Ondrej Holzman A year ago brought iOS 9.3 quite significant changes for users in the middle of the life of this operating system, so it was expected what Apple would come up with this year in iOS 10.3. There are not so many visible changes, but very positive news will be available to developers, which will eventually affect users as well. And one novelty will also please the owners of the new AirPods headphones.
The Find My AirPods feature is coming to iOS as part of the Find My iPhone application, which will help you find Apple's new wireless headphones. If you can't find one or both headphones, it will be possible to "ring" them via the application or at least roughly locate them remotely.
Rating better for everyone
Among other things, app ratings are a perennial topic for developers associated with App Story. Apple wants to solve at least one problem in iOS 10.3 – developers will be able to respond to customer reviews.
Until now, developers could not respond to comments and had to communicate various news, features and issues through their own channels (email, social networks, blog, etc.). They will now be able to respond directly under the given comment in the App Store or Mac App Store. However, it will not be possible to develop a longer conversation - only one user review and one developer response. However, both posts will be editable. Each user can mark selected reviews as "useful" via 3D Touch.
The prompts for rating apps in the App Store will also change, which was often addressed by users because some apps were asking for a rating too often. This will also change from iOS 10.3. For one thing a unified interface is coming notification, where it will finally be possible to star an app directly without having to be transferred to the App Store, and in addition, this unified interface will be mandatory for all developers.
It is also good news for users that a similar notification with a request for evaluation will be able to pop up only three times a year, no matter how many updates the developer releases. However, there is another problem related to this, which according to John Gruber Apple is now solving. The App Store primarily displays the rating of the current version of the application, and the user can switch to the overall rating.
Therefore, developers often asked users to rate applications because, for example, the original very good rating (5 stars) disappeared after deploying a new, even a small update, which lowered the position of the application in the App Store, for example. It is not yet certain what solution Apple will come up with. As for pop-up prompts in applications, Apple has already introduced a new useful feature for users: all rating prompts can be turned off systemically.
iOS 10.3 will automatically switch to the Apple File System
In iOS 10.3, an imperceptible but quite essential matter will also happen to the file system. Apple intends to completely switch to its own file system in its mobile operating system, which introduced last summer.
The main focus of the Apple File System (APFS) is improved support for SSDs and encryption, as well as ensuring data integrity. APFS in iOS 10.3 will replace the existing HFS+, which Apple has used since 1998. Initially, it was expected that Apple would not bet on its own solution before the summer with new operating systems, but it has obviously prepared everything earlier.
After updating to iOS 10.3, all data in iPhones and iPads will be transferred to the Apple File System, with the understanding that everything will of course be preserved. Nevertheless, Apple recommends performing a system backup before updating, which is a process that is recommended before every system update.
iOS will be the first to transfer data to APFS, and depending on how smoothly everything goes, Apple plans to deploy the new system to all operating systems, i.e. macOS, watchOS and tvOS. The advantage of iOS is that users don't have direct access to the file system, so the transition should be smoother than, say, a Mac, where there are more potential problems.
New keyboard for smaller iPads
As part of the iOS 10.3 beta, developer Steve Troughton-Smith also discovered one new feature regarding iPads, or the smaller models. With the default keyboard, it is now possible to choose a "floating" mode, which opens a keyboard roughly the same size as on iPhones. It can then be moved around the display as desired. The goal should be to be able to write more easily on the iPad with one hand.
For now, the feature is hidden in the developer tools, so it's unclear if and when Apple will deploy it, but it's not available on the largest 12,9-inch iPad Pro yet.
New in iOS 10.3, a one-handed floating iPad (9.7″ or less) keyboard layout. Can be moved around onscreen like the PiP overlay? pic.twitter.com/KLKybkR820
- Steve TS (@stroughtonsmith) January 24, 2017
The changes in app ratings are great. I still hope that they will somehow reasonably solve the rating during application updates and it will be perfect.
That floating keyboard is great! I hope it will be part of the update. I would appreciate it for an iPad mini
Hi, if I'm not mistaken, the next change also affected Siri and that's a good thing. On a non-updated iPhone 10.2.1, when you say "Call Petr Čejkovský", for example, you get English nonsense. On IOS 10.3, you call Čejkovský, and the homekit control also started to handle Czech device and room names.