iOS 16.3 Is Out | Hacker News Reader

iOS 16.3 Is Out

developer.apple.com

81 pointsludovicianul55 comments

There's also security updates for iOS 15/12 devices as well:

iOS 15.7.3: iPhone 6s (all models), iPhone 7 (all models), iPhone SE (1st generation), iPad Air 2, iPad mini (4th generation), and iPod touch (7th generation)

iOS 12.5.7: iPhone 5s, iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, iPad Air, iPad mini 2, iPad mini 3, and iPod touch (6th generation)

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201222

iPhone 5s still receiving updates. Almost 10 years old.

Here are the new features in iOS 16.3:

- New Unity wallpaper honors Black history and culture in celebration of Black History Month

- Security Keys for Apple ID allow users to strengthen the security of their account by requiring a physical security key as part of the two factor authentication sign in process on new devices

- Support for HomePod (2nd generation)

- Emergency SOS calls now require holding the side button with the up or down volume button and then releasing in order to prevent inadvertent emergency calls

The update also includes some bug fixes and improvements for iPhone users:

- Fixes an issue in Freeform where some drawing strokes created with Apple Pencil or your finger may not appear on shared boards

- Addresses an issue where the wallpaper may appear black on the Lock Screen

- Fixes an issue where horizontal lines may temporarily appear while waking up iPhone 14 Pro Max

- Fixes an issue where the Home Lock Screen widget does not accurately display Home app status

- Addresses an issue where Siri may not respond properly to music requests

- Resolves issues where Siri requests in CarPlay may not be understood correctly

I've seen the Freeform issue. Someone was trying to share a board with me and it was pretty much garbage. It looked like parts of strokes were missing or misplaced.

He eventually exported it to PDF and sent that to me, but yeah, you could do that with any drawing app.

Fixing Siri issues (especially the CarPlay ones) is a godsend

Something I've wondered when writing my own changelogs: What determines whether an issue is categorized as "fixed," "addressed," or "resolved"?

I'm pretty sure all of them mean the exact same thing, they just alternate for the notes to be less repetitive.

> What determines whether an issue is categorized as "fixed," "addressed," or "resolved"?

I mostly use them interchangeably and just pick whichever one feels better in that particular sentence at that particular part of the changelog.

The only real exception is when I've fixed one specific expression of a problem but I think there are probably still edge cases where it might pop up again. I deliberately mark those as "addressed" for my own sanity.

In recent years the terminology on Apple update notes is very inconsistent so I wouldn't read much into it except that nobody is paying much attention to it.

You use “addressed” when you’re not entirely sure that it’s completely fixed. You use “resolved” when you removed the feature instead of fixing it. ;)

These days I gravitate towards “improved” or “enhanced” handling or support for something to avoid unbounded certainty about the issue.

I only ever write it as defect / feature prefixed.

I never write the resolution as I am fallible!

It's why I prefer to use a standard like https://keepachangelog.com

Very similar but subtly different in my mind.

- Fixed: something was broken, and it has been repaired. - Addressed: there was an issue, and we've responded to it maybe with a workaround, improving docs, maybe by saying we won't fix it/it wasn't broken. - Resolved: something wasn't working, and now it works. Maybe there were fixes, and maybe there were workarounds. But it works now.

Siri activated in my car other day. “Sorry didn’t get that” it was muffled so wide asked what that was. Off hand I joked And said. “Oh car is going to blow up”

Siri “working on that” Wife and kids give me a look. Siri “Sorry. Something went wrong”

Wife now panicking “kids get out of car now!!”

Kids totally busting up.

Emergency SOS calls now require holding the side button with the up or down volume button and then releasing in order to prevent inadvertent emergency calls

Isn't that a screenshot?

Probably the difference between a press and release and a hold.

It’s actually “hold your phone in a gripper dash mount” position. Sure a nominal place is not on a button but an accidental one sure will be.

Toss your phone into the gripper mount in wrong way, start car, get out scrape ice and snow for five mins, and find your phone had dialed 911…

> - New Unity wallpaper honors Black history and culture in celebration of Black History Month

Weird to push this internationally when it's really just a US thing. When I read the official release notes of the update I found them a bit racist sounding, from my country's perspective.

Advanced Data Protection now for the rest of the world. Any experience how well it works? I'm currently in the process of updating all my devices and activating it as soon as possible.

I've had no issues with it, but you're ultimately trusting Apple to delete the private key from their servers. The best way to verify it works is logging into icloud.com. It will show that you cannot access the tools there since advanced protection is enabled.

There is a setting to enable iCloud access on web by verifying on a trusted device. I think the way this works is by temporarily sending your decryption key up to Apple to allow the active session access to data.

what incentive does apple have to keep it? If anyone finds out they're lying then their whole privacy schtick goes out the window.

My worry is more being compelled to keep a key by government agencies.

I believe if that happened apple would simply refuse to encrypt any longer and let customers know that's what is happening. The government can't force them to lie to the public. We're becoming a more autocratic nation but we're not quite that far along yet.

Anyone else see it in Canada? I upgraded and get the “Not available in your region” message.

Yep, already updated all of devices in my household; 12 Mini (work), SE (dev), iPad (dev), and 14 Pro (daily).

Restarted and it works! Thanks

It threw an error when trying to turn it on which required me to logout of my Apple ID and then log back in to fix.

I usually update my iDevices as soon as the update is out, but this time around I'm going to let automatic updates do its thing. I'm curious to see how long it actually takes for updates to be automatically installed. I assume the vast majority of people aren't keeping track of the latest iOS news.

Since iOS 16, the alarm of the Clock app is not working properly on my iPhone.

It either won't sound at all, or won't sound again after a snooze. I can see in the alarm notification that the snooze 9-minute timer only starts counting down after I pick up the phone (turning on the screen).

It's taking so long for this to be fixed that I'm starting to think that something is wrong with my device, not the OS.

You might want to do this

iOS settings => Sounds and Haptics => Drag the Ringtone and Alert Volume slider up higher and turn off change with buttons

The alarm clock volume on iOS is separate from your normal volume. So if it accidentally got lowered then your alarm clock will never make any sound. It can get accidentally lowered if you have change with buttons on so I turn that off. Turning off change with buttons just fixes your alarm and ringer volume, it won’t prevent you from changing your volume normally when listening to music

that should work, as I have no issue with alarms. Have you uninstalled the clock app and reinstalled?

I've had alarm issues as well recently, and I think in my case it may have something to do with either (1) "Attention Aware Features" that will silence alarms if it thinks you're using / looking at the phone, or (2) wearing my watch and having it think that I was silencing alarms by covering or touching the screen.

I turned off the attention aware features and also flipped off "Push Alerts from iPhone" for the Clock app on my watch. My distrust at this point is so bad that I just don't wear the watch to sleep even though I love the sleep tracking features.

It's ridiculous that a bug with alarms is even a thing, and also something that's hard to troubleshoot when I'm half-awake.

I have the same issue.

Will this arbitrarily break compatibility with some XCode version that ends up forcing me to buy a new Mac just to be able to build my code? (asking for a friend)

Not if you have a Mac from the past decade

That only happens with major OS releases. Or the inverse, where the version of Xcode requires the next major version of macOS. We should see that in March with Xcode 14.3 or 14.4.

That happened to me with a "minor" update of iOS, which upped the bar and required a new version of Xcode, but that version of Xcode required a newer version of MacOS, and that version of MacOS was not available for my MacBook.

So quite a nice chain of requirements that ended up forcing a new computer purchase, for what essentially boils down to the purpose of compiling Swift source code. Absolutely no other of my technical or performance requirements were asking for a machine renewal.

watchOS update as well, hopefully they have fixed the battery-draining bug. Prior to the most recent update, my watch would still have 50% battery at the end of a long day; now it drains after eight hours.

I hope so. My battery life is terrible and I can't get apple to do anything about it because "Battery health is above 80%". I've tried everything, turned off almost all notifications, turned off LTE when not needed, turned on every power saving thing I could and it still dies 5 hours earlier than it use to. I'm over it.

I've found that a complete restart of the watch alleviates the symptoms for a while, so there must be some process that gets into a bad state.

The watch restarts with every update, right? It seems like my watch updates at minimum once every 1-2 months. How long is a while; days, weeks?

Yes, I'm referring to me manually restarting, not the ones that already happen when updates come out. I do it when I notice it's draining faster than it should for my normal day of use. It gives me relief for weeks — usually until the next update comes out.

This occasionally happens to me, and a restart fixes it for a long time.

The watch restarts with every update, right? It seems like my watch updates at minimum once every 1-2 months. How long is a long time; days, weeks?

Hope they fix the temperature widget as well. Temperatures below zero are common outside Cupertino.

Also macOS. Updates for Ventura (to 13.2), Monterey, and Big Sur.

Tip to speed up watch update (assuming your watch and your iPhone are on the same WiFi network): start the update processes from your iPhone and let it go normally until it starts downloading the update to the watch. Wait until it gives an estimate of the time remaining for the download, and then go into your iPhone settings and turn off Bluetooth.

The iPhone will then switch to downloading the update to the watch over WiFi which should be quite a bit faster.

You will probably be prompted one or more times to reconnect the Watch. Go ahead and hit cancel.

You must do this from the Bluetooth settings in Settings. Turning Bluetooth off from Control Center doesn't actually turns it off. It just disconnects most devices. It does not disconnect the Watch.

Once it finishes download and says it is preparing you can turn Bluetooth back on.

Bummer, the watchOS update didn't fix it.

Group FaceTime is really unstable in iOS 16. I hoped fixing that would have been a priority, I guess not.

Was expecting Siri to ChatGTP but instead is silently killing battery lifetime with every update until next iPhone version must buy.

I just setup a Shortcut the other day for this (I based this off of the shortcut here: https://matemarschalko.medium.com/chatgpt-in-an-ios-shortcut... - just ripped out the smart home stuff from it).

Gives some much needed intelligence to Siri! Just need to speak "Hey Siri, GPT (or name of shortcut)" and then your query.

Nice work around, I guess Apple will have own chatGtp while was validated by the market

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