Apple WWDC 2020 keynote items (iOS 14 and more)

iOS 14‌
‌iPadOS‌ 14
‌macOS Big Sur‌
watchOS 7
 
I was a little underwhelmed. I was hoping for some hardware announcements.

Most of the MacOS, iPadOS and iOS improvements and new features seemed evolutionary but hardly revolutionary.

The biggest deal was Apple deciding to move away from Intel processors and to start making their own. That’s a pretty big step - only the second since the introduction of the Mac in 1984*. Let’s hope it’s a smooth transition.


One nice feature will be the ability to run iPhone and iPad apps on a Mac.


*The first was the switch from Motorola to Intel, creating quite a brouhaha back in the day.
 
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I like the phone/watch as a car key. Pretty obvious and I suspect pretty straightforward technically. The endpoint will be when the only thing in your pocket is a phone. No wallet, no keys. Even better it's all in a watch. New Apple product, pants with no pockets :).
 
Cool, I look forward to seeing how well the bugs in Big Sur execute under ARM instead of x86.
 
The pop up FaceTime and phone calls seem to be the most useful for me.
 
Hang 4 said:
I like the phone/watch as a car key. Pretty obvious and I suspect pretty straightforward technically. The endpoint will be when the only thing in your pocket is a phone. No wallet, no keys. Even better it's all in a watch. New Apple product, pants with no pockets :).
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And eventually...all watch and no pants! Wear a kilt and enjoy certain freedoms...
 
FastEddieB said:
I was a little underwhelmed. I was hoping for some hardware announcements.
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Everyone loves gadgets... But it's also nice to know that all of my gadgets are gonna get cooler in a couple of months.

Most of the MacOS, iPadOS and iOS improvements and new features seemed evolutionary but hardly revolutionary.
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Taken individually, yes. There isn't the one "killer feature". But there's a lot of really nice stuff that, when considered as a group, is a pretty big step forward.

The biggest deal was Apple deciding to move away from Intel processors and to start making their own. That’s a pretty big step - only the second since the introduction of the Mac in 1984*. Let’s hope it’s a smooth transition.
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Erm... This will be their fourth processor architecture and their third transition. Motorola 680x0 -> PowerPC -> Intel -> Apple.

Luckily, nobody is better at this than Apple. I've been through both of the previous transitions, and I wouldn't hesitate to buy a new machine with the new silicon when it comes out. The possibilities are exciting.
 
FastEddieB said:
I was a little underwhelmed. I was hoping for some hardware announcements.
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flyingcheesehead said:
Everyone loves gadgets... But it's also nice to know that all of my gadgets are gonna get cooler in a couple of months.
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This was a developer conference - it's usually focused on software. There will be plenty of hardware coming in the next couple of years! I'm curious to see how well the ARM architecture performs under real world situations.
 
kayoh190 said:
This was a developer conference - it's usually focused on software. There will be plenty of hardware coming in the next couple of years! I'm certainly curious to see how well the ARM architecture performs under real world situations.
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Well, Apple does often introduce some new hardware at the WWDC keynote as well. There were expectations of a new generation of AirPods Pro, as well as "AirTags" (kina like a Tile/Trackr device) and some other things. In fact, those rumors/expectations were growing enough that the more well-known Apple rumor-mongers all put out posts on Sunday night that there would be no hardware on Monday, likely after calls from Apple!
 
flyingcheesehead said:
Well, Apple does often introduce some new hardware at the WWDC keynote as well. There were expectations of a new generation of AirPods Pro, as well as "AirTags" (kina like a Tile/Trackr device) and some other things. In fact, those rumors/expectations were growing enough that the more well-known Apple rumor-mongers all put out posts on Sunday night that there would be no hardware on Monday, likely after calls from Apple!
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Not saying it doesn't happen, but it's certainly not something I'd expect. Only Apple can get mainstream attention from something like WWDC. Heh!
 
As a developer I appreciate the new policy of not rejecting apps that are already in the store when the only thing changing is bug fixes and updates for new hardware. I’ve been rejected on the first try dozens of times for features that have been in my apps since 2011. Most times an explanation gets the app approved. A few times I’ve had to remove a feature.
 
Hang 4 said:
I like the phone/watch as a car key. Pretty obvious and I suspect pretty straightforward technically. The endpoint will be when the only thing in your pocket is a phone. No wallet, no keys. Even better it's all in a watch. New Apple product, pants with no pockets :).
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Our new Ford already does lock/unlock and remote start through a phone app. I never understood why they didn't just make that next obvious leap, it won't let you put in gear without the "key" which is really just a transponder. If I could just use my phone I wouldn't ever need the thing.

The next step is to convince the states to let you have a legal driver's license on your phone, then we'll only have one thing to remember when leaving the house. Even better if it could all be on the apple watch.
 
I think the new car capability does not require you to open an app, just have the phone nearby. Also, it's the full key, not just the door unlock. I can unlock my car with the BMW app, which I did precisely once. It took 20 minutes because the app didn't retain the password that I had long forgotten. It's still pointless. The new one, which unfortunately appears to not be retrofittable, uses a near field transmitter (same as apple pay) to unlock the car and a contactless charging pad inside the car to start the engine and allow the car to be driven.

The license thing was the point of my pocketless pants joke. Go through everything in your wallet and put it on the phone. Credit cards into Apple Pay, cash into Venmo, ID's through through some secure app. GEICO already has my insurance card built into their app. US Hang Gliding has my certification searchable via a QR code. We could start a long thread on whether a picture of your FAA Medical is acceptable.

Obviously, all could be done on an Android platform too. Just the thread was about Apple.
 
Great. Don’t think I’m going to like my MacBook being an iPad. Developers aren’t going to spend money to make a laptop version, you’ll be running iPad apps on the desktop. Every application will get dumber.

another step to me dropping off the grid completely.

oh, and “get off my lawn!”
 
It's kind of ironic ... increasing phone/car integration when there is much hysteria about smartphone use and driving.
 
I checked the PowerPC to Intel timeline and from announcement to last shipped was about 18 months, and the OS rev after that was the last one to support it. In other words, buying an Intel Mac now means you get Big Sur + 2 OS updates, and then security for however long. In comparison, I’ve got a MacBook Pro mid-2012 that got Catalina (2019).
 
AggieMike88 said:
@JScarry .... what apps are you known for?
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Unfortunately, not enough people know about my apps. They are for speech pathologists and special ed teachers.

https://apps.apple.com/us/developer/learning-fundamentals-inc/id454061076

As a side note, you can search the app store for the exact name of most of my apps and they don’t show up. I stopped making new apps about 5 years ago and have moved to web-based exercises for teletherapy. I’m looking for a distributor if anyone is interested.
 
kayoh190 said:
This was a developer conference - it's usually focused on software. There will be plenty of hardware coming in the next couple of years! I'm curious to see how well the ARM architecture performs under real world situations.
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If they actually stick the fan on top of it, unlike blowing through a straw at the Intel chips with a tiny fan, like they do today, it’ll probably perform better than a horribly thermal throttled Intel. LOL

But it’ll depend on if your software was properly recompiled for the chip and optimized. Those issues will plague old software for years once they switch, just like the last three times. Performance will be low.

The good news is, if you do the usual correct Apple thing now on Intel and overpay for the top processor and RAM, the machine and apps will keep up with a soon-flooding-the-market 7nm Ryzen at whole machine prices of $500.

AMD is SOLIDLY kicking Intel’s butt again. Until Intel catches up. They will. But 10th gen is meh and HOT at 12nm.

For the consumer crowd, it won’t matter much. If it’ll play 4K video without skipping frames, that’s about all most folks push their hardware.

At least they put the ESC key back on the keyboard and went back to “mushy chicklet” vs “chicklet that destroys itself to the point of a class action lawsuit” keyboard. LOL m

Thinkpad with a Ryzen looking better and better if you want a serious laptop. Lenovo is killing it.
 
Hang 4 said:
I think the new car capability does not require you to open an app, just have the phone nearby. Also, it's the full key, not just the door unlock.
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That is my understanding as well.

I can unlock my car with the BMW app, which I did precisely once. It took 20 minutes because the app didn't retain the password that I had long forgotten. It's still pointless.
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Not at all. It lets you remote start from beyond the range of your key fob. I use it frequently here in Wisconsin... I can start my car before I get out of the airplane, or from my office, and it's toasty warm (or cooled down) and ready to go when I am.

Lock/unlock is pointless, I suppose, but the "remote remote start" is very useful.

Salty said:
Great. Don’t think I’m going to like my MacBook being an iPad. Developers aren’t going to spend money to make a laptop version, you’ll be running iPad apps on the desktop. Every application will get dumber.
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Maybe... But it looks to me like they've taken a big step towards making it easier to develop apps for both platforms without a lot of extra effort. So maybe the iPad apps will get "smarter" too.

Bob Noel said:
It's kind of ironic ... increasing phone/car integration when there is much hysteria about smartphone use and driving.
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Nobody's complaining about people texting and unlocking... And the whole phone + car ship sailed long ago. Something like 97% of new cars support CarPlay (Apple) and Android Auto. And, IMO, it's a big improvement having that vs. looking at your phone's screen.

masloki said:
In comparison, I’ve got a MacBook Pro mid-2012 that got Catalina (2019).
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Same here, though it's very much due for replacement. I'll probably do so when they come out with the 16" MacBook Pro with Apple silicon.

Which leads me to wonder if they'll rebrand things like they did before. Up until the Intel switch, Apple laptops were called PowerBooks. The very first Intel Mac was also the very first MacBook Pro. Maybe we're due for another rebranding?

JScarry said:
As a side note, you can search the app store for the exact name of most of my apps and they don’t show up. I stopped making new apps about 5 years ago
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And that's probably why they don't show up. If you haven't touched them in 5 years, they may not even run on the latest iOS, thus they'll disappear from the store for devices that can't run them any more, I believe.

denverpilot said:
AMD is SOLIDLY kicking Intel’s butt again.
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And that's probably why Apple is making this switch. I'm not sure why they don't just do AMD, but... ?

That's also what prompted the last switch. Apple, IBM, and Motorola formed the "PowerPC Alliance" but the other two started going after the game consoles so much that they really were failing hard on the laptop side of things which is Apple's bread and butter. Apple had apparently been doing shadow development of Mac OS on Intel for many years before that, so they were able to act fairly quickly.

I'm sure the same is true this time - And again, it seems like laptops are the thing that's spurring it. I'm sure Apple has been working on this since around Kaby Lake or so...
 
flyingcheesehead said:
And that's probably why Apple is making this switch. I'm not sure why they don't just do AMD, but... ?
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Couple reasons. AMD doesn’t have the fab capability to guarantee the volumes Apple needs as “just another customer” equal to anybody else. Apple had some performance deals with Intel. AMD probably would say no. And Apple still has to come to them for the best video hardware. GPUs are already becoming more important and a higher dollar component than CPU in low end machines. Once you’re at quad-core eight-thread in a typical consumer machine, they’ll never use it. But they’ll use every cycle of the graphics chipset regularly.

Also Apple probably wants Bootcamp and Hackintoshes to die. I know multiple creatives who’ve been on higher performance and much lower priced Hackintoshes for a few years now. Bootcamp is less problematic but...

The high end gaming community was never super enthused about Apple but this drives the nail into coffin of the gaming use of Apple machines for a long time, unless they do what Linux did and build a virtualization layer that can directly access video hardware and make video deals with Nvidia.

^^ For us aviation nerds, gaming includes: Flight sims. It’ll be a bad platform for that (well; worse than today) for a few years. People will want to run the new MSFT sim. That’ll keep planning types away from OSX for sure, starting now. Was already smart to avoid, now it’s a no brainer. Unless you want multiple hardware investment.
 
flyingcheesehead said:
And that's probably why they don't show up. If you haven't touched them in 5 years, they may not even run on the latest iOS, thus they'll disappear from the store for devices that can't run them any more, I believe.
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Apple adds new devices with different dimensions every couple of years, so you have to do a significant amount of work to keep your apps working on new devices. All 30 of mine were updated on January 2, 2019. For most of them it was the fifth update—which current users all get for free since you can’t charge for updates.

They did add the ability to automatically resize apps for new devices using storyboards, but since I made most of mine before storyboards were useable, the amount of work for me to convert to the new API is non-trivial. They also tend to deprecate methods so each update means a significant amount or rewriting to get the same functionality. At the moment there is only one deprecated method in my code, but converting launch images to storyboards looks like a lot of work, so I’ve been putting it off. I haven’t downloaded the new version of Xcode to see how they work with iOS 14,

My apps don’t do anything fancy so they should play nice on macOS. I just checked how much work it would be to port them using Catalyst. 66 warnings for deprecated methods (probably closer to 10 methods that occur multiple times) and 2 errors for methods that are no longer available.
 
Hang 4 said:
I think the new car capability does not require you to open an app, just have the phone nearby. Also, it's the full key, not just the door unlock
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hmmmmm sounds strangely familiar (I says as I walk up to my Model 3 with phone in pocket and empty hands, open the was locked door, enter, and activate the car by stepping on the brake.)

Thanks Elon!
 
denverpilot said:
And Apple still has to come to them for the best video hardware. GPUs are already becoming more important and a higher dollar component than CPU in low end machines. Once you’re at quad-core eight-thread in a typical consumer machine, they’ll never use it. But they’ll use every cycle of the graphics chipset regularly.
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And since the Apple silicon will include the GPUs, now we know why they haven't been giving NVidia the time of day for the last few months.

It'll also be interesting to see what they're capable of with the new SoC architecture. The new chips will incorporate a bunch of stuff that's currently being handled by Apple's T-series chips.

Also Apple probably wants Bootcamp and Hackintoshes to die. I know multiple creatives who’ve been on higher performance and much lower priced Hackintoshes for a few years now. Bootcamp is less problematic but...
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Hackintoshes, for sure. Does anyone even still use Boot Camp? Did they ever? Everyone I know (including myself) who has ever used Windows on a Mac was wanting to use Mac OS at the same time and thus used Parallels, VMWare, or VirtualBox. It'll be interesting to see what that looks like after the switch.

The high end gaming community was never super enthused about Apple but this drives the nail into coffin of the gaming use of Apple machines for a long time, unless they do what Linux did and build a virtualization layer that can directly access video hardware and make video deals with Nvidia.
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Highly doubtful, considering they're going to be using their own GPUs as well. That was the whole point of the Metal API it seems. Well, not the whole point... But those developers that are using Metal won't have to do much to take advantage of the new hardware.
 
flyingcheesehead said:
Highly doubtful, considering they're going to be using their own GPUs as well. That was the whole point of the Metal API it seems. Well, not the whole point... But those developers that are using Metal won't have to do much to take advantage of the new hardware.
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And don’t forget that Apple is heavily invested in Virtual Reality. An SoC that is optimized for Apple’s flavor of VR might be appealing to gamers and developers.
 
flyingcheesehead said:
Hackintoshes, for sure. Does anyone even still use Boot Camp? Did they ever? Everyone I know (including myself) who has ever used Windows on a Mac was wanting to use Mac OS at the same time and thus used Parallels, VMWare, or VirtualBox. It'll be interesting to see what that looks like after the switch.



Highly doubtful, considering they're going to be using their own GPUs as well. That was the whole point of the Metal API it seems. Well, not the whole point... But those developers that are using Metal won't have to do much to take advantage of the new hardware.
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Those two concepts go together. Everybody doing serious gaming on Mac used Bootcamp.

Apples current solution for gaming was already waaaay below the performance level of just running Windows on their hardware. It’s going to get a lot worse for a couple of years at least.

The productivity crowd used virtual machines, yes. But not the gaming/performance crowd. They’re going to bail now. Including the developers. No big game company wants multiple Dev tracks for oddball hardware bugs. They’re already too pressed keeping mobile and console versions or fending them off.

Apple is letting the high end gaming market go with this move. Their SoC ain’t gonna beat Nvidia right now or for a long time.

Also means they’re letting the big number crunchers using GPUs go.
 
kayoh190 said:
I'm curious to see how well the ARM architecture performs under real world situations.
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Some of us are destined to be leaders, I guess. :)

With over 130 billion Arm processors produced,as of 2019, Arm is the most widely used instruction set architecture (ISA) and the ISA produced in the largest quantity.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_architecture

I watched this video recently -
Jim Keller: Moore's Law, Microprocessors, Abstractions, and First Principles | AI Podcast

Jim Keller discusses, amongst other things, processor architecture. He said that current processors execute 500 instructions simultaneously, doing for example branch prediction. They end up at about 0.25 clock cycles per instruction.

It's all completely beyond me.
 
I don't think Apple really was concerned about high end gaming. And no gamers I know bought a Mac for that purpose. They are definitely loving casual gaming from the App store proceeds. It will retire the hackintoshes, which will force the final cut pro users to pony up.

Jim Keller just left Intel, and has done a stint at Apple once already but could be interesting if he ends up back there. On the other hand, their A13 chip is darn near desktop class performance in a battery constrained phone, so getting those chips into laptops and desktops should enable them to easily outperform Intel, and possibly, AMD.
 
masloki said:
I don't think Apple really was concerned about high end gaming. And no gamers I know bought a Mac for that purpose. They are definitely loving casual gaming from the App store proceeds. It will retire the hackintoshes, which will force the final cut pro users to pony up.

Jim Keller just left Intel, and has done a stint at Apple once already but could be interesting if he ends up back there. On the other hand, their A13 chip is darn near desktop class performance in a battery constrained phone, so getting those chips into laptops and desktops should enable them to easily outperform Intel, and possibly, AMD.
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Yep. Agreed on gaming. It’s just the nail in the coffin.

And for the creatives and post-production folk it’s not just Final Cut — all the other Adobe folk and the various audio only studios have been mostly running hackintoshes for years now.

The machine on the desk that their customers can see may be a real Mac just for looks, but the pricing was way too high not to build four hackintoshes for the back room. LOL.

I have no doubt the chip itself will perform. More concerned that OSX as a whole really hasn’t made real deep tech or UI prrogress in years which hints at something about the OSX team. Not focused on the long term and then all of a sudden an architecture change? Not sure they show signs of really having the chops for that. Which usually means the team doing the architecture switch was separate and secretive inside the company (Apple secretive? LOL!) and there’s a messy transition coming from skunkworks to maintenance teams.

It’ll take a couple of years to shake out. Which makes those years an okay time to buy this stuff at the consumer level, but a close to “hard pass” for businesses. Load up on a few extra Intel Macs for those who have to have them and wait it out since the product lifecycle is long.

And replace those Hackintoshes if you surreptitiously had any. We don’t but we are mostly Devs and not media creatives.

Examples of other stuff that will seriously suck... any security or corporate management software (because you have to use stuff like JAMF because Apple still seriously sucks at corporate support of OSX while doing very nicely with iOS) that uses a kernel extension. Already an enormous pain in the ass, now it’ll get worse while that sector rebuilds all that low level stuff once hardware is released.

And all us security guys sitting around twiddling thumbs with mandatory deadlines for either having those products working on day one of new retail available hardware or VERY close behind it. Won’t get let off the hook by third parties in security audits ANY further than a quarter at best.

Which means, risk analysis wise... avoid. Let a bigger Apple customer with thousands of machines fight that deal. They have many bodies to throw at the resulting dumpster fire that will ensue for a bit, depending on vendors of their required control tool.

(I don’t HAVE to have it yet, but do you know how hard and expensive getting a Mac to do 2FA logins to OSX done correctly is!? Holy hell, it’s been built into Win10 for years now and works. That kind of stuff in the biz world is sliding rapidly toward mandatory and Apple still shows zero interest. It’s causing conversations with our place of, “Why would we pay an annual fee for that to any third party company? That’s stupid. It needs to be in the OS by now.”

They need a hard look at business use cases and mandatory security controls in OSX really soon. Very much doubt they’ll do it. But they do. They can’t pretend industry standard security controls aren’t an OS level function forever.
 
denverpilot said:
Those two concepts go together. Everybody doing serious gaming on Mac used Bootcamp.
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Both of them? :rofl:

Seriously, who was "doing serious gaming on Mac" before anyway? The Mac has never been the game platform of choice.

Apple is letting the high end gaming market go with this move.
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Again, there wasn't really any high end gaming market to speak of that was using Macs.

Also means they’re letting the big number crunchers using GPUs go.
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Not at all. Their chips already have the GPUs built in on iPads, and will continue to do so on the desktop. The possibilities of having CPU and GPU on the same chip are interesting.

denverpilot said:
And for the creatives and post-production folk it’s not just Final Cut — all the other Adobe folk and the various audio only studios have been mostly running hackintoshes for years now.

The machine on the desk that their customers can see may be a real Mac just for looks, but the pricing was way too high not to build four hackintoshes for the back room. LOL.
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It had nothing to do with cost, and everything to do with Apple not updating the Mac Pro or anything else in their line for pro users for several years.

I have no doubt the chip itself will perform. More concerned that OSX as a whole really hasn’t made real deep tech or UI prrogress in years which hints at something about the OSX team.
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Uh, maybe they were busy spinning things up on a second architecture at the same time? ;)

More realistically, the Mac is such a relatively small part of the Apple pie these days that all the money was going into iOS, not Mac OS, and that's where the R&D was going too.
 
Now for a new thread drift.....

when the public beta becomes available, will you install it to your phone?
 
denverpilot said:
Thinkpad with a Ryzen looking better and better if you want a serious laptop. Lenovo is killing it.
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Only for consumers. For Federal, Lenovo not allowed since IBM sold the PC line to Lenovo/China. Once again, GPS is hit with another massive overbudget expense. Why? Because they knew years ago they'd have to migrate off Lenovo to HP but waited until this year.
 
AggieMike88 said:
Now for a new thread drift.....

when the public beta becomes available, will you install it to your phone?
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Never install the Apple x.0 release on anything you want to be reliable. I usually wait for the x.0.2 or 3.
 
AggieMike88 said:
Now for a new thread drift.....

when the public beta becomes available, will you install it to your phone?
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No. I don't install beta operating systems on any device that is "mission critical" (with the mission being it's my only form of communication for the most part!)
 
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