a location. Click Directions. Click "My Location" to change it to some other starting point. When the panel switches to entering a new location, the "My Location" text in the entry field is selected and it has focus, so you can start typing and it will replace whatever is there, which is exactly what you expect and has been the case since the '80s. Except due to the last place you clicked, the mouse is now hovering over the top of the suggestions list, and if it moves even a single pixel before you get your hands to the keyboard, focus switches to the list and the text in the box gets de-selected.
So not only can you now not just start typing--you get a bunch of error pop sounds instead of text like you expect--but if you now click the text entry box again, nothing is selected, so you have to triple-click or click and command-A in order to select the text and delete it to get whatever you actually wanted.
But it gets worse! You see the item you want in the list below, so your instinct is to hit down-arrow to select it. Except down-arrow does nothing, you need to hit tab to switch focus to a list that has no indication it's a different region in the popover instead of an auto-suggest drop-down like it should be, and then you can arrow down. Or you can mouse over the list and have it instantly steal focus from the text entry again, at which point the arrow keys work, but typing the first letters in the list item to hop to it does not. But even that's a lie, because while you can use the arrow keys to move the highlight down the list, hitting return... does nothing. Doesn't populate the box above, doesn't confirm the selection and go back to the previous page, nothing. So the highlight controlled by the arrow keys is an utterly useless placebo, the only way to actually do anything with the selected item is to go back to the mouse and click on it.
All of those UI things were solved decades ago, and have worked well for my entire professional life using a Mac. Yet here's a first-party major app from Apple that can't even get text-box entry correct.
Fix the broken windows and leaking pipes before you start remodeling the Kitchen or adding a whole new wing to the house.