[jamesmccann]

Feeling pretty disillusioned by another iPhone and iOS update. The 3.5mm coupled with lightning instead of USB-C just look like obvious traps for lock in with no real gain (5hr of playback time?!)

iOS still continues its march of adding minor features that should be in regular OTA updates and packing them up with some serious marketing hype. There's barely any improvement here and most of the features are already well implemented in Android / Google Apps or Facebook Messenger.

Disappointing.

[Ologn]

> already well implemented in Android

Yup. I remember the original iPhone/iPad announcements where many features were fairly innovative. Now applauded feature announcements are for features already out on Android phones.

[devrelm]

Right?

> New stereo speaker system

Oh cool, you mean like the forward-facing stereo speakers on my 2-year-old Nexus 6?

[gchokov]

Nobody cares about your Nexus 6.

[Longhanks]

Show me an Android phone that will provide the hassle-free experience Apple promises with those AirPods. That's the most innovative part of this event for me.

[SCdF]

So I just bought some backbeat fit headphones, which use bluetooth. To get them working with my Android phone I: - pressed the on button on the headphones - pressed the pair button on my phone

I mean, bar special hooks Apple can have because they don't give a fuck about standards, I really don't see how that is hard.

[cheald]

Same experience with my 6P and my el cheapo Bluetooth gym headphones. Turned headphones on, hit pair, good to go. Apple has done "hassle-free" very well historically, but that doesn't mean that other vendors are incapable of it.

[freehunter]

Which is the same with pairing to an iPhone. I hit "pair" on the headset, click the headset name on the Bluetooth screen, the headset says "connected" and boom done.

The real hassle is in my car, which unfortunately this doesn't solve. Toyota's system isn't the best. I have to hit a button then say "pair audio". Wait no, it's "pair audio player". No... wait it's "pair bluetooth"... ah I'll get the manual. Okay, got the phrase right. Now I have to press the button again and say "confirm". Now it asks me what I want to call my audio player. That's fine. Hit button again and say "confirm". Now I have to decide if I'm pairing from the car or from the audio player? I have no idea what that means. From the car I guess? Hit button again and say confirm. Okay now it's searching... but my phone says pairing failed. Okay, now it's kicked me out and I get to start over again. Let's pair from the phone this time. Nope, that failed too. Let's pair from the car again? Hey it worked!

And in between every button press, there is an ear-splitting beep that can't be adjusted with the volume controls in the car. And even then, I can only store three phones in memory, and it remembered both of my failed attempts plus my wife's phone that I paired for her. So to try a third time, I have to remove one of them... so it asks "which audio player do you want to remove?" then it lists all of them... "Player 1: iPhone". "Player 2: iPhone". "Player 3: iPhone". Fantastic.

Most of the time I just use the USB cable, except when I updated to iOS 10 and it started saying Error: 5 randomly during a song.

Pairing a headset with a phone is the easiest thing in the world, and it happens to be the "problem" that Apple solved. But the real problem is pairing with dumb "smart" devices that unfortunately are everywhere.

[efraim]

Sony has NFC in their Bluetooth headphones, just touch it to the phone and it pairs.

[nicky0]

iOS is a free OTA update.

[jamesmccann]

I was trying to place emphasis on the regularity not the cost of an upgrade. Packaging up what seems like relatively trivial features into a major OS release isn't really progress.

[nicky0]

I don't see how it makes much a difference if new features comes once a year or once a month. Being part of a "major release" doesn't invalidate anything.

[untog]

The new notification framework in iOS 10 feels like a genuine step forward. The rest, I agree.

[bobwaycott]

iOS 10 notifications are a royal pain in the ass compared to those prior. Particularly from the standpoint of dismissing with minimal interaction. You must be more intentional now to get rid of them.

[k-mcgrady]

Ways to dismiss notifications haven't changed much. Banner notification? Swipe up on it. Lock screen notifications? Swipe one way to open and the other to clear. Notification centre? Use 'x' to clear by day or force press 'x' to get 'clear all' option. If anything it's slightly easier to get rid of them than before.

[bobwaycott]

Actually, under 10, since the first beta, you must make contact with the banner notification itself and then swipe up. Prior to 10, this was unnecessary, and a quick flick up from outside the notification toward the top of the screen would dismiss. I appreciate an instruction guide for dismissal, but it is unnecessary, and doesn't respond to my point. I know how to dismiss.

[k-mcgrady]

I haven't noticed, always assumed you had to make contact with the thing you're swiping away which kind of makes sense. You point was that notifications are now more difficult to dismiss which I have noticed. If your point is based on having to make contact with the item you are dismissing it's quite weak. Is there something else they've changed that you're referring to and I have noticed in the betas?

[untog]

IMO they were always a huge pain for that, compared with Android.

[lukeholder]

Charging the Airpods in the case for 15 minutes gives you 3 more hours of audio playback. The case has 24 hours of charge available.

[shopkins]

Come on, the stickers alone are worth an OS upgrade! /s