iOS 12 official release seems to work well

[deedward9]

Not to jump in on your discussion uninvited but iOS 12 dramatically improved the performance of my iPhone 6s. Dramatically, and it seems to be working fine on my wife's iPad Air2. Ihaven't used many of the new features with gestures etc, but the performance improvement was more than enough for me.

Devin

[Dylrob]

Originally Posted by OtinG

Well what do you know, saying, "Hey Siri, turn on/off flashlight" has started working. When I tried it earlier I got messages like "I cannot do that at this time." Maybe the Apple server was down at the time. I assume Siri requires a server to operate just like Amazon Alexa does.

Siri still won't open Control Center though. She actually says, "I can't open Control Center for you."

Well no, but it is able to perform most of the tasks now. Is there any real benefit to bringing up the screen itself?

[Dylrob]

Originally Posted by tomsem

I have never used that for anything as I just touch where I want to type and use magnifying glass for precision, just as it has always worked. Plus that technique works the same when I’m using physical keyboard, which I often am. I doubt I’ll use the one-finger variant, either.

Not sure if it is a bug or a feature, but if I start with two fingers and spread them apart a little bit, selection mode kicks in. Rather hard to control it however, and easy to accidentally delete something.

One things I like about the iWork suite is that you can just two finger tap anywhere on the screen. Meaning it still works with an external keyboard. I wish that was an option in more apps.

Double tapping is supposed to initiate selection mode. It may be that your iPad is misrecognizing the input.

[johnnyb]

Originally Posted by tomsem

Maybe it is because I’ve been on beta for awhile but I think it is a clear improvement. I would give it more time.

I guess you're probably right...
I also really don't mind the new control center gesture but the clock layout. There's no reason to put that on the side on current iPads, and it's probably only due to laziness at Apple that we are getting the same layout as the presumed new iPads.

As to consistency: the old iPhones did not get the new gestures, so anyone who uses one of these with his old iPad now loses the same consistency, the new iPhone users get. I think that is an objectively stupid move, but I guess in line with what Apple has been doing in terms of consistency in the past couple of years...

Lastly: the app switcher view could formerly (in addition to the four finger gesture) be accessed by simply swiping up, without any holding or side swiping. That was the optimal gesture for any device that has a separate home button and it was replaced for consistency with new devices (and probably economical reasons, because it saves on development for possible home-button-less new iPads).

All in all, what we got was a worse app switcher gesture and the ability to do stuff we could do before, but now in line with iPhones we probably do not have yet.
(also, again, the clock on the left just looks terribly stupid, but I guess we will get used to it...)

[pshute]

Originally Posted by Dylrob

Also, trackpad functionality has always been possible on the iPad. You just put two fingers on the keyboard.

The two fingers thing was better than nothing, but I found it to be imprecise. Easy to accidentally roll the cursor a little left or right or to the next line as you let go. I really like the spacebar trackpad thing. It's been available in the alternative google keypad, which I don't really like for other reasons.

[pshute]

I've found iOS 12 better when switching apps on my iPad Air and iPhone 6. I think previous iOS versions used too much RAM, so apps were being unloaded when not in use. iPad Air and prior only have 1GB, later ones have 2GB and some have 4GB.

A symptom of lack of RAM is (I believe) apps reloading when you return to them after using other apps. I've found this to be getting worse and worse with every version of iOS since iOS 6, to the point where I would almost expect an app to reload after switching to just one other and back again. It's still a problem, of course, but is definitely happening less.

The real issue is that app writers aren't programming around this. Apps should save their state when iOS forces them closed, and restore it again when you return to it. Even Apple's native apps didn't do this when the memory shortage started to become apparent. Mail used to just lose the email you'd half typed, iBooks just closed the book and lost the page you were up to.

[pshute]

CloudLibrary has a new bug with iOS 12. Sometimes when I reopen the app after using other apps, the book is not on the page I was up to, it's a few pages back. When I turn the page to find my place, it's on the same page.

The only way I've found around it is to force the app closed, and reopen it. Then it's on the page I was up to.

[Dylrob]

Originally Posted by pshute

The two fingers thing was better than nothing, but I found it to be imprecise. Easy to accidentally roll the cursor a little left or right or to the next line as you let go. I really like the spacebar trackpad thing. It's been available in the alternative google keypad, which I don't really like for other reasons.

I don’t notice any difference in behavior, other than the fact that I can’t select text with the space bar method.

[OtinG]

The whole selecting text with your finger thing sux in iOS as far as I'm concerned. Selecting text or positioning the insertion point (cursor if there was one) is not precise at all, especially if you have old, ft fingers! You can manipulate the selection point, but that is still very clunky. And far too often trying to position an insertion point is so clunky that you wind up selecting a word instead. Say I type the word wrong and want to correct the typo, and not all typo are automatically caught BTW, trying to select the precise position within the word is a lessen in frustration. Chances are it will just select the entire word, I get frustrated, let out a string of words that would make a sailor blush, then give up and just retype the whole word. Yes, I know there are a gillion gestures built in, but I really think that iOS should be intuitive and it should not require reading a huge document to find the one odd rarely used gesture that will save you 20 sec, especially since it probably took you 20 minutes to find what that gesture was. I have a few gestures for the iOS development team, if they are interested I can send them a video.

And BTW, try selecting text or an insertion point while editing a post in this forum. The screen will move around as the keyboard pops up, and it often obscures your point of insertion so you have to scroll the screen down to see what you were doing, then you might lose the insertion point by scrolling because old hands don't work like Millennial hands. Apple needs to address these things.

[OtinG]

One of my many pet peeves with iOS is still not working correctly in iOS 12. When I use Messages, I expect it to update the same on all my iOS and Mac devices. It doesn't, period. If I delete a conversation from my iPhone 7, then it should be deleted from the Messages app on ALL of my iOS and Mac devices. But that never happens. Very frustrating. Why even have a cloud if it cannot do simple little tasks like updating the conversations lists?

Messages on Mac OS X really sux. Half of the time the messages never get sent out. Sometimes it is a lot more convenient to reply to or send a message from my MBP, but it is too darn unreliable to do so. If I have an image or video on my MBP I want to send via a message, I am better ogg emailing that to my iPhone then sending the message and attachment from my iPhone. That is way too clunky. I doubt they will have fixed this in Mojave, not that it matters, as I am not going to upgrade to Mojave do to its lack of 32-bit app support which I need.

[pshute]

Originally Posted by OtinG

The whole selecting text with your finger thing sux in iOS as far as I'm concerned. Selecting text or positioning the insertion point (cursor if there was one) is not precise at all ...

I wish they'd just add some cursor keys to the keyboard.

[OtinG]

Originally Posted by pshute

I wish they'd just add some cursor keys to the keyboard.

Totally agree. When I bought my iPad Pro 9.7" a while back, I got the Apple Pencil to go with it hoping I would be able to select and enter text a lot better than using my finger. Unfortunately the Pencil didn't help because of the crappy interface that Apple uses in iOS. The Pencil is more accurate at pointing than my fat finger, but other than that is still a major PITA to insert and select text.

[tomsem]

‘Trackpad Mode’ (invoked by tapping and holding space bar) also works on iPhone BTW.

[Dylrob]

Originally Posted by tomsem

‘Trackpad Mode’ (invoked by tapping and holding space bar) also works on iPhone BTW.

Presumably the option was added for the sake of the XR.

[OtinG]

Originally Posted by Dylrob

Why? Just why? WHY DID THEY NEED TO SWITCH THESE?

They didn’t even do it consistently... it’s still the other way around on my iPhone.

Well they apparently switched them back with iOS 12.0.1 which was released today. I am installing it on one of my iPads now. After it installs, I'll let you know if the update does restore the keys to their former locations.

ETA: Apple indeed switched the "123" and Emoji keys on the iPad keyboard back to where they were prior to iOS 12.