back to article iOS 8 screencaps leak: Text editor, dictaphone and 'tips' on the way

The first screenshots of iOS 8 have leaked online after being posted on the Chinese microblogging service Weibo. Although Apple have not officially confirmed whether the images are real, web whisperers certainly think they are for real. Apart from Healthbook, which is presumably a health app, the new additions to iOS 8 are …

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  1. Buzzword

    Correction

    Voice memos is a stock app, it's been there for years.

    1. RAMChYLD
      Meh

      Re: Correction

      Not on iPads tho :/ I actually had to buy a recorder app just so I can take voice notes on the fondleslab during meetings.

      1. ThomH

        Re: Correction

        The iPad similarly doesn't have Calculator. I wouldn't mind if it didn't make me so painfully aware that I'm out of practice with mental arithmetic.

    2. LarsG

      Maybe that's why Apple offer the upgrades for free now?

      If it's free, you can't complain you aren't getting your money's worth or you are being ripped off?

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Can I use your dictaphone?

    No! Use your finger like everyone else.

    The oldies are the best....at least while people remember what dictaphones are at any rate.

  3. Steve Todd

    While I can see Chinese companies might have access to the hardware

    I doubt they will have access to the software from a company like Apple, especially 6 months out from the expected release date.

  4. This post has been deleted by its author

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    If this turns out to be at all accurate iOS 8 will be the defining point for current Apple users.

    It will forever be the point where they say "fuck it" and just get a phone from a manufacturer that is doing more than tinkering with a dead mans idea of how a phone should be without a damn clue what they are doing.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      It will forever be the point where they say "fuck it" and just get a phone from a manufacturer that is doing more than tinkering with a dead mans idea of how a phone should be without a damn clue what they are doing.

      And what will Samsung do then? They have been tinkering with the tinkering of a dead mans ideas for years... Is that why their 'pro' tablets resembled Windows 8 just a bit too much?

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      "It will forever be the point where they say "fuck it" and just get a phone from a manufacturer that is doing more than tinkering with a dead mans idea of how a phone should be without a damn clue what they are doing."

      Because they're making a text editing app? Uh, ok.

    3. ThomH

      That doesn't sound likely to me. Here's what most people think about phones: they're much of a muchness and the best one to get is whichever is the most nominally expensive that they'll give you for free on your contract.

  6. ScarabMonkey

    The existence of a Preview app could hint at the idea of having centralised storage, so you don't end up with 10 different copies of the same PDF which you have tried to read using different apps...

    here's hoping!

    1. Al 24

      Interesting. This is a possible answer to the question I posted below before spotting your post (why the need for a preview app with springboard icon when ios was this functionality already?), this could be nice but would also be a major restructuring of the way app sandboxing / access to the file system works.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      "The existence of a Preview app could hint at the idea of having centralised storage, so you don't end up with 10 different copies of the same PDF which you have tried to read using different apps..."

      Maybe, if they're very careful about how it's implemented and it requires explicit user authorization for each file.

      The last thing I want is my iPhone to turn into a Windows/Android-like free-for-all where any program might be doing anything with any other program's data. Security disaster. No more peace of mind that when you install an app it won't be able to do anything malicious.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Devil

    Tips

    If this leak about Tips have some accuracy, I recall Nokia doing it for years on their symbian phones.

  8. stucs201
    Flame

    "hardly going to set fanbois on fire"

    It depends. If somehow it causes the battery to overheat enough then it might...

  9. Gannettt

    Looks faked to me

    The TextEdit and Preview icons are of a totally different visual style to the rest of iOS, they look like they were just pasted into the image. Yes, maybe this is a hint of the often talked-about convergence of iOS and OS X, but I think someone hasn't realised it's another 3 weeks until April 1st!

  10. JLV

    editors: Textedit on the Mac is just as "fun" as Notepad

    I am gonna shill* a bit for Textastic, which is a really, really, awesome programming editor on the iPad.

    I use it to review code and do some light editing. It also has a pretty clever widget to allow special character entry.

    Looking at full-page, full screen, code renditions on a hi-def tablet comes close to looking at a printout.

    After connecting to its built-in WebDav server, a bit of git magic on the command line allows me to take periodic snapshots of my whole app's codebase and deposit it on the iPad for review. No iTunes shenanigans required. Other people have hacked a hook up to a live git repo as well.

    * Full disclosure: no relationship whatsoever to the vendor besides being a happy customer.

    p.s. better sharing between apps? That would be great. How about Textastic => Pythonista, for example?

    p.p.s. If I were to get an Android tablet, what would be an equivalent editor offering?

  11. Slap

    If there's anything that iOS needs...

    If there's anything that iOS needs it's a proper file management environment, desperately.

    Text edit is effectively redundant as everybody I know uses notes, or Daedalus ,for basic text and note taking. Also given that pages is free for new devices it kind of validates it's redundancy. Don't get me wrong I love TextEdit on the mac - it's a quick and dirty word processor, but I don't see how it would fit in the iOS world

    Preview, oh god, yet another PDF viewer. Seriously I've lost track of how many PDF files I've got duplicated between apps.

    Seriously iOS needs a Finder equivalent. To be fair iOS is workable without, but by god I don't just want workable, I want flexibility. Goodreader is good in that it gives me access to my servers and can sort of function as a file management system, but I really want something native that doesn't require the duplication of files in order to open them with a different app.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: If there's anything that iOS needs...

      "If there's anything that iOS needs it's a proper file management environment, desperately."

      Disagree. Sandboxing apps was a master stroke on Apple's part. It means you can install and run apps with confidence that they will not mess up anything else on your phone (maliciously or otherwise) and you can delete them with confidence that your entire phone will go back to its original state.

      The last thing we (iOS users) need is to have the platform devolve into Windows, where your device slowly fills up with mysterious files and software over time until you get sick of it and reinstall everything to get back to a "neutral" state.

      1. JeevesMkII

        Re: If there's anything that iOS needs...

        Sigh. As if 100% sandboxed or a complete free for all are the only two states of being possible.

        You only have to look back as far as Symbian to see how to do it properly. Private data was private to the app, public data was public, and there was even an intermediate state where data could be shared between particular applications but not with the world at large.

        Call it what it is: laziness. They can't be bothered with proper security, so they have this half-arsed system that inconveniences everyone.

      2. cambsukguy

        Re: If there's anything that iOS needs...

        Hmm, compare iOS wth Windows, logical not. Windows might be compared with OSX logically I think.

        Windows (Phone) is part way between the two extremes of iOS and Android, closer to the iOS model IMO.

        If I download a file or have it emailed and click to open it, I will get a list of apps that have registered to open it, much like window, although the list is usually not present, for instance Office Docs open with Office. But, PDFs, there is more than one app that can open it.

        There is no proper file system but 'files' are presented to a PC for moving/copying etc. Required onlt for moving a music library because otherwise Onedrive, Dropbox et al suffices.

        All music apps can access the music library.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: If there's anything that iOS needs...

          "If I download a file or have it emailed and click to open it, I will get a list of apps that have registered to open it, much like window, ... There is no proper file system but 'files' are presented to a PC for moving/copying etc."

          You must not have used iOS since version 2. iOS has had the ability for users to open attachments with 3rd party apps (and for apps to open files with other apps) for the last ~5 years. And the ability for users to drag and drop files between apps and a computer via iTunes for about that long too.

          I am frequently amazed at how limited some people think iOS is. They go to these message forums and see all the complaints written by fandroids about how limited iOS is and how controlling Apple is and assume you basically can't do anything with iOS, when in fact it has been a fairly flexible, rich environment for a long time now.

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Hope the Messages auto delete

    Can be turned off, as some of us like being able to refer to text messages from five years ago :)

    It would be nice if they made it easier to scroll back that far though, and you didn't need to hit "load more messages" a bunch of times for conversations with many thousands of texts to go back to the beginning.

    1. cambsukguy

      Re: Hope the Messages auto delete

      Presumably, they are saved to the cloud where they can be accessed by every individual conversation dated in groups in some, marginally clever way in the same place as your contacts for easy integration and emails and stuff.

      Oh, it is iOS not WP, forget it, carry on, though I don't know how.

  13. Al 24

    hmmm

    Voice memos isn't new (ios3?) and I've been moving files between apps for years with no problems too (moving large files can be annoying as a full copy needs always gets done - the way the app sandboxing works though this will probably always be the case).

    Textedit as a stock app sounds handy, but I don't really see the need to have preview as an app with icon on the springboard? Surely ios already has the core functionality of preview.

  14. Annihilator
    Meh

    Stop it

    Please tell Apple to stuck adding more *^%&ing useless apps that can't be removed. I'm sure people love using iBooks, Newstand and Passbook (just 3 I can think of) but mine are shoved in a folder marked "crap" that I never go in, and takes up screen real estate.

    Was also a lot happier when there was just an "ipod" app instead of 3 separate Video, Music and Podcast apps.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Stop it

      You should rename it from 'crap' to 'al qaeda stuff' or 'drugs and gun info' just so if the cops ever get your phone they'll get all excited for no reason.

      Way back in the day, when I was probably 10 or so, I was using my dad's badass 286 and noticed a directory that had the extension '.nfg'. Apparently the file system got hosed and it had become undeletable, so he'd renamed it. I asked what 'nfg' meant, and my dad said, "No good." I was about to ask what the F was for when it suddenly dawned on me...

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Why do you care about "useless apps"

      So what does it matter how many things are in your "crap" folder?

      Nothing takes up screen real estate, because unless you're idiot, that folder called "crap" isn't on your home screen or any other screen you normally use. What's the difference between having a folder on a screen you never visit and having a dozen apps on a screen you never visit?

      1. Vociferous

        Re: Why do you care about "useless apps"

        "You can jump hoops to work around this inconvenience < insert company > intentionally inflicted on you, so it's not an inconvenience at all!"

        The Win8 fanbois pretty much live and breathe this logic, and it seems apploids are learning it too.

        Back in my day, one could uninstall things one didn't want. As we walked the 50 miles to school, uphill, in the snowstorm, in the dark, every morning.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Why do you care about "useless apps"

          Really? So you can uninstall the phone app and the settings app from Android? I doubt that, unless you root it (and I imagine you can delete those apps from your iPhone if you jailbreak it, though whether it works afterwards is anyone's guess)

          Just about every app could theoretically be uninstalled from an iPhone if you wanted to allow anything to be uninstalled. If you are using your phone as an iPod, why not delete the phone app, mail app, messages app, app store app, camera app and so on. The problem is, if you let people uninstall stuff at random, some will do it by accident and there's no way to get them back.

          I'm more than willing to pay a tiny price in one-time inconvenience to move unused apps to a folder or alternate screen, or just ignore them, so that I don't have to worry if a five year old grabbed my phone for a moment I won't find I've lost my Safari app with no way to get it back.

          If you want that level of control, you don't want an iPhone. Get an Android and compile your OS from source so you can compile out options you don't want cluttering up your kernel.

      2. This post has been deleted by its author

  15. mistersaxon

    Textedit? Hurrah!

    What everyone is forgetting is that textedit on Mac saves to iCloud which is fine and dandy if you have multiple macs to share text docs between, but if you want to read those little notes on an iPhone or iPad you have to migrate them all into Pages and use that as though it were notepad - or spend on a text editor for Mac and iPad etc. Same thing for Preview. Mac users have been asking for both of these in iOS for a while now. If this isn't a troll then it's good news for some of us.

  16. Uwe Dippel

    fantastic!! - Wow!!

    The screenshot alone convinces me: I need to have this baby! - please, please, Apple, bring it out to us as soon as possible! Whatever the price, I will pay it. Finally, not only the usual great software, but ground-shaking advances into the future! Yeah, Yeah!

  17. Kenny Millar

    It came from 9to5mac, which is about as reliable as the Sun for truths and rumour.

    What next, "iOS to include remote fart machine app made by Apple"?

  18. Wish You Were Here
    Thumb Down

    Better interoperability

    But will it let me choose Chrome as a default browser? Will it feck. About time the EU anti competition bods kicked Apple's nuts the same as they did for Microsloth with IE.

  19. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Just looks like some sort of test ROM to me.

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