Apple iOS 11.2.6 Has A Significant Problem
Apple AAPL +1.72% iOS 11.2.6 is more controversial than it should be. On the surface, it’s a seemingly simple bug fix, but it contains enough problems (the biggest is truly bizarre) that my review warned users not to upgrade. Now a new problem illustrates exactly why the cautious approach was best…
Apple iOS 11.2.6 has broken ‘Speak Screen’, a major part of iOS 11’s Accessibility features. Credit for spotting this goes to users who contacted me about this on social media and, in particular, PiunikaWeb’s Aparajita Sharma who broke down the fault in detail.
A simple way to reproduce it is with Amazon’s Kindle app. Start Speak Screen and it will successfully read the first page, but then skip to the bottom paragraph of each successive page – effectively rendering it useless. Speak Screen is a significant feature for vision impaired users and even those who simply prefer to have articles and eBooks read out to them.
An example of this can be seen in the video below.
Users are understandably frustrated. Right now it is not clear how many apps are affected by the bug since it is impossible to test them all – but breaking Kindle is not a great start. iBooks is currently unaffected.
Understandably users are cross and there are a number of complaints in Apple’s official Support Communities forum. Amazon itself told one user the blame is squarely on Apple because it claims the company not only recognises the problem, but has “no plan” to restore compatibility. I have reached out to Apple for a response to this.
If Amazon is right then the move may prove to be less a bug and more of a subtle power play removing functionality from rival apps. With Apple’s big iOS 11.3 update just around the corner, we will soon know for sure either way…
Source:- https://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonkelly/2018/03/10/apple-ios-11-2-6-problem-ios-upgrade-iphone-ipad-amazon-kindle/#3c1d33c46b3b
