Stories with Tag iPad

• Show HN: My iOS app to practice sight reading (10 years in the App Store)

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  Posted: 2025-03-23 21:25:08

  Verbose tl;dr

  "Notes" is an iOS app designed to help musicians improve their sight-reading skills. Available on the App Store for 10 years, the app presents users with randomly generated musical notation, covering a range of clefs, key signatures, and rhythms. Users can customize the difficulty level, focusing on specific areas for improvement. The app provides instant feedback on accuracy and tracks progress over time, helping musicians develop their ability to quickly and accurately interpret and play music.

  The Hacker News post titled "Show HN: My iOS app to practice sight reading (10 years in the App Store)" introduces an application specifically designed for musicians seeking to improve their sight-reading proficiency, a crucial skill for performing music accurately and fluently upon first encounter. The app, titled "Notes: Sight Reading Trainer" and available on the iOS App Store, represents a decade of development and refinement. It offers a comprehensive suite of tools and exercises tailored to various skill levels and musical preferences. The core functionality revolves around presenting the user with musical notation, which they must then interpret and, ideally, perform.

  The app boasts a wide range of customizable features, allowing users to tailor their practice sessions to their specific needs. This includes options for selecting the clef (bass, treble, alto, tenor), key signature, time signature, and note range, enabling focused practice on particular musical elements. Users can further refine their training by choosing specific rhythmic patterns or melodic intervals they wish to concentrate on, facilitating targeted improvement in areas of weakness. The app's flexibility extends to instrument choice, theoretically accommodating any instrument capable of producing the displayed pitches, although it's primarily geared towards melodic instruments.

  Beyond simply displaying notation, the app provides valuable feedback mechanisms. While the ideal usage would involve playing the notes on an instrument, the app incorporates a playback feature, allowing users to hear the correct rendition of the displayed passage. This auditory feedback serves as a valuable tool for self-assessment and reinforces the connection between visual notation and aural realization. Furthermore, the app tracks user progress over time, potentially motivating continued practice and providing a quantifiable measure of improvement in sight-reading ability. The post highlights the app's longevity in the App Store, suggesting a history of user engagement and ongoing development, implying a mature and well-tested application. Essentially, the app aims to be a versatile and effective digital tool for musicians of varying levels to hone their sight-reading skills conveniently on their iOS devices.

  • iOS
  • App
  • Music
  • Sight Reading
  • Music Theory
  • Education
  • training
  • App Store
  • Mobile App
  • Music Education
  • Ear Training
  • Music Practice
  • Software
  • iPhone
  • iPad

  Summary of Comments ( 116 )
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43456030

  Verbose tl;dr

  HN users discussed the app's longevity and the developer's persistence, praising the 10-year milestone. Some shared their personal sight-reading practice methods, including using apps like Functional Ear Trainer and various websites. A few users suggested potential improvements for the app, such as adding support for other instruments beyond piano and offering more customization options like adjustable clefs. Others questioned the efficacy of pure note-reading practice without rhythmic context. The overall sentiment was positive, acknowledging the app's niche and the developer's commitment.

  The Hacker News post about the "Notes: Sight Reading Trainer" iOS app, which has been on the App Store for 10 years, generated several interesting comments.

  Many users commended the developer for the app's longevity and consistent updates over a decade. They praised the commitment to maintaining and improving the app in a rapidly changing mobile landscape. Some long-time users chimed in, attesting to the app's usefulness in improving their sight-reading skills. They appreciated features like customizable key signatures, clefs, and rhythms, highlighting the app's adaptability to different skill levels and learning goals.

  A common theme in the comments was the difficulty of creating and maintaining a successful app, particularly for a niche market like music education. Users expressed respect for the developer's perseverance and dedication to this specific area.

  Several commenters discussed the importance of sight-reading for musicians and shared their personal experiences using various tools and techniques to practice. This led to a brief discussion about different approaches to sight-reading pedagogy.

  Some comments also focused on technical aspects. One commenter asked about the development tools used, specifically inquiring about using SwiftUI and UIKit together. The developer replied, explaining their approach of integrating SwiftUI incrementally into the existing UIKit codebase, offering a practical example of managing a legacy codebase in the evolving iOS development ecosystem.

  A few commenters shared their own preferred methods for sight-reading practice, suggesting alternative apps or resources. This wasn't a dominant part of the discussion but offered a glimpse into the broader landscape of sight-reading tools available.

  Overall, the comments section reflected a positive reception to the app and appreciation for the developer's long-term commitment. The discussion provided a mix of personal experiences, technical insights, and pedagogical considerations related to sight-reading practice.

• Reverse Engineering iOS 18 Inactivity Reboot

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  Posted: 2024-11-17 21:50:26

  Verbose tl;dr

  iOS 18 introduces a new feature that automatically reboots devices after a prolonged period of inactivity. Reverse engineering revealed this is managed by the SpringBoard process, which monitors user interaction and triggers a reboot after approximately 72 hours of inactivity. The reboot is signaled by setting a specific flag in a system property and is considered a "soft" reboot, likely to maintain device state where possible. This feature seems primarily targeted at corporate devices enrolled in Mobile Device Management (MDM) systems, as a way to clear temporary states and potentially address performance issues resulting from prolonged uptime without requiring manual intervention. The exact conditions for triggering the reboot, beyond inactivity time, are still being investigated.

  This blog post by Naehrdine explores an unexpected reboot phenomenon observed on an iPhone running iOS 18 and details the process of reverse engineering the operating system to pinpoint the root cause. The author begins by describing the seemingly random nature of the reboots, noting they occurred after periods of inactivity, specifically overnight while the phone was charging and seemingly unused. This led to initial suspicions of a hardware issue, but traditional troubleshooting steps, like resetting settings and even a complete device restore using iTunes, failed to resolve the problem.

  Faced with the persistence of the issue, the author embarked on a deeper investigation involving reverse engineering iOS 18. This involved utilizing tools and techniques to analyze the operating system's inner workings. The post explicitly mentions the use of Frida, a dynamic instrumentation toolkit, which allows for the injection of custom code into running processes, enabling real-time monitoring and manipulation. The author also highlights the use of a disassembler and debugger to examine the compiled code of the operating system and trace its execution flow.

  The investigation focused on system daemons, which are background processes responsible for essential system operations. Through meticulous analysis, the author identified a specific daemon, 'powerd', as the likely culprit. 'powerd' is responsible for managing the device's power state, including sleep and wake cycles. Further examination of 'powerd' revealed a previously unknown internal check within the daemon related to prolonged inactivity. This check, under certain conditions, was triggering an undocumented system reset.

  The blog post then meticulously details the specific function within 'powerd' that was causing the reboot, providing the function's name and a breakdown of its logic. The author's analysis revealed that the function appears to be designed to mitigate potential hardware or software issues arising from extended periods of inactivity by forcing a system restart. However, this function seemed to be malfunctioning, triggering the reboot even in the absence of any genuine problems.

  While the author stops short of providing a definitive solution or patch, the post concludes by expressing confidence that the identified function is indeed responsible for the unexplained reboots. The in-depth analysis presented provides valuable insights into the inner workings of iOS power management and offers a potential starting point for developing a fix, either through official Apple updates or community-driven workarounds. The author's work demonstrates the power of reverse engineering in uncovering hidden behaviors and troubleshooting complex software issues.

  • iOS
  • iOS 18
  • Reverse Engineering
  • Inactivity Reboot
  • Mobile
  • Operating System
  • Kernel
  • Debugging
  • Software
  • Apple
  • iPhone
  • iPad
  • Firmware
  • Root Cause Analysis
  • Troubleshooting
  • Inactivity
  • Reboot
  • Security
  • Exploit
  • Vulnerability
  • Mobile Operating System
  • Kernel Debugging
  • Firmware Analysis

  Summary of Comments ( 169 )
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42167633

  Verbose tl;dr

  Hacker News users discussed the potential reasons behind iOS 18's automatic reboot after extended inactivity, with some speculating it's related to memory management, specifically clearing caches or resetting background processes. Others suggested it could be a security measure to mitigate potential exploits or simply a bug. A few commenters expressed concern about the reboot happening without warning, potentially interrupting ongoing tasks or data syncing. Some highlighted the lack of official documentation on this behavior and the author's reverse engineering efforts to uncover the cause. The discussion also touched on similar behavior observed in other operating systems and the overall complexity of modern OS architectures.

  The Hacker News post titled "Reverse Engineering iOS 18 Inactivity Reboot" sparked a discussion with several insightful comments.

  One commenter questioned the necessity of the inactivity reboot, especially given its potential to interrupt important tasks like long-running computations or data transfers. They also expressed concern about the lack of user control over this feature.

  Another commenter pointed out the potential security implications of the reboot, particularly if a device is left unattended and unlocked in a sensitive environment. They suggested the need for an option to disable the automatic reboot for specific situations.

  A different commenter shared their personal experience with the inactivity reboot, describing the frustration of having their device restart unexpectedly during a long process. They emphasized the importance of giving users more control over such system behaviors.

  Several commenters discussed the technical aspects of the reverse engineering process, praising the author of the blog post for their detailed analysis. They also speculated about the potential reasons behind Apple's implementation of the inactivity reboot, such as memory management or security hardening.

  One commenter suggested that the reboot might be related to preventing potential exploits that rely on long-running processes, but acknowledged the inconvenience it causes for users.

  Another commenter highlighted the potential negative impact on accessibility for users who rely on assistive technologies, as the reboot could interrupt their workflow and require them to reconfigure their settings.

  Overall, the comments reflect a mix of curiosity about the technical details, concern about the potential drawbacks of the feature, and a desire for more user control over the behavior of their devices. The commenters generally appreciate the technical analysis of the blog post author while expressing a need for Apple to provide options or clarity around this feature.