The Portrait mode for Apple’s iPhone 7 Plus has been in the works for months, and now it’s ready for the masses… sort of. 7 Plus users running beta software have been able to shoot photos full of artificial bokeh for over a month now, but Apple just pushed out its iOS 10.1 update and Portrait mode came along for the ride. Now, here’s the thing: even though you don’t need to be enrolled in the iOS beta program to use the feature anymore, the feature itself still isn’t completely done. Once the update is installed, the camera app asks if you’d like to “try the beta” when you swipe into the new Portrait position. Our professional recommendation? Dive right in. Portrait mode might not be completely complete, but it’s still capable of producing seriously nice headshots. In case you missed it the first time around, the feature uses the iPhone 7 Plus’s two cameras in tandem — the primary 12-megapixel sensor captures the image as normal, but the second, wide-angle sensor is used to determine how far away the subject is. All of that data gets mashed up into a nine -layer depth map, providing the context needed to artfully blur out backgrounds while keeping faces and subjects closer to the phone remain crisp and intact. Apple’s goal was to build a dead-simple photography experience that yields pictures that look like they were shot on expensive SLR cameras, and for the most part, Apple’s work is very impressive. This photo represents well the sort of quality you can expect out of Portrait mode: the focus stays locked on the face and hands, and the windows in the background are blurred pretty dramatically. Thanks to that nine-layer depth map, you can see areas where blurring is very subtle, like the top of the subject’s head and the bottom of her scarf. You don’t need to take photos of people to get some mileage out of Portrait mode, either. Have cats prancing around? Or a sweet new mug you need to share? In my experience, as long as you’re within proper range (the app tells you when you are) and there’s enough contrast between the foreground and background, you’ll get that pleasant background blurring. It’s when you’re in well-lit environments with lots of similar colors that Portrait mode seems to have trouble — that’s often when you’ll see edges blurred when they shouldn’t be. Just check out this photo of a cactus precariously perched on a railing. The camera didn’t have trouble differentiating between the cool blue of the pot and the trees in the background, but it obviously had trouble telling where the cactus ended and the trees began. These disappointments are rare, though, and will probably get ironed out as people continue to put Portrait mode through its paces. Most of the big problems have been solved — now Apple just has to focus on the fine-tuning (which is obviously easier said than done). At this point, Portrait mode is still far from perfect, but there’s a lot to like about just how simple it is to use. It’s fast, it’s impressive and it’s only going to get better with time. Interested in taking it for a spin? Jump into your iPhone 7 Plus’s settings and mash that software update button — it’ll show up sooner or later.
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Apple releases iOS 10.1, adds Portrait mode to the iPhone 7 Plus
From Hollister, California — population 40, 000 — comes a good update from the Mercury News on Larry Page’s efforts to fund a flying car: Even from a few hundred yards away, the aircraft made a noise strikingly different from the roar of a typical plane. “It sounded like an electric motor running, just a high-pitched whine, ” said Steve Eggleston, assistant manager at an airplane-parts company with offices bordering the Hollister Municipal Airport tarmac. But it wasn’t only the sound that caught the attention of Eggleston and his co-workers at DK Turbines. It was what the aircraft was doing. “What the heck’s that?” saleswoman Brittany Rodriguez thought to herself. It’s just hovering.” That, apparently, was a flying car, or perhaps a prototype of another sort of aircraft under development by a mysterious startup called Zee.Aero…one of two reportedly funded by Google co-founder Larry Page to develop revolutionary forms of transportation… A Zee.Aero spokeswoman said the firm is “currently not discussing (its) plans publicly.” However, a Zee.Aero patent issued in 2013 describes in some detail an aircraft capable of the hovering seen by people working at the airport. And the drawings showcase a vision of the future in which flying cars park in lots just like their terrestrial, less-evolved cousins. Page has invested $100 million in Zee.Aero, which appears to have hired more than 100 aerospace engineers. But the article reports that apparently, in the small town where it’s headquartered, “the first rule about Zee.Aero is you don’t talk about Zee.Aero.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.