What's New in iOS 10.3: Find My AirPods, APFS File System, New Apple ID Setting and More

[QuarterSwede]

View attachment 685423 This morning on my drive to work I noticed several subtle improvements to CarPlay. I felt like my experience using CarPlay was much better this morning after updating to the beta than it ever has been. I really appreciated the shortcuts for launching the most recently used apps. I've often thought this would be a nice feature as they have always done this when maps is active but you are on another app. I'm not sure if this is new but i don't recall being able to view a list of what songs are up next. I have often wanted to be able to do this when listening to an apple playlist and I noticed this ability for the first time this morning.
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Nice catch! Up Next is new!

 

[pacorob]

Interesting. At least it does seem to be a step towards finally allowing 3rd party apps to have live icons à la Clock and Weather. Let's hope iOS 11 takes this one step further.

It would indeed be great to see somewhere down the line the option to have third party apps really running in the background but that you can close the app as well. Example: like with a radioclock app such as TuneIn Radio (Pro), Sonio or Bedr alarm clock radio that would be great to wake up with and so you don't have to leave the app open all the time.

View attachment 685423 This morning on my drive to work I noticed several subtle improvements to CarPlay. I felt like my experience using CarPlay was much better this morning after updating to the beta than it ever has been. I really appreciated the shortcuts for launching the most recently used apps. I've often thought this would be a nice feature as they have always done this when maps is active but you are on another app. I'm not sure if this is new but i don't recall being able to view a list of what songs are up next. I have often wanted to be able to do this when listening to an apple playlist and I noticed this ability for the first time this morning.
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So do you actuallly have to press the "Up next" button to see these up next tracks or can you also set it so you can see your current tracks and your upcoming tracks?
It does sound crucial that they finally added the option to see a list of recently used apps. I would have though you could already do this and even have a selection of your favorite apps.

 

[baseball99]

Same problem here. Tried reinstalling the profile too on both iPad and iPhone. Still getting same "iOS 10.2.1 Your software is up to date' message too.

 

[sbailey4]

You won't _see_ any difference. Certain apps might use less space. Certain operations might be quicker. Certain faults might not lead to problems, where they would have led to problems before. All things that you won't notice.

Um more space avail? YES will notice esp on 16gb devices
Quicker operations? YES will notice
No faults and crashes? YES will notice.

Let's just hope they HAVE been doing lots of behind the scenes testing of this on iOS and macOS devices well before this, so by the time it is actually released to the public it'll be perfect.
I do agree it feels like they are sneaking it into a small update when it'd be better if they waited, who knows they could still leave it out of the final release... You'd think they might've thought more about it from the whole "discoveryd" conundrum on Yosemite till 10.10.4 and iOS 8.

You seriously dont think they just decided "hey lets send out a new FS on this 1st beta for sh**s and grins" do you? And "sneak it in"? its mentioned in the notes.

File System Conversion
When you update to iOS 10.3, your iOS device will update its file system to Apple File System
(APFS). This conversion preserves existing data on your device. However, as with any software
update, it is recommended that you create a backup of your device before updating.

Anyone else unable to get the update to iOS 10.3 beta 1 to show up after they've installed the profile? I've tried uninstalling and reinstalling the profile, doing hard reboots, etc, but every time I do, I don't get the update just the "iOS 10.2.1 Your software is up to date" screen.

Same problem here. Tried reinstalling the profile too on both iPad and iPhone. Still getting same "iOS 10.2.1 Your software is up to date' message too.

You guys dont have the public profile do you? This one is only a DEV beta and requires that profile to be installed.

 

[v0lume4]

If you're wrong we won't remember you saying this. If you're right we won't remember you saying this. But seriously, if you watch the video regardless of the shape of future iPhone displays the rounded animation seems to have been added to enable a more seamless transition to the app icon shape.

It actually reminds me a bit of the app-opening Android animation if you've seen that one.

 

[ksnell]

I hear ya. So do you normally leave everything on then? It's not that I feel I'm being spied on, I just default to off unless its a feature I'm trying to use.

Hah In reality I am pretty selfish with it. I leave it off typically too, even though Mr. Snowden has informed us that if they want a piece of information from us (Hi NSA!), they are going to get it. Don't think checking the box yes or no would really stop anything malicious from happening.

 

[AdmiralShackbar]

Has the public beta version come out yet? Its not showing on my devices

 

[gsmornot]

Hah In reality I am pretty selfish with it. I leave it off typically too, even though Mr. Snowden has informed us that if they want a piece of information from us (Hi NSA!), they are going to get it. Don't think checking the box yes or no would really stop anything malicious from happening.

If I turn on iCloud Analytics, leave and come right back it's off. So, no need to worry about that one.

 

[Abazigal]

Sneaking in a file system change in a point update of iOS is really a horrid action by Apple. People will update to get bug fixes not knowing the danger to their data. The change should have been deferred until a major iOS update and a new iPhone model. Those with mission critical needs could then stay behind on an old iOS on an old iPhone.

My guess is that this is a potentially controversial and risky move that Apple just wants to get over and done with. Implementing it now would give Apple plenty of time to deal with any issues by the time iOS 11 is scheduled to be released. This way, you don't have people not wanting to upgrade to the latest software version simply because they have heard stories of how it might screw around with their storage.

 

[DeepIn2U]

If there's even a minor bug in the new file system, you can lose all your data.

Once APFS comes to macOS, I'm sure there will be mission critical users that will choose to stay on HFS+ for years to come. They won't switch until APFS has seen lots of real world use.

Sneaking in a file system change in a point update of iOS is really a horrid action by Apple. People will update to get bug fixes not knowing the danger to their data. The change should have been deferred until a major iOS update and a new iPhone model. Those with mission critical needs could then stay behind on an old iOS on an old iPhone.



From what I've read, APFS isn't specifically "optimized" for SSD's, but rather makes use of the fast random access capability of SSD.

HFS and HFS+ were designed in a single threaded era. They were also designed for drives that are slow at random access. Therefore, the directory structures are all one big blob at the start of the disk. (Well, actually several, but they'll start out all together.) Now, in a multi core, multi threaded era, all threads have to wait their turn as a single thread accesses the file system. APFS splits the directories up so multiple threads can access the file system. The downside is that data is scattered around, but on an SSD this doesn't matter.

Such false!


https://arstechnica.com/apple/2017/...ples-first-update-to-convert-storage-to-apfs/

It's an approach that makes sense; there are way more iDevices than Macs out there, which would increase the number of affected users if anything goes wrong. But iOS doesn't give users direct control of the file system or of their devices' partition maps, so it's a reasonably safe, controlled environment. Macs can have a wider variety of partition and file system setups, increasing the likelihood that some edge case will throw things off. There's no suggestion in the macOS 10.12.4 release notes that any drives will be converted to APFS, and we may need to wait for the next major release of the operating system before that starts happening.

Source:!

https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2016/701/
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My guess is that this is a potentially controversial and risky move that Apple just wants to get over and done with. Implementing it now would give Apple plenty of time to deal with any issues by the time iOS 11 is scheduled to be released. This way, you don't have people not wanting to upgrade to the latest software version simply because they have heard stories of how it might screw around with their storage.

Agreed. ONLY those Jailbroken will get screwed over but HEY they're NOT supported anyway and voided warranty according to Apple
Next we'll see iPhone's hacked by those users to run Android.
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Given that iOS and macOS have the same OS foundation, boot support for macOS shouldn't be far off.

Cannot WAIT for this.

Those with Time Capsule's with OSX/MacOS be prepared to NOT be supported.
This is where Apple is REALLY goign to push for Services revenues ... we may see price adjustments with iCloud once boot volumes with APFS is implented!
Now I wonder if so, will Apple introduce a buy-back/trade-in-for-iCloud-storage vouchers when returning your in/out-of-warranty-TimeCapsule's ? Hmmm.

 

[Shirasaki]

Because...analysing 1.000.000.000 syslogs is easier/faster than just 1.000.000 ?

Statistically speaking, it is somewhat easier.

 

[springsup]

Apple File System - When installing iOS 10.3, the iPhone's file system will be updated to use Apple File System (APFS). Apple recommends making a backup before downloading the new update. Announced at WWDC last year, APFS is optimized for Flash/SSD storage and includes features like strong encryption, space sharing, copy-on write metadata, cloning for files and directories, snapshots, and more.

This is HUGE! I am absolutely gobsmacked that they're shipping it now, and in a minor update, no less!

 

[MacBH928]

HFS and HFS+ were designed in a single threaded era. They were also designed for drives that are slow at random access. Therefore, the directory structures are all one big blob at the start of the disk. (Well, actually several, but they'll start out all together.) Now, in a multi core, multi threaded era, all threads have to wait their turn as a single thread accesses the file system. APFS splits the directories up so multiple threads can access the file system. The downside is that data is scattered around, but on an SSD this doesn't matter.

So what does this mean to me the end user? and will an APFS run on a traditional HDD(backups)

 

[Shirasaki]

So what does this mean to me the end user? and will an APFS run on a traditional HDD(backups)

I guess APFS should be compatible with traditional HDD, or system automatically recognise and choose proper file system while formatting.

 

[curmudgeonette]

So what does this mean to me the end user?

Assume you are editing Word documents in the foreground, running Handbrake in the background, and Spotlight decides to index. You are doing this on a quad core machine. On an HFS(+) volume, all the processes have to wait to access the volume in sequence - essentially as if you have a single core machine. On APFS, they'll be able to access the file system mostly in parallel.

 

[Bacillus]

Statistically speaking, it is somewhat easier.

No, more complicated/time-consuming but yields more precise results.
http://gerardnico.com/wiki/data_mining/error
But serious battery problems can be definitely determined with a test set of 1 mio
Or 2 minutes in an AppleStore

 

[BeefCake 15]

Assume you are editing Word documents in the foreground, running Handbrake in the background, and Spotlight decides to index. You are doing this on a quad core machine. On an HFS(+) volume, all the processes have to wait to access the volume in sequence - essentially as if you have a single core machine. On APFS, they'll be able to access the file system mostly in parallel.

So if I understood you correctly, it will take full (or at least more than currently) advantage of the multi-thread processing and memory usage? Any idea if this will improve or change the inter-OS filesystem compatibility and recognition with windows and Linux?

 

[Bulbguy]

is there a way were i don't have to update and my phone is not asking every hour if i want to update. I don't need an app to tell me where my earpods are, they are at the end of my wire......

 

[curmudgeonette]

So if I understood you correctly, it will take full (or at least more than currently) advantage of the multi-thread processing and memory usage?

Yes!

Any idea if this will improve or change the inter-OS filesystem compatibility and recognition with windows and Linux?

Shouldn't make a difference. Well, actually, it'll probably be a long time before Linux/Windows knows how to read an APFS volume. Further, any apps that make use of new APFS features will be hard to port to other OS'es.

 

[Félix Culpa]

I want to go back to MFS. I bet APFS isn’t even optimised for floppy disks!

 

[millerhifi]

Question on this new APFS format, if I'm on an older MPB that isn't using an SSD can I still do local backups in iTunes or do I need to move to iCloud?

 

[DiscoMcDisco]

Is "sort notifications by app" back LOL

I bloody wish it was

 

[MacBH928]

Assume you are editing Word documents in the foreground, running Handbrake in the background, and Spotlight decides to index. You are doing this on a quad core machine. On an HFS(+) volume, all the processes have to wait to access the volume in sequence - essentially as if you have a single core machine. On APFS, they'll be able to access the file system mostly in parallel.

So I should be seeing less stutters and beachballs ?

Also is APFS in Sierra or is it not?

 

[PR1985]

is there a way were i don't have to update and my phone is not asking every hour if i want to update. I don't need an app to tell me where my earpods are, they are at the end of my wire......

You know, that this is not the only feature you`ll get, right? And it will not be an app, it will be part of the app "Find my iPhone", which we all already have. I bet it´s not 10.3 what you see, at least, if you aren´t a developer.

 

[ILikeAllOS]

The big deal with iOS 10.3 is that customers will be able to leave ratings and reviews without leaving the app, Apple will allow in-app prompting for reviews up to 3 times a year, and developers will be allowed to reply to these reviews.

This will be a real boon to developers who get 1-star reviews from dingbat customers who can't figure out how to do something in the app for which the other 99% of customers don't seem to have any problems at all.

What? Where did you hear that?
I haven't heard anything about replying to app reviews?