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87 points
You can't save it to iCloud files and open it

You can't use the share button

You can't open an .ics file on your browser and add to the Calendar

You can't open the Calendar app and import from there

Apparently you can only add it to the Calendar if you receive the file as an attachment in the native Mail app

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/253646020

I thought the whole idea behind iOS was that "it just works"


Indeed. Just today was trying to share an event from the iPhone with a friend whose email I don't have, say via Signal or WhatsApp. I couldn't figure it out.

Solution: Wait until it syncs to the Mac, select the event, right-click -> Email Event, in the mail pick the .ics and save locally (then discard the email), then share that file via the messenger.

Yeah, I mean, sharing an event, a rare and complicated feat.

I think these apps have been neglected for a long time. There are many integration issues with synchronization, caldav, and more...
I got my mother an iphone thinking iOS would be more easier for her to use than Android, as she is not much into technology stuff. And it kind of is, though it's easy to hit the walled garden.

And I wanted to create a common calendar so one can set reminders for her (and all of us) about medical appointments, medicines and stuff that we all could manage from our phones, wheter Apple or Android, or my computer, via a web browser, caldav or whatever. I imagined that would be second nature, after all it's just a calendar, right?

Well, it's 2023 and you can't do that because reasons.

From what I hear, the issue is that you don’t get promoted for such “maintenance” work.
So existing features would just eventually rot?
Can you not? It's been a couple years, but I'd written a small 'ical calendar export' functionality on a web project that would prompt to open in ios calendar, and it subscribed to events from the website. That all seemed to work decently enough, and... truth be told, much better than the android behaviour. ios treated the url as something to query (often) which would reflect any schedule updates. Android tied it to your google account (IIRC) and... google decided when to query/check the URL; changes in schedule info on the website would be reflected in an ios calendar generally within a few minutes; android users would see multi-hour, sometimes multi-day delays in updated info.
I also can't preview PDFs. Isn't PDF a core part of the graphics system (it is on macOS)?! I can preview .docx and HTML, but not a PDF?!

They're getting better at "back-porting" stuff from real computing platforms, like Files (which can even connect to SMB shares, though last time I checked only using protocol version 2 and with the least helpful of error messages when it fails ... why?!?!?!?!).

But there's still a long, long way to go if they ever really want iOS to succeed macOS.

At the current state of affairs the only way to make the iPad a full computing platform is using macOS sandboxes (which I had expected to come with the M-processors).

All I want for Christmas is the ability to set multiple timers on my iPhone.
Can you seriously not do that?

There's a lot of shit I don't appreciate about Android, but setting as many timers as you want is a total no-brainer.

It’s been so long either they’re too embarrassed to add the feature after all these years or there’s some weird deeply embedded technical obstacle too scary to touch.
I guarantee it's a third option: When Apple has a bizarre, unexplainable limitation, it's because of a highly opinionated hyper-pure UX design decision.

Having multiple timers running is inelegant and sometimes confusing. So instead of giving users any agency in that situation, they just ban the very concept as a whole.

If they feel enough pressure, and they can come up with a satisfactorily simple UX, they will usually eventually fix the hole.

> So instead of giving users any agency in that situation, they just ban the very concept as a whole.

Of course, many apps on the app store offer this feature.

Annnd they just announced multiple timers.
Hilariously, you can set multiple timers on the Apple Watch, where screen real estate and battery are even more constrained.
Not ideal, but fairly easy to hand roll this with the new web push notification support. I support it as a component of a site I'm working on.

The main annoying part is iOS PWA's kill their service workers when off screen even when explicitly told not to via the `waitUntil` command, so you need to have a server running which handles keeping track of the ongoing timeouts and calls the push notification endpoints accordingly.

Code for that is here, https://github.com/JacksonKearl/push-simple. There's a Dockerfile, currently deployed via fly.io.

Timers requiring a connection to the internet are a non-starter IMO.
I agree it sucks, but iOS's service worker policy gave me no other option. Every other browser is just fine having the timeout running in the background, and I in fact have both codepaths running simultaneously so any other browser can work offline.

Funny that I provide a fully working code sample of how to do what the parent wants, explain the caveats associated with it, and get downvoted because Apple crippled their service workers... ok then, Hackers.

I think you’re getting downvoted because what you propose isn’t an adequate solution to what people find lacking in the iOS built-in apps. As you say, it sucks.
If I were on "People Who Only Are Willing To Use Built In Apps News" that would make sense.
Welcome to HN
I'd wager that this solution is definitely not in the "just works" department.
“Siri, remind me to check noodles (or whatever) in ten minutes” works when you’ve got another timer going.
Similarly “wake me up in 12 minutes”. But you get alarms instead of “timers”
> You can't open an .ics file on your browser and add to the Calendar

You need to choose the right Content-Type on the web server for the ics file delivered to iPhone, “text/calendar”. Safari doesn’t care what file extension the file has if the Content-Type is right.

If that works you can probably encode the ics as a data url and link that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_URI_scheme
Sadly I don't have root access to the servers of every site I browse so I can't use this workaround
"Albums" on the Photo app and the iPhone aren't the same either. That one actively irritates me - why are they different? They're both Apple!
> I thought the whole idea behind iOS was that "it just works"

As with all things and in all things, remember that it's just marketing that one chooses to believe.

I feel like you used to be able to add .ics files from safari but then scummy advertisements would create calendars with fake virus notifications disguised as events, which would result in a bunch of notifications on someone’s phone.
> I thought the whole idea behind iOS was that "it just works

That had never been true. OSX and iOS/iPadOS have always had their warts and the only people that denies that were hopeless fanboys wearing rose-tinted glasses.

It's software is generally well integrated within its own ecosystem, which makes a lot of interactions much better compared to the alternative... But only if you stay within the tiny confines of what Apple deems an acceptable workflow, which manually importing ics files clearly isn't.

I find iOS and AWS share this trait. If you want something done you need Shortcuts or Lambda.

You can do this via a shortcut and that is sadly how I have handled it for years now.

Same shit on Windows
Vote with your feet, get Android.
Tomorrow: It's 2023 and you still can't use DHCPv6 on Android
I don't even know what this means. How is it impacting users? Are they crying out about it on support forums for the past several years?
> I don't even know what this means.

It means the Android operating system does not implement the DHCPv6 protocol.

> How is it impacting users?

Users of Android devices will be unable to obtain a managed IPv6 address configuration, other configuration, or request an IPv6 prefix (read: prefix, not address) via DHCPv6 Prefix Delegation.

> Are they crying out about it on support forums for the past several years?

For at least 10 years now[0].

[0] https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/36949085

DHCPv6 is useless on mobile devices.

Mobile devices typically (read: by default, and if they don't people will berate them for not caring about privacy) randomize the DHCPv6 DUID and MAC address used for the connection, meaning that one might as well just assign a random IPv6 address from the given prefix. Which is exactly what you get without DHCPv6.

The only people demanding DHCPv6 in Android are network admins still under the strange illusion that DHCP somehow gives them some kind of "management", "accountability" or "logs". They didn't get the memo that they will still have to correlate their 802.1x auth with the current device mac and IPv6 addresses in use, which is in no way whatsoever helped by DHCPv6.

Where in this is the description of how it impacts users?
What is DHCPv6?
You've been able to use dhcpv6 on android for many years now. You do need a rooted device and a third party app though, so not exactly a viable solution for many.

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