Month: August 2014

…and the fun doesn’t stop with beta 1!  As it was with all betas, once you got in through some shenanigans, the system will allow you to continue even if the other betas are smarter than the first!

 

…or you can step out of the betas then step back in using an external UDID service like I did.

 

Anyway, what’s in this beta?  A new Tips app!  And what does it look like?

Well it’s pretty simple.  Just a few movies and pictures showing you how to do certain things.

 

There’s a few odd things though.  At least two of the movies actually have an audio track.  And the thing is, the movies aren’t supposed to have an audio track!  Take the Mail movie.  The movie shows that you can slide a mail entry to the side to expose some actions, and if you slide it all the way to the left, you can delete or archive it.  Now, if you put on headphones (because it only works with headphones for some reason), and turn the volume all the way up, you can hear something screeching (it sounds like a modern train slowing down or speeding up), then the sound stops and you can hear the hissing that most microphones have when there is no sound.

 

Another movie that has this is the Actionable Notifications movie.  This movie shows if you pull down on a push notification, you can expose a reply text field or buttons.  Now if you use the headphone trick, at the very beginning there is the sound of either something being put down gently on a wooden table or a button being pressed, a scooting sound, then nothing but hissing.

 

I found that extremely odd.  Especially since there really should not be a microphone active.  I’m assuming they screen recorded their iPads using a program, and that program also used any microphones attached.  Again, it is a beta, and some things are going to be a little weird until they finalize everything.

 

One thing I did notice is that Handoff doesn’t work.  It turns out I actually did get into the Yosemite Public Beta (legit this time), and I tried Handoff out, and…it didn’t work at all.  I tried it with Safari and Pages, and no matter how often I did it, neither device caused the other to do anything.

 

As I understand Handoff, the devices know when they are near each other, and create a local peer-to-peer network.  Then they use a specific library of functions to communicate the last used app and its state to each other (encrypted of course).

I’m thinking some of that isn’t working, and I don’t know enough to figure that out.

 

The other changes since the last time I talked about the beta, is a redesigned Control Center.  It now has filled in buttons instead of outlines.  Therefore it looks more finalized, some quirk of design that honestly I haven’t figured out yet.

 

It’s still lags for some reason, and sometimes I can get it to hang for more than 5 seconds.  It should really actually know when it’s hanging, and should kill the least important processes (although the reason it’s hanging is probably because it can’t get any instructions through…I wonder if Apple will be able to circumvent that).

 

Also another change that NO ONE has picked up on for some reason, is that the Videos app now actually displays something on the screen while the video is loading.  It displays the box art and the title, and also covers the rest of the screen with a blurred version of the box art (at least I think it’s supposed to be blurred…but I guess Apple deems the iPad 2 less powerful, so it only displays a really dim non-blurred image.  Apple is trying to keep the iPad 2 in the compatibility list, but I guess it’s a real stretch).

 

So the user experience continues to be incredibly laggy good, and the experience will continue to improve…I hope.

 

(Technically I should be on Beta 6 right now…but Apple has saved that version for the carriers.  AT&T has that version…not the developers.  Betas are weird.)