As my tempest of phone upgrade decisions rages in its teapot (Duo vs Fairphone vs. 17e vs. 18e), it occurs to me that the iPhone Duo's unfolding animation is a replacement for turning your phone sideways. I don't do that often now, but when I do, it's for exactly the sorts of uses that the Duo excelled at in the keynote.

Questions:

• What's the landscape outside to portrait inside animation look like? Where is the "sidebar"/dock?
• I recall one maybe full-frame portrait shot, but maybe the Duo was folded? I don't recall. 
• Can I use it left-handed now? Later?

I know it's, as someone commented [to me directly] on a similar post I made years ago, a third world problem, but Apple hasn't been great with left-handers for a while:

1. iPhone lock screen and lefties (2019)
2. Why does Apple ignore left-handers? (2013)
3. New iPod touch hates lefties (2011) 

I kind of get it. Since the Mac LC was described to me by my Pascal (!!) teacher as, "The computer that does 90% of what everyone needs but by design never lets you get that last 10%," I've known and seen that Apple shoots for the happy, most common path to KISS.

Which is to say I'm interested in seeing how wide a path we've got now with the Duo and if there are plans -- good, deliberate plans (I'm looking at you, multitasking on iPad) -- to make that path wider in the future. 

I mean, you really couldn't avoid it (could you?), but the watch obviously has a pretty useful left-handed mode, though I can't help but think Apple would, if truth-serum-ed, say the crown on top and button underneath is the superior position (just as the Duo would have the selfie camera down at the bottom like those bizarre Dell computers where you get to watch the fingers of people on your calls as they type).

Labels: apple, happy-path-or-no-path, iphone, iPhone duo, left-handedness

Interesting Apple keynote. Ternus immediately strikes me as a more interesting CEO, if we ignore that our CEO names, to this point, have been Steve, Tim, and John, which are as whitebread as it comes.

(Ooops. I started at The Return. Michael, Mike, John, Michael (I see a trend), Gilbert, then Steve, Tim, and John. Not exactly injera, are they?)

But, unlike wooden -- but otherwise amazingly business-competent -- Cook, I want to ask Ternus questions about what he's presenting. I feel like I might get better than boilerplate answers, which my intuition tells me are all I'd get from Cook. There's a huge gap between buttoned up and effusively proud of what you've done before you get to "That's company IP; I can't tell you". We've at least solved the "Do you seem to care about my phone?" issue. Tentatively.

The only other item of real interest for me -- beyond the reuse of "one more thing", which you could see coming a mile away -- was the one more thing: Duo.

I am the market for this thing, which is to say who the heck is the market?

1. I love small phones.
2. I hate Face ID.
   • Enough that I skipped the iPhone 12.
3. My favorite Apple device is my iPad mini.
   • (I have a 6th gen. Battery kinda stinks. I've kept on iOS 18 because 26 killed my SE 3's performance. I want a new one.)
   • But, honestly, if I could only have one Apple device, the mini is it.

Imagine an iPad mini in your pocket. This is my dream!

Well, you had me in the first half; not going to lie. It's a dream, but not at $2200.^* Is this for Apple Watch Edition owners only? Or at least Hermes watch owners, I guess. Not that there's anything inherently wrong with that.

Yet for that price, I can buy a Fairphone 6+ ($650), a Garmin Instinct Solar that "never" needs charging ($350, $1k running total), and a new mini ($700 once 8th gen is out?, $1700 total), pocket $500 and say forget the Duo.

Except that 8th gen mini won't fit in my pocket. Decisions, decisions.

IP68?!!

Now admittedly part of me doesn't trust the IP68 rating Apple claims for the Duo.

iPhone Duo is splash, water, and dust resistant and was tested under controlled laboratory conditions with a rating of IP68 under IEC standard 60529 (maximum depth of 6 meters up to 30 minutes). Splash, water, and dust resistance are not permanent conditions. Resistance might decrease as a result of normal wear. Do not attempt to charge a wet iPhone; refer to the user guide for cleaning and drying instructions. Liquid damage not covered under warranty.

Frankly, that's amazing. A 6 for dust means, "No ingress of dust; complete protection against contact (dust-tight). A vacuum must be applied. Test duration of up to 8 hours based on airflow." Really? Again, amazing.

The Galaxy Z Fold 8 that iFixit recently showed still gets sand crackle is only IP48.

Still, "Resistance might decrease as a result of normal wear" and "dust resistance [is] not a permanent condition" is doing a lot of work in that blurb.

That is, I still wouldn't want to take a Duo to the beach, and I'd probably want to drop another $200 for at least a year of AppleCare.

But, man, that SE 3 is getting slow. It stinks that if I don't order Friday I probably wouldn't get a new phone delivered until the 18e is out. This is definitely a see-it-first type of purchase. And probably a wait for version 2, see how long IP68 lasts, and hope it still has Touch ID next year thing for me.

^*The storage trap/lock-in

Why $2200 for me to buy a Duo? Because there's another bit of lock-in I'm experiencing: I've got too danged much on my phone.

My main SE 3 has 256 gigs, and it's still to the point that I'm constantly unloading apps and whacking music off of it to keep it running quickly. I bought a back-up SE 3 a while back with 64 gigs of space and, well, it's a pita to set up if you don't just say, "Forget it, don't restore from backup after all." But then you lose health, etc, right? Is there a clever way to do this other than...

1. Back up your well-storaged phone completely to your Mac with password protection.
2. Toss everything off of your main until you're under the storage of the poorly-storaged phone.
3. Make another backup of your main, now with waaaay less storage use so it fits on the new one, and ensure you don't accidentally erase that previous backup when saving it.
4. Install Backup 2 on poorly-storaged phone.
5. Install Backup 1 on well-storaged phone.

That's crazy. So I have to buy an even better-storaged phone not to go mad during my transfer.

That puts me at $2200.

Labels: apple, cook, fairphone, garmin, hats o' money, iphone, ternus, Touch ID

Labels: iphone, noteToSelf

From "The 5G iPhone SE will be for carriers, not customers " at theverge.com:

Now, just two years later, Apple is preparing to release its third-generation iPhone SE, one that’s rumored to offer broadly the same design as the 2020 SE, but with an upgraded processor and camera from the 2020 model, along with 5G.

And it’s that final detail — the addition of 5G — that seems to reveal why Apple is upgrading the iPhone SE this early: it’s an upgrade for the carriers, not the customers.

This is 100% accurate.

This is not.

Even if Apple sticks in an A14 (iPhone 12-equivalent) or A15 (iPhone 13) chipset, it’s only helping to future proof the 2022 SE by another year or two — hardly a reason to introduce a whole new model. 

If the prices are the same, just updating to an A15 makes the SE an amazing bargain once again.

This phone should be current as long as the iPhone 13 is.

And, as I've mentioned before, I hate Face ID. This could be the last iPhone with a Touch ID on the home button. If the rumored "SE BIG" based on the Xr has the same Touch ID as the iPad mini, count me out.

(And the SE 3 is rumored to have a 256 gig version available.)

I've seen MacRumors say that the SE 3 camera is going to be updated. I hope so, and that was one of the coolest parts of the first iPhone SE, which stole the 6S' rear (but not front) camera, but I don't think that's likely here.

I think I recall the SE 2 didn't bother upgrading the 8's camera other than the "sensor". And I bet the only additions we should expect are things that would be harder to remove than to keep. If it's easier to supply a new sensor, it'll use it, otherwise not. If it's easier to add night mode or whatever in software than remove it, it'll use it. Otherwise not.

But if they wanted to update the camera, I wouldn't fight them. I've been using the SE 1 since I gave away my SE 2, trying to use the iPad mini 6 as "my iPhone" while working at home, and, well, let's just say it's time for a new phone when I do go out.

If they really have the rumored 256 gig model for under $650, yes, please.

Labels: apple, iphone

From daringfireball.net:

I haven’t seen this issue, but I sympathize with those of you who’ve been hit by it. “Unlock With Apple Watch” almost completely mitigates the annoyance of using an iPhone with Face ID while wearing a mask.

I realize Grubes isn't quite committing the sin of assuming Apple lock-in, but it's close. "Hey, your iPhone works great with your watch!" is verrrrry close to, "Your iPhone doesn't work as intended without one, so of course you have one."

And, let's be clear, the iPhone assemblage expects a watch at this point.

I recall reading a review for the original AirPods by someone who didn't have a watch. She complained that it was too difficult to control volume with the AirPods she was reviewing, and she was 100% right.

The volume button on the AirPods is on your watch. It's the "digital crown". If you don't have a watch, you can't adequately control volume; a crucial part of your Apple AirPods is missing. It can even be a Series 2 watch like mine. Works perfectly. Not only sound, which is slick, but the pause, fast-forward, and rewind are also all there on the watch interface waiting on you.

You could argue that she should have been aware of how the watch would complete the AirPods, Jerry McGuire style, but the review was absolutely spot on saying the AirPods' design stinks out of the box.

Ostensibly, Siri would solve all your extra control problems, and the always-on "Hey Siri" of AirPods Pro and AirPods v2+ likely helps mitigate this a bit. Currently, though it's an adequate solution in theory, it's a huge fail in practice. I map my AirPods' double-tap away from Siri and to forward (left ear) and back (right) to get back some measure of control. Removing one pauses, of course.

(That said, when we finally figure out how to integrate Siri culturally and socially, it's going to be amazing. I think I've mentioned how once, in a crowed and extremely loud Apple Store, I was able to nearly whisper a text reply into my watch and have the perfectly transcribed text sent without so much as removing my phone from my pocket. That's how Siri should work, and, at some point, I bet it does -- a nearly subvocal interface that allows rich interactions.)

If you're wearing a watch, AirPods work great -- better than reaching for some dumb volume wart on a wire hanging down from your ears.

But if you're not, AirPods are a bad idea. You're almost precisely up the proverbial Sonic Creek without a paddle.

And, apparently, you're stuck up Face ID Creek too.

To be clear, this Face ID pain is not something I've felt since I quickly gave away my XR. I still prefer a phone with Touch ID so I don't have to have a clear line of sight to my full visage to use my phone. I've been on the SE train for a while now -- and am currently, unexpectedly, using an SE v1 again. What a beautifully sized phone. And I'm now the iPad mini train again too, a perfect balance of easy to carry away from the house (iPhone SE1) and maximized interactions when I'm at home and pockets no longer matter (iPad mini 6). Both are sooooo much nicer with Touch ID. No watch required.

I do, however, love using my AirPods. I've even PodSwapped them and feel good about that so far.

Labels: AirPods, apple, apple fail, apple watch, Face ID, iphone

From A Guy Walks Into an Apple Store by Matt Birchler

"This sounds like it will all work great, but now I have a new phone, two new cables, and one new charging brick, but I didn't get a charging brick with the iPhone because that was supposed to help reduce waste?" "You got it. Thanks for buying the things our ads say you should buy, and enjoy your new iPhone."

I mean, I get it. It is a convoluted set of steps to go from “new to iPhone” to “fully equipped with my iPhone”. I mean, it’s not crazy…

1. Buy an iPhone.
2. Buy a MagSafe charger/cable.
3. Buy the new charging brick.

Seems fine. And if we’d never built the expectation that those would be freebies we find in the box, nobody would be the wiser.

The real underhanded trick Apple’s performed is, however, that this makes the iPhone $39 + $19 = $58 more expensive because the price of the phone itself didn’t change.

Oh, wait. As we all know, it actually did. If you’re not on AT&T or Verizon, the phone went up $30 too.

That means the iPhone price silently went up $88. I know I’m belaboring that a little with the previous post, but that’s not great.

In this one case, it really doesn’t feel Jobsian. He would always claim the products were worth the price. He wouldn’t play the shell game with $90.

Or have I forgotten something & I’m using memory’s rose colored glasses?

Do we already know if that’s the case for the iPhone 12 mini, or is there a chance they could reverse course at least for that non-Pro model?

Real-time update: The wacky $30 carrier-free surcharge is there for the mini:

Labels: apple, hats of money, iphone

iPhone 12 and friends announced. Yay. Here are some first impressions.

iPhone (mostly the mini)

I want a smaller phone than my iPhone 8. I'd posted on MacRumors that I think Apple is calling out people like me perfectly. 

The SE 1 showed two things:

1. People buy cheap phones.
2. People buy small phones.

HomePod

Labels: apple, homepod, iphone, magsafe

Leaked proposals from the European Union suggest that smartphone manufacturers in the EU could be forced to make all batteries removable in the future. This would mean that any smartphone brand wanting to sell a handheld in the EU, including Apple, would have to ensure that every device on the market has a user-removable battery (via TechRadar).

1. The phones could be 2mm thicker in every direction.
2. Batteries might not be waterproof.

Labels: apple, iphone

Labels: apple, apple fail, Face ID, id, iphone, Touch ID

The manual Photos clean-up process

What's a synonym for extortion? 

Labels: apple fail, business, cust sat, icloud, iphone

It looks like the SE 2 is a real thing, but I’m also seeing a good deal of blowback online that this rumored design isn’t a real SE.

Look, it looks like it’s not a 4" phone. In that way, it’s not an SE. I’d like to have an iPhone 5 Steve Edition phone with an A13 in it, but that’s apparently not in the cards.

An A13 (the latest processor) in a phone case that’s significantly smaller than the XR/11 is, however. And that’s really where the original SE impressed. For $400, you had as fast an iPhone (within reason) as you could buy at the time. It was a top-of-the-line phone for bottom-of-the-line prices.

When you can get the latest iPhone processor for $400, that’s a deal all by itself. If you keep thinking, “If I wanted an iPhone 8, I would’ve purchased an iPhone 8,” you’re not trying hard enough. The 8 has an A11. That’s not bad, but it’s two generations old. Why would you shell out $450 when you can save $50 and get two more years of support come March?

The SE 2 question really reduces to if you like Face ID and not Touch ID. Personally, I’m exhausted with Face ID. I have a reasonably secure passcode on my phone, and sometimes the stupid thing tries to unlock when I’m just changing volume or using the flashlight and the “false failures” locks out Face ID, forcing me to type in that long password to do something simple, like check the weather. I also notice when I’m riding my bike with Runkeeper I get lots of Face ID locks, which isn’t cool when I’m exercising.

I really like the no-look, no accidental unlock failure, multiple fingers mean multiple people sorts of advantages of Touch ID. I’m looking forward to trading out the XR I’ve used for the last year-plus for something smaller, slightly faster, and easier & more convenient [imo] to unlock.

Am I really hoping the 4.7“ SE 2 is 4.7” in an edge-to-edge screen in an iPhone 5 case? Sure, but if it’s got Touch ID, that’s not possible. My guess is that ain’t happening.

Labels: iphone

Everyone’s weighed in on Jonathan Ives leaving Apple, and originally I didn’t have anything new to say. It sure looked like this was coming if you followed the work he was doing with Jacobs (?) on charity items, work on Apple Park from furniture to walls, etc. He may have led teams doing hardware redesigns, and was probably giving some detailed, serious (and seriously good) feedback on projects delivered to him, feedback that likely drove those designers nuts, but day-to-day Apple hardware? Maybe the Pro case? But, ultimately, I’d believe not so much.

But the release of Texas Hold ’Em, an app peak Jobsian in its appreciation of the skeuomorphic, the death of the 12" MacBook, and the rumors of Macbooks getting away from the butterfly keyboard as quickly as possible – combined with iOS 7 – gave me a distinct thought:

When the designer gets to choose the key constraints and is not given them, you risk unproductive idealism.

Ives was about minimalism. Oh, I’d love to see him write some code. It would be beautifully DRY without one wasted line. But it also might only do 80% of what the acceptance criteria requested.

iOS 7 was an interesting thought experiment: How flat can I make UI and still have it be a human-friendly UI? We got there… and a little farther. You sometimes have to cross the line to find it, and you could argue we really didn’t need to find it. But he did, and we did, and iOS has spent several years now recovering -- and has done that recovering not, as I understand it, under his leadership.

But Ives selected “flat”. Nobody was clamoring for flat. That was his constraint, his ideal, his Moby Dick. Not ours, iOS users’. That was only his.

The butterfly keyboard is similar. The MacBook Air I’m using right now, pre-butterfly, is plenty small enough. The extra ports it has make a lot of sense. It may not be a marvel of ideal design, but it is a marvel of practical design.

But that wasn’t enough for Ives’ Apple. They felt they had to find the line – for thinness. For minimalism. And then they unknowingly crossed it. It’s beautiful to have the same holes on each side of the machine, but it’s not human-friendly. It’s wonderful to have the thinest notebook ever, but not if it means that your keyboard craps outs. It’s great to have a 12“ MacBook with a beautiful ”retina" screen, but you’re telling me not only is my CPU pitifully constrained, but that I can’t use a jump drive and my power supply at the same time?

Who said we needed thinner notebooks and flatter UIs? Nobody. These were design goals – design contraints – picked by the designer. So much of a notebook’s design aren't elective constraints, but inherent ones for the device. That we need human-sized keys on the keyboard. That we need screens designed for the human eye. That we need the processing power to run a modern OS. That our antennae must get adequate WiFi signal. That our batteries last for a work day plus.

But those real-world, human constraints operate against Ives’ elective constraints of minimalism and thinness. He stopped designing for the world and started pursuing ideals. Some of those just happened to work fine with users – the iPhone is as much fashion as practical computer, after all, and we would all yet benefit from still smaller slabs in our pockets. We have not yet reached the functional peak of thinness for phones. We have with laptops.

Same with computer and phone screens' resolutions: We are now to the peak, where it’s almost impossible to see pixels with the naked eye, at least for someone who’s not nearsighted. Ives' ideals were useful there (and luckily even he realizes "more than more than the eye can see" has no practical value), but on the thinness & flatness fronts the Ives train has played itself out.

And it was at that point of idealism that Ives ceased being a good leader for the largest company by revenue in the world, one that ultimately sells devices to actual humans trying to get daily work done.

Labels: apple, apple fail, iphone, macbook

Finally updated to Mojave on my MacBook Air (2017). It’s nice that the login screen no longer has fuzzy text. I’ll admit I never really understood why Apple let the first thing you saw on the box be as craptastic as that text was. I understand that Apple can do a great job polishing things, but I don’t know that I believe they always do.

Other than that, so far I haven’t seen much exciting from Mojave.

I will say I’m pretty happy having purchased this MacBook Air now. I was worried they’d upgrade the MacBook line immediately after I purchased – and they did – but they didn’t touch the consumer laptops, and won’t until next week. $750 for a decent MacBook in June (during a great sale at Best Buy) doesn’t look as bad as it did originally.

Another unexciting thing: I did preorder the XR. Idk, that’s extravagant, and I don’t understand all the reviews calling the XR “affordable”. It’s not. It’s an insanely indulgent item. Unlike my Nokia 6 that I’ve been using for the last two weeks (long story), the iPhone SE and 6S I used previously both remain nice, fast phones. I don’t need an XR. You can spend much less and still have a great smartphone experience.

But even though I filled out the official form that says “leave the phone here” with my number and order number on it, UPS decided they’d rather not be bothered with leaving my phone at my home. Thanks for nothing, UPS! I can pick it up at their office, saving them a trip, if I want… between 7 and 8pm tonight. That’s it. That’s the window.

So great thing I preordered that phone. /sigh If I’m lucky, I’ll play with it Monday, maybe Tuesday, night.

It will be interesting to see if I change my tune on if it’s worth purchasing later, once I’ve used it. Coming from a 6S, I imagine it’ll run rings around it and take much nicer pictures. But do I need something that expensive, even if I use it an hour or two a day? Um… goodness, no.

Labels: android, iphone, mac, macbook, macOS

Going to try and keep this short…

I’ve seen some stuff, including this from Niley Patel, saying that the XR is a strange, mismash of a phone.

It’s not. We can see its precedents in the 5c, new MacBook Pro, and the iPhone SE.

• The SE showed Apple that it could put top of the line internals in a compromised phone and have it sell like mad.
  • Recall that the SE had the 6S flagship’s processor and phone
  • But combined with the two-year old screen and selfie camera of the 5S
• The 5c showed Apple that if you take an old phone and give it colors, you can give an inferior phone a sales bump.
• The two flavors of the 2016 MacBook Pro shows us Apple is starting to give design teams overlapping, but flexible constraints.
  • That is, we’ve got two completely different computers (same link), one cheap, slow, with two ports, and one top of the line, expensive, with four, in exactly the same case.
  • For the XR, we flip the script, and have two completely different shells with the same internals.
  • That’s essentially what we had with the SE. Point here is that this “shared design constraint” model is increasingly prevalent at Apple

I think we add one more point to this list…

• Apple was surprised by SE sales, and wishes they’d charged more.

What needs to happen to charge more for a cheaper version of the same internals? Well, first, you can’t pitch it as a spiritual remake of a four year-old design. You have to pitch it as a new phone.

So we have…

• Top of the line internals but in a cheaper phone (SE)
• An excuse to charge more by using an updated design (MBP)
• A purely aesthetic appeal for dollars with frivolous colors (5c)

It’s not a perfect parallel, but I think you see how Apple’s past clearly births this new .

EDIT: Though Stratechery says I’m wrong about the 5c:

Still, I for one thought it would sell very well; all indications are that Apple agreed, but it quickly became apparent that customers overwhelmingly preferred the iPhone 5S. Apple struggled to keep the latter in stock, having produced far too many 5Cs, and the model was quietly discontinued two years later….

The 5C’s failure, such that it was, showed that the iPhone had three distinct markets:

• Customers who wanted the best possible phone. They bought the 5S.
• Customers who wanted the prestige of owning the highest-status phone on the market. Heavily concentrated in China, they bought the gold 5S.
• Customers who aspire to owning a top-of-the-line iPhone, but couldn’t afford one. They bought the 4S instead of the 5C.

I guess I’m wrongly biased from seeing tons of kids enjoy the 5c, sometimes even over a 5 or 5S. I’d guess the 5c failed largely because of the craptastic 8 gig storage on the lowest-end 5c. That’s simply not a useable phone.

But the argument that people want what I’d call “aspirational luxury” from their iPhone is an important point.

As I said about the SE, above – “Well, first, you can’t pitch it as a spiritual remake of a four year-old design.” – is exactly what we're saying here.

If colors didn’t sell, the XR wouldn’t use them. Though maybe I should’ve substituted iMac for 5c?!

More interesting in the most recent Stratechery update is the XR explanation, however:

There is, of course, the question of cannibalism: if the XR is so great, why spend $250 more on an XS, or $350 more for the giant XS Max?

This is where the iPhone X lesson matters. Last year’s iPhone 8 was a great phone too, with the same A11 processor as the iPhone X, a high quality LCD screen like the iPhone XR, and a premium aluminum-and-glass case (and 3D Touch!). It also had Touch ID and a more familiar interface, both arguably advantages in their own right, and the Plus size that so many people preferred.

It didn’t matter: [For] Apple’s best customers... price is a secondary concern.

Labels: apple, business, design, iphone, macbook pro

The original iPhone SE was a great release, and the first iPhone I’ve shown up to buy on “opening day”.

What made it great? It was the latest and greatest iPhone available, packed into a 4" screen. The 6S had been released just six months previously, and now you had the exact same phone with a perfect hand-sized screen (recall the neat images showing how un/reachable the 6 Plus was, or this cold take at Forbes wondering if the iPhone 5 would be too tall).

But that was it. Your only sacrifices were no 3D Touch and that your selfie cam was the equivalent of an iPhone 5S. You had the 6S’ main camera & processor, and the old iPhone 5 body meant plenty of space for the battery powering the much less hungry smaller screen.

The SE was a great phone. The best buy in iPhone yet.

The SE 2 might not be so good.

There’s one recent rumor of the SE making a comeback this September. I’m not sure I buy it.

Gui Rambo of 9to5Mac has uncovered a reference to an unreleased ‘iPhone xx’ in Apple’s development app. [XCode] While we don’t expect Apple to release an iPhone 20 or iPhone double X this year, the ‘iPhone xx’ identifier may be a placeholder for a forthcoming model with a different marketing name.

...

Other details shared by Rambo upon inspection include the processor associated with ‘iPhone xx’ being the A10. That’s the same chip used in the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus. Apple is expected to unveil three new iPhones next month — a 5.8-inch OLED, 6.1-inch LCD, and 6.5-inch OLED — but including an A10 chip and not an A12 even in the mid-sized budget-priced model is not expected.

I’ve also read that it’s supposed to have the same resolution as a 7, with some folks speculating that perhaps it’s an “iPhone 7c” equivalent – a more inexpensively made 7 to round out the bottom of the iPhone line.

My guess is somebody was adding a new phone to an internal build of XCode and, as all new code seems to be born, copy and pasted existing code, here the iPhone 7 entry, to start. Then this build was accidentally released before they'd updated the listing to whatever phone they meant to be adding.

But let’s pretend it’s true, and that there’s a 4-inch ”iPhone 7" on the way in September.

It’s sad, isn’t it? Instead of the A12 six months later, it’s the A10 a year and a half late.

Labels: apple, iphone, rumor

From Video purports to show testing of Apple 'iPhone 8' with rear-mounted Touch ID:

A video published on Tuesday allegedly shows Apple's "iPhone 8" in quality control testing —with a rear-mounted Touch ID sensor, despite most recent rumors discounting that possibility.

If you've been watching the rumor mills this year, you'd know Apple's had this option of last resort in their back pocket for a long time. What's important to learn is how much otherwise risky innovation this sort of back-up planning enables.

And if you have been not just watching, but watching closely, you've seen a pretty interesting narrative grow around this year's iPhone rumors. I actually do believe Apple was, until the last moment, trying to embed Touch ID in the screen. I'd also buy the rumor that at least one team at Apple was sweating bricks, worried the in-screen Touch ID was going to get the cut, and were scurrying to get it to work at scale.

The reason they could wait until the last minute was precisely because they had Touch ID on the back of the phone ready to go. If the only other option they were left with was retina scanning, Apple Pay could've been in trouble. Can you imagine if iRetinaScan 1.0 had a flaw? Now what happens to Apple Pay for those who shelled out for your latest phone? Do they simply lose access to Apple Pay, now that you couldn't keep it secure? If you thought AntennaGate was a big deal, wait until Retina-Apple-Pay-Gate.

I'm not saying Apple is excited about back of the phone Touch ID (if it's really going to be used -- I suppose even if this video is legit, Apple could spin up a few mock lines without releasing that design), but it's better than nothing. Now you can include retina scan as the primary access point but not bet the farm on it working.

I've been letting an idea for a post stew for a while about how Apple has been remaking hardware to fit in previously designed shells. The original iMac is a good example, as it went through a number of iterations before the shell changed.

Starting with the latest iPod touch refresh, however, I think we hit a new gear with hardware design. And with the iPhone 7S or 8 or whatever it'll become, now we're no longer putting, say, last generation's innards into a previously released case, but ensuring that we can use either option 1 or option 2 with the next generation's shell. We saw, for example, two winners in the latest MacBook Pro. The touch bar MacBook Pro and the MacBook Pro Escape are two completely different animals, as I mentioned last December. Who knows how many other designs were created for the same basic aluminum laptop that didn't get chosen.

My budding claim is that Apple's MO is now to finish the outer shell well before a final decision has been made on what precisely is going inside. And to swap the choice on insides at the last minute is no longer a big deal, giving Apple lots more room to experiment within a generation.

These different design needs are, to steal from Rumsfeld again, known unknowns. If you know you're down to 5 either-or decisions for insides, you can build an exterior that anticipates every combination of them. If there's no back of the phone Touch ID, there's probably a tiny bit of space between the silicon and case that goes unused, or is now used by a battery with a slightly different design. If there is a back of the phone Touch ID, the changes to the rest of the hardware aren't just minimal, they're already completely anticipated.

I'm going to bet this sort of "planning for known unknowns" is exactly what Apple's doing, and doing better than anyone.

Labels: apple, design, iphone, planning

Daring Fireball has some thoughts on why iPad sales are down:

By 1987 or 1988, it was easy to argue that the Mac was, hands-down, the best platform the world had ever seen for graphic designers and visual artists. By 1991 — seven years after the original Mac — I think it was inarguable...

That’s just not true for iPad. The iPad is a terrific platform for casual use. I think it’s better than a MacBook for reading and watching video. It’s great for casual gaming. I know plenty of people who much prefer the iPad as a tool for writing. Not because iPad writing apps are more powerful, but rather because they’re simpler, less distracting, and easier to focus upon. None of those are compelling reasons to upgrade an older iPad for a newer more powerful one. In fact, those are all good explanations for why owners of older iPads (especially starting around 2012’s iPad 4) see no reason to upgrade. [emphasis mine -mfn]

This begs the question, "Why do we feel we need to upgrade our phones so much more often than our tablets?"

There are lots of "obvious" reasons.

• Your phone is the computer you always have with you.
• This also dovetails nicely with, "Our phones get more use".
• Better cameras
  • iPads, as annoying and obvious as folks are who do use them as cameras, aren't nearly as nice as point-and-shoot camera substitutes.
• Service provider upgrade subsidies
• iPhone 6 screen size, though that should have balanced by now.
• Status symbols.
  • iPhones are public. iPads are private.

But I wonder if there's an even simpler practical explanation: When we use our phones, we're in a hurry. A few hundred milliseconds is a much bigger delay for typical phone usage than when you're relaxing/consuming on your iPad.

When I'm in a hurry, a faster processor/experience matters more.

In "patting your own back" news...

From Apple unlikely to develop an Echo-like standalone Siri speaker - report:

Apple doesn't appear interested in developing a standalone Amazon Echo-like speaker utilizing Siri, as the company's vision is instead linked to devices like the iPhone, Apple Watch and AirPods.

Apple has "no apparent interest" in replicating the Alexa family of devices, according to Time's Tim Bajarin. Citing discussions with unnamed Apple executives, the future goal of the technology is to utilize Siri as an "omnipresent AI assistant across devices" rather than have a central hub.

File that away in the annuals of, "I believe I had that."

Labels: alexa, business, gruber, iPad, iphone, siri, TKHadThat, W1 chip

Why isn't "Flash on Silent" working like you expected if you're using "LED Flash for Alerts" in the iPhone's Accessibility settings?

It's because you're coming at it backwards.

It's not "Flash on Silent [only]", which is useful for dopes that can hear.

It's "Flash on Silent [even though your switch is telling your phone to be quiet]"!

Make sense?

If you're deaf, the flash is the sound.

If you have your ringer switched to silent, there shouldn't be a flash. The sound is off.

If you set "Flash on Silent", your iPhone will "ring" even though it's supposed to be quiet.

That is to say, "Flash on Silent" is equivalent to a setting that'd say "Ring on Silent".

It also appears that setting "LED Flash for Alerts" off overrides the ability to flash on silent. That's too bad for hearing folk, where the flash only on silent would be awesome. You must have LED Flash for Alerts on for the Flash on Silent to have any effect (afaict).

I hope that makes more sense. Don't worry, everyone got this wrong coming at it from the land of the hearing enabled.

Labels: iphone

Recently I bristled at a fellow who implied that we needed to "touch" a MacBook Pro before critiquing it. Today I did. They're very nice. Very light, well made, great screen.

Here are some fimp-ish comments:

The Touch Bar is an extended replacement for right-click. I like it.

With the Touch Bar, most of what'd be in a context menu is already open, full color, waiting on you. On Windows, I hit shift-F10 to open a context menu. With Touch Bar, it's already open.

Like check this out... I downloaded MacVim, hoping I could try it out with the crazy escape key. When I clicked on the dmg file so that it was selected in the Finder, I got this:

That's pretty cool. I can get info, share, or tag it. When I selected "share", I got this share sheet:

Mail, Messages, Airdrop, Notes, and the ever-present "More". Neat!

I can dig it.

When I tried Mail, I caught this Touch Bar menu (which, again, I'm arguing is essentially a mouse-free, gesture-aware context menu):

Honestly, that's beautiful. SO much easier than making your user remember lots of keyboard shortcuts if they don't live in your app. And if they live in your app, you could potentially let them set up whatever items they want.

And of course this is better than a context-menu, because you can gesture with it as well.

Seems small, but Touch Bar isn't just a good idea waiting for programmers to do something with it, as I've heard it described. It's a good idea now, and well integreated into OS and first party apps.

Escape is odd. (I'm a VIm user.)

I wasn't able to get MacVim installed, as it was an app from the dreaded "unidentified developer" and I haven't been made privvy to the Apple Store admin login and password, but I could open vi in the Terminal and test drive a little.

Escape is odd.

If you don't know vi, it's a text editor that has two modes: Command Mode, where you give vi commands to perform on the text, and Insert Mode, where you're essentially just typing away like Notepad or TextEdit. And vi isn't the only editor that supports it. Sublime Text has a vi like mode built in, and WebStorm has a nice plugin, for instance.

How do you get from Insert to Command mode? Escape.

Escape is now on the Touch Bar, and is just a virtual, not a "real", key. That's not great, but it's not horrible.

Here's the weird part -- it's not where it's supposed to be. See that dead space to its left? If I could trade that for a real, dedicated ESC key, I would in a heartbeat. It's hard to "feel", and since it's to the right of where I expect it to be, it's not natural. For someone who hits ESC scores of times a day, well, that stinks.

Enough. Fringe case.

One interesting tidbit...

But one thing I learned while playing around in the Terminal... See that greyed out button to the right of the ESC and color wheel? It says man page. That's really pretty cool. I wouldn't use it much, but it's context sensitive, and lights up when you type in a *NIX command.

I manned grep. Here it is:

Again, not a big deal, but nice. Makes me optimistic that the Touch Bar will slowly become second nature. Apple seems to be fairly interested in integrating it.

The track pad drives me batty. I couldn't single-click to save my life.

I kept force-clicking or having nothing happen. After switching to tap-to-click, I was okay again. But somehow, I've unlearned clicking. And I didn't have this trouble on the MacBook or early MacBook Pros with Force Trackpads.

(I think I might have been accidentally alt-clicking sometimes; it's a case of having the whole trackpad clickable)

Click-drag drove me crazy too. Windows has a tap, tap-drag gesture I'm used to now, perhaps. But keeping my initial click down is more painful, again, possibily because I was right-clicking at times.

Btw, three-finger drag is really well hidden now. But once I found it, instant happiness.

The keyboard is louder than it used to be. Like most sensible folk, I couldn't care much less.

Aside from my esc issues, above, I've got to say that it's a nice keyboard. I could use it easily when I'm mobile/out of the office/away from my "real" keyboard.

USB-C ports are really small. I get it.

If this is the trade off to get a smaller laptop, I'm all in. USB-C never bothered me. You need replacement cables for some peripherals, but otherwise, you just need a dock.

The new ports (and removal of the old ones) never bothered me.

Buying?

There are two great times to buy Mac hardware to get your money's worth:

1. When it's initially released.
2. When it's sold refurb for the first time.

Both of those maximize your cash, I think. The refurb discount is pretty good.

I'd convinced myself to wait on the 2017 MacBook, and rather than buy a truck, I'd just buy a real computer for my mobile slot. Right now, I carry around a Lenovo 100S for those times that I "don't carry a computer". It's a crap computer for specs, but has great battery life.

The MacBook is nearly the same size, and would actually run rings around the 100S.

But now I wonder. That Touch Bar is a nice addition. If that's a $300 mark-up addition like it is on the MacBook Pro, I'll probably wait for a 2017 "F12" MacBook (one without a Touch Bar) to hit the refurb rack. But now, having "touched" one, I think a refurb 13" MacBook Pro with Touch Bar might be an option I'll consider too. It's not as fast as much Y700, but it's a great mobile laptop. Having touched one, I get what the MacBook Pro is trying to be a little better.

The new MacBook Pro is still not a truck. Walt Mossberg at The Verge nails this on the head...

Neither will unseat my "truck" on the laptop stand in the home office, but either Mac would mean the Y700 stays on the stand a lot more regularly when I leave the house.

I also spent a little time with the iPhone 7. Heeeeeello, nurse. Great feeling phone. You know, I like that home "button" better than the one on my SE. I played around with the settings, and "2" feels great.

Labels: hardware, iphone, lenovo, macbook pro, touch bar

I posted to Medium, so now I get a daily "newsletter". It's not super, but this morning I checked out Why Silicon Valley is all wrong about Apple’s AirPods by Chris Messina.

He starts, give or take, with this:

Last week, Apple did it again, but for some reason, nearly everyone in Silicon Valley is confused about what just happened. I mean, I understand the confusion, but do people really think that the most significant announcement was the removal of the 3.5mm analog headphone jack? I mean, it was, but not for the reasons everyone’s [in a tizzy].

Apple doesn’t give [two shakes] about neckbeard hipsters who spent thousands of dollars on expensive audiophile gear that rely on 100-year-old technology to transmit audio signals. They’ll readily drop them faster than Trump drops facts to make an argument in a televised debate.

Apple is securing its future, and to do that, it must continue to shrink the physical distance between its products and its customers’ conceptions of self. The Apple ᴡᴀᴛᴄʜ came first, busting our sidekick supercomputer out of our pockets and onto our skin. Apple’s next move will put its products literally within earshot of our minds.

He then goes on to recap my Medium post on AirPods (not actually my post, I don't think, but exactly the same ideas, all the way to deriding businessmen who wore Jawbones), but wasted words, less direction, and better pictures.

Labels: apple, design, iphone, medium, W1 chip