> The way this works in iOS 11 is now inconsistent and confusing

I really don't see how the apologists can deny this.

In iOS every UI control to toggle something on or off toggles things on or off... They all have the same UI presentation, and shows the same affordances, leading the user to expect the same behaviour.

And that they have. Everywhere except for wifi. Who in their right mind though this was a good idea?

How is it possible to argue this inconsistency is not a source of confusion?

I can't wait for my next flight, to hear how the in-flight personnel are going to explain this to Apple users.

"If you have electrical equipment with a radio transmitter, please turn it off now. If you have a Note 8, please let us know now, so we won't have to call the bomb-squad. And lastly if you have an wifi-only iPad running iOS 11, please make sure you turn wifi off using the special settings app because flight-mode doesn't work".

This is getting ridiculous. I bet the airliners are really happy about this change.

When you get on a plane, enabling Airplane Mode should turn off all the radios on an iPhone or iPad. You say flight mode doesn't work, so is this no longer the case?

I believe flight mode actually works, but people with wifi-only devices have been conditioned to believe disabling wifi is sufficient.

And with Apple now being inconsistent about what a on/off toggle actually does... It's hard to tell what toggling flight-mode actually results in.

And if I were in the airline business, I would take an issue with that.

I am actually quite surprised by this and to me it looks like people are just overcomplicating things. You get on a plane, you turn on Airplane Mode. Simple. It would never ever occur to me in a million years to turn on Airplane Mode on my phone, but then go ahead and just turn off the wifi on my iPad. Also, isn't Bluetooth also supposed to be off, which Airplane Mode would take care of?

EDIT: This is what Airplane Mode looks like https://i.imgur.com/mEMYdL6.jpg https://i.imgur.com/4L3uZmm.jpg

As an opposing viewpoint, turning off wifi is exactly what I used to do when boarding a plane - my bluetooth radio is always off.

Interestingly, my stock HTC One M7 suffers the same problem, but in regards to Location.

Enabling/disabling Location in the quick settings menu only changes Location settings between Low Accuracy and High Accuracy.

I have to open the phone settings, then go into Location, to then be able to completely turn it off.

This is just totally false. Airplane mode is still airplane mode and turns everything off.

My point is that on wifi-only devices, people have been conditioned into believing that turning wifi off effectively is the same as flight mode.

Now it no longer is. Why did Apple have to cause this needless confusion?

>The way I've run every smartphone I've owned is to turn off mobile data, WiFi, and Bluetooth and only turn them on as and when I need them

Okay, but you have to accept that this is a ridiculously small minority use case.

I don't accept that. I think it's a common sense approach. I don't want my phone connecting to things without my involvement.

If the icons were consistent and there was a setting to toggle the behaviour of Control Centre then it would be a non-issue. I could set it up the way I want and it would work as it used to in iOS 10. But the icons are inconsistent and, as far as I know, there's no such setting.

You don't accept it on what possible grounds? Do you really think the majority of iOS users, or even a sizeable minority, use their phones in the way you do?

That it's ridiculous. Reread what I have written. I made no comment on what the majority of iOS users do. I'm talking about what I do.

I'm sorry but you absolutely did. You were asked whether you "accept that [turning off mobile data, wifi, and bluetooth and only re-enabling them when you explicitly need them] is a ridiculously small minority use case", to which you replied "I don't accept that", and then followed on with a non sequitur about it being a "common sense approach."

"shit has to taste good, millions of flies eat it every day"

"I don't accept that."

Addressing the strongest possible reading and all that.

> a non sequitur about it being a "common sense approach."

Just read "common sense approach" as "that makes sense to me" and it fits perfectly. As for common sense, ask random people on the street what they think turning something "off" means. Do you think you'll find even ONE person who says "oh, that probably means it'll stay off until I change location, or until 5 AM, whatever comes sooner?". That's the elephant on the couch.

The use case of what you or most would find convenient, and would prefer to have available with one touch instead of more, is completely orthogonal to what all of this is about -- the common sense of what any normal person who isn't bent on defending Apple just because would respond with 1000 times out of 1000: of how to read UI in this case. Consider it a use case for the UI, and to even suggest just one person actually has the use case you declare to be such a majority they must be catered to without any further investigation (e.g. if the majority is wrong, that should strengthen, not weaken your resolve) truly is ridiculous.

It's not a minority use case. It's just a use case that is poorly accommodated by a large majority of smartphones. This leads to much higher data usage and higher revenue for carriers than would be the case if smartphones were a little more on the user's side.

I have a smartphone that offers reasonable controls on cellular data use on a per-app basis, in addition to easy system-wide toggles for WiFi and cellular data. It's easy for me to keep cellular data off most of the time, as I'm usually within WiFi range or taking short trips (eg. grocery shopping) where there's no inconvenience to being offline for a while. As a result, I get great battery life out of my phone and don't need a multi-GB data plan unless I'm traveling for most of the month. The TCO for my smartphone is a small fraction of what's typical with an iPhone on a major carrier, but I have full access to the capabilities of my smartphone and its LTE connection, when I decide to use them.

Everyone benefits from longer battery life.

Can you show me the use case for turning it ack on at 5 in the morning every 24 hours even though you have not changed location? Until then you have nothing, in defense of something that shouldn't be defended. Would it kill you to say "yeah, Apple should make it more obvious" and move on? What's with the kool-aid?

For the record that's how I do it too. Saves lots of battery and I'm not actively using the phone that frequently.

Are you actually sure it affects battery life that much?

I'm a bit dubious about this - in fact, turning off WiFi would actually harm battery life, surely, compared to LTE?

If by LTE you mean mobile data, I have that off too as I don't have a data plan. I can say the battery definitely runs down a lot faster with WiFi on but I don't have specific hard stats to back that up.

Wow. This exchange is one of the most bizarre things I've ever seen on HN.

I'm kind of fascinated to hear from people who spend money on things only to disable all of the things that make the thing worth spending money on.

If someone tried to tell me that the default behavior of a product should be to not function, I think I would go through the roof.

That isn't fair. My microwave "doesn't work" until I press some buttons. I leave my bluetooth, wifi and data on most days because I have bluetooth headphones and I want people to be able to send me messages and stuff. Sometimes I turn them off to get the battery to last longer. It seems like it could be quite reasonable for a large group of non-technical users to be quite happy with a phone that turns off the radios when the screen is off.

Ya, so accept that Apple decided your hyper aware use case doesn't need to be the default. Seems like you know what is up, so they are working to prevent unnecessary charges to the far larger, far less aware segment of the population. All seems good, no?

No, not good. The old behaviour was better. If there was a setting to have the option of the old behaviour then it would be all good.

Yes, good. The new behaviour is better.

See? It cuts both ways, you can't make blanket statements like that - either way - when they're subjective to each user's own use case. I legitimately prefer this toggle, because I so rarely care about wifi being actually, fully off that I'll go to settings.app for that, and the benefit of being able to easily toggle disconnect but keep wifi on for location accuracy easily outweighs that.

I agree that a setting to toggle between both is better but I also default to more settings being better. However, I realise that that's often counter to the Apple Way because they try to strip away all the unnecessary* cruft to try to focus the user into a certain use case and so understand why Apple did it this way, even though it's not my preferred way.

* as in literally not necessary, i.e. nice to have, rather than 'unnecessary' aka 'not useful'

no, the old behavior was better for you.

I hate to point this out, because it seems pedantic and patronizing, but honestly you might need the reminder, that there are other people out there, and no, they aren't all like you.

Here is a common enough non-techie use-case where this new behaviour is clearly a regression: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15413902

This use case should be solved by enabling the “Wi-Fi Assist” feature (which I believe is on by default) or avoided in the first place by turning off “Auto Join” for these networks - then you don’t even need to toggle WiFi.

In the same vain I regularly visit shopping malls. If I go in the week the WiFi usually works no issue, but at weekends when they are busy it can be very slow, so I usually turn off WiFi. With this feature I can still get location accuracy without using GPS (which saves battery) and don’t need to remember to turn it on when I’m home.

I don’t think there is anything wrong with the feature, but more the UI and feedback surrounding it. Someone else suggested pressing the button shows a pop up asking if you want to disconnect from the network, or turn off WiFi completely.

I turn off (sorry, disconnect from, in new parlance) WiFi.

Please tell me why this behaviour is better:

- the indicator clearly indicates WiFi is off (it's grayed out, like any other icon that show off state)

- the phone drops my perfectly working stable 4G connection and randomly tries to connect to any shitty wi-fi it can find: a random cafe I pass by, a random hotspot on a random phone eenabled by random people on the train, random public wi-fi spots in public areas

- despite the fact that I told it to disconnect from wifi, it doesn't, and randomly connects to all these shitty networks, often popping up a "hey, select a wifi to connect to"

- And then it just reverts to "always on" at 5AM

How is this better?

It is patronizing and I need no such reminder.

Then stop acting as if your use case is what the majority of users want. If you really care about a toggle that actually turns off the radio, get an Android

Reread what I have written. Your misdirected anger is your problem, not mine.