iPhone

iOS and the hassle of dropping your WiFi as you move away from your house

Written by

This tweet from Mike Rundle struck a nerve:

https://twitter.com/flyosity/status/1067108399169576962

This happens to me all the time. I’m in an app that’s attached to my home WiFi and I walk (or drive, as a passenger) away from my house. As I move further from my house, the signal gets progressively weaker and whatever app I’m in just hangs, stuck waiting for a reply from my home WiFi that’s never coming.

If you follow down the Twitter thread, you’ll see this response:

I’ve been using Shortcuts for that. Shortcut that drops wifi, calculates time to destination (Home), texts wife the ETA and then re-enables wifi (after x amount of seconds).

While I do applaud this effort, this feels like a kluge to me, a hack that should just not be necessary.

My preference? Set a threshold that automatically drops WiFi when my signal drops and I am getting further away from my WiFi router. The key is the word “automatically”.

This could be a setting, since this might not be an issue for everyone. But given the enthusiastic response to the Shortcut, it’s certainly an issue worth addressing.

UPDATE: Some time ago, Apple added the setting Cellular > Wi-Fi Assist (scroll down below that long list under CELLULAR DATA) that someone suggested might help with this, though I believe the intent was to help with poor WiFi, not specific to this problem. As it turns out, this is on for me. Does not make a difference.

Apple, App Store antitrust lawsuit going to the Supreme Court today

Written by

Reuters:

When iPhone users want to edit blemishes out of their selfies, identify stars and constellations or simply join the latest video game craze, they turn to Apple Inc’s App Store, where any software application they buy also includes a 30 percent cut for Apple.

That commission is a key issue in a closely watched antitrust case that will reach the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday. The nine justices will hear arguments in Apple’s bid to escape damages in a lawsuit accusing it of breaking federal antitrust laws by monopolizing the market for iPhone apps and causing consumers to pay more than they should.

Major implications here for Apple and the App Store.

From the Supreme Court document summarizing the case:

Electronic marketplaces such as Apple’s App Store present a new wrinkle on this doctrine, because the marketplace sponsor (e.g., Apple) interacts with and delivers goods “directly” to consumers, but as an agent on behalf of third party sellers.

And:

Whether consumers may sue for antitrust damages anyone who delivers goods to them, even where they seek damages based on prices set by third parties who would be the immediate victims of the alleged offense.

Gonna keep my eye on this one.

More on third-party USB-C to Lightning cables

Written by

John Gruber unpacks a lot of detail on USB-C to Lightning cables, the MFi program, and his take on the likelihood of USB-C making the move to iPhone.

This is a terrific, put your feet up, grab a hot beverage, chock-full-of details read.

Woman remotely wipes iPhone being held as evidence

Written by

Daily Gazette:

A cellphone seized by police as part of an investigation into a drive-by shooting last month was remotely wiped by its owner, authorities said this week.

Police believe Juelle L. Grant, 24, of Willow Avenue, may have been the driver of a vehicle involved in an Oct. 23 drive-by shooting on Van Vranken Avenue, near Lang Street, so they obtained her phone, according to police allegations filed in court. No one was injured in the shooting.

After police took her iPhone X, telling her it was considered evidence, “she did remotely wipe” the device, according to police.

What’s the law here? It’s her phone. Does she have the right to wipe it after it is taken from her? Do the police have the legal right to prevent this?

Fascinating story.

Using a Mac Photos smart album to tell how often you use your iPhone’s telephoto lens

Written by

The iPhone XR, famously, does not have a telephoto lens. David Smith worked out a way to see how often he’s used the telephoto in the past, with his iPhone X:

https://twitter.com/_davidsmith/status/1056924594869862400

In a nutshell, he jumped into Mac Photos and created a smart album based purely on focal length, which eliminated all but images taken with the telephoto lens. Very smart.

iPhone XR: A deep dive into depth

Written by

This is a fantastic look at how smartphone cameras capture and handle depth in photos. This is a fascinating read all the way around.

It’s from the Halide blog, and does get into how the Halide camera app expands on the iPhone XR’s “humans only” portrait mode. But there’s lots of interesting tidbits here.

One in particular stood out for me:

It seems the iPhone XR has two advantages over the iPhone XS: it can capture wider angle depth photos, and because the wide-angle lens collects more light, the photos will come out better in low light and have less noise.

Remember how we said the XR’s Portrait mode is only available on human portraits? When it comes to faces, you never want to photograph a person up close with a wide angle lens, as it distorts the face in an unflattering way.

That means you really have to take portraits on the iPhone XR from medium shot (waist-up). If you want a close-up headshot, kind of like the iPhone XS, you’ll have to crop, which means you’ll lose a lot of resolution. A wide angle lens isn’t always a plus.

Jump to the blog post, check out the images, especially those that compare the iPhone XR and XS side by side. Be sure to read the captions.

Sometimes, the iPhone XR will take nicer-looking Portrait photos than any other iPhone, including the XS and XS Max.

But most of the time, the XS will probably produce a better result.

Short term, the XR is going to give you better results in low light, because of the wider aperture, which lets in more light. But over time, I believe machine learning is going to conquer that physical limitation, and we’ll see new generations of iPhone cameras that produce unbelievable low light images.

Lots of interesting nuggets in Daring Fireball’s iPhone XR review roundup

Written by

Lots of discussion of the camera in this Daring Fireball review rollup. Specifically, the absence of the telephoto lens on the iPhone XR.

As you read this (and, if you are considering the XR, you should), think about how you use your current iPhone camera. If you have an iPhone with a telephoto lens, do you ever use it? When you bring up your camera, do you ever tap the 1x (the 1x turns into a 2x) to switch cameras? Note that in low light, you’ll likely get digital zoom, not the telephoto, but wanted to set the stage for reading the Daring Fireball piece.

Seems to me, this is an overlooked part of the camera interface. If you live your life in the wide angle lens, you won’t miss the telephoto if you move to the iPhone XR.

Another interesting bit from the rollup was something I alluded to in this post from earlier this morning. From this Rene Ritchie iPhone XR review for iMore:

Less fine is the sudden loss of Z-axis asymmetry thanks to the shoved down Lightning port on iPhone XR.

Rene is referring to the image embedded in the post showing the Lightning port not being aligned with the screws. It’s “shoved down” to make room for the LCD display. And as John Gruber points out, once you see it, you can’t unsee it. No big deal, but interesting, at least to the design nerd in me.

iPhone XR teardown

Written by

Beyond all the usual teardown detail, there are two things of note worth a look in the iFixit article:

  • In Step 6, you’ll see a modular SIM card reader, much easier to replace and not requiring a logic board swap. Small thing, but interesting.

  • Much more interesting to me, take a look at the image in Step 3. There are two major differences between the iPhone XS, on the top, and the iPhone XR, on the bottom. One difference is obvious: The XR has no antenna band. But can you spot the other difference? It’s quite subtle.

Rather than spoil it here, I’ll post about it in a few minutes, when I get to the Daring Fireball iPhone XR review roundup.

Koss headphones commercial filmed entirely on an iPhone XS Max

Written by

[VIDEO] Amazing to me. If I hadn’t read about this experiment, I would never have known this (embedded in the main Loop post) was filmed on an iPhone.

From the director, via this Reddit thread:

I wanted to share this for anyone interested in the full potential of the iPhone XS Max camera system or interested in hearing the thoughts on the Xs Max potential from someone who shoots video and photos professionally.

I just got my Xs Max a week ago and I was totally blown away by the new camera system. The dynamic range, color saturation, af acquisition and af tracking and over all image quality had me thinking, ‘I wonder if I could actually shoot a commercial with this, and if so could anyone even tell?’

Steven Soderberg who is a filmmaker I idolize shot an entire full length film on an iPhone and I’ve seen a ton of other examples from other filmmakers trying the same thing, so I figured why not! Ha.

Expect more and more of this sort of thing.

Apple is working on an iPhone that works better in the rain

Written by

Malcolm Owen, AppleInsider:

Most smartphone users will have experienced issues when using their devices with wet hands or in the rain, with residual water on fingers sometimes causing the display to incorrectly detect or fail to sense touches or swipes.

And:

According to two patent applications published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on Thursday, both titled “Finger tracking in wet environment,” Apple suggests the use of filtering to determine whether a detected touch is intended by the user or not. This occurs before the device performs “computationally-intensive touch processing,” with the aim of reducing processing time and power usage, as well as the byproduct of improved usage in wet weather.

As Apple increases the power of their processors, devices gain more of an ability to analyze all parts of the user experience. Computational photography and machine learning are starting points, but real time “touch processing” is another. Can’t wait to see what other features lurk in the iPhone’s future.

Shot on iPhone XS: Users share their Portrait mode photos with Depth Control

Written by

Apple:

Photographers from around the world are capturing stunning photographs on iPhone XS using Portrait mode, taking advantage of its new Depth Control feature that makes it possible to adjust the depth of field to create photos with a sophisticated bokeh effect. An update coming soon brings Depth Control to real-time preview, allowing photographers to change the amount of background blur before the shot is taken.

These images pulled from the #ShotoniPhone tag across social media highlight the enhanced Portrait mode on iPhone XS, showing advanced photography techniques that everyone can use.

Take a look at the photos. Gorgeous. To me, these are as good as any shots I could have shot with a film camera (I am an amateur, but still, great stuff).

I wish Apple would put together a page with lots of sample photos you could play with, sliding a depth slider, trying all the different lighting modes, just to get a sense of all the different possibilities.

iPhone gaffe that could cost Vladimir Putin’s ‘god-daughter’ £1.25m

Written by

First things first, there were a number of articles about this, but most sourced this Mirror article, and the headline made me laugh.

On to the story, from the Mirror:

Russian president Vladimir Putin’s ‘goddaughter’ may have lost an incredible £1.25million after she was caught on camera using her iPhone.

Ksenia Sobchak, a journalist, politician and reality TV show host, is the face of rival smartphone manufacturer Samsung.

But the 36-year-old was caught on camera using her iPhone X – despite trying to hide it under a sheet of paper – during a television interview.

Apparently, Sobchak’s Samsung contract requires her to only use a Samsung device when in public. Ouch.

Apple just killed the ‘GrayKey’ iPhone passcode hack

Written by

Thomas Brewster, Forbes:

Multiple sources familiar with the GrayKey tech tell Forbes the device can no longer break the passcodes of any iPhone running iOS 12 or above. On those devices, GrayKey can only do what’s called a “partial extraction,” sources from the forensic community said. That means police using the tool can only draw out unencrypted files and some metadata, such as file sizes and folder structures.

Previously, GrayKey used “brute forcing” techniques to guess passcodes and had found a way to get around Apple’s protections preventing such repeat guesses. But no more. And if it’s impossible for GrayKey, which counts an ex-Apple security engineer among its founders, it’s a safe assumption few can break iPhone passcodes.

This does sound promising, but I’ll take it with a grain of salt. Like jailbreaking a phone, this sort of thing is hard to quash completely. And certainly incredibly difficult to prove, one way or the other.

iPhone XR: The reviews are in

Written by

Scroll through Apple’s iPhone XR quote gallery. Can’t remember the last time an Apple product has been so positively received and recommended.

Phil Schiller on the iPhone XR

Written by

Interesting Engadget piece on the iPhone XR: Half review, half interview with Phil Schiller, all of it a good read.

A few tidbits:

The iPhone XR might be the most interesting phone Apple has made in years.

Think about it: Apple just released its flagship XS and XS Max to a chorus of positive reviews, and now here it is, a month later, preparing to launch another smartphone that packs many of the same features found in those really expensive ones. For Apple, this is all a little unheard of.

Seems to me, this is the new normal, Apple easing into a new model for releasing and marketing iPhones. Having the same processor across the new product line has got to make life easier, production more cost effective.

“We had this technology we were working on for many years to be the future of the iPhone,” Schiller said of the X. “It was a huge ask of the engineering team to get it to market last year, and they did. … We knew that if we could bring that to market and it was successful very quickly after that, we needed to grow the line and make it available to more people.”

And:

“I think the only way to judge a display is to look at it,” he told me, adding that Apple calls these screens “retina displays” because your eye can’t discern individual pixels unless you press your face up right against the glass. “If you can’t see the pixels, at some point the numbers don’t mean anything. They’re fairly arbitrary.” And when asked if the screen was to blame for the XR’s staggered release, he simply said, “This is when it’s ready.”

It is interesting to see this lowest tier of the new product line be so highly recommended. Part of this is Apple’s proven genius with materials. Consider this quote from Ben Bajarin:

The Xr feels more premium than all its high-end Android competitors which bodes well for Apple.

No company has experimented more with material science/metals than Apple to get to where they are today.

Absolutely true.

John Gruber’s iPhone XR review

Written by

A long, satisfying review. Lots to process, but a few things that stand out:

Only the iPhone XR offers a 128 GB storage tier, and it’s just $50 more. If you want more than 64 GB with an iPhone XS, you’ve got to pay $150 more than the base price and jump all the way to 256 GB. So in terms of what I would actually recommend for most people — getting the storage tier one level above entry level — the 128 GB iPhone XR costs $350 less than the 256 GB XS and $450 less than the XS Max.

People who are looking for some way that iPhone XR purchasers are getting screwed have it backwards. If anyone is getting screwed on pricing, it’s XS and XS Max purchasers, who don’t have the option of buying a 128 GB device for just $50 more than the baseline 64 GB models.

With anything beyond the free iCloud storage tier enabled, 128GB of storage should be more than enough. And, I’d argue, even 64GB should be enough as well, at least for most people. But for only $50, the leap to 128GB seems a no-brainer.

Another bit that stood out to me followed a series of images John took of his son. Take a look at the images, then read on:

In short, Portrait Mode is usable on the XR in some low light situations where it’s unusable on the XS.

Very interesting. I suspect this is something that could be addressed in a future software release. I can’t imagine the XS and XS Max can’t be tuned to solve this problem, but the proof is in the pudding.

Great read.

Apple’s updated iPhone repair pricing

Written by

Apple has updated their repair pricing sheets to add the iPhone XR.

What I find most fascinating about this list is that pricing goes all the way back to the iPhone 3G. Take a look, and a walk down iPhone memory lane.

Piper Jaffray survey: Record 82% of U.S. teens have iPhones

Written by

Philip Elmer-DeWitt, quoting a Piper Jaffray survey update:

Apple’s share of smartphone ownership was unchanged in the Piper Jaffray Taking Stock With Teens survey. Of ~8,500 respondents, 82% have an iPhone, the highest percentage we have seen in our survey. The iPhone may have room to move higher, however, with 86% of teens anticipating their next phone to be an iPhone, the highest ever recorded in our survey (up from 84% in Spring-18). Android was the runner up with 10%, down from 11% in the spring.

This is US teens, not world-wide ownership. But strong news for Apple, increasing their hold on the next generation of (well heeled?) phone buyers.

iPhone X, XS, XS Max, and XR specs, side by side

Written by

Scroll down towards the bottom of the article for a nice data table filled with all the specs for the three newest models, alongside the iPhone X. A terrific way to see what’s new and different for each model.

M.G.Siegler: A Few Thoughts on the iPhone XS Max

Written by

M.G. Siegler:

A month later, I think I’ve determined I actually prefer the ‘X’ — and now the ‘XS’ — size. This wasn’t the case when “downgrading” from a ‘Plus’ phone to the “regular” iPhone in generations past — I found the smaller versions to be almost comically small when switching between the two. With the ‘Max’ to the ‘X’ or ‘XS’, to be honest, I just like the latter form factor more — I find it to be a more natural size that feels better in the hand.

The comically small comment is interesting to me. I know a host of people who yearn for a new version of the SE form factor. There are people with small hands and/or terrific eyesight and/or small pockets that miss that size.

Same thing with Apple Watch. There are people with smaller wrists for whom even the old 38mm form factor was too large.

My instinct here is that the reason Apple won’t stay small is not strictly a market research response (i.e., customers don’t want small) but, instead, that Apple recognizes how hard it is to pack all the technology they have now and foresee in the future in a small package.

Add to that, a smaller package means smaller batteries, which doesn’t scale well, since the tech itself doesn’t shrink with a smaller enclosure.

Back to M.G.’s writeup:

Obviously, your mileage may vary, but I think part of my feeling is due to the fact that unlike when the ‘Plus’ models hit, it doesn’t seem like developers have really done anything to tailor their apps for the larger screen of the ‘Max’. Apple did, but not in the same way as they did with the ‘Plus’, where the entire OS changed in landscape mode, for example (it doesn’t here). And as a result, many apps just look sort of chunky now.

This is an important point. Every time Apple makes a sea change to the process of developing an app, legacy app developers have to make a choice. Do they spend time and money “fixing” their existing apps so they take advantage of the new form factor (adopt the new “safe zones” rules so the app plays well with the notch/bigger screens), or dedicate themselves to new app development and the lure of a brand new sales/money cycle?

All of that plus the fact that the bigger model doesn’t have the better camera system this time around (again, unlike the ‘Plus’ era), puts a lot of checks in the ‘XS’ box.

All three of the new models have the same processor, too. Interesting change of strategy for Apple. And a strong case for buying the iPhone XS.

There’s more to M.G.’s review, definitely a worthy read.

iPhone XR available for pre-order tomorrow night just after midnight PT

Written by

Apple:

The new iPhone XR, integrating breakthrough technologies from iPhone XS in an all-screen glass and aluminum design featuring a stunning 6.1-inch Liquid Retina display — the most advanced LCD in a smartphone — and six beautiful finishes will be available for customers to pre-order beginning Friday, October 19 at 12:01 a.m. PST on apple.com and the Apple Store app.

And:

iPhone XR will be available in 64GB, 128GB and 256GB models in black, white, blue, yellow, coral and (PRODUCT)RED starting at $749 (US)

And:

Customers will be able to pre-order iPhone XR beginning Friday, October 19 at 12:01 a.m. PST with availability beginning Friday, October 26, in more than 50 countries and territories.

Follow the headline link for all the technical details. But if you want an iPhone XR anytime soon, I’d jump on that pre-order.

Brazilian iPhone owners woke up 1 hour earlier today

Written by

Reddit:

Basically, a failure involving iPhone and local carrier TIM has made iPhone owners wake up 1 hour earlier today.

That’s because the smartphone adjusted automatically for daylight saving time, but that year the start of the DST was postponed to November due to the second round of presidential elections and the National High School Exam.

A small fraction of Android users was affected, but problem hit mainly iPhone users.

That’s a major oops. I wonder if Apple has a mechanism in place to deal with time changes like this.

Cops told ‘Don’t look’ at new iPhones to avoid Face ID lock-out

Written by

Motherboard:

But Face ID can of course also work against law enforcement—too many failed attempts with the ‘wrong’ face can force the iPhone to request a potentially harder to obtain passcode instead. Taking advantage of legal differences in how passcodes are protected, US law enforcement have forced people to unlock their devices with not just their face but their fingerprints too. But still, in a set of presentation slides obtained by Motherboard this week, one company specialising in mobile forensics is telling investigators not to even look at phones with Face ID, because they might accidentally trigger this mechanism.

We had passcodes, then fingerprints, then faces, the evolution of biometric mechanisms used to unlock you phone. Will this evolution continue? Or is Face ID the final stop?

No matter, this is a knotty problem on all sides. Protect privacy, but make it effortless to unlock a phone.

Apple officially says iOS 12 is now in use on 50% of all iPhones and iPads

Written by

Benjamin Mayo, 9to5Mac:

Mixpanel reported that Apple had crossed the magic 50% milestone for iOS 12 at the weekend, and now Apple has released its first usage numbers which are based off visits to the App Store.

Apple says 50% of all devices are running iOS 12, and 53% of devices introduced within the last four years. This four year timespan metric is new, and it means that it only counts devices launched since September 2014 (iPhone 6 and later).

I would bet that these numbers would be even higher if there weren’t so many 8GB and 16GB phones out there. When your phone is full, it is no trivial matter to update to a new version of iOS.

Given that the absolute smallest capacity of Apple’s new line of phones is 64GB, I’d expect transition to new versions of iOS to come a lot faster over time, and for adoption rates to soar as older, smaller phones drop out of usage.

Side note: Here’s an Apple Support document talking you through updating your phone if space is an issue.

iPhone XS vs $10K Canon C200 cinema camera

Written by

[VIDEO] Interesting setup, comparison. A few comments:

When viewed the footage on a small iPhone scene they both looked fantastic. I was impressed to say the least but it all fell apart when viewing in fullscreen on my 27inch iMac. Too much sharpening meant the details just got lost and all the leaves with details just got smushed together. The C200 still looked great.

No surprise there. But:

The dynamic range however is super impressive. it’s able to keep the highlights on the bright sun while keeping details in the shadows. This is some crazy multiple exposure processing thats been done.

And:

In conclusion the iPhone camera is a smartphone camera and always will be. It is incredibly small but to be honest give completely mind blowing results.

And:

Is it as good as a cinema camera, not at all. Is it the best camera I have ever seen on a smartphone? 100%.

Good stuff. Watch the video (embedded in the main Loop post). [Via 9to5Mac]

TIL Safari on iOS 12 has built-in protection against fake software keyboard

Written by

Reddit:

Safari on iOS 12 has a security mechanism in place to make sure malicious websites aren’t displaying a software keyboard that mimics the iOS one in order to act as a keylogger.

To trigger the warning: open a webpage in full-screen mode, for example a full-screen video on YouTube’s mobile website. Then tap several times at the bottom of the screen, as if you were typing on an invisible keyboard.

A warning message will appear telling you the website may be showing you a fake keyboard to trick you into disclosing personal or financial information.

Worth reading the comments on this page.

Note that this seems to only work on an iPad (something to do with the way iPad supports a full-screen mode that iPhone does not).

I have not been able to replicate this, but I am running a beta, so that might be an issue. A number of people have replicated this. If you can, please do ping me with specifics.

And here’s a screen shot of the warning message.

AnandTech’s iPhone XS and XS Max review

Written by

This is a really detailed review, with no kowtowing to Apple. One particular point worth highlighting:

The Apple A12 is a beast of a SoC. While the A11 already bested the competition in terms of performance and power efficiency, the A12 doubles down on it in this regard, thanks to Apple’s world-class design teams which were able to squeeze out even more out of their CPU microarchitectures. The Vortex CPU’s memory subsystem saw an enormous boost, which grants the A12 a significant performance boost in a lot of workloads. Apple’s marketing department was really underselling the improvements here by just quoting 15% – a lot of workloads will be seeing performance improvements I estimate to be around 40%, with even greater improvements in some corner-cases. Apple’s CPU have gotten so performant now, that we’re just margins off the best desktop CPUs; it will be interesting to see how the coming years evolve, and what this means for Apple’s non-mobile products.

Good read.

PSA: When you switch phones and you have your health data in the cloud, be very, very patient for it to come back

Written by

Reddit user u/pilif:

Since September of 2016 I’m running daily and tracking the runs with the Apple Watch. Sometime last year, I have told iCloud to store the health data in the cloud and now that I have updated to an XS Max, I noticed that most of my past workout data was gone.

Don’t worry though – it’s still there, the phone downloaded 2228 (in my case) files that contain the actual workout data and it’s processing them one by one.

But the kicker: This can only run while the phone is unlocked. When it’s locked, /var/mobile/Library/Health becomes inaccessible and the process stops.

This is a solid PSA. I hear complaints about lost “ring closing” data all the time, from people who switch to a new iPhone and fear they’ve lost their workout history. Read the rest for a way the more ambitious of you can track the transfer progress.