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VIDEO: The new iMac Pro, hands on impressions

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[VIDEO] Marques Brownlee has had the new iMac Pro for about a week. In the video embedded in the main Loop post, he shows it off, shares his first impressions.

If you are in the market, this is absolutely worth your time.

Couple of notes here:

  • Important to note that the new iMac Pro is not user upgradable. So if you are ordering, future proof best you can.

  • Marques priced out a home built PC using the iMac Pro parts (or similarly specced parts where the actual parts are not yet available) and came up with a price of $5100. Comparing that to the iMac Pro base price of $4999, my take is that the iMac Pro is fairly priced.

  • The fact that I cannot upgrade over time is an issue for me, though I suspect iFixit will eventually sell a kit to get me inside and 3rd parties will sell parts to upgrade. Eventually.

  • The iMac Pro is very quiet, runs cool. That’s impressive, given the high end workstation grade parts jammed in to that svelte enclosure.

Apple announces iMac Pro, available this Thursday

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Very exciting news. I suspect Apple will sell a bunch of these, especially to folks tapping their feet waiting for an update to the Mac Pro.

Though there’s no pricing on the Apple site quite yet, it was originally announced with a base price of $4,999.

A pen clip for your Apple Pencil

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Patrick Lucas Austin, LifeHacker:

There’s a pretty straightforward reason you should attach a clip to your Apple Pencil: it lets you treat it like a traditional writing implement. The Apple Pencil’s completely rounded design means it is more prone to roll around your desk, or right off your table and onto the ground. In addition, adding a clip lets you, of course, clip it anywhere you’d stick a regular pen.

Have an Apple Pencil? Check out this clip for the Fisher Space Pen. $2, plus shipping (maybe buy a few at this price), and stick one on your Apple Pencil.

You’ll soon be able to watch almost all NFL games online, no matter your Internet provider

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Brian Fung, Washington Post:

The news was announced Monday by Verizon as it sealed a deal with the NFL for an estimated $2 billion over the next five years. The move highlights the telecom giant’s pivot toward digital media and online advertising amid massive changes in the TV and Internet industries.

Monday’s deal makes it possible for Verizon to hook customers of even rival Internet providers with must-see content hosted on websites that Verizon owns — such as AOL, Yahoo, Yahoo Sports and go90, the telecom giant’s proprietary online video app.

The agreement between Verizon and the NFL will let football fans stream their local teams’ games, as well as nationally televised games and league highlights. Games that air on Mondays, Thursdays and Sundays are covered under the deal. Even the Super Bowl will be widely streamed to anyone with an Internet connection, Verizon said.

Even if you have no interest in the NFL, this is an important move. Verizon has managed to throw enough money at the NFL to make the games you normally watch in your cable package available in your browser, and that’s no small thing.

First things first, this is a big enabler for wannabe cable cutters. It legitimizes the concept, makes it practical for a reasonably sizable audience to break free of a cable package, as long as they have access to either WiFi or an unlimited data plan.

Second, it provides a big test case for net neutrality. Will other cable companies throttle Verizon NFL packets to throw a monkey wrench into Verizon’s plans?

At the very least, I see this as a rip in the fabric tying us to cable packages. In my view, the cable disruption just got closer.

Apple’s Phil Schiller on how the iPhone X “seemed impossible at the start”

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From the T3 interview with Phil Schiller, starting with the creation of iPhone X:

“At the time, at the beginning, it seemed almost impossible. Not just almost. It seemed impossible. And to pull off what feels impossible and make it possible – and not only that, but just something we love using – is just a great achievement.

“Clearly there was a point in the process where we had to commit to the fact that it would be a full top-to-bottom screen on the front with no home button, which means you’re counting on Face ID working as we’d hope, and being as good.

“That’s an exciting moment, when you have to sort of… the old saying: ‘Burn the boats. Leave the past behind, and commit.’ Knowing that the team was willing to make that gamble was a key point early enough in the process..

And:

“Most people are comfortable with it within minutes – 30 minutes, whatever. It’s not the kind of thing you have to live with for a week or two to get used to.

And:

We say to Schiller that we’ve been surprised at how good Face ID is for Apple Pay. “Yes. That was on a long list of things we knew we had to deliver. The home button, at the beginning, really did one thing. Maybe two. It woke up your screen, and then it let you go to the home screen from any app. And then over the years, we’ve layered on many, many uses – the multitasking capabilities, evoking Siri, you being able to use it for Apple Pay, creating Touch ID for your fingerprint. So Face ID had a much harder job for its first version than the home button had for its first version.”

And:

“Products [like] AirPods and Pencil could not work were it not for hardware and software and chip teams and radio teams, all working together to make something happen. And I think the latest feature that’s the result of this collaboration is Face ID.”

“Other companies certainly have had the vision of ‘can you unlock something with someone’s face?’ but no one [has] actually delivered technology as advanced and capable and ubiquitous and consumer friendly as Face ID. And that is the direct result of this collaboration, and how these teams work for years together on a simple powerful idea with all that technology.

And:

Is the iPad Pro really the PC replacement it was touted as? Or is it really a supplementary device to the Mac?

“What we’ve learned, truthfully, is that it’s both, and that depends on the user,” says Schiller. “For some people, iPad Pro is a replacement for their computer. Not that you throw away your computer. People don’t often do that.

“But that it becomes your primary computing device. The way you mostly hear about this is people say, ‘I use a computer at my desk’ or ‘I use a notebook at my desk, but when I travel, I travel just with my iPad Pro’. It is so great in that situation.”

This is a terrific interview. There is just so much more to it. Great insight into Apple’s corporate product thinking.

Why Apple’s acquisition of Shazam is so important

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Michael Simon, Macworld:

Shazam’s main strength is music identification, and that fits well into Apple’s current strategy. It’s not just Siri on our phones: AirPods, HomePod, and Apple Watch could benefit from Shazam’s uncanny ability to name that tune.

And:

On the new Pixel phones, Google has implemented a feature that displays the name of a song playing nearby even if Assistant hasn’t been asked. It’s a neat feature that’s all done locally, and I use far more often than I thought I would. A similar feature would be great on the iPhone, and with Shazam’s massive library at Apple’s disposal it would be far superior to Google’s.

And:

We will already be able to ask Siri to play things like the most popular song in 1986, but Shazam could amplify its knowledge considerably. It would be great to tap your AirPods and ask “Play the song that goes like this …” or “Play that Ed Sheeran song about Ireland.” Shazam might not be able to do that now, but the groundwork is certainly in place, particularly when paired with Apple’s own AI musical capabilities.

Read the rest of Michael’s article. Lots of interesting speculation. As you read, think about Apple’s dive into TV and movie production. Imagine saying/playing a line of dialog, or tapping a still from a movie and asking Siri what movie it’s from.

With ownership of Shazam, Apple can turn that tech loose on the entire ecosystem.

Two opposing headlines, Woz, and the iPhone X

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Apple founder Steve Wozniak was in Australia to speak at the Pivot Summit in Geelong, Victoria. Woz was asked his feelings about the iPhone X. What spun out of that short talk was a series of headlines, like:

“Woz Slams The iPhone X, Confirms Google Is Taking Advantage Of Consumers”, from ChannelNews, and “Apple iPhone X not what Steve Wozniak wants” from the The Australian.

At the same time, 9to5Mac ran this take on the exact same event:

Speaking at the Pivot Summit in Geelong, Victoria today, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak shared a few new tidbits about his experience with the iPhone X so far and his thoughts on Face ID vs. Touch ID. Woz also offered up a few anecdotes about his years working with Steve Jobs. Wozniak is one of several speakers at the one day conference focused on providing insight about emerging technology.

And:

Speaking prior to the launch of the iPhone X, Wozniak expressed that he wasn’t interested in picking up the phone on day one, offering little explanation as to why. Apple CEO Tim Cook decided to remedy the situation himself and personally sent Woz an iPhone X to try out. His verdict? “I kinda like it.”

So which take is accurate?

Here’s Woz, via email, referring to the 9to5Mac article:

“This article is on the mark. Another article was like typical Australian sensationalism saying that I didn’t like my iPhone X. How ridiculous.”

I found this whole thing interesting, thought it worth posting. Straight from the horse’s mouth.

iPhone 6s running slow? Consider replacing your battery

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Reddit:

My iPhone 6S has been very slow these past few weeks, and even after updating multiple times, it was still slow. Couldn’t figure out why, but just thought that iOS 11 was still awful to me. Then I used my brother’s iPhone 6 Plus and his was… faster than mine? This is when I knew something was wrong. So, I did some research, and decided to replace my battery. Wear level was somewhere around 20% on my old battery. I did a Geekbench score, and found I was getting 1466 Single and 2512 Multi. This did not change wether I had low power mode on or off. After changing my battery, I did another test to check if it was just a placebo. Nope. 2526 Single and 4456 Multi. From what I can tell, Apple slows down phones when their battery gets too low, so you can still have a full days charge. This also means your phone might be very slow for no discernible reason. Check your Geekbench scores and see what you get if your phone is still slow!

I would love to get an official response from Apple on this issue. Be sure to read the updates to this post, especially the second one.

UPDATE: Two things:

  • Via Bryan Lee on Twitter, if you are having issues with your iPhone 6s, Apple does have a battery replacement program for certain devices, manufactured in Sept or Oct 2015. Go to this page to check to see if your device is eligible.

  • As mentioned in the linked Reddit thread, there’s a free app, called CpuDasherX, you can use to check your clock speed, see if it’s running full speed. According to this comment thread, 1848 Mhz is the factory CPU speed for the iPhone 6s.

UPDATE 2:

As noted in this tweet and some of the comments, the A9 does vary its frequency based on load. So a different frequency is not indicative of a battery issue. It’s possible this Reddit thread is a red herring. Again, would love an official Apple comment.

UPDATE 3:

Take a look at this free battery life wear level tester. Might offer some insight.

Phil Schiller on the nuance of Face ID, HomePod delay, and more

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From the Bright.nl exclusive interview:

Schiller has a quick answer to the commentary that other smartphone makers had a face or iris recognition before Apple did: “They all stink.”

He nuances: “They don’t work in all the ways we need Face ID to work. We’re very aware that through the years this simple thing, the Home button, that started as the way you click to get to the Home screen, grew into doing so many things for us. We added Touch ID, it took you to the multitasking screen, paged Siri, activated Apple Pay. All through this one mechanical button.

So for Face ID we needed the best way we know of to enable us to easily unlock our device with our face, in a protected way with the Secure Enclave, and support all these other things. We had to solve all of that. Other things that people have tried with face haven’t been anything like that. Face ID is a very unique implementation.”

And:

“I think we’ve worked really hard to maintain the trust we have with users about how this information technology is and isn’t used. First of all, no Face ID data goes to third parties. So what you enroll with Face ID, what you use to unlock your phone, that’s an algorithm that is created and encrypted by the Secure Enclave. No third party that uses the iPhone camera has your Face ID data. We did create an API so developers can use the cameras to track facial movements, to do things like wrap stickers on your face (like Snapchat, ed.) That’s different than Face ID. They don’t have all the access to the data that Face ID has for that.

And:

“We feel bad we aren’t able to deliver Homepod for the holidays. We’re going to take the time to do it right and make sure it’s great when it comes out. We need more time to make it right.”

There’s a lot more. I found the whole thing worth reading.

Android to iPhone: What I’ve liked about switching to the iPhone X

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This is a two part series, written by David Ruddock, Android Police.

The first part, titled, I’ve never used an iPhone, part one: Switching to the iPhone X and first thoughts, ran a few weeks ago.

The second part, titled, Android to iPhone, part two: What I’ve liked about switching to the iPhone X, ran last week.

There’s a lot to process in these two posts. Some of the comments reflect someone new to the iPhone X and new to iOS. But all in all, solid takes, both the negative and positive.

A couple of highlights from the most recent post:

When I first started using iMessage, I immediately appreciated how much it modernized my texting experience (I do a fair bit of SMSing) when chatting with my iPhone-using friends and family.

And:

I would use an iMessage client for Android in a heartbeat if Apple were to release one. Even if it were terrible, I’d probably seriously entertain paying a subscription for such a thing. It’s not about iMessage being amazing or revolutionary or even an especially good messaging client – it’s just about using the same platform as my friends and family and being able to have those conversation move seamlessly across devices and operating systems.

And:

I know a lot of people turn off haptic feedback on their smartphone. That is because, I have now learned, essentially every Android smartphone has absolutely awful haptics. Your $930 Galaxy Note8 has haptic feedback that is, frankly, bad. So does every other Android phone. Yes, the difference is that clear after going to the iPhone X.

Apple’s Taptic Engine doesn’t just buzz – it clicks, it taps, it knocks. And it can do so with an incredible range of intensities and precision.

And:

I do miss intelligent package tracking being pulled directly from my Gmail (versus now just getting Amazon tracking, which is a bit of a downgrade).

This last was an interesting core difference between iOS and Android. I do see the Android advantage in reading all my emails and understanding that I’ve got a package coming, weaving intel about the package into my notifications.

But the issue is privacy and what is done with my private information. Google profits off the shared details of its users, in the form of steered and focused advertising. That is the price you pay for more informed device intelligence. That price makes me uncomfortable.

All in all, an insightful read.

Sources: Apple is acquiring music recognition app Shazam

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Ingrid Lunden and Katie Roof, TechCrunch:

As Spotify continues to inch towards a public listing, Apple is making a move of its own to step up its game in music services. Sources tell us that the company is close to acquiring Shazam, the popular app that lets people identify any song, TV show, film or advert in seconds, by listening to an audio clip or (in the case of, say, an ad) a visual fragment, and then takes you to content relevant to that search.

We have heard that the deal is being signed this week, and will be announced on Monday, although that could always change.

The deal is said to be worth about £300 million ($400 million).

Apple’s Ive regains management of design team after 2 years

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Mark Gurman and Alex Webb, Bloomberg:

Apple Inc.’s Jony Ive, a key executive credited with the look of many of the company’s most popular products, has re-taken direct management of product design teams.

Ive, 50, was named Apple’s chief design officer in 2015 and subsequently handed off some day-to-day management responsibility while the iPhone maker was building its new Apple Park headquarters in Cupertino, California. “With the completion of Apple Park, Apple’s design leaders and teams are again reporting directly to Jony Ive, who remains focused purely on design,” Amy Bessette, a company spokeswoman, said Friday in a statement.

Is this much ado about nothing? Was there a plan for Sir Jony to step away, a plan that’s now changed? Or was this more a shift of focus, first to getting Apple Park to completion, then back to work as usual?

How to use the one handed keyboard on iPhone

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One of the lesser trumpeted features that shipped with iOS 11 was the one handed keyboard. The linked post walks through the options.

Long story short, fire up a text or tweet, then, when the keyboard appears, press and hold the keyboard’s emoji icon, like so:

Tap your keyboard alignment of choice (left, right, center) and you’re good to go.

Note that the one handed keyboard is iPhone (and iPod Touch) only. Read the article for iPad options.

iPhones dominate Flickr’s list of most popular cameras in 2017

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Sarah Perez, TechCrunch:

Apple’s iPhone remains the most popular camera used by the Flickr community, the photo-sharing site revealed today in its annual review of camera rankings and top photos. This year, the iPhone beat out other camera makers – like Canon and Nikon, the number two and three respectively – by accounting for 54 percent of the top 100 devices used on the site, the company found. In addition, all top 10 devices of 2017 were iPhone models, Flickr says.

Amazing. All top 10 cameras on the list were iPhones.

Amazon wants a key to your house. I did it. I regretted it.

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Geoffrey A. Fowler, Washington Post:

I gave Amazon.com a key to go into my house and drop off packages when I’m not around. After two weeks, it turns out letting strangers in has been the least-troubling part of the experience.

Once Amazon owned my door, I was the one locked into an all-Amazon world.

And:

Make no mistake, the $250 Amazon Key isn’t just about stopping thieves. It’s the most aggressive effort I’ve seen from a tech giant to connect your home to the Internet in a way that puts itself right at the center.

And:

The Key-compatible locks are made by Yale and Kwikset, yet don’t work with those brands’ own apps. They also can’t connect with a home-security system or smart-home gadgets that work with Apple and Google software.

And, of course, the lock can’t be accessed by businesses other than Amazon. No Walmart, no UPS, no local dog-walking company.

And:

Amazon is barely hiding its goal: It wants to be the operating system for your home.

First things first, note that this article appeared in The Washington Post. The Post is owned by Jeff Bezos. Which tells me that Bezos truly is allowing the Post to be the Post, and that the Post is not afraid to bite the hand that feeds.

That said, the issue here is the walled garden. Once Amazon controls the lock on your door, they can control who has access to that lock, keeping out eventual home delivery by rivals like Walmart, and keeping rivals like Apple and HomeKit from offering door-unlocking services.

Very interesting.

HomeKit vulnerability allowed remote access to locks and more, fix rolling out

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Zac Hall, 9to5Mac:

A HomeKit vulnerability in the current version of iOS 11.2 has been demonstrated to 9to5Mac that allows unauthorized control of accessories including smart locks and garage door openers. Our understanding is Apple has rolled out a server-side fix that now prevent unauthorized access from occurring while limiting some functionality, and an update to iOS 11.2 coming next week will restore that full functionality.

And this from Apple:

“The issue affecting HomeKit users running iOS 11.2 has been fixed. The fix temporarily disables remote access to shared users, which will be restored in a software update early next week.”

Props to Zac Hall for the scoop and the way he handled the whole issue.

Uber paid 20-year old $100,000 to destroy stolen customer data

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Reuters:

Uber announced on Nov. 21 that the personal data of 57 million users, including 600,000 drivers in the United States, were stolen in a breach that occurred in October 2016, and that it paid the hacker $100,000 to destroy the information. But the company did not reveal any information about the hacker or how it paid him the money.

Uber made the payment last year through a program designed to reward security researchers who report flaws in a company’s software, these people said. Uber’s bug bounty service – as such a program is known in the industry – is hosted by a company called HackerOne, which offers its platform to a number of tech companies.

Crazy. Just crazy.

Apple reveals 2017’s top charts, but don’t try to buy an iOS app from your Mac

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I enjoyed going through Apple’s tops of 2017 list.

But, it did remind me of one broken piece of Apple’s app-purchasing system, still unaddressed after all this time. To see it, you have to open the list on your Mac.

On your Mac, if you click on Apple’s top movie link, after a bit of shuffling, you’ll be taken to an iTunes page listing the top movies of the year. Click on a movie and you’ll be taken to that movie’s iTunes page so you can rent or buy.

BUT.

Still on your Mac, still looking at that same best of list, try clicking on an app. To save you time, here’s a link to the iPhone game of the year, a fun little number called Splitter Critters.

You’ll be taken to a Safari App Store Preview page, with this note embedded on the page:

Used to be, you could click a link of an app you want to buy, the app page would open in iTunes, and you could purchase the app, even from your Mac. For a while, app links that used to work took you into the void, clearly broken. My hope was that this was a temporary situation, that Apple would work through their changes with iTunes and, eventually, restore the ability to buy an iOS app from a link shown on a Mac.

Why is this important? Why care about an iOS app that will never run on a Mac? It’s all about app developers and bloggers making a living.

App developers need publicity for their apps. And that publicity often comes from blogs (like MacStories, Daring Fireball, iMore, 9to5Mac, Six Colors, iDownloadBlog, etc.) When a blog links to an app, the best chance a developer has to close the deal with a reader is if that reader can click on a link and buy the app right then and there.

If the reader happens to be reading about the app on a Mac, there is no chance to close the deal with a simple click and purchase. At the very least, they have to remember to make the purchase the next time they are on an iOS device. This is bad for the developer and, ultimately, bad for the blogger. It widens the gap, reduces the intimacy between the writer who recommended the app, and the reader. And it lessens the chance that a blog will be able to make a bit of money from an affiliate link.

My two cents? Apple should fix this. As is, this makes the Mac a bit of a second class citizen.

Your Text Replacements in iOS and macOS now sync reliably across iPhone, iPad and Mac

Written by

Christian Zibreg, iDownloadBlog:

Text Replacements, an often overlooked iOS and macOS feature that automatically expands custom text snippets into longer phrases or whole sentences as you’re typing, should no longer be plagued with the widely reported intermittent syncing issues.

As first noted by Daring Fireball’s John Gruber, an Apple spokesperson told him back in September that an update that moves text replacement syncing to CloudKit was scheduled to roll out to iOS 11 and macOS 10.13 High Sierra users in the next month or so.

Brian Stucki, who first explained why Text Replacements didn’t sync reliably between iOS devices and Macs, has now confirmed in an update to his original post that snippet syncing now at long last works reliably across all devices running macOS High Sierra and iOS 11.

Nice to see this CloudKit progress.

How to allow remote access to your Mac

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Glenn Fleishman, writing for Macworld, pulled together some advice on remote access between Macs (pretty easy, though worth the read) and between Macs and other platforms (not so easy). Interesting.

3 top reasons people dump Android for iPhone

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Jonny Evans, writing for Computerworld, on the top reasons switchers are switching to iPhone, as laid out by Creative Strategies. Though the title might seem click-baity, the logic is thoughtful.

A taste:

Today’s smartphone user may have subscriptions with multiple such services. They are also likely to own multiple devices, and that’s where the problem emerges. In contrast to competitors, Apple’s platforms are far better at syncing passwords, settings, images and other items between all your devices using the same Apple ID. You can even set up a new iPhone just by tapping it with your old one in iOS 11.

That kind of convenience makes it so much easier for consumers rapidly engaging in a multi-device, multiple-service, cross platform digital existence. This sync extends across to Apple’s Macs, of course.

Solid read.

The hidden player spurring a wave of cheap consumer devices: Amazon

Written by

Farhad Manjoo, New York Times:

On the surface, the camera doesn’t sound special. Like home internet cameras made by Nest or Netgear, the Wyze device can monitor an area for motion or sound. When it spots something, it begins recording a short clip that it stores online, for access on your phone or your computer.

But the WyzeCam has one groundbreaking feature that no rival can match. It is being sold for such an unbelievably low price — $20 — that it sent me tunneling into the global gadget industry to figure out how Wyze had done it. That, in turn, led to a revelation about the future of all kinds of products, from cameras to clothes.

And:

Nest’s and Netgear’s comparable indoor cameras sell for around $200 each, while Wyze’s device goes for $20 plus shipping if you buy directly from the company’s website.

And, most importantly:

Wyze did not create a home internet camera for a tenth of the price of rivals by skimping on quality. Though the camera comes in extremely spare packaging, it otherwise offers many features you would expect in big-brand devices, including tough security.

This is a remarkable story, with Amazon leading a wave of coming disruption, allowing incredibly inexpensive Internet-of-things gadgets to skip the traditional retail stepping stones and markups, ship directly to you at just about cost (plus Amazon’s markup, of course).

Reminds me of big-box disruption, where a seller would bring a parade of cheaply made goods into their offices, pick one that combined “good enough” quality with the lowest possible price, then buy at huge volumes to stock their stores.

Very interesting read.

Featured Snippets: The latest frontier in Google search and discovery

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Google blog:

Featured Snippets are algorithmically generated highlights of what’s available on the web that provide quick, relevant answers for your queries. Today, we’ve added more images and related searches inside select Featured Snippets to help you learn even more about your topic, or to discover new things related to your interest.

If you use Google for search, you’ve no doubt encountered Featured Snippets, a block of info at the very top of your search results, often with exactly the info you need.

Two interesting reads:

Amazon Prime Video arrives on Apple TV in over 100 countries

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From Apple’s press release:

Starting today, customers around the world can access the Amazon Prime Video app on Apple TV to stream award-winning and critically acclaimed titles including Prime Original Series and Movies. Also starting this week, the Apple TV app — a unified place for iPhone, iPad and Apple TV users to discover and start watching the best shows and movies — supports live sports, giving fans in the US a simple and seamless way to keep track of their favorite teams and games in real time. Participating sports apps in the Apple TV app include ESPN and the NBA, developed in partnership between the NBA and Turner Sports, with more to be added soon. Starting tomorrow, Prime members in the US can enjoy Thursday Night Football on the Apple TV app for iPhone, iPad and Apple TV.

It’s a big day for Apple TV. They’ve added the Amazon Prime Video app (here’s a first look we posted earlier today) as well as live sports to the Apple TV app.

Live sports in the Apple TV app means fans in the US can now follow their favorite teams to ensure those live games show up first in their Up Next queue. Fans can also receive on-screen notifications when a game is about to start, and when their favorite teams are in a close game, so they can easily switch to catch the most exciting sports moments live. Additionally, through a new dedicated Sports tab in the Apple TV app, fans can see the teams, leagues and sporting events currently playing or coming up soon, along with the time remaining and current scores.

You’ll want to update your Apple TV to the latest version of tvOS for all this to work.

First look at Apple TV’s Amazon Prime Video app

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I’ve been looking forward to an Amazon Prime Video app on my Apple TV for quite some time.

The good news is, the app is here and available for download. The better news? The app works quite well. One caveat, which I’ll get to in a minute, but the overall experience is excellent, just what you’d expect from a well-written Apple TV app.

Click through to the main Loop post for all the details. […]

Apple begins selling unlocked & SIM-free iPhone X in the U.S.

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SIM-free means, in part, that you won’t get a carrier SIM card. You’ll still need to get one. Keep that (to me, a tiny bit of a hassle) in mind.

UPDATE: From the comments:

You can get a SIM card for free from T-Mobile, and it takes seconds to install.

Meanwhile, that SIM-free iPhone—unlike the GSM models— is fully compatible with all networks including CDMA. More importantly, it has the Qualcomm chip, which means it will provide about 30% better wireless performance than Intel-equipped models in terms of data speeds, signal reception, voice quality, and battery life. And due to all of the above advantages, the SIM-free model will also provide a significantly higher resale value.

This is the iPhone variant everyone should buy.

UPDATE 2: Also from the comments:

Dave: it may also be worth mentioning that this is a great option if you already have a nano SIM card in your existing iPhone.

Duly noted.

Apple’s HomePod isn’t about Siri, but rather the future of home audio

Written by

Daniel Eran Dilger, AppleInsider:

Rather than being the phenomenal, exciting new product category launch that pundits love to praise, the Alexa-powered Echo is Amazon’s salvaged booby prize for failing in smartphones: a few million units sold at low margin, versus the tens of millions of smartphones other Android licensees have been able to sell (or the hundreds of millions of high-margin iPhones Apple has been selling each year).

Ouch. But I agree with the premise. The Echo is a highly successful pivot. If Amazon’s 2014 Fire phone had caught on, it’s not clear that they would have gone down the Echo path.

Echo and related Alexa-based smart speakers are really “smart mics” for listening to commands. Amazon’s retail background works to leverage this to take online orders from Alexa users, but its original goal in hardware was a mobile phone with a camera, display and mic all working together to identify potential products to sell, not just a simple voice appliance. Amazon laid this out in excited detail at the Fire Phone launch, it just wasn’t able to sell it.

And:

Google’s Home is a straight up knock off of Echo, designed to counter the threat of Amazon reaching audiences of online buyers before they ever think to search Google.

And:

HomePod isn’t a “smart mic” seeking to force Siri into more places to intercept users’ attention. Despite cloying narratives of how Amazon is dominating the “smart speaker” market it created out of necessity after Fire Phone imploded in a cloud of smoke, Apple has always had a commanding lead in the number of people using its Siri voice assistant worldwide.

And:

Unlike Amazon, Apple isn’t trying to intercept buyers before they head to a retail store. Apple’s happy with connecting users with either stores or online retailers; Apple Pay works for both, and iOS apps create a blurring line that serves either, or both at the same time. Apple’s Siri doesn’t attempt to keep people out of rival apps or stores; it seeks to help them launch apps to find whatever they need.

And:

HomePod responds to Siri commands and passes them to your iPhone for launching apps or presenting a visual answer. But HomePod isn’t just a “smart mic” like Echo and Home. Primarily, It’s an intelligent speaker designed to produce exceptional home audio that intelligently fills whatever space it is installed in.

These are just snippets. There is so much more to process in this insightful, well written post, but the quotes laid out above should give you a basic sense of where Daniel is going with this.

Terrific job, definitely worth your time.