Slashdot Mirror


Turning Off Wi-Fi and Bluetooth in iOS 11's Control Center Doesn't Actually Turn Off Wi-Fi or Bluetooth (vice.com)

An anonymous reader shares a Motherboard report: Turning off Bluetooth and Wi-Fi when you're not using them on your smartphone has long been standard, common sense, advice. Unfortunately, with the iPhone's new operating system iOS 11 - which was released to the general public yesterday - turning them off is not as easy as it used to be. Now, when you toggle Bluetooth and Wi-Fi off from the iPhone's Control Center -- the somewhat confusing menu that appears when you swipe up from the bottom of the phone -- it actually doesn't completely turn them off. While that might sound like a bug, that's actually what Apple intended in the new operating system. But security researchers warn that users might not realize this and, as a consequence, could leave Bluetooth and Wi-Fi on without noticing. Numerous Slashdot readers have complained about this "feature" this week.

16 of 226 comments (clear)

  1. Very Brave by Oswald+McWeany · · Score: 5, Funny

    It was very brave and forward thinking of Apple to not allow you to turn off Wifi.

    --
    "That's the way to do it" - Punch
    1. Re: Very Brave by sound+vision · · Score: 5, Informative

      Another decision to impede security in the name of convenience. People act like Microsoft only does this.

    2. Re: Very Brave by cayenne8 · · Score: 4, Insightful
      You know...while I do not consider myself an Apple Fanboy....I have enjoyed many of their products over the past years.

      But man...after Steve passed away, it does seem to be going downhill there. The UI is just not as intuitive anymore. Gaffs of things not working, like the watch LTE problems on release, and stuff like this.

      I had hoped the folks he'd had following him had had some of the intuition he'd displayed on how things should be (some losers, but mostly good IMHO) and work that make products easy and fun to use for he user, and have them be intuitive.....but alas, that does not seem to be the case and we see blunder after blunder and design and UI flaw after flaw.

      --
      Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
    3. Re: Very Brave by ColdWetDog · · Score: 4, Insightful

      MacPro, the dwindling mini, the 'touch bar', dongles, port starvation, thin, thin, thin!!!

      Oh, and iTunes.

      I win!

      --
      Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
    4. Re: Very Brave by Khyber · · Score: 5, Insightful

      https://youtu.be/ZBma82g3Uag

      Apple has become exactly what Jobs originally did not like.

      --
      Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
    5. Re: Very Brave by Aristos+Mazer · · Score: 4, Funny

      Apple needs an asshole because otherwise the shit builds up? :-)

  2. When...? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Can we go back to the 'old' way, where I buy something, its mine, and I get to determine how I want it to work.

    I know, I know, grumpy old man grumbling about progress....

    Maybe just go back to the old dictionary... where "off" meant off, and progress meant something other than "up yours".

  3. This is why I refuse to update my iphone by Spy+Handler · · Score: 4, Informative

    my iphone 6+ will stay on 9.3.5 forever, or until the hardware dies... whichever comes first.

    How do I stop the auto updates? It's impossible to stop the phone from downloading updates automatically, unless you jailbreak it... OR you block the following URLs on your wifi router:

    appldnld.apple.com
    mesu.apple.com

    This will prevent your iDevice from auto downloading OS updates. Don't worry, you can still update your installed apps, it only blocks iOS updates.

  4. Re:And the point then? by Okind · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Besides cutting off access to those radios to apps, what would be the purpose of turning them off now if it doesn't really turn them off?

    How about theft?

    For a smartphone there may not be a reason, seeing you always carry it with you. But for clunkier items like tablets, an always-on transmitter of a radio signal is a godsend for thieves everywhere. Now they can use a simple scanner to locate items to steal.

    In fact, this is the reason you should turn your transmitting devices off (not standby) when you leave them out of sight in your locked car. It prevents them from being stolen.

  5. This reminds me of something... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "The instrument (the telescreen, it was called) could be dimmed, but there was no way of shutting it off completely." -- 1984

  6. Re:And the point then? by karnal · · Score: 4, Funny

    Well, we could just remove the batt... oh wait.

    --
    Karnal
  7. Re:Product Opportunity by msauve · · Score: 5, Funny

    Just hold it wrong. Problem solved.

    --
    "National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
  8. Re:And the point then? by quintus_horatius · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You can turn off both radios in the settings app

    Then why have this "false" radio-off setting? Why not turn them off the way users expect when they, for instance, toggle the radios off using the easy-to-find settings?

    Also, FTFA:

    ...both Bluetooth and Wi-Fi will become active again when you toggle them off in the Control Center at 5 AM local time, according to Apple's documentation

    What the hell is the point of THAT?!

  9. After giving this some thought by the_skywise · · Score: 4, Insightful

    After being outrageously outraged I lied down and took a stresstab and I think I see the usability standpoint. They're probably getting tons of customer support calls from naive users whining that they can't airdrop from their iPhone to their iPad because they turned off wifi on their iPhone. (I do that all the time as I leave my macbook connected to an ethernet connection and turn off the wifi and then can't figure out why my macbook doesn't show up on airdrop but the 15 people's iPhone in the office cubes around me do!)
    That said, they've broken the first law of UI design - DON'T CHANGE THE BEHAVIOR OF A BUTTON ONCE YOU'VE ESTABLISHED ITS USE. If anything it should be a tri-state button now - full on - apple services only - off. That would've clarified the intent to the user of the change AND alerted the user to its valid state.

    Is it any wonder that many considered Steve Jobs an asshole when he would go off? He was probably going off on UI designers doing stuff like this. "DUDE - I PAY YOU A QUARTER OF A MILLION DOLLARS A YEAR AND YOU'RE PUSHING THIS S$*@ ON ME?! WTF?!"

  10. Re:Burying the takeaway by tk77 · · Score: 5, Informative

    If you long-press on one of the buttons in the control center, it pops up a larger display that sort of details whats going on.

    If you tap the wifi or bluetooth buttons to turn them off, the blue highlight turns gray and the text in the larger display will say "disconnected". If you turn them off in the settings app, the highlight turns gray and there's a line through the wifi/bluetooth logos and in the larger display it says "off".

    The airplane mode button which is the first button in the control center, when pressed, turns everything off.

    It's not obvious and I didn't really know that this is how it worked until I saw the Apple support doc. Knowing now how it works, I don't mind so much. It means on my iPad I can have Bluetooth on, but "disconnected" and still be able to use the pencil (rather then having to have BT fully on).

  11. Facts by sjbe · · Score: 4, Informative

    The problem is that they replaced an engineer with a pointy haired boss with an MBA.

    The only thing factually correct in that sentence is that Tim Cook does have a MBA degree and there is no evidence that constitutes a problem for Apple. Steve Jobs was not an engineer and did not have an engineering degree (or any other degree for that matter). Tim Cook IS an engineer and does have an engineering degree from Auburn University.

    Tim Cook knows how to do is squeeze people for more cash, exploiting their captive user base until people throw their hands up in the air and walk away.

    There is no evidence that Apple customers are walking away in any meaningful numbers.

    It's ironic, Microsoft is trying so hard to be like Apple, but Apple is trying very hard to be like Oracle.

    If you think that then I don't think you've actually dealt with Oracle. The experience of working with Apple is NOTHING like the experience of working with Oracle.