512 Pixels

These things come in cycles.

There’s revolution, followed by evolution. The Apple II, then the IIe. The Macintosh, then the Macintosh SE. The Titanium PowerBook G4, then the aluminum models.

Both sides of the revolution/evolution coin have their winners. The IIe became Apple’s bread and butter for years, introducing an entire generation to personal computing. The SE and SE/30 are among the most-loved early Macs, and it is still hard to talk about the 12-inch PowerBook G4 without smiling.

With the iPod, the cycle sped up. Three years passed between the original 5 GB music player and the iPod mini and the iPod photo with its color screen. The iPod nano came just a year and a half after the iPod mini, and then for many years, was reimagined every 12 months.

That first iPhone was a revolution on par with the first Macintosh or iPod. It improved upon existing technology, but implemented things with an all-new paradigm.

A year after the original, Apple made substantial improvements with the iPhone 3G, but the basic recipe was the same. The radios may have been better, but the new model used the same CPU, display and camera as before. It was evolution’s time to shine.

Then came the iPhone 4.

It was a dramatic departure from the 3GS before it. The plastic shell of the 3G and 3GS felt safe and was extremely utilitarian, while the iPhone 4’s dramatic glass and steel enclosure felt like the first iPhone that was truly designed. In one keynote, the iPhone went from something that was comfortable in the hand but a little boring to something incredible to touch and see.

As iconic as the design was, what it packed in its thin chassis was an even bigger deal. It was powered by the A4 chip from the iPad. It included a front-facing camera that worked with a new service called FaceTime. The display clocked in at a whopping 326 ppi, bringing print-level quality to an iPhone for the first time, giving birth to the Retina era.

The parallels between the iPhone 4 and the iPhone X are obvious, but are still worth calling attention to, at least if you’re obsessed with this stuff.

Starting with 2012’s iPhone 5, Apple used aluminum on the back of their phones until the iPhone 8, 8 Plus and X. Thanks to the better-late-than-never arrival of wireless charging on this crop of iPhones, the glass back is … well … back.

I really like wireless charging. I have a Mophie charging base on my nightstand and a second on my desk, and simply place my iPhone on the rubbery disc and forget it. The only time I plug my iPhone X in to anything is if I need to charge it in my car. It’s pretty great not to have to deal with Lightning cables, especially if I grab my phone late at night or early in the morning.

The iPhone X, with its stainless steel band, pays homage to the 4’s industrial design, albeit with a modern twist. They both use slight notches in the metal for the antenna, with far less controversy this time around. The band isn’t flat like the iPhone 4, however; this phone retains the slippery, rounded edges introduced on the iPhone 6.

I’ve never had an iPhone that slides around as much as this one. It wants to slide out of any pocket it is in, and if it’s on the couch, it will find its way down between the cushions as if drawn into the darkness by an invisible magnet.

On my silver model, the stainless steel has already picked up all sorts of scratches and scuffs. Personally, I love the way raw stainless steel ages, including on my Apple Watch.

The back glass is crisp and shiny, and I prefer it over the Space Gray this time around, despite having and loving a matte black iPhone 7 Plus.

Unfortunately, the stainless steel band isn’t the only thing that has picked up scratches on my iPhone X. This phone has picked up scratches across the front and back glass in a way no previous iPhone I have owned has. None of them are particularly long, but they are deep enough that I can catch them with the corner of a finger nail if I try.¹

I’m a little nervous as to how banged up this iPhone is going to look by the fall.

The back is home to the largest iPhone bump ever created by Apple. The black glass that surrounds the two camera lenses contrasts with the silver back so sharply, I think it makes the bump look even bigger. The phone rocks around and vibrates loudly on some surfaces thanks to the bump in a more noticeable way than even my 7 Plus did.

However, what the bump houses allows me to forgive the unsightly nature of the thing. The camera system on the iPhone X is truly great. It’s consistent, fast and continues to impress me, even three months into ownership. The wider aperture and optical stabilization make the iPhone X better in low light situations than it has any real reason to be.

This is the part of this review where most people would bring up Portrait Mode and Portrait Lighting, Apple’s depth-powered effects that attempt to punch up images for more dramatic shots, now from both the rear and front-facing cameras.

I don’t ever use either mode. I own a couple of “real” cameras and just can’t get over how processed and unnatural these images feel to me. I know these modes are popular, but they just aren’t for me.²

Like the iPhone 4 before it, the iPhone X’s design and camera systems raise the bar in very real ways, but like the Retina display, the OLED “Super Retina” display on this phone instantly makes previous iPhones feel older than they actually are.

No doubt, a large part of that has to do with the size of the display itself. The panel measures 5.8 inches diagonal, but it’s been stuffed into a chassis not much bigger than the iPhone 6, which came with a 4.7-inch display. Having used Plus-sized iPhones the last several years, adjusting has taken some time, but I’m really happy with the size of the iPhone X.

Simply put, the screen is the iPhone, and the iPhone is just screen.

The display doesn’t have any hard angles, instead it flows into the corners of the phone, as if it was poured into a mold. It all feels very futuristic, and the forehead and the chin on older iPhones seems ancient in comparison.

Then there’s the display itself. Now with its pixels packed in at 458 ppi, images and text are sharper than ever. OLED means that black is truly black, making everything feel richer and more vibrant. It’s the most iPhone-y iPhone screen there’s been since the original Retina display.

The top of the screen, of course, is encroached upon by the notch. Under its black glass,³ Apple has packed all the sensors and technology needed to make Face ID possible, but all of that hardware needed a place to live.

Instead of lobbing off the entire top of the display, Apple chose to let it flow up and around the notch, giving the iPhone X an extremely distinctive look.

In practice, I rarely think about the notch. It’s just part of the frame, fading away in light of whatever I’m doing on my phone.

Occasionally when moving from an app with a dark UI like Overcast to one of Apple’s apps with the company’s EVERYTHING-IS-WHITE-AND-IT-FEELS-LIKE-THE-PLANET-HOTH design language in apps like Mail and Messages, I’ll be a little surprised when the notch resurfaces.⁴

That’s not to say the notch isn’t troublesome in some ways. The truncated status bar means iOS now has to hide some critical information, like if the phone is connected to a VPN or is in Do Not Disturb mode:

Those things can be discovered only by invoking Control Center, which is in the wrong place on the iPhone X, as I wrote in November:

I understand conceptually why Control Center is where it is. Pulling down on the cell signal, Wi-Fi and battery indicators open the controls for those things. I actually like that linking of those two bits of UI.

The problem is that Control Center is too far away. I use my iPhone in my right hand, and even as someone who carried a Plus-sized phone for three years, I struggle to activate Control Center. Because Spotlight can be triggered with the same gesture — a downward swipe — from about anywhere on the screen, I often am greeted with a search field when all I wanted was to turn down my screen brightness or enter Airplane mode.

For people who use their iPhones with their left thumbs, it’s all but unreachable.

Three months in, and I still hate where Control Center is on this phone. I still accidentally invoke the Cover Sheet when I don’t want it and struggle to do this one-handed. Apple needs to revisit this in iOS 12.

If they release iOS 12 and the only change is putting Control Center in a better place on the iPhone X, it’ll be worth it. https://t.co/dqwkbR4lU4

— Stephen Hackett (@ismh) January 30, 2018

The notch’s effect on iOS is worth what it brings: Face ID really feels like it’s from the future.

With just a tap⁵ and a glance, I can unlock my iPhone, and a short swipe gets me in. It works with and without my glasses, without caring if I’m wearing a hat or if my fingers are wet. It even works if it’s pitch-black in my bedroom.

Over the last month, I’ve re-grown my beard, and I haven’t cut my hair since late October. Face ID has learned my ever-increasing level of fuzziness and has adapted over time.

It’s not a perfect system, though. The iPhone has to be oriented “vertically” in relation to your face for Face ID to work. If you are lying on your side horizontally, you have to hold the iPhone horizontally, in parallel with your face, for it to register. If you hold it too close or too far away, it can struggle to unlock as well. I suspect some combination of these things is why I find myself needing to enter my PIN code more often in bed than anywhere else.

It’s hard to gauge if I have to unlock my iPhone with my PIN code any more than I did with Touch ID out in the real world, though. It feels like Face ID is the same or better than the old system, though.

Where it really shines in apps that require biometric authentication. To unlock 1Password or log in to my bank, all I have to do is look at my iPhone, which I’m already doing. It makes authenticating feel transparent, which is a good thing.

All in all, with the iPhone X, Apple has dumped a whole lot of revolution on its most important product. The screen, body, cameras and more are all better than before, but the iPhone X is more than the sum of its parts. It’s the first chapter in a new era of iPhone design. The things that seem special about this iPhone will soon be normal, as evolution kicks in again.

That’s how these things go. Evolution may be important, but revolution is where all the fun is, and the iPhone X has plenty of it to go around.

This week on Liftoff, Jason and I catch up on some weird satellite and exoplanet news before walking through Apollo 4 and 5.

Ina Fried at Axios:

Apple has shaken up its iOS software plans for 2018, delaying some features to next year in an effort to put more focus on addressing performance and quality issues, Axios has learned.

Software head Craig Federighi announced the revised plan to employees at a meeting earlier this month, shortly before he and some top lieutenants headed to a company offsite.

Fried goes on to report that larger iOS projects, like a revamped home screen and CarPlay UI are now slated for 2019, being pushed back to make room for a year of bug fixing and polish.

That would be a bold choice in the mobile space, but in taking their foot of the gas, I hope Apple can address some core issues in iOS. That said, High Sierra was a release framed this way, and it has had a litany of problems since its launch in the fall.

If iOS 12 is a bit of a sleeper, what does that mean for macOS in 2018? Will High Sierra stick around for two years, or will macOS 10.14 be a bigger change than previously expected?

One theory is that this will give Marzipan more room. If iOS developers are given the tools to make macOS apps from their existing code, a lack of new iOS features could give them the time to do so.

Apple Support:

This article describes the new system configurations of the Apple Workgroup Server (AWS) 95 with the January 1994 release.

Jim Dalrymple:

With the release of the latest macOS developer beta, Apple will begin to alert users that they are using older, 32-bit apps, instead of the more modern 64-bit apps, the company told me today. The macOS beta will be released to developers on Wednesday.

Even though I had a 5K iMac on my desk for a year before replacing it with my iMac Pro, I’ve never gotten good at plugging things into the back of the machine without looking. As someone who imports photos and video from an SD card on a regular basis, you’d think I’d be better at finding the port on the back.

I recently picked up Satechi’s $49 awkwardly named “Aluminum Type-C Clamp Hub Pro” to help with this problem. It puts a SD card slot, Micro SD card slot, three USB 3 and one USB-C port around the front of the iMac, all enclosed in a small body that fits perfectly flush with the front of the computer. It plugs into one of the USB-C/Thunderbolt 3 ports on the machine, which worked well for me, as I had one free.

It attaches by inserting four rubbery inserts into the grille across the very bottom edge of the machine. A twist of the knob built into the enclosure tightens things down. Everything that touches the iMac is soft, so I’m not worried about scratching it, but it’s secure enough that I’ve been able to plug stuff in without worrying about the thing falling onto my keyboard. I did mount in slightly inset from the edges (where Satechi’s directions tell you to put it) to avoid interfering with the speakers.

Having a bunch of ports facing me is totally a sin against the Church of Ive, but it’s been really handy in the week or so I’ve had it mounted under my iMac Pro.

On this very special episode of Query, I chat with Serenity about her hands-on time with Apple’s new smart speaker.

I honestly came away from this recording much more excited about the HomePod than I was when I ordered one this morning. I think you’ll really enjoy our conversation and Serenity’s impressions of the device.

HomePod orders are now open.

I picked up a white model, set for in-store pickup two weeks from today. We have a couple of Amazon Echos around the house, despite being subscribers to Apple Music. We pay for Amazon’s Echo-only music streaming and use the speaker to control a bunch of smart lights, listen to news, set timers while cooking and more.

On paper, the HomePod should do everything we ask of our Echo, but I’m a little worried that Siri won’t be able to keep up as well as Alexa does. I guess I’ll find out in two weeks.

Mark Gurman is reporting that Apple is working to overhaul its iBooks (soon to just be named “Books”) app and store, with the help of at least one ex-Amazon employee:

The new app, due to be released in coming months, will include a simpler interface that better highlights books currently being read and a redesigned digital book store that looks more like the new App Store launched last year, according to people familiar with its development. The revamped app in testing includes a new section called Reading Now and a dedicated tab for audio books, the people said.

I don’t use iBooks, but that has nothing to do with the apps. I much prefer reading on an e-ink Kindle that isn’t going to notify me every time someone sends me an iMessage.

As he does every year, Jason Snell has asked a whole bunch of Apple watchers to provide feedback on the company’s performance for the past year.

This year, everything seems to have scored better than in 2016, except for hardware reliability, software quality and the company’s environmental and social initiatives, as Snell writes:

Judging by my panel’s responses, 2017 was something of a bounce-back year for most of Apple’s core platforms. But there was still plenty of concern to go around, especially when it came to the quality of Apple’s software.

In reading through these comments, I think a lot of the Apple community is in agreement that Apple needs to batten down the hatches on some things, especially when it comes to software bugs and the Mac. I hope that happens in 2018.

I joined the guys on the Fits + Starts podcast this week to talk about working for yourself, finding purpose in work and the weirdness of having an emotional attachment to a company.

For the second January running, I’ve published a Q&A and studio tour video: