Apple

Bill Gates on Steve Jobs and iPhone, John Gruber on Bill Gates and Android

Written by

First things first, take a look at the video embedded in the main Loop post, a Fox News interview with Bill Gates. Jump to about 11:28 in, where Bill is asked about his “famously tempestuous” relationship with Steve Jobs and the new iPhone.

With that in mind, this is John Gruber, from the linked Daring Fireball post:

I say this with no snark intended: who would have guessed 10 years ago that Bill Gates would be using a personal computing device running a non-Microsoft OS? Or really, an OS that didn’t have “Windows” in the name?

And:

While I’m at it, it occurs to me that Apple is the only company left where all its employees are using only systems made by their own company.

Read the whole post, including the update. Fascinating.

How to do a clean install of macOS High Sierra

Written by

Luke Filipowicz, Lory Gil, iMore:

Downloading and installing a new OS gives you the opportunity to do some major house cleaning if you so desire. If you feel like you’d like a fresh start with macOS High Sierra, you can always opt to do a clean install: Just follow the steps below, even if you’ve already installed macOS High Sierra.

A clean install does give you a chance to shake out the leftover cruft from legacy installs. Me, I always keep several copies of backups, untouched, so I can go back and retrieve old apps/data I was sure I’d never need again.

Good post.

The Apple TV, out, then in, then out on Amazon

Written by

Sarah Perez, TechCrunch:

The Apple TV is back for sale on Amazon after a two-year hiatus – a move that was expected following Apple CEO Tim Cook’s announcement in June that Amazon’s Prime Video app would arrive on Apple TV later this year. The two companies had clearly come to an agreement that benefitted their mutual interests – for Amazon, that meant getting its streaming video app onto Apple TV devices; and for Apple, it meant getting its streaming media player on Amazon.com’s retail site again.

Except, as of this writing, the Apple TV is no longer on Amazon. I just did a search for “Apple TV” in quotes and without quotes, and got no love.

The Apple TV clearly had popped into stock over the past few days, but now it is not showing up at all. Not clear if this is related to negotiations related to the Amazon Prime Video app for Apple TV, or perhaps having something to do with pricing on 4K movies on Amazon.

macOS 10.13 High Sierra: The Ars Technica review

Written by

This is a detailed review, definitely a solid place to start learning about macOS High Sierra.

Before you update, you might want to read the section on APFS, the Apple File System called A one-way ticket to APFS-ville (if you have an SSD).

The High Sierra installer does do one major thing that the Sierra installer didn’t do. Behind the scenes, it converts your boot partition from the longstanding HFS+ filesystem to the new APFS.

Well, it does that for most Macs, anyway.

Though most people will never even know what’s happening, there are plenty of caveats and details to know about how the APFS conversion happens, the cases when it doesn’t happen, and why it doesn’t happen when it doesn’t happen.

Read this section, consider your Mac’s particular configuration. Do you have a spinning hard drive? Do you have an SSD that you installed yourself? Do you have a Fusion drive setup? None of these are dealbreakers, but it’s worth spending the time to read about these cases before you do the upgrade.

High Sierra automatically checks firmware integrity each week

Written by

The Eclectic Light Company:

Upgrading to High Sierra brings a new and significant security feature: your Mac will automatically check its EFI firmware. In a series of tweets, Xeno Kovah, one of the three engineers responsible for the new tool, has outlined how this works.

The new utility eficheck, located in /usr/libexec/firmwarecheckers/eficheck, runs automatically once a week. It checks that Mac’s firmware against Apple’s database of what is known to be good. If it passes, you will see nothing of this, but if there are discrepancies, you will be invited to send a report to Apple.

And:

eficheck depends on a small local library of ‘known good’ data, which will be automatically and silently updated if you have security updates turned on in the App Store pane.

That checkbox is in the App Store pane in System Preferences and should be checked by default.

macOS High Sierra keychain vulnerability should not stop you from updating

Written by

Juli Clover, MacRumors:

macOS High Sierra, released to the public today, could be impacted by a major security flaw that could allow a hacker to steal the usernames and passwords of accounts stored in Keychain.

Here’s the tweet that brought this to light:

https://twitter.com/patrickwardle/status/912254053849079808

The timing of this reveal is terrible, as it coincides with the release of macOS High Sierra. I know a number of people who have held off updating for just this reason.

Don’t let this story stop you from updating:

  1. This exploit is said to effect earlier versions of macOS as well. If you are on Sierra and considering updating, you are already as vulnerable as you would be if you updated.

  2. Apple is said to be working on a fix and Patrick Wardle has said he will not release details of the exploit until the fix patch is available.

Add to that:

For this vulnerability to work, a user needs to download malicious third-party code from an unknown source, something Apple actively discourages with warnings about apps downloaded outside of the Mac App Store or from non-trusted developers.

To be clear, do your research and a full backup before you update. I’ve done my homework and, once I finish this morning’s Loop posts, will hit the return key and start my update. I will definitely update on Twitter as I go. Hopefully, the update will be trouble-free. Fingers are crossed.

Apple’s High Sierra press release

Written by

Nice job highlighting the major features in macOS High Sierra. Don’t miss the section towards the bottom called “Additional app refinements”.

My favorite is the very last one:

Spotlight provides flight status information, including departure and arrival times, delays, gates, terminals and even a map of the flight path

Interesting.

Every single iPhone, bar one

Written by

Nice image. Wish Rene had shot this on a less scratchy surface. Makes me uncomfortable just looking at it. But a great shot.

The missing iPhone? The iPhone X, understandably.

Insight into the Apple Watch Series 3 signal meter

Written by

Jeff Butts, MacObserver, sharing info he got from Andrew Woodward, who has his new Apple Watch in hand:

When Mr. Woodward activated his Apple Watch Series 3 LTE and received a text message confirmation, he thought he’d see the green dots on the Watch face. He didn’t, so began the technical support process. After speaking to both his cellular provider and Apple, the thought was that the eSIM was still waiting to be provisioned.

It wasn’t, but Mr. Woodward didn’t realize it until later on in the day. He walked away from his iPhone, beyond Bluetooth and Wi-Fi range. Suddenly the green dots appeared.

Those green dots are the sign that your Apple Watch is flying solo, using its data plan and, likely, using more battery to support the LTE radio.

As you’d expect, the Apple Watch uses the iPhone’s radio whenever possible, saving battery life.

The linked article also walks through the Apple Watch Control Panel interface (swipe up from the bottom of the Apple Watch face), where the “radio tower” icon is white if your Apple Watch is in range of an LTE signal, and green if it’s actually connected and using that connection.

Good stuff.

How Apple built an iPhone camera that makes everyone a professional photographer

Written by

John Paczkowski, Managing Editor, BuzzFeed:

This year the company is particularly proud of these, which boast a marquee “Portrait Lighting” feature that brings a range of professional-looking effects to the already great photos the dual camera system on the iPhone 7 Plus is capable of taking.

This year’s leap, however, feels particularly meaningful.

And:

The camera’s effects don’t rely on filters. They’re the result of Apple’s new dual camera system working in concert with machine learning to sense a scene, map it for depth, and then change lighting contours over the subject. It’s all done in real time, and you can even preview the results thanks to the company’s enormously powerful new A11 Bionic chip. The result, when applied to Apple scale, has the power to be transformative for modern photography, with millions of amateur shots suddenly professionalized. In many ways it’s the fullest realization of the democratization of high-quality imagery that the company has been working toward since the iPhone 4.

i couldn’t agree more. Apple is changing the conversation. It’s no longer a simple focus on the reduction of low-light image graininess, megapixel count, or CCD capacitor thresholds. Apple is creating tools that help people take amazing pictures.

Love this review.

Mastering the iOS 11 app-stacking gesture

Written by

From a larger article on customizing your iOS home screen, Rene Ritchie has a section on rearranging apps on a page. Of all the gestures added to iOS over the years, I find this one (stacking app icons) the most difficult to master. Might be my big oafish fingers, or a subtlety on the tap mechanism itself, but I’ve simply found this mechanism frustrating.

But.

Reading the steps Rene lays out in his post, watching the GIF, and practicing a bit, I finally have it. I think the issue for me was a quick staccato tap to add an icon. Had to hit it just right.

No matter, if you’ve never tried the app stacking thing, give Rene’s article a read.

Apple I and a Steve Jobs autograph on the auction block

Written by

CNET:

Right now, an Apple-1 computer valued at $700,000 is being auctioned off, with a current bid of $140,000. And starting Oct. 20, a Newsweek magazine from 1988 signed by Jobs will be auctioned off at a starting bid of $1,000. It’s estimated the magazine will sell for between $10,000 and $15,000, according to RR Auction Executive Vice President Bobby Livingston.

Here’s a link to the Apple I auction page. As I write this, the current bid is up to $204,999. Bidding closes noon PT/3p ET tomorrow.

And here’s a link to the coming (October 20th) auction of the Steve Jobs signed Newsweek cover.

A small-screen iPod, an Internet Communicator and a Phone

Written by

Horace Dediu, Asymco:

Apple is now the biggest watchmaker in the world, overtaking Rolex during the last quarter. This achievement happened less than two and a half years after Apple entered the watch market. Rolex, on the other hand, was founded in 1905, 112 years ago at a time when watches were the avant-garde of technology.

Horace follows with a nice job of walking through the numbers. That part of his post is interesting, but further down the column is something I found even more so:

It’s fitting therefore to remember how the iPhone was launched; as a tentpole troika: A wide-screen iPod, an Internet Communicator and a Phone. Today the new Watch is a small-screen iPod, an Internet Communicator and a Phone.

And:

The iPhone was born a phone but grew up to be something completely unprecedented, unforeseen by its creators and, frankly, undescribable in the language of 2007.

The Watch was born a timepiece but it is traversing through the early iPhone and pulling in a new direction all of its own. The fact that we are talking about “Resting Rate”, “Arrhythmia” and “Atrial fibrillation” at a timekeeping launch event indicates that new behaviors will follow and so will the language we’ll use to describe this child-like product once it grows up.

The Apple Watch is still linked to the iPhone, still traveling in an iPhone orbit. But it is clearly towards having a direction all its own, independent of the iPhone. But bigger picture, both devices, linked or not, still serve as interfaces to the Apple ecosystem.

Original Apple Watch doesn’t support watchOS 4 heart rate features

Written by

Jeff Gamet, MacObserver:

If you’re planning on using the new heart rate monitoring features in watchOS 4 on your original Apple Watch think again because they aren’t there. Apple Watch Series 0, as it’s now called, can track your heart rate, but the new monitoring options require an Apple Watch Series 1 or newer.

Solid point, good to know.

Side note: Here’s how to tell which Apple Watch series/model you have.

7 things to try out in iOS 11

Written by

Colin Devroe:

Tomorrow iOS 11 is being released to the public, I thought I’d jot down a few things that I believe people should do on the day they upgrade, so that they don’t just move on with their busy lives and forget.

Good list, quick read.

The BirchTree watchOS 4 review

Written by

Matt Birchler pulled together a fantastic review of watchOS 4. This is too big to quote out, but worth your time to step through. There’s good and bad here, no punches pulled.

Of particular interest is the new Siri watch face and the detailed discussion of the new Dock. Well done, good read.

The LTE Apple Watch and the red dot

Written by

Yesterday, we posted the Hodinkee review of the cellular Apple Watch, with some focus on the red dot placed on the edge of the Digital Crown.

To add to the discussion, this from Matthew Achariam’s Red Dot blog post:

We got an unknowing first glimpse at the latest design of the Apple Watch more than two years ago. No less, adorned on the wrist of Tim Cook was a stainless steel watch with a bright red crown cap.

This pic is a closeup from the original Reuters’ pic of Tim’s wrist from a few years ago:

Note the red dot. More from Matthew:

Leica’s brand is iconic due to their distinct red mark which it has used since 1913. It is instantly recognizable.

And:

French fashion designer, Christian Louboutin, employs a similar technique, coating the soles of the shoes he creates in a bright glossy red.

And:

In horology watchmakers use color as a tool to differentiate between editions and various releases constantly. Industrial designer and long time Ive collaborator, Marc Newson, has created several watches that Ive has drawn inspiration from for the Apple Watch. Newson’s Hemipode watch also features red caps, adorned on secondary buttons.

And:

By nature, changing anything that touches so many people always elicits a reaction. If you want an LTE enabled Apple Watch, you’re getting a red crown cap—a decidedly non-neutral color is now the only option. In the past, you had some semblance of choice in getting a non-neutral color. This small red dot breaks the modular styling of the watch. For better or worse, the watch design team decided that this marker and what it represents was of greater importance.

A small thing, perhaps, but the red dot is an important, distinguishing design element.

iFixit’s iPhone 8 teardown

Written by

Lots and lots of detail. A few highlights:

Fully topped off, this 3.82 V, 1821 mAh cell will deliver up to 6.96 Wh of power.

The iPhone 7 battery is 7.45 Wh, the Galaxy S8 has 11.55 Wh. Apple says the iPhone 8 battery life is comparable to the iPhone 7, even with the smaller capacity. Not clear how it compares with the Galaxy S8.

The 8’s sensor is bigger than the 7’s, but specs the same 12 MP resolution. This means the individual pixels are larger, letting in more light, improving colors, and decreasing noise.

The sample pictures I’ve seen all show this to be true, especially easy to see in low light.

There’s lots more, with some terrific pictures. Scroll about halfway down for some nice shots of the Qi enabled (pronounced “chee”) wireless charging coil.

Love this stuff.

Hodinkee review of the Apple Watch Series 3 Edition

Written by

Benjamin Klymer, Executive Editor of Hodinkee: One of the most amusing things about doing what I do for a living – writing about and working with mechanical watches – is the reaction that other watch guys expect me, or really … Continued

iOS 11 official release notes

Written by

This is a great read, a great way to quickly get a sense of all that’s new with iOS 11. Worth a scan, pass it along.

iOS Control Center: Understanding how the WiFi and Bluetooth toggles work

Written by

John Gruber, commenting on the fact that the WiFi and Bluetooth buttons in Control Center no longer act as on/off switches:

This is an interesting feature, but I think it’s going to confuse and anger a lot of people. Until iOS 11, the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth toggles in Control Center worked the way it looked like they worked: they were on/off switches. Now, in iOS 11, they still look like on/off switches, but they act as disconnect switches.

Off the top of my head, I would suggest making them three-way switches: on and connected, on but disconnected, and off.

Completely agree. This setup is confusing. As John points out, when you tap the WiFi button, WiFi is left on, but you are disconnected from your current session. Tap it again, you are reconnected. The icon goes from a blue background to a grey background, and back to blue when you reconnect.

To complete the picture, there is a third icon state. Take a look at what happens when you turn on airplane mode:

The grey background with the line through it shows that Bluetooth and WiFi are now disconnected. In Airplane mode, a tap on the WiFi icon goes from disabled to connected (assuming there’s WiFi to be had), from grey with a line through it to the blue background.

Confusing. But once you get the sense of it, it’s pretty clear what’s happening.

How to scan documents in iOS 11 Notes app

Written by

Good walkthrough by Christian Zibreg, iDownloadBlog, on using Notes to scan and save documents.

I love this feature. And I find it interesting to think about edge detection at work here. Watch how the scanner detects the edges of a piece of paper laying on a table, automatically adjusts the scanning frame so you end up with a relatively rectangular result.

This object and edge detection is a hallmark of ARKit. Not certain that’s how this was done, but would not surprise me if it was.

Hackers use Find My iPhone to remotely lock Macs, demand ransom

Written by

Juli Clover, MacRumors:

Over the last day or two, several Mac users appear to have been locked out of their machines after hackers signed into their iCloud accounts and initiated a remote lock using Find My iPhone.

With access to an iCloud user’s username and password, Find My iPhone on iCloud.com can be used to “lock” a Mac with a passcode even with two-factor authentication turned on, and that’s what’s going on here.

This does appear to be a genuine hole in Apple’s security scheme, though iCloud itself was not hacked.

Seems like this is fixable. From the comments:

When you go to remote lock a device you enter a lock passcode and the device’s password or passcode. When that is sent to the Mac, iPhone, whatever, if the device password doesn’t match, it won’t lock the device. That way, even if a hacker guesses your Apple ID and password using hacked credentials, they still can’t lock the device without the Mac’s login.

Not sure if this is doable, since your Mac’s password is not stored in the cloud, but maybe the entered password could be encrypted, sent to the Mac, and the Mac could decrypt and compare.

Austin Mann: iPhone 8 camera review

Written by

Austin Mann:

I’m writing to you from a small hotel room in India having just experienced a magical adventure in western India orchestrated by friends at Ker & Downey. I’ve shot thousands of images and countless portraits with the iPhone 8 Plus and I’m excited to share what I’ve learned.

While the iPhone 8 Plus looks essentially the same as the phone we’ve had since the 6 Plus, there are some new features in the 8 Plus which really impact creative pros across the board — most notably Portrait Lighting, along with a few other hidden gems.

I’m a big fan of Austin’s photography and his reviews. He knows his craft and does a great job showing off iPhone 8 Plus camera.

New York Times on iPhone 8: A worthy refinement before the next generation

Written by

Farhad Manjoo:

What does one say about a new iPhone? At this point, a decade after the first one sent the earth spinning in directions both magical and ghastly, it can be difficult to summon any fresh wonder when appraising the familiar little slab of digital horror and delight.

I’ma stop you right there. Why does the New York Times do this? Why ghastly? Why digital horror?

But I digress:

The 8s look almost identical to the iPhones 7, 6S and 6, a model first introduced back when Donald Trump was still hosting a reality TV show. To make matters worse, both are overshadowed by the $1,000 all-screen iPhone X, which Apple considers the foundation for the next iteration of the iPhone. That model ships in November, and reviewers have not yet had a chance to use it.

To make matters worse? This prose is jarring, especially when compared to the “worthy refinement” in the headline. But onward, people:

Most of Apple’s improvements over the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus are minor, but if you have an older model, either of the 8s will feel like a solid upgrade. And if you are considering upgrading from an Android phone, there’s one area where the new iPhones still rank head and shoulders above their competition — the processor, the engine that runs the entire device, where Apple is so far ahead that it almost feels unfair.

OK, I feel the tone shifting. What follows is a highly positive review, especially when compared to Android phones. For example:

The fastest Android phones, though, are almost painfully behind. With a Geekbench score of around 1,900, Samsung’s flagship Galaxy S8 is not just half the speed of the iPhone 8, but it’s actually slower than last year’s iPhone 7, and even slower than the iPhone 6S, released in 2015.

Helps when you custom design your own processors.

And my favorite part of the iPhone, the camera:

Most images were astounding, and given the iPhone 8’s advantages in size, convenience and usability, I predict that my camera will be spending a lot more time in the drawer. In particular, I fell hard for the 8 Plus’s “Portrait Lighting” feature, which uses data from a depth sensor to mimic the blurred-background “bokeh” effect you get when taking portrait photos with expensive cameras. That feature made its debut last year on the iPhone 7 Plus, but in the 8 Plus, it’s been further refined to let you adjust the lighting of each shot, making for breathtaking portraits that you’ll be surprised came from a mere phone.

Pretty, pretty good.

iOS 11: How Control Center works

Written by

Jason Snell, Macworld:

Control Center in iOS 11 is different. Really different. And when you upgrade from iOS 10, it will take some getting used to. But as someone who has been using it for a few months now, let me declare: It’s better. The new Control Center is simultaneously simpler and more powerful. And best of all, you can customize it to do what you want —— and hide most of what you don’t care about.

I agree with Jason. I think the new Control Center does take getting used to. But Jason solves that problem. His walkthrough makes things pretty clear.