Malcolm Owen, AppleInsider:
According to the Apple website, orders in the United States for all combinations of color and capacity of the iPhone X are claimed to be “In Stock” for deliveries, with orders arriving with customers as soon as “Tomorrow.” This appears to apply to devices for all four major carriers, as well as the SIM-free variant.
Bottom line, supply has caught up with demand, and there’s still time to get an iPhone X in time for Festivus.
Matt Birchler has his magnum opus, a massive 8-part, 13,000 word review of Android Oreo. But written with iOS in mind.
It’s a worthwhile read, lots of talking points, a chance to see what switching to Android would be like.
If you are considering the move, read this first. Nice job, Matt.
Apple, from this feature story:
Over the last five years, Bruce Armstrong has walked thousands of miles through the corridors of an empty manufacturing plant in Sherman, Texas, keeping the lights on. Since the plant closed in 2012, he’s been its caretaker, always holding out hope it would come alive again. Thanks to new business from Apple, that hope is about to become a reality.
Great story about a town that is becoming the VCSEL capital of the US.
VCSEL? That stands for vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers:
VCSELs power some of Apple’s most popular new features, including Face ID, Animoji and Portrait mode selfies made possible with the iPhone X TrueDepth camera, as well as the proximity-sensing capabilities of AirPods.
Apple invested $390 million in a VCSEL manufacturer in Finisar, allowing it to build out a VCSEL facility in Sherman, Texas.
From the Apple investment announcement:
As a result of Apple’s commitment, Finisar will transform a long-shuttered, 700,000-sqare-foot manufacturing plant in Sherman, Texas, into the high-tech VCSEL capital of the US. Apple’s award will create more than 500 high-skill jobs at the Sherman facility, including engineers, technicians and maintenance teams. When combined with the company’s nearby plant in Allen, Texas, Finisar’s payroll in Northern Texas is expected to be $65 million.
And:
One hundred percent of the VCSELs Apple buys from Finisar will be made in Texas. Consistent with Apple’s commitment to the environment, the company intends to procure enough renewable energy to cover all of its Apple manufacturing in the US.
Love this story.
[VIDEO] Three new spots, one particularly striking, all embedded in the main Loop post.
Apple founder Steve Wozniak was in Australia to speak at the Pivot Summit in Geelong, Victoria. Woz was asked his feelings about the iPhone X. What spun out of that short talk was a series of headlines, like:
“Woz Slams The iPhone X, Confirms Google Is Taking Advantage Of Consumers”, from ChannelNews, and “Apple iPhone X not what Steve Wozniak wants” from the The Australian.
At the same time, 9to5Mac ran this take on the exact same event:
Speaking at the Pivot Summit in Geelong, Victoria today, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak shared a few new tidbits about his experience with the iPhone X so far and his thoughts on Face ID vs. Touch ID. Woz also offered up a few anecdotes about his years working with Steve Jobs. Wozniak is one of several speakers at the one day conference focused on providing insight about emerging technology.
And:
Speaking prior to the launch of the iPhone X, Wozniak expressed that he wasn’t interested in picking up the phone on day one, offering little explanation as to why. Apple CEO Tim Cook decided to remedy the situation himself and personally sent Woz an iPhone X to try out. His verdict? “I kinda like it.”
So which take is accurate?
Here’s Woz, via email, referring to the 9to5Mac article:
“This article is on the mark. Another article was like typical Australian sensationalism saying that I didn’t like my iPhone X. How ridiculous.”
I found this whole thing interesting, thought it worth posting. Straight from the horse’s mouth.
Reddit:
My iPhone 6S has been very slow these past few weeks, and even after updating multiple times, it was still slow. Couldn’t figure out why, but just thought that iOS 11 was still awful to me. Then I used my brother’s iPhone 6 Plus and his was… faster than mine? This is when I knew something was wrong. So, I did some research, and decided to replace my battery. Wear level was somewhere around 20% on my old battery. I did a Geekbench score, and found I was getting 1466 Single and 2512 Multi. This did not change wether I had low power mode on or off. After changing my battery, I did another test to check if it was just a placebo. Nope. 2526 Single and 4456 Multi. From what I can tell, Apple slows down phones when their battery gets too low, so you can still have a full days charge. This also means your phone might be very slow for no discernible reason. Check your Geekbench scores and see what you get if your phone is still slow!
I would love to get an official response from Apple on this issue. Be sure to read the updates to this post, especially the second one.
UPDATE: Two things:
Via Bryan Lee on Twitter, if you are having issues with your iPhone 6s, Apple does have a battery replacement program for certain devices, manufactured in Sept or Oct 2015. Go to this page to check to see if your device is eligible.
As mentioned in the linked Reddit thread, there’s a free app, called CpuDasherX, you can use to check your clock speed, see if it’s running full speed. According to this comment thread, 1848 Mhz is the factory CPU speed for the iPhone 6s.
UPDATE 2:
As noted in this tweet and some of the comments, the A9 does vary its frequency based on load. So a different frequency is not indicative of a battery issue. It’s possible this Reddit thread is a red herring. Again, would love an official Apple comment.
UPDATE 3:
Take a look at this free battery life wear level tester. Might offer some insight.
This is a two part series, written by David Ruddock, Android Police.
The first part, titled, I’ve never used an iPhone, part one: Switching to the iPhone X and first thoughts, ran a few weeks ago.
The second part, titled, Android to iPhone, part two: What I’ve liked about switching to the iPhone X, ran last week.
There’s a lot to process in these two posts. Some of the comments reflect someone new to the iPhone X and new to iOS. But all in all, solid takes, both the negative and positive.
A couple of highlights from the most recent post:
When I first started using iMessage, I immediately appreciated how much it modernized my texting experience (I do a fair bit of SMSing) when chatting with my iPhone-using friends and family.
And:
I would use an iMessage client for Android in a heartbeat if Apple were to release one. Even if it were terrible, I’d probably seriously entertain paying a subscription for such a thing. It’s not about iMessage being amazing or revolutionary or even an especially good messaging client – it’s just about using the same platform as my friends and family and being able to have those conversation move seamlessly across devices and operating systems.
And:
I know a lot of people turn off haptic feedback on their smartphone. That is because, I have now learned, essentially every Android smartphone has absolutely awful haptics. Your $930 Galaxy Note8 has haptic feedback that is, frankly, bad. So does every other Android phone. Yes, the difference is that clear after going to the iPhone X.
Apple’s Taptic Engine doesn’t just buzz – it clicks, it taps, it knocks. And it can do so with an incredible range of intensities and precision.
And:
I do miss intelligent package tracking being pulled directly from my Gmail (versus now just getting Amazon tracking, which is a bit of a downgrade).
This last was an interesting core difference between iOS and Android. I do see the Android advantage in reading all my emails and understanding that I’ve got a package coming, weaving intel about the package into my notifications.
But the issue is privacy and what is done with my private information. Google profits off the shared details of its users, in the form of steered and focused advertising. That is the price you pay for more informed device intelligence. That price makes me uncomfortable.
All in all, an insightful read.
One of the lesser trumpeted features that shipped with iOS 11 was the one handed keyboard. The linked post walks through the options.
Long story short, fire up a text or tweet, then, when the keyboard appears, press and hold the keyboard’s emoji icon, like so:
Tap your keyboard alignment of choice (left, right, center) and you’re good to go.
Note that the one handed keyboard is iPhone (and iPod Touch) only. Read the article for iPad options.
Sarah Perez, TechCrunch:
Apple’s iPhone remains the most popular camera used by the Flickr community, the photo-sharing site revealed today in its annual review of camera rankings and top photos. This year, the iPhone beat out other camera makers – like Canon and Nikon, the number two and three respectively – by accounting for 54 percent of the top 100 devices used on the site, the company found. In addition, all top 10 devices of 2017 were iPhone models, Flickr says.
Amazing. All top 10 cameras on the list were iPhones.
SIM-free means, in part, that you won’t get a carrier SIM card. You’ll still need to get one. Keep that (to me, a tiny bit of a hassle) in mind.
UPDATE: From the comments:
You can get a SIM card for free from T-Mobile, and it takes seconds to install.
Meanwhile, that SIM-free iPhone—unlike the GSM models— is fully compatible with all networks including CDMA. More importantly, it has the Qualcomm chip, which means it will provide about 30% better wireless performance than Intel-equipped models in terms of data speeds, signal reception, voice quality, and battery life. And due to all of the above advantages, the SIM-free model will also provide a significantly higher resale value.
This is the iPhone variant everyone should buy.
UPDATE 2: Also from the comments:
Dave: it may also be worth mentioning that this is a great option if you already have a nano SIM card in your existing iPhone.
Duly noted.
Mikey Campbell, AppleInsider:
After a rocky start marked by a quick initial sellout and lingering supply issues, Apple is quickly catching up with iPhone X demand, with current U.S. delivery estimates pegging ship times at six business days.
I just checked and delivery now shows as December 11 (ten days from now). That’s still pretty good, and in plenty of time for gift-giving, if that’s your goal.
Even better, most models are showing available for pickup today. If you live near an Apple Store and an iPhone X is in your near future, check pickup availability for the model you crave. 64GB models are available today at most stores I checked, 256GB available at some, but far fewer.
Joe Rossignol, MacRumors:
At least a few hundred iPhone users and counting have complained about the word “it” autocorrecting to “I.T” on iOS 11 and later.
This is a bizarre new class of bugs. It started with autocorrect capitalizing the first letter of some words, even in The Middle of a sentence.
Then we saw a rash of autocorrects of the letter I to A[?], much to the amusement of Ohio State fans.
And now this. What’s going on here? Is this machine learning going awry? Is this the future of AI? Works most of the time, but every so often a robot goes insane and starts breaking things?
One problem with machine learning is that it creates evolving behavior, which creates a complex tree of possible behaviors, impossible to completely test.
That said, is that what’s going on here? Or is this something more mundane? It’d be good to actually know the cause of these issues. So far, mum’s the word.
Gabe Weatherhead, MacDrifter:
When my 10.5″ iPad Pro arrived I decided to do a little experiment. You see, I honestly believe that the iPad, iPhone, and other micro super-computers are the future of computing and I want to force myself out of old-man complacency. Five months ago I committed to that experiment and avoided using my Mac unless there was absolutely no way to do something on my iPad or iPhone. Last week I ended my experiment and I have a few opinions (big surprise).
I use my Mac, iPhone, and iPad in a mix throughout the day. My iPhone is always with me, gets all the looks when I am away from my desk. My Mac gets all my looks at my desk. And my iPad gets the rest, those times when I am bopping about, laying about, or in a car (not driving!)
[Of course, my Apple Watch gets its share of looks, no matter the device I’m using, but in my view, does not impact the Mac vs iPad argument.]
Gabe’s piece really captures my feelings about the Mac, why it is the best solution for certain (but by no means all, or even most) situations. Here’s a taste:
I do a lot of text editing, so this is a category where I feel friction the most. There’s really no comparison for me. Text editors on the Mac are more feature rich and I can edit faster than on iOS.
Friction is a perfect word. The Mac is customizable to the point where I can really get at those friction points, ease them to make my process more efficient. iOS, on the other hand, is more portable, easier to get going and, for me, always with me every second I’m awake.
Apple has found a perfect blend of devices. At least for me and my habits.
That said, read Gabe’s piece. See if it resonates for you.
Joe Rossignol, MacRumors:
ModMy today announced it has archived its default ModMyi repository on Cydia, which is essentially an alternative App Store for downloading apps, themes, tweaks, and other files on jailbroken iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch devices.
ZodTTD/MacCiti also shut down last week, meaning that two out of three of Cydia’s major default repositories are no longer active as of this month.
And:
The closure of two major Cydia repositories is arguably the result of a declining interest in jailbreaking, which provides root filesystem access and allows users to modify iOS and install unapproved apps on an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch.
I’ve always thought of jailbreaking as a wild west frontier, with few rules, little oversight and, correspondingly, no real way to prevent malware. Jailbreaking also technically violates your iPhone warranty.
But, that said, jailbreaking also brought some interesting, experimental features to iOS. Over time, Apple caught up, bringing the more successful jailbreaking features into the fold.
We’re seeing the end of an era.
Fascinating project from Oliver Thomas. He bought a high resolution camera that can capture infrared images. He set the camera up on a tripod and shot the IR dot pattern projected by the iPhone X. […]
This is a terrific piece from Ben Lovejoy, 9to5Mac, a realistic look at the experience of shooting with the iPhone X camera.
I’ve been using the iPhone 8 Plus (similar cameras, but the iPhone X has a slightly faster telephoto f/2.4 vs. f/2.8 – and the X has OIS in both lenses) for the past few days and my experience has been similar to Ben’s.
I will say, I find the iPhone 8 Plus camera to be astonishing.
Take a moment to compare the two images in this tweet. One was taken at the base of Philadelphia City Hall, looking up to the top of a tall tower. Without moving, I took a second shot, pinching out to zoom in on a statue at the top of the tower.
I was floored by the amount of detail in that second shot. Amazing to get this kind of result from a phone that fits in my pocket.
[VIDEO] Click through to the main Loop post. If you are at all a Star Trek fan, watch all the way to the end, well worth it.
Charlie Osborne, ZDNet lays out one particular attack chain designed to clear your iPhone so they can resell it.
Fascinating, and worth reading, just so you know what might be coming if someone ever gets their hands on your iOS device.
[VIDEO] I’m a fan of Jeff Benjamin’s 9to5Mac videos. This one (embedded in the main Loop post) walks through a series of iPhone X tips, all worth knowing.
If nothing else, just knowing how to set up reachability and the ways you can customize the virtual home button make this worth watching.
Brian X. Chen, New York Times:
It happens every year: Apple releases new iPhones, and then hordes of people groan about their older iPhones slowing to a crawl.
And:
The phenomenon of perceived slowdowns is so widespread that many believe tech companies intentionally cripple smartphones and computers to ensure that people buy new ones every few years. Conspiracy theorists call it planned obsolescence.
That’s a myth. While slowdowns happen, they take place for a far less nefarious reason. That reason is a software upgrade.
And:
Tech companies make it simple to upgrade to a new operating system by pressing an “update” button, which seamlessly migrates all your apps and data over. While that’s convenient, it isn’t the best way to ensure that things will continue running smoothly.
A better practice is backing up all your data and purging everything from the device before installing the new operating system. This “clean install” works more reliably because the engineers developing operating systems were able to test this condition more easily, Mr. Raiz said.
The premise is that a clean install will clear cruft from your iPhone, make your phone run faster with a newer version of iOS.
Read the article, see if you agree. Is there any truth to this recommendation? Is a clean install going to yield enough of a speedier phone to be worth the effort?
Anecdotal, but I’ve run lots of betas, all via the update mechanism, have never (ok, maybe once or twice in ten years) felt the need to do a clean install.
Interesting article, looking forward to reading the comments.
Frederick Riedel used stickers to cover the:
on his iPhone X. But Animoji still worked without them. Portrait mode stopped working. Face ID stopped working too. So the stickers were doing their job.
Why do Animoji still work? Pop over to the main Loop post for the detailed explanation. Pretty interesting.
Matt Birchler compared the time it took to charge an iOS device using:
Follow the link, check out the graph. To really get a sense of the difference, look how many minutes it takes each to get to a 40% charge (the second horizontal gray line).
The 29W charger took just under 30 minutes. Accelerated charging took about an hour and 40 minutes.
I don’t know how rigorous this analysis was, but wow, what a difference. We could be seeing the limitations of inductive charging, or we could see these numbers improve with each new release.
Important to note that Matt used a Samsung wireless charging pad. So it is certainly possible we’d see better numbers when Apple releases their branded pad.
But as is, what price convenience?
UPDATE: Had a lot of conversations about this post, about the value of the convenience brought by wireless charging. Add to that the fact that the latest iPhones have plenty of battery life, and the use case comes into focus. Instead of placing my phone on my desk while I type away, if I simply place it on the charging pad, I’ll get a nice little power top-off without the hassle of plugging in.
Conclusion? Wired is clearly a faster charge than wireless, but that’s just fine. Wireless does the job it was designed to do and brings great convenience to the process.
Interesting idea (watch the video embedded in the main Loop post), but unstable. Don’t recommend it.
Taylor Hatmaker, TechCrunch:
Touted as the iPhone X’s new flagship form of device security, Face ID is a natural target for hackers. Just a week after the device’s release, Vietnamese research team Bkav claims to have cracked Apple’s facial recognition system using a replica face mask that combines printed 2D images with three-dimensional features. The group has published a video demonstrating its proof of concept, but enough questions remain that no one really knows how legitimate this purported hack is.
I believe the term should be spoofed, not hacked. The video in the post shows Bkav using a homemade mask trying to spoof a person’s face registered using Face ID. Hacking would be breaking in and stealing credentials, or installing a back door, that sort of thing.
That said, something doesn’t sit right looking at that video. When I first saw it, my instinctive reaction was that it was fake. But even if the mask was successful in spoofing the user’s face, I just don’t see this as an issue.
More from Taylor’s post:
If you’re concerned that someone might want into your devices badly enough that they’d execute such an involved plan to steal your facial biometrics, well, you’ve probably got a lot of other things to worry about as well.
And:
Prior to the Bkav video, Wired worked with Cloudflare to see if Face ID could be hacked through masks that appear far more sophisticated than the ones the Bkav hack depicts. Remarkably, in spite of their fairly elaborate efforts — including “details like eyeholes designed to allow real eye movement” and “thousands of eyebrow hairs inserted into the mask intended to look more like real hair” — Wired and Cloudflare didn’t succeed.
If Bkav has the goods, I suspect we’ll hear more from them, perhaps a follow-on post with a more clearly defined demonstration. Or, perhaps, we’ll hear from Apple about some patch they made to Face ID in response to Bkav’s work. As is, color me skeptical.
Neil Hughes, Apple Insider:
Details on “Unsane” have slowly trickled out in recent months, including the fact that the film was shot in secret and entirely on Apple’s iPhone, according to Entertainment Weekly. The film stars Claire Foy, Juno Temple, and Jay Pharoah, with Pharoah describing the picture as “reality-horror type” with some similarities to Jordan Peele-created smash hit “Get Out.”
The movie was filmed this summer, meaning the best iPhone it could have been shot on was the iPhone 7 Plus.
I’m looking forward to seeing this movie in the theater, at the very least to get a sense of the look of an iPhone shot movie on the big screen. It will be interesting to compare the look of this film with future films shot on an iPhone 8 Plus or iPhone X.
Also, I loved Get Out and am a big fan of Claire Foy, Jay Pharoah, Steven Soderbergh.
[VIDEO] Serenity Caldwell is, secretly, a member of a top 10 women’s roller derby team. The iPhone X dropped the same day as the WFTDA’s annual international championships.
What better test for the iPhone X than to put it through its paces trying to capture some high speed flat track action?
Serenity’s writeup takes you through the specifics, but for my money, the real nugget of gold in her review is the pulse-pounding video embedded in the main Loop post. Those are some great slo-mo shots.
Be sure to bump the resolution up to 1440 in the YouTube window for best results.
Thoughts on the idea of Apple adding facial mapping and Face ID to your Mac. […]
Yoni Heisler, BGR:
One of the great things about Face ID is that the data associated with your initial Face ID photo is always being updated to account for even subtle changes in your appearance. That being the case, there’s an incredibly simple way for iPhone X users to train Face ID to work flawlessly across all situations. So if you’ve been noticing that Face ID works great 99% of the time but seems to slip up if you hold up your phone at an angle or from a new distance, we’ve got a solution for you.
And:
The next time you try to unlock your iPhone X with Face ID and it doesn’t take, don’t try to unlock it with Face ID a second time. Instead, enter in your passcode. Doing so effectively tells Face ID to incorporate facial data from whatever new angle or position you happen to be holding your phone in. That being the case, the next time you attempt to unlock your phone from the same position, your phone will unlock immediately.
This is a terrific tip.
Rene Ritchie, iMore:
I stand by my claim that iPhone X is the best damn product Apple has ever made but that doesn’t mean it can’t and shouldn’t get better. That includes how new features like Face ID, gesture navigation, Control Center access, and Lock screen buttons are currently implemented.
A solid list of ideas, all of them filed as feature request radars, with the radar numbers if you’d like to dupe them yourself.
[VIDEO] Oliver Thomas has identical twins and an iPhone X. As you might expect, he made a video testing to see if one twin could unlock the iPhone X registered to the other twin.
The text went pretty much as you’d expect it to. But what I found really interesting was Oliver’s use of night mode in an old night-vision camcorder to capture the IR dot pattern put out by the iPhone X.
In the video, jump to about 30 seconds in and check out the spread of that pattern. It goes pretty wide, so much so that Oliver had to move one of the twins out of the spread to be sure he didn’t get a false positive.
The wide spread shows how far of a face detection reach the iPhone X has.
In addition, at that same place within the video, check out the pattern of the dots on the wall. They almost look like 5-pointed stars, rather than round dots. Is that just my imagination? Is there a shape to the dots beyond simple circles?
In the meantime, check the video for yourself. It’s embedded in the main Loop post.