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.

Apple iPad and MacBook event, today at 10a ET and 7a PT

Written by

This morning’s Apple event starts 3 hours earlier than most, since it takes place on the east coast, at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (I love their URL, bam.org).

You can watch the event on your Apple device, either via the Apple Special Events web page or on the Apple Events app on your Apple TV.

Speaking of the Apple Special Events web page: Each time you reload the page, you’ll get a different version of the event invite artwork. What does it all mean? Guess we’ll find out soon.

iOS 12.1 hits today, brings Group FaceTime and new emoji to iPhone and iPad

Written by

Apple:

iOS 12.1 will be available Tuesday, October 30, bringing Group FaceTime and more than 70 new emoji to iPhone and iPad. FaceTime changed the way people communicate and share important moments, and now with Group FaceTime, it’s easy to chat with more people than ever before — from 2 to 32 people. iOS 12.1 also brings Depth Control in real-time preview and Dual SIM support to iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max and iPhone XR customers.

Here’s a link to the new emoji sets.

I do love the new emoji. They are beautifully rendered, no doubt. But I do wish Apple would take the “Add to Favorites” model used on the Mac’s Character Viewer to allow me to mark specific favorite emoji to make them easier to find. The more emoji we add, the harder an individual emoji is to find.

There is a Frequently Used section on my iOS emoji keyboard, but emoji fall off that view as others are used. And the ever-changing view of the Frequently Used emoji makes it hard to develop any sort of muscle memory.

Mnemonic generator

Written by

Love this. Jump to the page, type in a sequence of words or letters, and the site will generate a mnemonic to help you remember the words.

Type in the planet names, or the guitar string open notes (E A D G B E), anything you like. Fun!

[H/T @bobtiki]

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.

Accessing the Apple Watch ECG by changing region settings

Written by

Guilherme Rambo, 9to5Mac:

One of the new features of Apple Watch Series 4 is the ability to take an Electrocardiogram of the user’s heart through a series of new sensors on the back of the device and on the revised digital crown. Since this feature requires regulatory approval by health authorities, Apple Watch ECG will roll out to users in the United States first, where Apple was able to get clearance from the FDA.

But if you are outside of the United States?

This limitation is not enforced by hardware, and if you buy an Apple Watch Series 4 in any country, it includes the new sensors. Looking at code within iOS related to the ECG feature, we’ve been able to confirm that its limitation to the US will be based on the software region of the user’s devices (iPhone and Apple Watch).

Read the article for the key to changing your region and for the distinction between region and language. Very interesting.

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.

Google’s Night Sight for Pixel phones will amaze you

Written by

Vlad Savov, The Verge:

Night Sight is the next evolution of Google’s computational photography, combining machine learning, clever algorithms, and up to four seconds of exposure to generate shockingly good low-light images.

Wow. Just wow. Take a minute to look at these images.

Useful second life for old watches?

Written by

Reddit:

I imagine and wish Apple could implement a software download that allowed my old series zero to be handed down to my child with things like fitness and calendars still available. Maybe not even calendars.

I know the watch currently requires a phone but perhaps that could be tied to the “parent” device? Would anyone else be interested in this? How could it work?

I think there’s a germ of a great idea here. Maybe a dumbed down version of watchOS that let an older Apple Watch continue to serve and be a first-class citizen, able to communicate with the current version of iOS, but with a much smaller feature set. Still useful, an entry level device for kids, keeping old Apple Watches out of the waste stream.

Apple and Disney threaten to crush cable TV

Written by

Jon Markman, TheStreet:

The culprit is cost. The industry is riddled with bait-and-switch plans that start low and steadily ratchet higher in price with hidden fees. The experience is complicated by poor customer service.

Apple plans to offer a service similar to Amazon’s Channels. The idea is users can select the channels they want and pay a monthly fee. The company will bundle content from the likes of HBO, Showtime, AMC, CBS and others, plus throw in its shows as they come on stream.

It will be completely transparent, and backed by Apple customer service.

To me, this is the core of Apple’s advantage and potential to disrupt the cable TV business model. If Apple could offer internet service, cable would be toast. The lack of competition in that space, and the absolute dependency on cable for internet service is what makes this complicated.

Opinion: Apple Music’s human curation falls apart when it comes to less mainstream tastes

Written by

Terrific analysis by Ben Lovejoy, 9to5Mac. Apple’s motivations aside, I think music curation is a tough problem to solve.

My musical tastes are all over the place. People who know me very well, musicians who share much of my musical tastes, have a difficult time making recommendations for me. It’s just not easy to figure out what music will press that button for someone.

That said, I’d like to see more experimental interfaces that make it possible for me to wander my musical tree on the fly. I’d like to play some music that I love, then have an interactive training session, via Siri, purely dedicated to exploring “more like this” kind of music, where I can do more than just love or hate the presented choices. Something more conversational that allows me to express specifics of what I enjoy or dislike.

For example, I love soulful music that contains technical artistry (e.g., great singing, complex harmonies, or technical guitar, piano skill, etc.) If you and I were listening to music together, I could point all these things out. But if all I get is “love” or “don’t love”, it becomes much harder to convey the subtlety of my personal tastes.

All this said, I think this ability is coming. With advancements in processing complexity and machine learning, I believe a new window to modeling musical tastes is opening. I have no doubt that someone, somewhere will crack this problem.

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.

Massive iPad deployment at Ohio State paying long-term dividends

Written by

Andrew O’Hara, Apple Insider:

When The Ohio State University partnered with Apple to provide 65 thousand iPads over the next five years to its entire campus, it meant more than just giving each student a cool piece of tech. The deal marked a profound shift in university’s investment in technology, one that would have far-reaching implications.

And:

Starting with lower-level general education classes, OSU is looking to launch their own digital bookstore for much cheaper textbooks. In the chemistry class OSU trialed the digital initiative, students paid $20 for the digital copy of the course materials, rather than $250 for the physical copy.

This cost savings alone makes the iPad rollout a huge win. But the school has seen improvement in grades and a higher overall student engagement. This experiment was a huge success, and a big win for Apple in education.

Tim Cook: Being gay is God’s greatest gift to me

Written by

This video is relatively short (about 2 minutes) and the headline is from a quote right at the end, which doesn’t do the clip justice. This is Tim Cook talking about standing up for what is right, for who you are.

Watch it. Inspiring.

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.

Using dark mode in CSS with MacOS Mojave

Written by

Nice little article on making your web page dark mode friendly. I believe this tag only works with the latest Safari beta, but it won’t hurt to add the code to your pages now.

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.

Pixar co-founder Ed Catmull to retire

Written by

Hollywood Reporter:

Ed Catmull, who co-founded Pixar along with Steve Jobs and John Lasseter and in doing so revolutionized the animation industry, is retiring after a ground-breaking five-decade career, during which he has been involved with dozens of hit films from Toy Story to Frozen to this year’s Incredibles 2.

Catmull, who acts as president of both Walt Disney and Pixar Animation Studios, will step down from his current roles at the end of this year, according to a Disney announcement on Tuesday, and then stay on as an adviser through July 2019 before formally retiring.

End of an era. If you are at all a fan of Pixar, I strongly suggest reading Catmull’s brilliant book, Creativity Inc.

Side note, Steve Jobs did invest a large chunk of change and became the majority shareholder, and John Lasseter came along later on. Check the Pixar Wikipedia page for the history details.

Shortcuts: Apple embraces tinkering for the first time in 20 years

Written by

Stu Maschwitz:

Steve Jobs famously described the computer as “a bicycle for our minds.” Whether or not you’ve heard that before, it’s worth refreshing your memory on the context by watching this short video. The gist is that humans aren’t very efficient at getting around when compared to the rest of the animal kingdom, but because we are “tool builders,” we can more than make up for it. The tools we create magnify our capabilities. They make us better versions of ourselves. And the computer, Jobs believed, is “the most remarkable tool that we’ve ever come up with.” So what a bicycle can do for our bodies, a computer can do for our minds.

This is the opener of a terrific essay about Shortcuts, and the road that meandered to it.

If you have even the slightest interest in Shortcuts or inclination to tinker, put your feet up, grab a beverage, and savor this.

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.

Watch Tim Cook deliver his fervent privacy speech

Written by

[VIDEO] Take two minutes to watch Tim Cook speak (video embedded in the main Loop post). The content of his speech is strongly held, fervently delivered. I really got caught up in it.

Has he memorized this speech? I might just be missing it, but if he is reading from a teleprompter, he’s hiding it very well.

No matter, interesting to watch this political side of Tim Cook emerge, especially as compared with those early Apple rollouts, as he first dipped his toes in the keynote waters.

Apple’s upcoming TV service to launch in 100+ countries in 2019, starting with the U.S.

Written by

Juli Clover, MacRumors:

According to The Information, Apple’s original content will be made available for free to Apple device owners, a rumor we heard earlier this month from CNBC.

While Apple’s content will be available at no cost, Apple will encourage users to sign up for television subscriptions from other cable networks such as HBO or STARZ.

And:

By making third-party content available via the streaming service and launching it in most countries around the world, Apple will be able to better compete with Amazon Prime Video and Netflix, both of which are available in 190+ countries.

What will the service be called? How will it be delivered? Looking forward to all the details rolling out.

But one point stands out to me: By rolling their own content and by limiting the possibility of any controversial content, Apple has no legal/political/licensing limitations on where they can roll out that content. Very smart.

Apps on millions of Android phones execute a multimillion-dollar ad fraud scheme

Written by

Craig Silverman, BuzzFeed News:

Last April, Steven Schoen received an email from someone named Natalie Andrea who said she worked for a company called We Purchase Apps. She wanted to buy his Android app, Emoji Switcher. But right away, something seemed off.

“I did a little bit of digging because I was a little sketched out because I couldn’t really find even that the company existed,” Schoen told BuzzFeed News.

The We Purchase Apps website listed a location in New York, but the address appeared to be a residence. “And their phone number was British. It was just all over the place,” Schoen said.

It was all a bit weird, but nothing indicated he was about to see his app end up in the hands of an organization responsible for potentially hundreds of millions of dollars in ad fraud, and which has funneled money to a cabal of shell companies and people scattered across Israel, Serbia, Germany, Bulgaria, Malta, and elsewhere.

Oh, what a scheme. Incredibly sophisticated scam. Amazing story.

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.

Apple’s brand new USB-C Apple Watch charger. A sign of things to come?

Written by

Juli Clover, MacRumors:

Alongside the iPhone XR, Apple today released a new 0.3m Magnetic Apple Watch Charger that’s equipped with a USB-C connector for the first time.

An odd product. Vastly more people have iOS gadgets than Macs, and therefore are set to charge with USB-A instead of USB-C.

Is this simply a niche product for the few who have built their charging lives around USB-C? As opposed to the Mac folks who (I’d wager) all have a USB-A dongle, just in case they need to charge their Apple Watch on their Mac.

Maybe it’s that simple, that this is just a product (after all this time) for folks who need a USB-C specific solution for charging their Apple Watch.

It’s the “after all this time” part that tickles my brain. Why now? Is there some function coming to Apple Watch that can only be delivered via USB-C? As opposed to via a USB-A adapter?

Is there still the chance of USB-C making an appearance on a non-Mac product?

This cable feels like a crossover product, spreading USB-C adoption beyond the Mac.