[HN Gopher] Apple's hidden flight tracker app
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Apple's hidden flight tracker app
Author : rammy1234
Score : 145 points
Date : 2022-05-29 14:02 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (medium.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (medium.com)
| ghostly_s wrote:
| https://archive.ph/rQrXh
| rockbruno wrote:
| Thank you. I couldn't read the Medium at all since it forces
| you to have a subscription. I thought HN would have a rule
| against paywalled articles.
| barefeg wrote:
| > Are paywalls ok?
|
| It's ok to post stories from sites with paywalls that have
| workarounds.
|
| In comments, it's ok to ask how to read an article and to
| help other users do so. But please don't post complaints
| about paywalls. Those are off topic. More here.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html
| pvinis wrote:
| Huh. is that a US thing only? Doesn't seem to show up for me.
| Currently in Cyprus, normally based in UK.
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| Not US-only, I use it in Canada and Europe frequently.
| pcmoney wrote:
| It actually is not that useful because you cant base any actions
| off of it. Eg: "tell me if this flight is delayed etc"
| mikebonnell wrote:
| This is a really cool feature, thanks for sharing! This also
| highlights the downside of iOS, so many features are hidden or
| hard to discover :(
| behnamoh wrote:
| Google Pixels show new features with each Android update. I
| think Apple should do something similar.
| CharlesW wrote:
| They generally do, via the Tips app. You may have uninstalled
| it.
|
| https://apps.apple.com/us/app/tips/id1069509450
| cjsawyer wrote:
| I was shocked when I accidentally selected text out of an
| image. You'd think they'd make a bigger deal about cool changes
| the_biot wrote:
| It's pretty amazing how Apple does incredible stuff on the
| down-low, without lots of marketing.
|
| Their Google-street-view-like feature is just an unobtrusive
| link that says "look around" or something like that in their
| maps app on the iphone. Never mind that this is a massive
| amount of work, and that they're in the process of mapping
| all of Europe, and I assume the US.
| mattzito wrote:
| It was a pretty big part of the keynote where they announced
| it, I think it's just that they don't really do in-product
| promos for new features in iOS.
| dom96 wrote:
| I hate that feature. It breaks double tap to zoom for me at
| the most frustrating times. I am yet to need to copy text
| from an image. Funnily enough I think this should be less
| discoverable.
| christoph wrote:
| I've actually found myself using this feature a lot,
| probably almost daily.
|
| BTW, you can switch it off globally easily - it's in
| language/region settings on both iOS and Mac.
| dagmx wrote:
| For that specific feature they did/do highlight it quite a
| bit:
|
| - it was shown off at the keynote last year
| https://youtu.be/TfRMXk53wPY
|
| - I believe the tips app will mention it to you
|
| - they have support articles describing it
| https://support.apple.com/en-ca/HT212630
|
| - any text field you're in will let you scan text directly
| from the camera.
|
| Granted, maybe they could go further to show people when they
| go into the photos app or something, but it's definitely a
| very highlighted feature relative to others.
| zwily wrote:
| Apple likes end users to discover stuff like that on their
| own. They hyped it up a ton at the WWDC keynote before it
| came out, but only a small % of mostly developers see that.
| Part of their philosophy is to delight users along the way
| and maybe finding things like that is delightsome?
|
| They rarely throw "check out the new features!" dialogs on
| upgrades. (Sometimes they do, but it's rare relative to the #
| of new features.)
| mlindner wrote:
| This is one of these things that has kept me an Apple user
| all these years. It's been a core part of their software
| philosophy for a very long time. One of the first of these
| moments was when on early Mac OS X versions where you could
| drag and drop almost anything into anything, and it would
| consume it in some way. For example, dropping an image into
| any text box would either render it as an embedded image,
| paste it as a hyperlink, or paste the filename, depending
| on the context. And these things applied to so many
| different metadata and media formats that everything just
| moves around easily. There's always been so many little
| great features that you just discover through the process
| of using the software.
| dfinninger wrote:
| They had it as a flagship feature one year, and I was
| notified in-app after upgrading.
|
| It's also in the Tips app, which is great to go through from
| time to time!
| erikig wrote:
| Thanks, I didn't know they had a Tips app either.
| sneak wrote:
| It pops up on screen via notification without consent on
| upgrade, like an ad for Apple software you can't turn
| off.
| moistly wrote:
| Hilariously, bringing up search on iPadOS (tap on empty
| desktop space) shows Tips in its best-guesses, but typing
| "tips" into search hides it.
| grishka wrote:
| It is a big feature on macOS and I remember them announcing
| it. I use it sometimes, though I do wish it worked in
| Chromium-based browsers and supported Cyrillic alphabet.
| TooSmugToFail wrote:
| I'm in Europe, running iOS 15.4.1 and it does not work for me.
| Tried 5-6 flights to SFO, and none of them worked.
| fredguth wrote:
| Same in Brazil. Maybe it only works with flights in US.
| deepdmistry wrote:
| I am in US, running iOS 15.5 and I tried US flights as well as
| international flights but it still doesn't work for me.. so not
| sure if there is some privacy setting blocking it or if some
| feature we need to enable.
| FR10 wrote:
| I think it barely works outside of the US, but this is usual
| with most of the quick actions in Spotlight. Its kinda crazy
| all the extra options you get on Spotlight once you land in the
| USA.
| mrunseen wrote:
| Does work for me for Turkish airline operators (I tried TK and
| PC)
| s09dfhks wrote:
| https://scribe.rip/macoclock/apples-hidden-flight-tracker-ap...
| [deleted]
| shmde wrote:
| This is a lot more readable than the medium site. Thanks.
| igammarays wrote:
| Doesn't work with every flight number. Not sure what the criteria
| is.
| mrweasel wrote:
| My guess is that it works for certain airlines. I tried the
| three next flights fromthe local airport. Some of those are
| just one letter and three numbers. That makes it pretty hard to
| make assuption regarding the meaning of the code, without
| having a reference.
| tyingq wrote:
| It's likely expecting IATA style flight numbers, which would
| all be two letters (or a letter/number) airline code,
| followed by some amount of numbers.
| behnamoh wrote:
| I wonder what other iOS features are buried in the OS that I
| don't know about...
| tzs wrote:
| I don't know if this is something new or I just am noticing it
| for the first time, but if I'm in an app for a site that sends
| an SMS code during login, taping the text entry field after the
| SMS is received extracts the code and offers to fill it.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| I'll probably never do it, so I'll throw it out here as an idea:
|
| A journey-constrained social network. E.g. if you frequently
| travel between New York and Paris, you'll be allowed to join the
| JFK-CDG group, then you can talk about travel deals, where to go
| in each city (as you're likely from there or going there, and
| it's a fair exchange with the other groups), what's cheaper or
| worth buying as a gift from one place back to the other, etc.
|
| Doesn't have to be flight specific as the journey method.
| lars_francke wrote:
| There used to be dopplr.com which went into this direction.
|
| https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/dopplr
| cmeacham98 wrote:
| Leaving aside other problems (are there really enough travelers
| for pairs other than the most traveled airports?), how could
| you ever verify this?
| moralestapia wrote:
| Are you in the middle of the ocean moving at 600mph towards
| <destination>?
| cmeacham98 wrote:
| A: Obviously spoofable
|
| B: GP said the intent was for "frequent travelers", i.e.
| I'm assuming one-off travelers are intended not to be
| allowed. Having to verify multiple trips before you can get
| in sounds like a horrible user experience.
| evan_ wrote:
| That determination would need to be done client side and is
| therefore vulnerable to spoofing
| samstave wrote:
| Me and a partner actually have an MVP built out for this. Its
| kind of stagnate right now, but this specifically does this:
|
| Define areas of interest. Create tour routes. Geo-specific
| content (You can post audio, links, etc, to a particular point
| of interest.
|
| When you arrive within the designated (content poster defined)
| area, and are within a certain range of the POI - the content
| can be auto played, such as the audio description of a view
| point, landmark etc.
|
| It will do way finding and pathing...
|
| We have a working MVP on android, but like I said its currently
| dormant.
|
| One feature that is useful to emergency responders is the
| ability to provide geo-cache locations, so when the scouts for
| firefighters are scoping a best route to address front-line
| wild fire, they can mark a point where they leave an equipment
| cache, take a photo of it and share the route with
| firefighters.
|
| We have a digital LED wayfinding strip in the brim of a hat -
| so you have the way finding light compass to tell you the way.
|
| We have a patent on the hat...
| grishka wrote:
| There's this Jetlovers thing that connects to Foursquare/Swarm
| and logs your flights, provided you check in at every airport.
| You can follow people to see their recent flights in your news
| feed. Your idea feels like it belongs there.
| jamil7 wrote:
| We use this in our app, it's very US-heavy though I think.
| NSDataDetector can do a lot of cool stuff, very ugly API to use
| and is confusingly similar but not the same to what's available
| through dataDetectorTypes on a UITextView.
| pjot wrote:
| This appears to be the struct[0]
|
| [0]:
| https://developer.apple.com/documentation/uikit/uidatadetect...
| LeoNatan25 wrote:
| It's actually a C enum.
|
| https://developer.apple.com/documentation/uikit/uidatadetect.
| ..
| jamil7 wrote:
| Right, would be nice for them to unify these.
| ronyfadel wrote:
| Made me smile :D The person who made this at Apple worked on this
| directly in front of me.
| ramesh31 wrote:
| Thank you guys for keeping user delight at the forefront of
| everything. No one else does it like Apple.
| russelldjimmy wrote:
| I think the fact that this post was downvoted speaks a lot.
| Sorry bud. I, too, am a fan and believe that not many do it
| the way Apple does.
| smoldesu wrote:
| What is it saying, exactly? I'm listening but I don't hear
| anything.
| rlt wrote:
| How many Rony Fadel / Tony Fadell jokes have you had to put up
| with?
| ronyfadel wrote:
| Not too many actually!
| peanut_worm wrote:
| I feel like Apple has a hard time making all of the features of
| their products easily discoverable.
| willnonya wrote:
| Just looking at iOS settings backs up this hypothesis.
| reactjavascript wrote:
| I would go further and say discoverability seems to be a low or
| nonexistent priority industry-wide.
| russelldjimmy wrote:
| There is a cost to making features discoverable. The cost is
| visual complexity. Apple can present only one UI to every first
| time user. They need to make hard choices about what to keep
| and what to remove so that the most non-technical user does not
| feel overwhelmed. At the same time, they have to figure out
| subtle ways to gauge user intent and carefully make a feature
| discoverable such that only the user who might consider using
| it (a power user) discovers and acts on it, while not getting
| in the way of the average Joe. It's more art than science and I
| watch this with fascination. Not many companies seem to have
| the attitude of being totally OK with hiding features that took
| time and money to make.
|
| To me, it's quite clear that Apple is OK with letting a hundred
| power users miss a hidden feature than having even one non-
| techie overwhelmed with choice anxiety (I am exaggerating the
| numbers surely).
| GeekyBear wrote:
| One thing that power users used to do, is explore the control
| panels and preferences for the system and the apps they use
| to see what features can be turned on.
|
| One of the Youtubers, who had previously been a lifetime
| Windows user, complained that he loved using iMessage on his
| laptop, but it didn't receive his SMS messages like his phone
| does.
|
| After getting a ton of comments suggesting that it was a
| feature you have to turn on in the preferences, his next
| video was him being amazed that the phone would not only
| forward him the SMS messages, but that the Mac would
| recognize SMS messages with two factor verification codes and
| offer to fill them into the proper place automatically.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8Xjz5v0jDw
| joeman1000 wrote:
| It's those little QoL upgrades which puts macOS/iOS etc. in
| a league of its own. The integration you get out of the box
| is what sells me on Apple stuff now. I think the average
| person doesn't notice or care about these little things,
| and so windows does the job for them. I live in my computer
| though, so I notice everything.
| cromka wrote:
| Another thing is that those less prominently exposed features
| can be taken away from the few of their users without causing
| much uproar when they don't catch on with a wider audience.
| cheschire wrote:
| I'm sure it's the exact opposite. Better to have hundreds if
| not thousands of non techies be comfortable than one power
| user have an extra feature.
| halJordan wrote:
| I disagree, it was perfectly integrated into messages and
| spotlight. He discovered it as soon as it came up. The paradigm
| is "I have to have an app for that." Fwiw, for how poorly siri,
| spotlight, and shortcuts are utilized by end users Google has
| it even worse on Android.
| tedmiston wrote:
| https://archive.ph/rQrXh
| NaOH wrote:
| Similarly, someone texted me--technically, iMessages--shipment
| tracking numbers the other day. Two tracking numbers in three
| messages.
|
| Message 1: 123456789012
|
| Message 2: Tracking number.
|
| Message 3: 2nd tracking, 210987654321
|
| If I press and hold on the first tracking number, the menu of
| options is contact-info focused--call, WhatsApp, Add to Contacts,
| etc. If I do the same on the second number I get an option to
| Track Shipment. But I can paste both numbers into Spotlight and
| directly get tracking info. So I'm not certain why one tracking
| number behaves one way and a second another way.
| dpeck wrote:
| There is one of these for sports scores too and it drives me
| crazy that there's not an easy way to use it directly.
|
| For instance, I like to keep up with my colleges sports teams,
| but I don't need the live tracker stuff (if I wanted that I'd
| watch the game on tv). But I'd love to have a Home Screen button
| that would bring up the "app" for "Georgia Tech baseball score"
| or "Georgia Tech basketball score" to quickly see what's going on
| what I'm in between meetings at work or out doing something with
| the family.
|
| No ads, no frills, it'd be gloriously simple and I assume there
| is some way to do it but I could not find it.
| dvtrn wrote:
| http://plaintextsports.com has become one of my favorite
| websites for every single reason you just went off about
| CodeIsTheEnd wrote:
| Thank you! (I made plaintextsports!)
|
| On my to-do list is making a personalized page where you can
| select exactly which teams you want to follow, something
| closer to what dpeck wants, but I've been having trouble
| finding the time...
| dpeck wrote:
| This would be awesome! I love plaintext sports and the
| minimalist aesthetics of it.
|
| Curious, it seems college baseball scores are generally not
| as easy to find as others. Do they tend to be behind more
| restrictive APIs, or is it more just that there's so little
| interest in it vs MLB?
| Hnrobert42 wrote:
| I wonder if there is a a way you could do it with a man Apple
| Shortcut or a web page linked as an icon on your Home Screen.
| Maybe a URL that searches spotlight.
| dpeck wrote:
| I figured there had to be, and that there might be a way to
| figure it out with connecting up developer tools from mobile
| Safari but I never pursued that path so might be completely
| wrong.
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