Apple releases iOS 6.1, adds LTE carriers, tweaks security Apple has released iOS 6.1, which adds LTE support for more carriers worldwide, but not much more in terms of features for a release that's graced with a full "dot-digit" numerical upgrade. "Apple today updated iOS to version 6.1, adding LTE capabilities to 36 additional iPhone carriers and 23 additional iPad carriers around …
Ars helpfully did a poll — http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/12/poll-technica-whats-your-preferred-ios-mapping-app/ — 32% of iPhone users prefer Apple's Maps, 52% Google's and the rest are mainly on Waze (6%) or 'other' (4%), with Nokia and Bing both also managing to break the 1% barrier.
Summary then: Google has already saved the day, though a third of people weren't bothered anyway — and this is amongst technically minded folk that say the day-in day-out headlines.
Not owning a single piece of Apple kit, you are singularly ill-qualified to make the pronouncement you made. Which is wrong, by the way.
It IS true that there are alternative mapping applications.
It is ALSO true that you cannot substitute those as the default app that Apple launches if you, e.g., click on an address in a phone book.
Point, meet Jordan. Jordan, meet the point.
I'm aware you can't set anything else as default. I can't set the TomTom app as default on my Android phone either due to the developers' not implementing the ability, even though the Android API does allow for it. I'm not too bothered about it; I didn't buy my phone for maps.
Just because I don't personally own an iOS device doesn't mean I'm not educated about it and don't come into contact with it. Why do you think I read an article about a new iOS update in the first place? It certainly wasn't so I could take to the comments section just to chide people for their choice of mobile devices. I just wish people would accept that different people like different things and not bicker over trivial things like the integrated maps application on a mobile OS.
Morning Malcolm. I *do* own Apple kit, so your assumption is manifestly incorrect. Not that I'm that arsed, but I just thought I'd point it out.
I just don't like corporate bullies such as Apple (and Google to a slightly lesser extent) and I rejoice when they get stuff wrong (yes, that means Google too).
It's just a joke, move along and get over it.
So bored of fanboys. On both sides. Grow up.
Of course Android updates take longer to filter out, there are hundreds if not thousands of different device configurations maintained by many different manufacturers. As oppose to <10 configurations all with similar hardware made by 1 manufacturer. http://www.android.com/devices/
Umm, you do know that "all iDevices" as you used it has a fairly narrow definition? Specifically "all iDevices except the original iPhone, the original iPad, and the first three iPod Touch generations, a definition that is frequently characterized as 'not all iDevices'".
I *am* impressed by the propaganda machine that asserts (falsely) that Apple dutifully supports all it's older hardware, while Samsung/HTC/LG/Sony/Whoever somehow don't.
The truth, as always, is way more complicated than this ignorant fanboi-ism would like you to believe!
"...Umm, you do know that 'all iDevices' as you used it has a fairly narrow definition?"
We have some old devices in our household (in the bottom of drawers); they've all been replaced with newer devices. Apple does *far* better than almost anyone else in this regard.
Truth be told, if you use these devices intensively and actually pay attention, the many SW bugs become visible.
Not this again. Most phones don't run vanilla Android. If you have a Nexus, you get it straight away. If you run TouchWiz or whatever, you get it when that's released.
Whilst it is true that some of the non-Nexus phones are still slow, so what - if you're bothered by that, then get a Nexus phone. Unlike a certain other platform, you have the choice to get what you want. And the Apple maps fiasco showed the flaw in rushing out untested updates just to grab the headlines - I prefer a company that puts the consumer above marketing.
The only people who whine about Android updates are iphone fanatics. It would only be a valid point if Android phones as a result got features behind Apple phones, but in practice, they're still months or years ahead. Who cares if an Apple user gets sat-nav or copy/paste "straight away", when that feature came years behind the competition anyway.
I've seen some security researchers be quite concerned about the slow proliferation of Android updates too, and I'm pretty sure they're not motivated by iPhone fanaticism. The basic complaint is that differences between versions of the published source code are an authoritative documentation of security problems that Google recognised in the previous version, and if a serious security problem is found there's no point telling everyone to update their OS because a large number of them can't do that thanks to HTC-or-whomever.
Other than that I think you're right about choice, though the "years behind the competition" stuff is obviously a stretch. See e.g. the web browser — a pretty fundamental component. You could copy and paste in Android's as of April 2009. You could copy and paste in the iPhone's as of June 2009.
I've seen some security researchers be quite concerned about the slow proliferation of Android updates too, and I'm pretty sure they're not motivated by iPhone fanaticism.
You may be surprised...
The android update issue is slightly different - the fact that operators etc run variations on the core droid-stuff means that not all the factors of the update are relevant and may not even be beneficial.
"Whilst it is true that some of the non-Nexus phones are still slow, so what - if you're bothered by that, then get a Nexus phone. Unlike a certain other platform, you have the choice to get what you want."
Is that a choice? Hobson's choice perhaps. Buy this particular model or expect no update. That sounds wide open. Makes even Microsoft seem like a paragon of open systems suppliers.
If someone had written similar about Apple, you'd whine. Seriously, I don't know where you get off calling people "fanatics". If anyone dares criticise Android or Google, we have to endure you whining. I've got and idea. if iPhone fanatic bother you so much, IGNORE ARTICLES ABOUT IPHONES. It really is that simple. And please don't feel you have to take part in discussions about iPhones. Some of use both daily and we know that 90% of your blatherings are vacuous nonsense.
Actually no, all iDevices will NOT get it there and then - and thats deliberate and cut-throat strategy on the part of Apple.
My 2nd Gen iPod Touch for example, is stuck on iOS 3.x which more and more apps simply do not support.
Its not because of any special hardware requirements of the apps, its actually because Apple have cold bloodedly excluded even fairly recent generations of hardware from their SDK - which means that compiling a very simple app on a current SDK means that your app won't download to users of older hardware.
The even more cold blooded thing that Apple have done, is that the app store DOES NOT CHECK your OS revision before accepting your purchase. If you didn't look carefully, you'll find that you can't download your purchased app, and Apple will almost certainly not refund you.
This is supposed to co-erce consumers into buying newer hardware. However, I got news for you Apple - my iPod cost a small fortune and I'm NOT going to replace a perfectly functional device. If you want to screw me like this, when I eventually update my hardware it will be from a different manufacturer. You can bite me.
Where's the vampire icon when you need one?
I don't have an iPhone at the moment, and when I did have one I never even opened the Map application, so pardon my ignorance, but ....
Isn't TomTom one of the BIG players in the mapping space, and wouldn't it be reasonable to expect that Apple teaming with them should have improved the quality of the data? (Ignoring the app itself, apple's app apparently offering functionality that Google would not provide for the iPhone).
So what went wrong? Is TomTom useless? If so, this may come as a surprise to a lot of people too.
Never owned one
Like the chap above, I have an iPAD 64GB wifi that iOS5 turned into a snail. I ended up buying a cheap netbook out of the last days of Comet. £200 and doesn't knacker my hands typing on it
Only ussue is Win 8 which is annoying, but I'm sticking with for the moment as the work might be moving onto that later this year, just so I can get familiarity.
Then it goes Linux
One site asked for the town where I was born, so I entered "Ocala"
"Entry must be 8 letters or longer"
"Ocala, FL"
"Punctuation not allowed"
"Ocala FL"
"Spaces not allowed"
I think at this point it became something very profane and racist, but it was longer than 8 letters and didn't have spaces or punctuation!
Well, you should have gone back in time and been born somewhere else then, so that you "conformed to the form"!
I'm thinking of changing my name by deed poll for similar reasons. According to most online forms my current monicker, with an accented character in it, is apparently not a real name as it includes "disallowed characters"
Pink Austin 1100.
Well it was meant to be red, but it had faded so much over the years that pink describes it better.
And seeing as I was young then it had all the required add ons. Small steering wheel. Faux Leopardskin furry seat covers. 6 band graphic equaliser. Triple air horns. Gear knob in the shape of a skull etc.
Those were the days!
I got stuck in a buggy, illogical workflow loop as the upgrade forced me, unannounced, to change my Apple ID into an email address.
Only my email address was, they said, linked to another account and they conveniently decided that the DOB held for my account was different to that which I was entering to validate myself (it wasn't, as confirmed when I eventually got into the account and made the necessary changes).
1 hour of frantic faffing about, a forced help forum account set up to view answers (grrrr...), 11 emails for password/email changes and a whole lot of swearing and abuse directed at 1 Infinite Loop and I finally managed to get my phone working again though.
Just works.
The iPad 4th Gen download was 90MB for me. It still killed the quota on my MiFi pebble tho.
First car? This junky POS that is the Proton Gen 2. I don't understand how TopGear could trash the Perodua Kancil instead of this lemon which has serious tuning issues and multiple defects right out of the factory. Heck, one of the car's tires disintegrated during the car's maiden voyage!
I'm glad Rik referred to how stupid this is in a cleverly oblique way, though I wish we'd see an entire Reg article dedicated to this abomination.
Most of us who read The Reg are probably clueful enough to realize how stupid it would be to give truthful answers to these security questions, but the average person doesn't realize how insecure this is. This might have seemed like a good solution to the problem of identifying yourself on the web for relatively unimportant sites at first, but it has taken on a life of its own since. The ability to easily search the web for names as well as the propensity of people to give away "unimportant" information to Facebook makes this far more dangerous than using a dictionary word as a password.
But once something is deemed a "best practice" in security it lives forever like some sort of zombie. Much like the outdated idea that changing your password frequently is a good idea, these "three security questions" continue to be used everywhere. Presumably anyone actually working in the industry knows this is dumb, but I know from experience in my consulting work that no matter how smart and well regarded you are in your field, you can't fight "best practices" with your recommendations. You can recommend something, someone will point out it contradicts best practices, and you can explain why best practices are wrong in this case until you're blue in the face, but in the end you are forced to give in if you want to get anything accomplished aside from discussing this one issue.
Nail on head time.
I wish I could give you several upvotes for that. Unfortunately "best practices" dictate your post is only worth the same single thumbs up as the inevitable one along the lines of "...my first car had rounded corners... Apple lawyers...", coming up in 5... 4... 3...
We have our fearless leaders in Congress to thank for a lot of this. Basically the whole roll out of this crap is the implementation of these "best practices" is one, read the cheapest and easiest, way to gain Sarbox (Sarbanes-Oxley Act) compliance. One more example of paving the road to a hand basket, or something like that.
My Nokia hands free car kit is still not fully functional with iPhone... despite the fact it was when I got my 3GS several years ago and does with the new Blackberry that my employers gave me. Come on Apple, how about fixing something that should be relatively simple to fix?
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
