iOS 10.3 will probably make your iPhone feel faster

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The Verge:

Apple released iOS 10.3 yesterday with a new modern file system, but like any software update there are many undocumented changes. One particular change has been revealed through Apple engineer Renaud Lienhart‏, who works directly on the iOS operating system. “iOS 10.3 feels ‘snappier’ because many animations were slightly tweaked & shortened, for the better,” says Lienhart on Twitter.

Here’s the tweet:

Why the snappiness?

Apple’s new file system in iOS 10.3, that’s rolling out to millions of iPhones and iPads, should help make the OS feel a little faster, too. As APFS is designed to be low latency, this should also improve read and write speeds on iOS devices. You won’t notice this immediately, but apps that write a lot of data to a disk (like video processing) might seem faster

Lots of people talking about this. My favorite quote? This, from John Gruber:

I upgraded my phone today, and it did seem to me that it took an unusual amount of time. Understandable, considering it was changing the file system. This is one of those things where if it all goes according to plan, normal people will have no idea it happened. But for us nerds, what Apple pulled off today seems almost impossible — tens of millions of devices are being upgraded to an altogether brand new file system, in place, silently. My sincere congratulations to Apple’s file system team on a job well done.

That’s the key. These last few months, I’ve been upgrading all my devices each time a new beta hits and have yet to encounter a problem. Apple really deserves kudos here.

UPDATE: Tiny nit, but a cricket told me the Verge got one detail wrong, that Richard Lienhart is no longer an Apple Engineer. Just passing that along. Story core still correct.