Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
iPhone's HEIC Format Causing Some Students to Fail AP Exams, Here's How to Fix It
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
It’s not about adapting to Apple, but acknowledging the simple reality that the bulk of the students use iOS devices and taking the necessary safeguards.
And I am speaking from a teacher’s POV myself. Prior to my country closing the schools due to the pandemic, we teachers were rushing to familiarise our students with the platforms that we would be using to conduct home-based learning with them. Google Classroom, our own online learning portal, the website that would be used to house the instructions, Zoom, as well as whatever web service we want to use with them, nothing was left to chance. We made sure that everyone was familiar with the login details and procedures, and our IT dept even made sure that the HBL website could be viewed readily from any device, even the smallest smartphone. Teachers were instructed to use common formats like PDFs and YouTube videos that could work across any platform.
Granted, we were this particular mainly because we were dealing with young children (7-12 years), but also because as teachers, it is our responsibility to ensure that the students don’t miss out on their learning, and if this means having to spend the first few days playing tech support, then I treat it as part of the job.
Like I said, they are a school, and they have a responsibility to their students. And when you know that the majority of your students are using iPhones, it feels extremely negligent to not have factored this into their submission workflow.
Likewise, you don’t have your students sit for a major exam using an entirely new format without having a dry run first. It’s just common sense.
At the end of the day, the school has the duty to do right by their students and if they can’t, it’s on them, not the technology.
Ultimately, this is a simple story of a school not having prepared itself adequately to carry out an online exam properly. But Apple and iPhones get more clicks, and so here we are.
It reminds me back to old days, when finding workarounds to get through an almost entirely PC based world was a daily matter. It seems students today lack of initiative. /s (partially)
1. This is going to happen again the next time around. The problem is not solved.
2. Apple needs to provide a more simplified way of providing JPG files for everyone. You and I know how to do this but not everyone does.
I ran into this issue just the other day. I don’t understand why duplicate-as-jpg of an existing HEIF file in iOS Photos isn’t an integrated front-and-centre option. My workflow for a photo submission for my kids’ school from my iPhone was to AirDrop it to my iMac, load it in Preview, Export as JPEG (which wasn’t the default), and then send. I also find it odd that the AirDrop feature doesn’t offer a convert to jpg option up front. The weird part is that Apple forces the opposite choice for email. I can’t directly send an email with HEIF to someone from Photos on my phone. It’s not even an option. So, Apple is not even consistent with itself here. Yes I realize Apple is trying to simplify matters but sometimes their solutions cause other problems, ironically making things much more complicated.
2. Apple needs to provide a more simplified way of providing JPG files for everyone. You and I know how to do this but not everyone does.
I ran into this issue just the other day. I don’t understand why duplicate-as-jpg of an existing HEIF file in iOS Photos isn’t an integrated front-and-centre option. My workflow for a photo submission for my kids’ school from my iPhone was to AirDrop it to my iMac, load it in Preview, Export as JPEG (which wasn’t the default), and then send. I also find it odd that the AirDrop feature doesn’t offer a convert to jpg option up front. The weird part is that Apple forces the opposite choice for email. I can’t directly send an email with HEIF to someone from Photos on my phone. It’s not even an option. So, Apple is not even consistent with itself here. Yes I realize Apple is trying to simplify matters but sometimes their solutions cause other problems, ironically making things much more complicated.
Last edited:
Just so I understand this correctly, the school is 20 years behind in their technology and the students have to back pedal to an older less efficient format because as usual the school sees IT and all it encompasses as an expense not an asset?
I don't want to drag this out too much, but I have been teaching at a university for a couple of years in a course that actually did involve handing in assignments digitally. I consider the people I was teaching (physics grads) technically skilled, or at least more skilled than average graduates, but I've witnessed a lot of struggling with the simple requirement of compiling the solutions into a single pdf. It's difficult for me to imagine that the average high schooler will be able to do this reliably. I might very well underestimate the "new generation" of students and they capabilities though, so I guess it's just a matter of having the right tools.
Regarding the CAS topic: Yes, I think generally, computer science simply isn't as demanding regarding calculus, as physics or pure math (And I don't mean to sound superior about it, I am very aware that when it comes to discrete maths, CS grads are way ahead of me). I think it's great that it worked out for you, but in some fields you'll feel terribly lost without a solid calculus basis, as some of my friends back in my undergrad years admitted to me. I know it may feel silly to work stuff like integrals out manually (and don't get me wrong, I hardly ever do that either), but when you encounter, say, a derivation where integration by parts is used to simplify an integral, it gets pretty important that you have an intuition for these things. The intuition will never develop without seeing every step behind the scenes.
Think about it more like: Apple chose, for more or less valid reasons, to use a very obscure image format that basically nobody uses anywhere. In a kind of Apple-typical fashion they decided to be ignorant about the fact that outside their bubble nobody knows what the hell to do with that stuff and handed the problem with that to the users.
If the site accepts PDF files, which are universally compatible, they could use the Document Scan feature of iOS 13 to scan their tests and submit to the website. The scan will be a very legible copy of the test.
In the time it took to write up that tutorial, they likely could have just updated the app to parse HEIC file format...
I know this is only tangential, but I still have a dozen or so AOL ART format photos of people I took pics of or were shared to me on AOL that nothing will convert to anything viewable. I've been looking for years and everything says they are corrupt or it's a proprietary format. LOL
One day I will power up the trusty old PowerMac G5 and use AOL itself to convert them. Some of the pics actually have icons that say they are browser Plug-Ins now. So that format is REALLY abandoned! LOL
Steve Jobs really did know how to get even with companies he didn't like much like AOL.
Not to further tangent, but this link says it can convet ART files: https://www.aconvert.com/format/art/
I don't have any to test it with though.
I'm generally a big fan of Apple and a heavy-level user . . . but this is totally Apple's fault.
The HEIC format is great, should one choose to use it. Yep, it's better than JPEG; enabling it by default in the latest iOS is the problem. That'd be fine if HEIC was the standard—or even close to a standard—but that day hasn't yet come, so it's ridiculous to expect the world at large to think they need to read a tutorial about how to switch from a relatively new, non-standard default format to a format that's the default just about everywhere else on the planet.
Examining this as a one-time issue is also problematic, because jeez . . . every single time we visit a danged website we have to click a stupid "I accept" box. Every time we sign in anywhere—and EVERYTHING requires an individual account—we have to "read and agree to" the terms of use. Dunno about you, but if I read every single word of every single agreement/instructional/pop-up I'd die of old age before ever getting close to the end.
And on top of everything else, I'd be surprised if the decision to make Apple-shot photos HEIC by default wasn't at least somewhat about iCloud and maximizing server space.
Crabbing concluded.
The HEIC format is great, should one choose to use it. Yep, it's better than JPEG; enabling it by default in the latest iOS is the problem. That'd be fine if HEIC was the standard—or even close to a standard—but that day hasn't yet come, so it's ridiculous to expect the world at large to think they need to read a tutorial about how to switch from a relatively new, non-standard default format to a format that's the default just about everywhere else on the planet.
Examining this as a one-time issue is also problematic, because jeez . . . every single time we visit a danged website we have to click a stupid "I accept" box. Every time we sign in anywhere—and EVERYTHING requires an individual account—we have to "read and agree to" the terms of use. Dunno about you, but if I read every single word of every single agreement/instructional/pop-up I'd die of old age before ever getting close to the end.
And on top of everything else, I'd be surprised if the decision to make Apple-shot photos HEIC by default wasn't at least somewhat about iCloud and maximizing server space.
Crabbing concluded.
This bring horror days back from the 90s when mac files will not work on Windows and the opposite, I love standards!
That being said, this is Apple's mistake, they used a format that I never heard used any where else but promised it will work when shared with others. Thats what I remember.
That being said, this is Apple's mistake, they used a format that I never heard used any where else but promised it will work when shared with others. Thats what I remember.
Android introduced HEIF about 6 months after Apple did (mid-2018) with Android P. Windows 10 added support before that in early 2018.
It's not a school; the tests here are AP tests, which are competitors to IB, or broadly similar to A-levels. So you have three parties that have to work together: the school (which would have normally administered the exam in paper form), the student/family (using personal technology not under control of the school), and the College Board (being a huge non-tech organization which is not good at rapid software development).
If the school misplaced the paper tests, that would be one thing. But the school doesn't have control of the test website, nor do they have control over the test hardware.
I attribute most of the blame on College Board. If you've been following along, there's other serious test administration issues, like accommodations for disabilities, that they failed to address.
I think you mean the college board being retarded and archaic could not adapt to existing technology seamlessly so blames students. AP exams this year were worthless. If I was a college I would not take them. Most will be completely subjective graded by bored grad students with minor objectivity.
Also, a huge portion of students cheated by calling each other during the exam and essentially taking it together.
Also, a huge portion of students cheated by calling each other during the exam and essentially taking it together.
That would have been a great idea... oh, wait, they did exactly that. And told students repeatedly to try it out. And were ignored by the same students now whining about file types. cb.org/demo was originally scheduled to go live for exactly that purpose on May 4, a week before exams, but actually went live the week before that because College Board busted their tails to get it ready in time for students to have plenty of practice. Tried it out myself, worked great. Of course, I followed the instructions.
**for the record, CB is not my organization, as I do not work for it. I am simply a teacher of an AP Class and as such it is my job to pay attention to what they put out in regards to stuff like this.
You're acting like the tweet was the first mention, when in fact it was one of the last. https://apcoronavirusupdates.collegeboard.org/ has been active since late March, and the specifics about file types have been on there since late April. I could search through the -literally- hundreds of emails I've had relating to this, but that feels like a waste of my time.
Also, I know the demo rejected HEIC files because I had students that had ignored that part of it until then and reported to me that the demo was what clued them in to the files not working.
I can only speak to what I've experienced and seen; Whilst I'm a CS student now, I did politics as my main course in high school, and even before high school, handing in assignments as PDF was the norm. I think once it's normal it's just one of those every day things you hardly think about regardless of what tool you use. But I guess to properly make a judgement on it we'd need a much larger cross section of society to give their opinions, both students and teachers from many different fields, and after trying out both systems.
In the end I think we agree that the tool isn't the important part - at least unless it's in a field where learning how to use a tool is part of the goal. Question is just whether learning how to use the tool lessens or improves the main learning outcome and ease of working. In my experiences with all the things I've studied I feel it's made me faster and helped me organise my thoughts better than a pen and paper - but that's more anecdotal than anything.
Though it is a fascinating debate that could warrant further studying by those with power of the system, to see what is ultimately the best for students; perhaps a hybrid solution really would be optimal, I don't really know.
Hm. I think it depends which university you study CS at. I have friends who study CS at other universities, and by what I've heard from them, my university has much greater focus on math and theoretical math especially than theirs. But of course, regardless of where it is, CS is different from studying pure math at least, so of course not as mathematically demanding as that would be. But I'm currently in my second year and have taken Calculus, Linear Algebra, Probability theory and statistics, Formal logic and provability as well as computability, which is arguably more a CS than a math course, but I count it as mathematical since it was more math heavy than most of the purer CS courses.
And while we do a lot of stuff with CAS tools and the like, we're still heavily encouraged to du some things by "hand", still writing it out on a computer - often you also only get points if you show your steps - but you can still use a CAS tool to verify your result as well as use it as a writer - it's like a mathematical typesetting program that is what you see is what you get. Essentially you can use a CAS program like Maple as if it were Word for math.
I guess what I'm saying is that I agree that there's a lot of value in working some things out manually; I just don't think you need to do it on paper to get the desired effect, and I'd still say it's faster and easier to write out manually on a computer than with a pen, but again that's just anecdotal. I also think there's great value in doing it with a CAS tool though, so you can focus on the bigger picture and meaning of the results, rather than the often trivial steps of a calculation that can easily go wrong - You do Gram Schmidt process on just a slightly large input without making a fatigue mistake
. It's the same thing again, and again and again - it's not hard, it's just a lot of steps. For my linear algebra exam I did it by hand since we were supposed to show our workings out (written in Maple) but verified my result in Maple. I had made a mistake somewhere, but because of time constraints I just wrote that as a comment; I was sure in my methodology but had made some silly mistake somewhere, the correct answer was whatever it was, and moved on. Full points, cause they could see I clearly understood what I was doing since I still had all the steps but had just written a wrong value somewhere, clearly by mistake as I argued each step, and I recognised there was something wrong with the validation stage. I think this is a way of doing things that makes a lot of sense since you sort of get the benefit of both worlds, and it takes almost no extra time to write out your results and verify them since it's all within the same tool, and to me at least takes less time to write math in maple than with a pen.No matter what though, in the end it's what works best for the individual, or in cases where it's impossible to make individual accommodations, the majority, that is most important and I can only speak to what works for me and the people around me whom I've spoken to about things like this. I'm very happy with Denmarks fairly digitalised education system though
Darth Tulhu
macrumors 68020
I'm not really sure how this happened, but I think it could be the result of a perfect storm (in no particular order), combining any or all of the below:
1. The pandemic forces school systems to scramble to deal with a scenario no one was really ready for
2. A failure of the school system to take into account that mobile devices are THE primary computing device of students
3. A failure of the school system to recognize the likelihood that the majority of their students will have an Apple device
4. Apple's habit of doing things "their way" because they believe it's better (no Flash, USB-C only, butterfly keyboards, FireWire, etc)
5. A bias of IT personnel towards Windows, leading to Windows-centric new and legacy infrastructure
6. Students not paying attention to provided instructions
That said, I've been actually impressed with what schools in my district have accomplished, and how quickly they did so.
So, regardless of this snafu, to the teachers out there and in this forum that are bending over backwards for their students in this fracked up situation we find ourselves in:
THANK YOU.
1. The pandemic forces school systems to scramble to deal with a scenario no one was really ready for
2. A failure of the school system to take into account that mobile devices are THE primary computing device of students
3. A failure of the school system to recognize the likelihood that the majority of their students will have an Apple device
4. Apple's habit of doing things "their way" because they believe it's better (no Flash, USB-C only, butterfly keyboards, FireWire, etc)
5. A bias of IT personnel towards Windows, leading to Windows-centric new and legacy infrastructure
6. Students not paying attention to provided instructions
That said, I've been actually impressed with what schools in my district have accomplished, and how quickly they did so.
So, regardless of this snafu, to the teachers out there and in this forum that are bending over backwards for their students in this fracked up situation we find ourselves in:
THANK YOU.
That's what you get when you have a monopoly on certification. I hated them then, hate them now.
Oh‘I though one of the points of AV1was that it is patentunecombered so no one can be sued for impkementing it in their sw am I wrong?
Well as has been sugested safari does the right thing if the website provides the right mimetypes under accepted encoding ( or what that http header is named) ofc it’s up to the site developer/ server admin to nake shote the header actually indicates the cottect type instead of just all. Correct me if I’m wrong, but all means any format the client is capable of sending, right?
Considering how ubiquitous iPhones are these days and that the default format is HEIC on iOS, then my view is that it's incumbent on college boards to have reasonably foreseen this issue and procured the appropriate software/licensing to ensure they can support HEIC.
Expecting that all users would adequately read the instructions and change their format to JPEG is naive and dumb of College Boards...
This is akin to Apple's iPhone 4 Antannaegate gaffe... Apple made big claims that the supposed antennae problem occurred for only 0.2% of iPhone users... That may have been true, but what Apple forgot is that 0.2% of iPhone users was still something like 40,000 unhappy iPhone owners who collectively still made a lot of noise and created massively bad PR for Apple...
So too for College Boards... even if only 1% of students didn't follow the instruction, it's still a big PR issue for the College, and therefore it would have been incumbent on them to have factored this in when deciding to go the lazy option of expecting students to change their photo format, or implement support for HEIC on their systems.... Alas I suspect their arrogance got the better of them.
Expecting that all users would adequately read the instructions and change their format to JPEG is naive and dumb of College Boards...
This is akin to Apple's iPhone 4 Antannaegate gaffe... Apple made big claims that the supposed antennae problem occurred for only 0.2% of iPhone users... That may have been true, but what Apple forgot is that 0.2% of iPhone users was still something like 40,000 unhappy iPhone owners who collectively still made a lot of noise and created massively bad PR for Apple...
So too for College Boards... even if only 1% of students didn't follow the instruction, it's still a big PR issue for the College, and therefore it would have been incumbent on them to have factored this in when deciding to go the lazy option of expecting students to change their photo format, or implement support for HEIC on their systems.... Alas I suspect their arrogance got the better of them.