Apple’s iOS 10 popped out last night, bringing with it some long-awaited changes, notably to Messages and UI. But not everything is fun and games, however. iOS 10 is great, but it’s not without its issues. Control Center [caption id=“attachment_335167” align=“aligncenter” width=“619”]
Why are the AirDrop and AirPlay icons so big?[/caption] Anyone who’s familiar with Android will know how useful Android’s control panel is, particularly the ability to control what you want and don’t want to see. On iOS, the Control Center (CC) was just host to a handful of toggles and access to a select few apps. With iOS 10, I feel they’ve done their usual two-steps-forward, two-steps-back routine. The two-steps-forward include 3D Touch context menus for CC apps and separate tabs for music and HomeKit. That latter isn’t that useful in India at the moment, however.
The two-steps-back come in the form of AirDrop and AirPlay and icons, that take up more space than they deserve and the splitting up of the music tab. The simple act of changing a track now adds an additional, unnecessary step to the process. I’m also disappointed that we still can’t use force touch to pick between Wi-Fi hotspots and Bluetooth devices. What was wrong with the earlier system? I have no idea. Default apps are here to stay [caption id=“attachment_335169” align=“aligncenter” width=“640”]
You can now “disable” these unused apps, but I wouldn’t recommend that.[/caption] Initial reports indicated that Apple would finally give us the option to remove default apps from our iDevices. Sadly, it turns out that Apple will only let us “disable” these apps and remove them from the home screen. This is more trouble than it’s worth because removing default apps will break some iOS functionality. Since Apple, in all its wisdom, doesn’t let us change default apps, we’re left in the lurch. Even with iOS 10, it’s still better to just dump all default apps that you don’t use into one folder and forget about them. There’s no alternative to 3D Touch [caption id=“attachment_335171” align=“aligncenter” width=“619”]
These actions just aren’t available to those without 3D Touch.[/caption] 3D Touch is actually useful in iOS 10, but it’s a feature that’s not present on all devices. Those of you on anything other than an iPhone 6s, 6s Plus or the iPhone 7 (sniff) will not have 3D Touch and iOS 10 gives you no alternative to it. Peek and pop is nice, but couldn’t there have been, say, a two-finger gesture to enable that? Adding widgets directly from app isn’t possible without 3D Touch, clearing all notifications is not possible without 3D Touch and even the CC shortcuts won’t work without 3D Touch. Even the new iPad Pros don’t support 3D Touch. Sure, it’s convenient to ignore “lesser” devices, but that’s just irresponsible. The poor li’l iPad [caption id=“attachment_335176” align=“aligncenter” width=“640”]
The only good thing in iOS 10 for iPad Pro[/caption] The iPad is definitely not ‘little’, but in Apple’s eyes, it is. The iOS 10 update brought nothing notable to the iPad. The same Messages, CC and UI features have been carried over to the iPads, and since they don’t have 3D Touch, they don’t even benefit from those features.
Apple, you need to show the iPad more love. We’ve all been asking for multiple logins for a long time, and there’s no sign of it yet. Split-screen multi-tasking is still rudimentary at best, though it’s better than not having it. If anything, the new CC looks worse on the iPad. You see one, complete panel and another incomplete one to its right or left. It could easily been designed better, and I still can’t understand why Music is on a separate tab, even with all that real estate available on the iPad. A note on “collaboration”
Apple was extremely excited to announce collaboration for iWork and Notes. I’ve no idea why, that feature’s been available to us since 2006. Sadly, it still doesn’t work very well in the Notes app. Sharing a note is clunky. You create a note, tap share, and then send an invite to someone else with an iCloud account. When that happens, your screen will freeze for a few seconds as the note is uploaded and a link is generated. When the receiver clicks on the link, he’ll be taken to the note. Now comes the “collaboration” part. You can’t see who’s working on the note at the same time as you, you can’t see the cursor and you don’t see updates until about 5-10 seconds have passed. It’s a pain to “collaborate” on. If I type something at, say, row 10, and you type something at row 10, you won’t know someone was doing that till the Note gets updated. When that happens, your text will end up somewhere else. Don’t let this article turn you off, however. Apple has done a great job with iOS 10. If you’re on a compatible iDevice, simply go ahead an upgrade, especially on the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus. You won’t regret it.
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