Comment by wendythehacker 10 months ago
Interestingly, I had the exact same reaction when trying to figure out how to enable/disable WiFi. Why Apple, why? I wonder what telemetry tells them about this icon - wouldn't it be one of the most used ones? Or is there maybe an incentive for Apple to make sure users have WiFi on that I don't understand.
The new connectivity group is indeed awful. When expanded, some of the options are buttons that toggle state. Some open a whole new page of options. And Personal Hotspot is represented by a blank icon, and actually clicking it just dismisses the settings entirely.
Oo this is fun: guessing what the meeting was like where this decision was made. Off the top of my head, there are a few possibilities:
1. Engineers like to unify + encapsulate things where possible for its own sake, and the UX people were looped in too late.
2. There was pressure from above to make things “feel different” to stave off the accusations of “the end of an era of innovation” that get louder every iPhone/iOS release, and this stacking functionality is one of the strategies the team developed early on. No amount of negative metrics can put a hole in an Organizational Priority!
3. Despite their successful efforts to minimize intimidation-layoffs, they did end up laying off ~1000 engineers. It’s possible that the engineers were/are checked out due to a feeling of betrayal, and that the times are changing.
4. Most likely by far: a combination of all the above!
I really think it has to be some organizational mistake. No way that got past a good UX person who had the power of veto.
When WiFi is enabled, iPhones usually broadcast a list of previously connected SSIDs, which can be used in fingerprinting. Fortunately, shortcuts can disable (not just disconnect) WiFi.
> I wonder what telemetry tells them about this icon
Do workaround articles count as telemetry? https://allthings.how/how-to-get-wi-fi-cellular-and-bluetoot... & https://old.reddit.com/r/ios/comments/1fidfm0/ios_18_psa_you...
Active probes are faster, https://www.wi-fi.org/knowledge-center/faq/what-are-passive-...
> The reason for client scanning is to determine a suitable AP to which the client may need to roam now or in the future. A client can use two scanning methods: active and passive. During an active scan, the client radio transmits a probe request and listens for a probe response from an AP. With a passive scan, the client radio listens on each channel for beacons sent periodically by an AP. A passive scan generally takes more time, since the client must listen and wait for a beacon versus actively probing to find an AP. Another limitation with a passive scan is that if the client does not wait long enough on a channel, then the client may miss an AP beacon.
I think the reason is Apple wants to make it hard to turn off Wifi, so your device is part of their Find My network and will support other Wifi based data collection they do.
The buttons doesn’t actually turn off Wifi or Bluetooth, they disconnect from the current network/device. This is a huge dark pattern.