Apple Releases iOS 16.4, iPadOS 16.4, macOS 13.3 Ventura, watchOS 9.4, tvOS 16.4, and HomePod Software 16.4

lots of feature creep but, bless their pointy heads, they’ve still not fixed the missing album art bug in ios. now going on 3 major releases without a fix. [insert frown 絵文字 here]

For iPadOS 16.4, one item that goes by quickly and you might miss - ‘oh, BTW, we turned on auto-iOS-update, because we love you and respect your personal decisions. - you can turn it off if you want.’

Yes, first thing I did was turn it back off.

There’s also an Apple Studio Display firmware upgrade (version 16.4) that requires Ventura 13.3. It will appear if an Apple Studio Display is connected and you have updated Ventura to 13.3.

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What does it for me on 16.4 is that Books has the page turning animation again. :rofl:

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Now if only 13.3 ensures that taps on my 14" MBP’s trackpad no longer go unregistered as often…

11 posts were split to a new topic: Quick Look selecting in reverse in Ventura

Some of Your Devices Require A Software Update
Check your Home app, which I went to use to update my Homepods. Seems it won’t progress to update until I launch Home app, “Home upgrade Available” which then, click Lean More, has a screen “advising me” that my Mac Mini (Late 2012 won’t go past Catalina) and my ipad (didn’t finish 16.4 update because I was asleep and it wanted passcode) "won’t be able to view or control -homepod name- until the latest software update is installed. Devices that are unable to update won’t be able to view or access this home. conveniently in a light grey text so its not easily seen as “accessible”. Thanks Apple! :rage:

That nasty behavior where I plug the phone into the laptop, and then have to enter my passcode to get backups to occur, is still there. And there’s still no way to set up ‘album shuffle’ in Music. (Alphabetical by track name is absolutely -moronic- for classical, do you know how many tracks I have named “adagio?”

I’m with Michel Hedly - Apple should start fixing stuff rather than bleeping around with more Emjois and glitz. (And whoever came up with that default keystroke to edit the lock screen should be flogged! Wife and I have both triggered that MANY TIMES by accident; wife was in tears because she couldn’t figure out how to get the photo back on her lock screen. I was about ready to throw the phone at the wall in frustration…)

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Maybe a followup article on just what the Home “Upgrade” is all about? Found in Home > Home Settings > Software Update.
Seems that if a device in not on 16.4 or 13.3 that once you upgrade, you cannot use that older version of the Home app on that older OS to control your “Home” - not even sure if you can “view only”, either.
Wonder if there are any issues with Homebridge, or HomeKit Controller, or other third party HomeKit apps.

A lot of that was covered here a few months ago: Matter Is Here, but Does It Matter Right Now? - TidBITS

Apple did briefly release the new architecture with 16.2, but pulled it after people were having issues. Again mentioned briefly here: Apple Releases iOS 16.2, iPadOS 16.2, macOS 13.1 Ventura, watchOS 9.2, and tvOS 16.2 - TidBITS

I don’t have elaborate HomeKit setups (I have two homes with HK), but everything is working perfectly for me on the “legacy” architecture so I have absolutely zero plans myself to update until either this has been around for a while, or I have no other choice but to update.

My Apple Watch Ultra’s battery drains twice as fast after the upgrade to 9.4.

Apparently select AppleCard users on 16.4 are now being invited to test drive “Apple Pay Later”. Hooray! We need more of this! :rofl:

I’d say the first thing to try if you are seeing excessive watch battery drain post-update is to power cycle both the phone and the watch and see if that makes things better.

I just installed 9.4 a couple of hours ago on my Ultra. It’s probably too soon to say, but I’ve not noticed any increased battery drain compared to 9.3 and earlier so far.

That’s appropriate, but I’m more likely to channel my parents and ask, “Isn’t there something you should be doing?” Like

I’m not sure what you’re talking about here. I use Quick Look all the time and haven’t seen any problems with image display order.

Yeah, as @ddmiller wrote, it’s something to look at now that Apple has brought the new Home architecture back. I’m a little worried about it because I have a LOT of devices and scenes and automation and I would be very unhappy if I lost them.

Someone sees this with the Apple Watch or iPhone or iPad after every update. Let it finish setup and indexing and all the necessary background cleanup tasks for a day or so, and then see if the battery life is still being negatively impacted.

I mocked Apple leading the release notes with the new emoji not because I think it’s silly to add them (well, sort of) but mostly because I think it’s ridiculous to promote the addition as the top improvement. I have to assume that adding a new emoji is trivially easy and isn’t done by a senior-level engineer. As David Shayer wrote, it’s highly unlikely that bugs will be fixed this late in the release cycle because the risk of causing other problems is too high.

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Voice Isolation for regular calls is NOT on by default. I too had a hard time figuring out how to enable it. You have to access it from the control center WHILE A VOICE CALL IS ACTIVE — otherwise the setting is not visible. Setting it once appears to leave it at that setting for future calls though.

This is completely obscure on Apple’s part imo — why this setting isn’t available under Settings → Phone is beyond me.

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Well, after more than 40 years in Tech, I know how much work goes into writing a good bug report. I frankly have little confidence at this point that Apple really cares much about user-reported issues, and that’s why I’m not willing to put the hard work into trying to nail down a well-written bug report that just gets sucked into the black hole at the center of Apple Park…

Sure, but I was sharing that article for his point about when in the cycle bugs are likely to be fixed.

I’m no fan of reporting bugs to Apple either, but if no one does it, we can’t necessarily expect them to be noticed and fixed.

In September 2021, I reported a bug to Apple about how Audio MIDI Setup still used the term “master,” despite Apple having officially deprecated the term. (Gotta walk the walk, Apple.) Apple finally fixed it in Ventura, a year later, but still hasn’t corrected a screenshot in the app’s help. I’ve sort of enjoyed repeatedly plinking them about it.

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I guess you could argue that should actually be the job of the beta testers and devs. Now obviously, the more that report bugs, the better the odds of getting them fixed should be, and yet there’s indeed considerable doubt as to if more user reports actually lead to fewer bugs. I find this a very interesting issue, and I’m entirely unsure which side I come down on personally. I think we’re quite susceptible here to believing what we would want to be true though.

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On at least some of the bugs we’ve discussed here on recent releases, there’s also been a lot of discussion on Apple’s own developer forum. That’s where I’d expect Apple to (a) find a common problem, (b) solicit help if they can’t reproduce it from the material already there, and most importantly (c) provide -some sort of feedback-.