iOS 10.3.Whatever

tl;dr Install iOS 10.3.1 now

On March 27, 2017 Apple released iOS 10.3 with little fanfare. Here are their release notes:

iOS 10.3
iOS 10.3 introduces new features including the ability to locate AirPods using Find my iPhone and more ways to use Siri with payment, ride booking and automaker apps.

Find My iPhone

• View the current or last known location of your AirPods

• Play a sound on one or both AirPods to help you find them

Siri

• Support for paying and checking status of bills with payment apps

• Support for scheduling with ride booking apps

• Support for checking car fuel level, lock status, turning on lights and activating horn with automaker apps

• Cricket sports scores and statistics for Indian Premier League and International Cricket Council

CarPlay

• Shortcuts in the status bar for easy access to last used apps

• Apple Music Now Playing screen gives access to Up Next and the currently playing song’s album

• Daily curated playlists and new music categories in Apple Music

Other improvements and fixes

• Rent once and watch your iTunes movies across your devices

• New Settings unified view for your Apple ID account information, settings and devices

• Hourly weather in Maps using 3D Touch on the displayed current temperature

• Support for searching “parked car" in Maps

• Calendar adds the ability to delete an unwanted invite and report it as junk

• Home app support to trigger scenes using accessories with switches and buttons

• Home app support for accessory battery level status

• Podcasts support for 3D Touch and Today widget to access recently updated shows

• Podcast shows or episodes are shareable to Messages with full playback support

• Fixes an issue that could prevent Maps from displaying your current location after resetting Location & Privacy

• VoiceOver stability improvements for Phone, Safari and Mail

Weren't we all waiting for improvements in "Cricket sports scores?"

Well, there were a few more things in iOS 10.3. Good things. Things worth talking about. Things worth shouting from the roof tops about. But Apple didn't mention them in the release notice.

MacRumors noted:

iOS 10.3 introduces a new Apple File System (APFS), which is installed when an iOS device is updated. APFS is optimized for flash/SSD storage and includes improved support for encryption. Other features include snapshots for freezing the state of a file system (better for backups), space sharing, and better space efficiency, all of which should result in a more stable platform. Customers updating to iOS 10.3 should first make a backup given that the update installs a new file system.

More on the storage savings from APFS later...

In a separate document from the release notice Apple casually mentioned a few security updates. Specifically it documents 89 CVEs (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures).

You'd think Apple would tout that.

Maybe there was a reason they didn't though.

On April 3, 2017 Apple released iOS 10.3.1 with ONE security fix.

Wi-Fi
Available for: iPhone 5 and later, iPad 4th generation and later, iPod touch 6th generation and later
Impact: An attacker within range may be able to execute arbitrary code on the Wi-Fi chip
Description: A stack buffer overflow was addressed through improved input validation.
CVE-2017-6975: Gal Beniamini of Google Project Zero

Read that again. Especially this part:

Impact: An attacker within range may be able to execute arbitrary code on the Wi-Fi chip

This is NASTY. The Register has a good summary. This is a problem in Broadcom's Wi-Fi stack which is used by iPhones after the iPhone 4 and in newer iPods and iPads and some Android phones including Google's Nexus 5, 6 and 6P, most Samsung flagship devices.

The good news is that Apple's ecosystem is able to respond very quickly to vulnerabilities such as this. The bad news is that Android can't.

On a related topic, the implementation of new Apple File System (APFS) that comes with the installation of iOS 10.3.Whatever yields significant savings in storage.

On my 16GB iPad Air, my available storage increased more than 1GB. It took about half an hour to install.