iOS 8 Beta 1 #apple #ios

This might be a thing.  But if Apple comes to me and says “Screw you you can’t talk about this”, then it won’t be a thing.  (And I still have a reason:  No money.  Oh, and Education.com is a dick.)

 

That’s right.  Apple forgot how to Security once again and allowed iOS 8 Beta 1 to be downloaded to literally everyone.

 

I suppose before I get into the real OS I should talk about how these betas are not secured.

 

Every developer beta SHOULD have a UDID check inside the file.  This means when you go to install a beta using iTunes, iTunes verifies with Apple if the device has an approved UDID.  UDID stands for Unique Device IDentifier, and it is used by Apple’s services to find the EXACT device that is using the service.

iOS 7 Beta 1 and iOS 8 Beta 1, for one reason or another, does not have this UDID check.  So when iTunes goes to install the beta, it doesn’t matter what UDID the device has, because the check wasn’t performed.  Now, Apple’s services could have detected that the check wasn’t being done at all, and denied the install, but for some reason it doesn’t.

 

So yes.  I have Beta 1 in my possession.  On my iPad, but not my iPhone.  Even though the 5S would be way better suited for iOS 8 than the iPad 2…betas are almost always terribly unstable, and I need my phone to be working.  I don’t use my iPad very much anyway.

On to the OS itself!

—

 

One of the first things I tried out was the new photo editing features.  And while laggy, they were awesome.  One thing though…for extremely dark photos, both the Light and Color sliders wouldn’t work at all.  I could slide them up and down, but the picture wouldn’t change, and the previews didn’t have any difference between them.  Whether this was due to the iPad 2 camera or the software I don’t know.

 

The photo search function worked well too.  I have no idea why it wasn’t in iOS 7…or 6.  Or 5.  Or any of them.

 

There is still no Weather app on the iPad.  I know it’s only Beta 1…but it really should’ve been in iOS 7.  Just my preference.

 

I’m not quite sure if Spotlight Search should use the internet or not.  If you forget to turn off Airplane mode, then you’ll have a hell of a time trying to figure out why Spotlight isn’t giving you Wikipedia entries (although I did find that it retains previous Wikipedia searches and info, so that’s good).

 

Handoff and Continuity obviously didn’t work because I had only one device running the beta.

 

No Siri though.  Sad Siri is sad for not catering to 1% more of the Apple fanbase.

 

Overall, the experience was incredibly laggy good.  The one thing the iPad was really bad at was splitting the keyboard in two.  For some reason it lagged MASSIVELY when trying to do that.

 

But my reaction to all these lags, omissions and general stupidness is a wholehearted MEH.  It’s the first beta.  It will be broken in some ways.  I don’t care.  Apple is just getting their feet under them with all these new things.  The problems will be fixed.

 

I’m not even supposed to have this anyway. (Unless Apple is cleverly actually opening the betas to everyone!  You must remember, Apple has already opened up the OS X Yosemite betas to the first one million people (I apparently didn’t make the cut)!)