Talk:Firmware

Remove "Comments" Column

The tables here are too wide and stretch off the side of the page. We could fix this by ditching the "Comments" column. The column is barely used, and when it is, it adds nothing that couldn't be found on the timeline. The majority of the "comments" are either redundant ("Initial release") or can be found on the timeline.
There are a "few" loners:

• iPhone (original)
  • Alpine 1A420: either make the "IPSW Download URL" "iphoneproto.zip" a link to the MacRumors article or move to Beta Firmware
  • Alpine 1A543a/Oktoberfest 3B48b ("Initial US/Euro shipment"): this is the only device where we differentiate by release date; so unless we do that for all devices, release location/date doesn't really matter
  • Alpine 4A57: move to Beta Firmware
• iPhone 3G
  • Big Bear 5A345: not a beta, but remove "Initial release" (you could argue 5A347 was an "initial release" also just like 4.2.5/4.2.6 for the Verizon iPhone 4 (iPhone3,3) and 7.0/7.0.1 for the iPhone 5c and 5s)
• iPhone 3GS
  • Baker 8B117: put that information on the timeline
• iPhone 4 GSM (iPhone3,1)
  • Telluride 9A405: information available from OTA Updates and (should be) the timeline (9A405 for the 3GS was also first non-beta OTA, but that doesn't have a comment)
• iPhone 4S
  • Telluride 9A334: put that information on the timeline
  • Brighton 10B145: put that information on the timeline
• iPhone 5 (iPhone5,1 and iPhone5,2)
  • Sundance 10A551: put that information on the timeline
• iPod touch (original)
  • Big Bear 5A347 and up: mentioned in the footnote for "Download Link Prohibited"
• iPod touch 2G:
  • Kirkwood 7A341 through SUNorthstarTwo 7E18: mentioned in the footnote for "Download Link Prohibited"
  • Northstar 7C145: put that information on the device's page

We could extend this to Beta Firmware also, but that can be handled later. --5urd (talk) 17:55, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

It fits perfectly fine on my 15-inch MacBook Pro. However, I agree it's not that necessary. I'd be for removing it. For OTA Updates, I'd say it is required really since it explains why you have to get 6.1.3 from 5.0.x before 8.x for example. --iAdam1n (talk) 20:28, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

I agree it looks fine on a big enough monitor, but not everyone has big screens. I have a 1280x1024 screen, and the table is too big for that. As for OTA Updates, I agree it has its purpose, but there has to be a better way to do it, but that's a job for another day. --5urd (talk) 21:37, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

Actually, apart from that info I noted, is there any more information on OTA Updates comments section that is important? If not, we could just add a section to state the OTA from 5.0.x to 6.1.3. --iAdam1n (talk) 22:02, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

It looks actually fine on my iPhone retina display. If table-size is an issue why not merge the ipsw url column and the sha1 hash column into 1 column ?--M2m (talk) 01:04, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

That wouldn't work. The issue 5urd mentioned would be because the width of the table is too big. --iAdam1n (talk) 08:05, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

so merging url with sha1 and a br-tag in between wouldn't reduce width ?--M2m (talk) 15:58, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

Oh, that might but it would look very very ugly. I think the best thing to do is just remove the comments column and add a note for important info there (like the 5.0.x > 6.1.3 OTA). --iAdam1n (talk) 16:22, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

That'd work, but as Adam said, it'd just be ugly. Look at the original iPad's table compared to almost everything else; because of the comments column, each row is at least twice as tall as it needs to be (the width of the comments column shrinks the date column, forcing it to use two lines. --5urd (talk) 17:49, 26 February 2015 (UTC)