Juha Saarinen: Impressions of iOS 8

Tech blogger for nzherald.co.nz.·NZ Herald·

19 Sep, 2014 02:21 AM5 mins to read

Apps were updated and most seem to work following the iOS 8 update. Photo / AFP

The Apple iOS mobile operating system upgrade days are hotly anticipated by users wanting new features for their devices, and feared by network admins as there's usually a flood of data coming in.

What's more, there's no stopping it and as far as I can tell, no way as of yet to cache the upgrades locally.

One network person with around 2,000 iPhones to manage estimated that the 1.1 gigabyte iOS 8 upgrade would chew through over two terabytes of data on his domain alone, which should give you some idea about the traffic volumes coming out of Akamai at the moment which handles it for Apple.

Luckily for said network admin, a large amount of phones under his auspices are iPhone 4 models which can't be upgraded to iOS 8 so his internet end point was spared the traffic deluge. (*Correction: model 4s iPhones and above can be upgraded to iOS 8)

My upgrades went smoothly and quickly over VDSL2 - I have plenty of space left on my iPhone 5s but if you don't and get an error that there's not enough room for iOS 8, skip the over the air upgrade and do it via iTunes instead.

Apps were updated and most seem to work, in fact. The one noteworthy fiasco was Healthkit that's been struck by an unknown bug meaning apps for it have been withdrawn for now.

I've used iOS 8 since the early betas and am liking it. It's not that different from iOS 7 in terms of use, just more refined with features such as being able to respond directly to notifications.

The new predictive keyboard takes a while to get used to, and I'm not sure that I type any faster with it to be honest. Will report back on this in a few months' time though, and also try out the Swype-y third party keyboards for iOS 8.

A few resizing bugs exist that are mainly visible when moving from portrait to landscape orientation with iPads, but other than that, iOS 8 seems fairly stable. Fingers crossed.

All the under-the-hood stuff apart, I am liking Apple chief executive Tim Cook's thinking more and more. Well, at least that of the team who word-processed the company's new, expanded data protection and privacy policy which also saw the light today, and is actually another reason to switch to iOS 8.

Read more:
• Is iOS 8 too big for your iPhone?

The gist of it, and this very clever marketing that's aimed at holing both Google and Facebook, is that Apple sells you stuff. It doesn't sell you to marketers.

Apple obviously had to do this if it wants people to trust its new Health and Homekit offerings, but nevertheless, it's nicely executed I think.

To back it up, Apple has boosted security for iCloud which is now covered by the same two-factor authentication - you'll get a four-digit code sent via SMS that has to be entered after your Apple ID and password to gain access to the cloud storage service and apps there.

There's more though: Apple's drawn a line in the sand and basically locked itself out of people's iDevices. With iOS 8 installed, personal data that includes photos, messages and their attachments, emails, contacts, call history, iTunes content, notes and reminders are all now protected by customers' pass codes.

Apple says it can't bypass the passcode - the devices are strongly encrypted - and therefore, "it's not technically feasible for us to respond to government warrants for the extraction of devices in their possession running iOS 8."

That's great stuff. The downside to that is that governments and law enforcement may employ more "rubber hose" decryption techniques and force people to unlock their devices by applying pressure. Or just beating people until they tap in that passcode.

Furthermore, Apple also said it has not worked with any government agency anywhere to create back doors in its products and services or allowed access to its servers - and, it promises this will never happen.

We'll see how this aggressive new approach at protecting users' privacy pans out, and security researcher Jonathan Zdziarski is partly happy with what Apple's done.

He does not believe that it will prevent cops' ability to get at least some data out of i-Devices but either way, good on Apple for standing up for transparency.

Before I forget, Apple also fixed one totally unforgivable faux pas it committed at the recent iPhone 6 launch: that free, un-deletable U2 album it planted on everyone's devices.

If you haven't seen it yet, and want to de-Bono your iPhone,

here's the link