iOS 14 suffers app preference amnesia: Rebooting an iThing resets browser, email client defaults back to Safari, Mail Apple's iOS 14 is supposed to let people select third-party apps, such as Chrome and Outlook, as their default browser and email client. Yet, when the iThings are rebooted or powered back on, these choices are wiped, and the defaults reset to Apple's Safari and Mail. Released yesterday, version 14 of the mobile operating …
Don't rent - buy outright - including "refurbished" ones for the kids and shorter term SIM deals. It's the fact that they do support quite old kit for updates (inc Security updates) that's appealing.
But now IPadOS and iPhoneOS have diverged is not so good - new "App Library" and Home Screen Widgets (yes I know stolen) but NOT on iPad - WTF.
I don't think it was malicious but it was deliberate and it has less to do with iRent and more to do with iGarden.
I suspect that the rationale was "if the customer reboots, something must be wrong, so we will change the settings and reboot in safe mode."
I also suspect that a patch will change this ridiculous behavior.
Yup iproducts are only ever rented and expensive but I converted ten years ago and have only had 3 phones and 3 tablets in that time. All upgrades were for pleasure only and all six devices are still in use somewhere in the family.
Apple just works and keeps being updated for years, something that I have treasured over the last decade. I think they are a new class of shiny that makes you forget about it and just use the damn thing.
Still not an apple fanboi but definitely a continued user.
PS typing this on a five year old iPad before I upgrade it to ios14.
I'd say we 'iRent' just about anything digital, be it Apple branded or not. But since we're talking about the fruit company, over the weekend I spent some serious time with my fully functioning PowerBook 3400 running FA-18 Hornet 2.0 and having a blast. I updated the address book on my 2007 iPod Touch and added two albums. So frankly, I'm not too concerned about the longevity of my 2017 iPad Pro and 13" Macbook Air. They'll live on, and on, and on. My fully functioning 12" G4 PowerBook from 2005 is nodding approvingly from across the room. :-)
But also don't rule out accidentally deleted a line:
function set_default_browser(browser):
system.default_apps.browser = browser
settings = configfile.open("wherever_that_is_stored")
settings.defaults.browser = browser
settings.save() //oops, deleted this
Apple makes bugs. This sounds like one of them. If they didn't want to do it because they want to keep their customers on their apps, they could equally easily have left out the option; their customers have taken that for 13 OS releases so far.
Apple really has to learn to not give important jobs to the summer intern. Last time it was with the time zone issue, where Apple became the only company in the world to forget that there is such a thing as a time zone. Now, Apple has forgotten to respect people's settings after a measly reboot.
Not even a system wipe and reinstall, which would be perfectly acceptable and nobody could complain, but just a reboot.
So Apple kit is no longer meant to be turned off. How green.
Well, Apple may not offer any explanation, but I'm betting there will be a patch coming real soon.
If you switch them off from the Control Panel they'll only be off until the next day, disabling it in Settings makes it persistent.
My main annoyance is the aggressive way in which it tries to force you to start using Apple Pay. You have to go quite deep into it before it no longer flags it as something you still have to do.
That said, the secure messaging apps (Telegram, Signal and Threema) had absolutely no problem with the update, although I needed another power down and restart before they properly re-negotiated their push connection.
Android explicitly asks you which app you'd like to use to open anything the first time you try, with "always" and "just once" options.
It's even better than Windows 10, because it defaults to "just this once".
Some phone vendors might make that initial choice for you, but it's easily changed and in my experience has always stuck.
What Huawei do is create their apps with the most similar short name and logo to the Google equivalent they can manage - put all theirs on the front page and hide all Google's in a folder on a different screen - and hope that you don't notice and use all their apps for preference.
It was the one sour note of setting up an otherwise nice new phone.
Perhaps it was prep for the new Trumptastic rules banning them from selling gear with the Play Store...
The iOS 14 codename I believe was "Groundhog Day"
...or maybe it was actually "Azul", which equates to a similar incredulous blue feeling.
.
In either case, 14.1 should correct their initial mistake to make sure every reboot
starts with a short startup chime of "I got you Babe".
Are the developers and iPhone power users who run prerelease beta versions of iOS going to be setting Chrome as their default browser? Of course not, that's why this wasn't uncovered during testing. They set it to Chrome, found that Chrome was now the default, then set it back to Safari where they intended to leave it and as far as they were concerned concluded "the new feature works".
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