This is a long review, chock full of detail. Definitely worth your time.
A few pieces on Face ID, just to give you a taste:
Here’s where there’s a difference between Touch ID and Face ID: Touch ID throws away the original enrollment images of your fingerprints almost immediately. Face ID keeps the original enrollment images of your face (but crops them as tightly as possible so as not to store background information). That’s for convenience. Apple wants to be able to update the neural networks for Face ID without you having to re-register your face each time.
And:
The True Depth camera reads the data and captures a randomized sequence of 2D images and depth maps which are then digitally signed and send to the Secure Enclave for comparison. (Randomization also protects against spoofing attacks.)
The portion of the Neural Engine inside the Secure Enclave converts the captured data into math and the secure Face ID neural networks compare it with the math from the registered face. If the math matches, a “yes” token is released and you’re on your way. If it doesn’t, you need to try again, fall back to passcode, or stay locked out of the device.
And:
None of the neural networks have yet been trained to distinguish multiple registered faces. They can tell you or not you, but not you, someone else, and not either of you. That’s a level of complexity beyond the first iteration of the system. Right now, very few people reportedly register multiple fingers for Touch ID, but Apple could add that functionality to a future implementation of Face ID, if there’s significant demand.
My guess is that doing all these checks for more than one person would make face-recognition noticeably slower than Touch ID, and Apple was concerned that reviewers and consumers alike wouldn’t respond well to that. That, I think, is the real reason Apple limits Face ID to a single face.
Rene’s take is that the system was not yet designed to handle more than a single face, that it’s not an issue of CPU performance, but of neural network design. All interesting.
What developers can’t do is get your face data. Just like apps never got access to your fingerprints with Touch ID, they never get access to your face data with Face ID.
Once the app asks for authentication, it hands off to the system, and all it ever gets back is that authentication or rejection. Apple has a separate system, built into ARKit, the company’s augmented reality framework, that provides basic face tracking for Animoji or any apps that want to provide similar functionality, but it only gets rudimentary mesh and depth data, and never gets anywhere near Face ID data or the Face ID process.
This is just a tiny taste of Rene’s review. A fascinating read. One smart cookie.
I absolutely love this Apple Music ad. Beautifully constructed, lots of eye candy, one of those videos that’s worth pausing just to get a sense of all the pieces.
Anyone know the origin of each of these elements? Ping me.
This is relatively short (a bit over 3 minutes), worth watching in spite of its brevity. Tim Cook talks social media, why Apple is different than other companies, iPhone X, Face ID, and privacy.
The video in the linked post shows a mass of people chaotically queueing up to buy an iPhone X at the Orchard Road Apple Store in Singapore.
This did take me back to the early days, when every iPhone release was met by mobs like this. I’m told that much of this crowd is scalpers, many from other countries, trying to get their piece of the pie.
Keep an eye out for the Apple employee who tries to provide order by restarting the line, only to have the chaos recreate itself.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has raised privacy concerns about developer access to the facial expressions of iPhone X users. In particular, they say that Apple allows developers to capture facial expression data and store it on their own servers.
When the iPhone X was launched, Apple was careful to stress that the 3D face recognition model used by Face ID was stored only on the phone itself. The data is never transferred to Apple servers. But the ACLU says that app developers are allowed to transmit and store some face data.
Interesting article. Lots of layers to this issue. There’s face tracking (think Animoji) and attention detection (are you actually watching your screen). How much of this data is hidden behind an API? In other words, does Apple simply tell a developer whether you are paying attention to the screen, or do they give you more specific data, like the current screen location on which you are currently focused?
This is a good read. And keep an eye out for more detail in the Rene Ritchie/iMore iPhone X review I’ll be posting a bit later this morning.
Update: There is no API for attention detection, therefore there is no way for developers to access it.
Apple has determined that some Apple Watch Series 3 models have an issue causing “edge stripes” to appear on the display after time.
In an internal memo distributed to Genius Bars and Apple Authorized Service Providers, Apple said the issue is to be treated like any other Apple Watch repair. Since the issue appears to be a manufacturing defect, the repair should be free under Apple’s standard one-year limited warranty policy.
If you have a GPS Series 3 Apple Watch, or plan to buy one, take a look at the image in Joe’s post so you know what to look for. Sounds like Apple acknowledges the issue, has your back if you do run into this.
Join us here on November 2, 2017 at 2:00 p.m. PT / 5:00 p.m. ET to listen to the conference call live.
As usual, Apple will announce a metric buttload of profit and sales. And, as usual, expect a lot of unanswered and stupid questions from the assembled analysts on the call.
iOS 11.1 was released on October 31, 2017 and includes 240 new emojis including Giraffe, Face Vomiting, Genie, Sauropod (dinosaur) and more. A number of existing emojis changed in this update, such as Honeybee, Ram, and Tumbler Glass.
I use four emojis. This is overkill for me.
UPDATE: There seems to be some discrepancy in the number of emojis announced but, as Kip Beatty pointed out in the comments below:
The number is so high because for many of the emojis Apple now adds a range of skin tones to cover a variety of ethnicities.”
As the worlds of artificial intelligence and digital photography collide, we’re starting to see some mind-blowing technology emerge. The latest research in turning low-resolution photos into high-definition photos may drop your jaws — it’s starting to cross into the realm of sci-fi.
MotoGP’s Valentino Rossi is widely considered to be professional motorcycling’s GOAT – Greatest of All Time. Racing against Yamaha’s MOTOBOT Ver.2, an autonomous motorcycle, is an interesting test. I won’t spoil the results but before you watch, guess who won and by how much. Keep in mind, Rossi isn’t riding his 200mph+, 250+ HP MotoGP Yamaha YZR-M1 beast of a bike. It looks like he’s riding a fairly stock Yamaha R1 – still a fast, powerful bike.
Apple on Wednesday released a major update for GarageBand, bringing compatibility with the iPhone X, new instruments, sounds, and a brand-new Sound Library.
Apple told me that one of the most requested features for GarageBand is new sounds and instruments. For musicians, this makes perfect sense—you want to have your song sound different and fresh. New sound and instrument combinations allow you to do that.
The new Sound Library allows users to download Touch Instruments, Apple Loops, Live Loops templates, and instrument presets, all within the app. With everything being downloaded onto an iPhone or iPad, space is sometimes a concern for users, so Apple also allows you to uninstall sound packs that you no longer need from within the Sound Library.
There are currently eight sound packs in the GarageBand Sound Library that range from Guitar Amps to Chinese Traditional. There is no doubt, you’ll be able to find some unique sounds in these packs to differentiate your song.
The greatest thing about the Sound Library is that it can be updated independently on the GarageBand app itself. This means that we no longer have to wait until the next update to receive new sounds. If Apple has a new sound pack next week, they can just post it and GarageBand will notify us in the app that new sounds are available.
In addition to the Sound Library, GarageBand also has an all-new Beat Sequencer inspired by classic drum machines. The sequencer has 16 steps, but you can show up to 64 steps if you like.
There are also a number of new instruments from Asia, including Japan’s Koto and Taiko Drums. I’m really looking forward to pounding out some beats with those drums. Apple also included a Guzheng from China.
I know a lot of musicians, myself included, that use GarageBand a lot to track song ideas. You can take those ideas and move them to Logic or you can finish your song in GarageBand. This app is really powerful and allows anyone that can tap on a screen to make music.
With hundreds of millions of devices around the world, Apple is truly bringing music creation to the masses with GarageBand.
Mashable recently sat down with Schiller and other senior members of Apple’s executive team including SVP of software engineering Craig Federighi, SVP hardware engineering Dan Riccio, and VP of user interface design Alan Dye for a wide-ranging discussion about how they built what is perhaps the most eagerly-anticipated smartphone since Apple’s founder Steve Jobs unveiled the original iPhone more than a decade ago.
Too much to quote, but a very enjoyable, informative read, all the way through. Well worth your time.
Imagine a similar handheld device from a superior alien race. Assuming they needed such an interface or display at all, they would simply handle their device normally and it would still allow them to perform sensitive actions.
To an unfamiliar observer it might seem like no authentication took place, like one could just pick up any device and start taking sensitive actions on their behalf. But in reality all of that functionality had just been removed from the workflow and done automatically. It’s security made invisible and effortless.
That’s what FaceID is, and why it represents such an improvement: it adds security while removing friction.
I like the analogy here. Touch ID focuses authentication on a physical act on a physical mechanism on the phone. Face ID is invisible.
One important limitation of Face ID: It only lets you register one face. That may strike many as unnecessarily limiting since Touch ID lets users register up to 10 [sic] fingerprints, but Apple says it found the number of people who register more than one person’s fingerprints is miniscule.
Ben continues:
The idea that hardly anyone registers more than one person’s fingerprint didn’t ring true to me, and our poll shows that it’s not true for 9to5Mac users at least.
At the time of writing, the majority of our readers have more than person’s fingerprints registered for one or more of their iOS devices. Almost half (48.98%) have one other person registered, and a further 6.85% have more than two people.
I would certainly agree with this. I have my entire family “fingered” on my iPhone 6s, and the Touch ID performance is still very fast.
Ben’s take on adding a second face to the Face ID registry:
My guess is that doing all these checks for more than one person would make face-recognition noticeably slower than Touch ID, and Apple was concerned that reviewers and consumers alike wouldn’t respond well to that. That, I think, is the real reason Apple limits Face ID to a single face.
First things first, this is not news. Apple has been very up front about the Face ID edge cases.
That said, I did find this interesting, was wondering how long it would take before someone verified this theory.
From the linked Mashable article:
With both sets of twins, the other twin unlocked the iPhone X, even though neither one had registered his face with Face ID on the iPhone X. With the Franklin twins, we had both brothers remove their glasses and had the other brother register. Again, Face ID failed to tell the difference.
Look, Apple never claimed Face ID was perfect and, in my tests, it could not be fooled by photos or videos of my registered face.
But also interesting is the claim that Windows 10’s facial recognition tech was able to distinguish between twins.
Not much of an issue. Unless you are a twin. Especially an evil twin.
UPDATE: I’m told that the Windows facial recognition tech is iris scanning, not true facial recognition. Requires facing the camera with head aligned, just so. Does pick up the difference between twins, but clearly loses in convenience to Face ID.
Three years ago, after an argument at a bar with some fellow artificial intelligence researchers, Ph.D student Ian Goodfellow cobbled together a new way for AI to think about creating images. The idea was simple: one algorithm tries to generate a realistic image of an object or a scene, while another algorithm tries to decide whether that image is real or fake.
The two algorithms are adversaries—each trying to beat the other in the interest of creating the final best image—and this technique, now called “generative adversarial networks” (GANs) has quickly become a cornerstone of AI research.
The term GAN is worth remembering. It is one of the new shinys in AI research.
But more importantly, jump to the article and scan through the images, watch the embedded video. The generated images are remarkably good. I cannot tell the difference between generated images and real ones.
This is fascinating and scary, all rolled into one.
Too much to excerpt the whole thing, but here’s a bit on Face ID:
Going in to this review, my threshold for “success” was whether Face ID worked as well or better than first-generation Touch ID. I didn’t expect it to nail the speed of the second-gen sensor, which is incredibly fast. As long as it landed between the two I would be happy.
Face ID works really well. First, it’s incredibly easy to set up. You choose to enable it and then rotate your nose around the points of a clock twice. That’s it. Second, it worked the vast majority of times I tried it, it never once unlocked using a picture of myself or another person’s face and the failure rate seemed to be about the same as Touch ID — aka almost never. As hoped, it’s definitely faster than the first generation of Touch ID, though perhaps slightly slower than the second gen.
The “slightly slower than second gen” comment is interesting. I wonder if that will improve as users develop the swipe up timing muscle memory. Certainly, the timing should improve with next generation processors.
I experience failure with Touch ID at least once a day or so, almost always due to sweaty fingers from a workout or, perhaps, dirt of some kind on my fingers. Face ID eliminates that issue (my only complaint about Touch ID).
At several points, the unlock procedure worked so well in pitch black or at weird angles that I laughed out loud. You get over the amazement pretty quickly, but it feels wild the first few dozen times you do it.
So important. Really glad to read these reviews, hear the positives on Face ID in the wild.
Apple has detailed an upcoming feature included in the new iOS 11.2 developer beta called SiriKit for HomePod. When HomePod launches in December, SiriKit for HomePod will allow developers to use the smart speaker as an access point to sending commands to their apps on iPhone and iPad.
No way to test this yet, as far as I know. Will Apple ship a HomePod simulator for Xcode before the HomePod itself ships?
This is the fate of the iPhone 8. It will be ignored by many of Apple’s most committed followers, who see it as a speed bump on the road to the release of the iPhone X in early November.
The iPhone X is stealing the iPhone 8 thunder, no doubt. But there’s a lot to appreciate here, especially if you have an older phone:
Instead, it will soldier on, doing its job as the latest iteration of the existing iPhone line, providing a substantial upgrade to people who haven’t bought an iPhone in two or three years and aren’t interested in paying $999 for the very first generation of a new iPhone, if they could even find one in stores. These people are ready for a better version of their existing phone, and the iPhone 8 will deliver that to them.
If you are considering an update, but stuck on the fence between an iPhone 8 and iPhone X, spend some time digging through Jason’s detailed iPhone 8 review. It just might change your thinking.
I’ve had my iPhone X from Apple for less than a day, so it would be irresponsible of me to call this a review—instead I’ll give you my first impressions of a few of the main features, and then follow-up with more details later this week or next.
The “Notch”
Let’s get this out of the way right now. There will be so much written about the notch at the top of the iPhone X, we’ll all be sick of it. I said from the time I attended the iPhone launch event that the notch didn’t really bother me—it still doesn’t.
If you focus on the notch, then sure, you will see and it could even bother you. However, I focus on what’s on the screen, not on the notch. Perhaps that’s why it doesn’t bother me—I don’t really know it’s there.
It’s not like the notch is in the way of what you’re trying to do on the iPhone. It’s not stuck in the middle of the display, so for me, it doesn’t factor into my usage of the device.
We could talk all day about the aesthetics of the notch, but if it’s not in the way of what I’m trying to accomplish on my device, then it doesn’t matter to me.
iPhone
I think what surprised me the most about the iPhone X when I took it out of the box is that I thought the physical design would be bigger. I guess I didn’t spend much time comparing it with the iPhone 8 Plus during the launch event.
However, when you turn it on, the iPhone X is all screen. It doesn’t have the big top and bottom of the iPhone Plus models—it’s just screen. It’s beautiful.
The iPhone 8 has a 4.7-inch screen; the iPhone 8 Plus a 5.5-inch screen and the iPhone X a 5.8-inch screen.
The display
Wow, this display. A 5.8‑inch Super Retina OLED screen that is truly incredible.
The iPhone X display is a true High Dynamic Range (HDR) display, so you can watch Dolby Vision movies and view HDR photos, all in the way they were meant to be seen. This iPhone, which may be similar to an iPhone 12 Refurbished, also features True Tone, which subtly adjusts the screens display to match the surrounding ambient light, even as you change rooms. I’m a big fan of True Tone on my iPad and have raved about this technology in the past.
For everyday use, the screen is brilliant in every app that I used it with. The OLED panel actually folds underneath the edges of the phone and Apple uses what it calls subpixel anti-aliasing to make sure the edges are smooth, and everything you view is at its best.
Face ID
This is the feature I was waiting to see. Face ID is the future for Apple and with the previous success of Touch ID, Face ID had a lot to live up to. We have used our fingerprints to login to our iPhone and authorize apps for years—it just worked. Anything less than that would be a huge step backward for Apple and us as consumers.
Well, I have good news—it works. Really well.
Face ID is really easy to set up. In fact, it’s quicker than setting up Touch ID on previous iPhones. When you first start up your iPhone X, it will prompt you to point the camera at your face and roll your head in a circle. You do that a second time and it’s done.
Face ID worked more than 99 percent of the time for me. I can’t really figure out why it didn’t work those few times, but once I tried again on those occasions, it unlocked right away. I have the iPhone X set to require my attention, so if it notices I’m not looking at the phone, it won’t unlock. Perhaps I wasn’t looking at the iPhone when I was unlocking it, I’m not sure.
When you raise the iPhone up to your face, you can start to swipe up on the bottom of the screen at the same time—eventually, you’ll get the timing right and it just unlocks and goes to your homepage. It’s pretty quick.
I also wear reading glass now, but I didn’t use them when I setup Face ID. However, I often wear them when using my iPhone or my computer, but that didn’t seem to fool Face ID.
I tried using Face ID in the dark as well—it worked really well. This was actually one of my main concerns for Face ID because we are often in low-light or dark conditions, whether we’re at home or out on the town for a night.
For me, Face ID has to work everywhere I am and so far it’s working just fine.
According to Apple, the probability that someone else could unlock your iPhone with Face ID is 1 in 1,000,000. Of course, that changes with twins, siblings that look the same, and children under 13 because their features are not fully developed. If you are in this situation, you can always use a passcode.
Face ID can’t be fooled by pictures because it uses depth information when it analyzes your face. It also can’t be fooled by masks because it uses an anti-spoofing neural network. In case you are wondering, your Face ID data is encrypted and stored on your device in the Secure Enclave. It never leaves your device and is not backed up to iCloud or anywhere else.
Apple is also making it very easy for you to use your existing apps that utilize Touch ID. When you open an app, a banking app for example, it will ask you if you want to use Touch ID; I said yes and the iPhone activated Face ID in its place. Perfect. I didn’t think they could do that, but it makes the entire experience much better.
1Password told me it was designed to support Touch ID, but that I could allow it to use Face ID. I did.
Apps will all need to be updated in the coming weeks and months to use Face ID by default on the iPhone X instead of Touch ID.
You can also enable Attention Aware features with Face ID. With this enabled, the iPhone will not dim the screen if it knows you are looking at the screen. It will also not lower the volume of an alarm until you look at the phone and it knows it has your attention.
Face ID is important, but the TrueDepth camera that it uses also allowed me to have some fun with Apple’s new Animoji feature in Messages. It tracks 50 different facial muscle movements in your face, allowing you to post some fun stuff to a friend.
Once posted, you can save the Animoji as a movie, or you can also send it as a sticker by dragging it onto a message. I spent far too much time playing with this today, but I had fun doing it.
Gestures
When you first start using the iPhone X, you will no doubt automatically reach for the Home button without thinking. I did it many times in the first couple of hours, but it didn’t take that long to realize that there is no button anymore.
In fact, Apple has a series of gestures and button combinations that allow you to do all of the same things on the iPhone X that you did on previous models.
For instance, to open the iPhone X, hold the iPhone up and Face ID will unlock it. At the same time you can swipe up from the bottom of the screen and you will go to your home screen.
You can press and hold the side button to activate Siri.
From any screen of apps on the iPhone, swipe up from the bottom and it will take you to the first home screen.
From inside any app swipe up and pause to go to the multitasking window. From here you can choose another app or if you press and hold an app, a minus sign will show on the top corner of the apps, allowing you to close them. You can also swipe up to close apps.
Swipe down from the top right corner to get to Control Center.
Swipe down from the top left to get to Notification Center.
More to come
There is a lot more to talk about that I haven’t had a chance to try out yet, including the cameras. I’ll continue using the iPhone X and post another article when I’m done.
I will say this about the iPhone X. It’s lived up to the hype so far. Face ID is absolutely brilliant and worked in as many situations as I could put it in; The new gestures allow you to do everything you need to on an iPhone; I love the display; and the notch is no big deal.
Sothebys: >While not known to be a car enthusiast per se, Steve Jobs did have a penchant for German automobiles and design, owning BMW motorcycles, as well as Mercedes-Benz SLs. According to legend, Jobs was convinced to buy the Z8 by Larry Ellison the iconoclastic CEO of Oracle, who enthused to Jobs that the car was a paragon of modern automotive engineering and ergonomics, reflective of Steve’s own products and psyche. > >The car comes with a plethora of important accessories, including its proper hardtop and hardtop stand, car cover, owner’s and service manuals, service records, two keys, navigation CDs, and – most significantly, its original BMW-branded Motorola flip-phone. Interestingly enough, and perhaps unsurprisingly, Jobs was known to have hated the Motorola phone.
Are you one of the lucky few that got an iPhone X in the first shipment due to be delivered this Friday, November 3? If so, your shipping information is available. Widely reported this morning by various iPhone and Apple fan forums, you can get your tracking number right now even if Apple hasn’t sent it to you yet.
It didn’t work for me here in Canada. Maybe you’ll have better luck.
I’ve had this phone since last Tuesday. Apple had given me this early peek in part because I was one of the first pre-release reviewers of the original iPhone. Given that history, we all thought it would be interesting to get my impressions of what the company clearly believes is the next milestone in a journey that has pretty much altered our relationship with technology. Sure, with every single iteration of the iPhone, Apple has claimed that it’s the best one the company has ever made. But for this anniversary edition—coming at a time when critics are griping that the company had tumbled into an innovation trough— they’re pushing for something higher. Tim Cook calls the iPhone X “the future of the smartphone.”
This is a great read, all the way through. I love the open, with Steven choosing what feature to show people who see his phone, ask what it can do. Lovely writing, makes me want an iPhone X, which is exactly what this pitch is supposed to accomplish.
Remember, as cool as the original iPhone was, it didn’t really begin changing the world until Apple let third-party software developers take advantage of its innards—stuff like the camera, GPS, and other sensors. Maybe something similar, albeit not on such a grand scale, will happen with the iPhone X. Those who shell out the cash for this device will enjoy their screen and battery life today. But the real payoff of the iPhone X might come when we figure out what it can do tomorrow.
I see the iPhone X as the very beginning of a brand new product line. I think the payoff will come as those future iPhones X evolve.
There’s this photo of my kids in the bath that, well, I’d rather not tell you about. I mean, it’s incredibly cute and I’d love to show it to you, but I’m also a private person, so it wouldn’t be right to go into details. But I will say this: though it’s one of my favorite possessions, this picture doesn’t physically exist.
And:
As precious as this image is, I don’t have it stored on a flash drive attached to my keychain, or in some other ultra-safe place. Instead, it’s housed on a server in some unknown probably dank and sunless location. That’s no casual decision. I’ve put considerable time and thought into how I store my photos in general, as well as how I back up my information overall. Despite all the bottomless storage features offered by tech giants like Google and Amazon, I default to keeping my most valuable data with Apple. Why I chose this matters, so let’s talk about it.
Spot on. Apple’s commitment to privacy is a critical discriminator. Not only for the reasons spelled out in this Time article, but as a foundation for protecting things like information flow between doctors and patients. Good read.
Earlier this year, vascular surgeon John Martin was testing a pocket-sized ultrasound device developed by Butterfly Network, a startup based in Guilford, Connecticut, that he’d just joined as chief medical officer.
He’d been having an uncomfortable feeling of thickness on his throat. So he oozed out some gel and ran the probe, which is the size and shape of an electric razor, along his neck.
On his smartphone, to which the device is connected, black-and gray images quickly appeared. Martin is not a cancer specialist. But he knew that the dark, three-centimeter mass he saw did not belong there. “I was enough of a doctor to know I was in trouble,” he says. It was squamous-cell cancer.
How many stories have we seen where an Apple Watch notifies someone of an abnormal heart rhythm? That’s just the start.
The iPhone, add-on devices like this ultrasound unit, Apple Watch and, of course, HealthKit, are changing the health care landscape.
