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Students are failing AP tests because the College Board can’t handle HEIC images

(www.theverge.com)
669 points danso | 2 comments | 20 May 20 19:36 UTC | HN request time: 0.406s | source
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crazygringo ◴[21 May 20 16:55 UTC] No.23260987[source]▶
I thought iOS was supposed to convert HEIC images to JPEG automatically behind-the-scenes in any file transfer situation where HEIC isn't supported. The article itself even says:

> iPhones convert HEICs to JPEGs automatically when they’re attached to emails in the Mail app

I'm just curious technically why the same didn't happen with the testing portal? If you have a webpage that accepts image uploads, is iOS Safari not smart enough to do the same conversion?

Or was the portal programmed badly or in a non-standard way that that couldn't happen? Or is there a way to do it that the developers ignored?

Just curious for the technical details of who's more to blame here -- Apple not providing enough backwards compatibility, or the testing portal being designed poorly.

Because blaming students for not following obscure instructions to change their phone's overall configuration is not the right path. A national testing portal ought to support the default image format taken by the world's most popular phone, period.

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1. gsnedders ◴[21 May 20 17:09 UTC] No.23261225[source]▶
> If you have a webpage that accepts image uploads, is iOS Safari not smart enough to do the same conversion?

AIUI, Mobile Safari always re-encodes the image. However, if you transfer the image to a device that supports HEIC (e.g., recent macOS) then you'll find out that (desktop) Safari never re-encodes an image when uploading a file.

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2. oefrha ◴[21 May 20 17:34 UTC] No.23261699[source]▶
> (desktop) Safari never re-encodes an image when uploading a file.

Not really: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23261216

Images are converted if you select from Photos (instead of the filesystem).