Apple’s $999 iPhone X packs an edge-to-edge display and dual cameras

The iPhone X (pronounced “iPhone ten”) is real, and it’s finally here. CEO Tim Cook just unveiled the biggest redesign of the iPhone we’ve seen yet at today’s event in the Steve Jobs theater at Apple’s brand-new campus. As expected, the phone is dominated by a massive screen that takes up the entire front of the display. Just like Samsung’s Galaxy S8, the bezels are barely there, though the iPhone X has a slightly odd “cut-out” at the top of the phone to allow for the front-facing camera and sensors. The lack of bezels means the phone isn’t that much bigger than the iPhone 7. The “super retina” display is 5.8 inches with a 2436 x 1125 resolution — that works out to 458 pixels per inch, by far the highest ever seen on an iPhone. Phil Schiller also notes that it’s an OLED screen, the first that’s “good enough” for an iPhone. The screen supports HDR, and naturally includes 3D Touch technology and the “true tone” display on the iPhone 8 and iPad Pro. To accommodate this giant display, Apple has ditched the home button and touch ID. Given that every iPhone has had a home button, this change might even be a bigger deal than the bigger screen. The phone is wrapped with stainless steel and has glass on the front and back; surprisingly, it only comes in two finishes (silver and black). To accommodate this giant display, Apple has ditched the home button and Touch ID. You can raise the phone to wake, but you can also tap the screen to wake it up. Given that every iPhone has had a home button, this change might even be a bigger deal than the bigger screen. To get home, Apple has added gestures like the ones we’ve seen on the iPad for years — a swipe up from the bottom gets you back to the home screen, while swiping up and pausing will bring you to the multitasking menu. To access Siri, you can use “hey Siri” or you can hold the side button, which Apple has enlarged. To replace Touch ID, the iPhone X is locked until you look at it and it recognizes you. Apple is calling this “Face ID.” It uses the front-facing camera as well as other sensors, including an infrared sensor, flood illuminator and dot projector to unlock the phone. (Apple’s calling it a True Depth sensor.) It’ll update your face scan frequently to account for changes like haircuts, hats and beards. Schiller says it’s a one in a million chance that someone else’s face would unlock your phone, compared to one in 50, 000 for Touch ID. Face ID will also let you authenticate Apple Pay purchases — by clicking the side button twice and looking at the screen, your phone will make the desired payment. And Apple’s also using the True Depth sensors to let you create and share animated emojis. Apple is starting with a dozen different emoji (most of them animals) that you can animate using your face. As for the camera, it’s a dual camera, much like that on the iPhone 8 — it has dual 12-megapixel sensors with a f/1.8 aperture on the wide end and f/2.4 on the telephoto lens. The big thing to note here is that both lenses have optical image stabilization, while the iPhone 8 Plus only has OIS on the wide-angle lens. It also features factory calibration on the cameras for augmented reality. The processor is the same as the A11 Bionic chip found in the new iPhone 8, and it sounds like a big step up over last year’s processor. It’s a six-core CPU, with two high-performance cores. Those high-performance cores are 25 percent faster than the A10, while the four high-efficiency cores are 70 percent faster than the A10. Apple also designed the GPU for the first time and says that its optimized for the company’s Metal 2 graphics framework. Despite all the new features and power of the A11 chip, Schiller says that the phone should last two more hours than the iPhone 7. Like the iPhone 8 and 8 Plus, the iPhone X will also include wireless charging for the first time. To facilitate wireless charging, the entire iPhone lineup now has glass backs, just like the iPhone 4 and 4S had many years ago. Somewhat surprisingly, Apple is using Qi, one of the biggest open wireless charging standards. That means that plenty of wireless charging pads out there should work with the iPhone X right out of the box. Naturally Apple has made its own charging mat that can accommodate the iPhone X or iPhone 8, the series 3 Apple Watch and Airpods, provided you buy a new wireless charging case for them. It’s called AirPower, but it doesn’t come out until next year unfortunately. There are a few changes to navigating iOS to accommodate for the lack of a home button. Since swiping up from the bottom gets you home or to multitasking, you now access control center by swiping down from the top of the screen, You need to hit the targets on the left or right where your status and battery indicator live to do that, though. Apple hasn’t shown the notification center yet, but we’re guessing you can get it by swiping down from the middle of the screen. One of the biggest questions about the iPhone X has been its cost. It’ll start at $999 for 64GB, and the 256GB model will likely run an extra $100. Pre-orders start on October 27th, and the phone will begin shipping on November 3rd. Start saving your couch change, folks. Follow all the latest news from Apple’s iPhone event here!

Continue reading here:
Apple’s $999 iPhone X packs an edge-to-edge display and dual cameras

The iPhone 8 reportedly swaps the home button for gesture controls

The folks over at Bloomberg got their hands on some images of the next iPhone as well as some information from people familiar with the new model. Some of the features confirmed in their report were already known or at least heavily suspected, but there are also some new details about how the phone will function without the home button. As has been reported before, the images viewed by Bloomberg show that the iPhone 8 will have thin bezels and a larger screen than the iPhone 7. It’s also going to have a facial recognition sensor that, along with the earpiece and front-facing camera, will be contained in a cutout at the top of the screen. Some other physical details include rounded edges for the screen, a longer power button, a glass front and back and stainless steel edges with antenna cuts on the corners. The app dock is also getting a redesign and looks a lot like the iPad iOS 11 dock, according to Bloomberg . But one of the bigger changes — the removal of the home button that’s been a part of the phone for a decade — comes with some tweaks to how users will access the features that the home button has brought them to in the past. Now, what was once the home button’s function is going the way of the iPad and Apple’s laptop trackpads. Gesture controls will now bring you to the main app grid and show you which apps are open. The bottom of the screen will host a software bar that can be dragged upwards to open the phone and also to get to the multitasking interface once the phone is unlocked. The new iPhone is expected to launch on September 12th alongside the 7s and 7s Plus models. Source: Bloomberg

View original post here:
The iPhone 8 reportedly swaps the home button for gesture controls

This iOS app makes creating and editing guitar tabs a breeze

One of the more tedious tasks of playing in a cover band is managing lyric and chord sheets. When you play a typical four-hour gig in a local bar, memorizing all that music is not always going to happen. You’ve got to study each song and learn your particular parts, sure, but having a cheat sheet with the verses and the chords on an iPad can really help keep you on track while you also manage your guitar, pedal effects and vocal performance. Gathering all this song data from the internet (or writing it out yourself) can take time. For me, the process usually involves finding the right transcription of the chords in the correct key online, copying the relevant bits from the web page and then creating a PDF on my computer for upload to Dropbox and my iPad so everyone can access it. An upcoming app called TabBank, currently in beta and set to release on July 27th, aims to simplify this process quite a bit, with a simple way to create and import chord sheets and tab right on an iPad or iPhone. Launching the app, you’ll see a fairly basic interface without any clutter to get in the way. You’ll get the option to create a new chart or read through the Getting Started guide, which explains that TabBank uses its own version of the ChordPro standard file type to edit your sheets. If you’re typing out your own music, you simply enter the chord name in brackets in front of the word you want it to appear over on the final product. You can even define new chords the app doesn’t already know with a line in the file that tells the app what strings and frets to use when previewing, like Cm7b5: x3434x. Tabs can be created with rows of dashes that represent the guitar strings; they will be formatted a bit more nicely when you’re done, and you can add hammer-on and pull-off notes as well. You can also format the font size into small, medium or large styles, and choose the from three different styles used for chords and lyrics. What makes TabBank extremely useful for me, however, is the way it pulls in tab and chord sheets from the internet. You’ll need to install a mobile Safari extension, and then navigate to any of your favorite portals, like Ultimate Guitar or E Chords . Once you find the version of the song you want to import, you hit the Share button in Safari and TabBank will pull in just the relevant portion of the music, ignoring all the ads and other cruft usually found on such sites. The song will then appear below the Create New Chart section in the main screen. You can tap the title and get a nicely formatted tab or chord chart in seconds, and you can edit it right in TabBank, as well. You can tap on any chord or tablature and TabBank will play it back with a basic MIDI guitar sound paired with a visual of the notes on a guitar neck. It might be helpful for newbies who need to know how to play a given chord, but it’s fairly bland when you’re trying to figure out a solo or rock riff. I pulled up AC/DC’s “You Shook Me All Night Long” and, while accurate, the playback only sort of sounded like it should. This is more a limitation of MIDI and written tablature, though, and not a problem with the app itself. Once you’ve written out your chord sheet or imported one from your favorite website, you can export either a PDF or ChordPro file, which you can then share out to any other apps you like. It was incredibly easy to send a PDF to the app I use to manage lyric sheets and set lists on stage, Deep Dish’s GigBook . So far, TabBank seems like a great tool to use if you want to manage your guitar tab and chord sheets on your iPhone or iPad. Being able to get music from the web, edit it on my device and then send it to the setlist app I use saved me quite a bit of time; I look forward to using the app from here on out. The app should be out on the App Store July 27th, where it will be a free download with some in-app purchases to add printing and exporting PDFs and saving tabs from the web.

Follow this link:
This iOS app makes creating and editing guitar tabs a breeze

Language App Duolingo Finally Added Japanese and It’s Great

Duolingo is one of the best free ways to get started learning a new language, and they’re finally answering the pleas of wannabe polyglots everywhere by adding Japanese to their curriculum. Sugoi! Read more…

Read More:
Language App Duolingo Finally Added Japanese and It’s Great

Over 560 Million Passwords Discovered by Security Researchers in an Anonymous Online Database

A trove of more than 560 million login credentials has been exposed by a leaky database, researchers revealed on Tuesday, including email addresses and passwords stolen from as many as 10 popular online services. Read more…

More:
Over 560 Million Passwords Discovered by Security Researchers in an Anonymous Online Database

The Most Interesting Part of Apple’s New $5 Billion Campus Is a Pizza Box

This morning, Wired magazine published an early look into Apple’s brand new spaceship campus. The giant circle features the kinds of ridiculous details you might expect from Apple, like sliding glass doors that weigh 440, 000 pounds each and 9, 000 trees supposedly durable enough to survive the forthcoming climate… Read more…

Read More:
The Most Interesting Part of Apple’s New $5 Billion Campus Is a Pizza Box

Incredible First Person Footage of a Real Spacewalk Will Leave You Speechless

On March 24th, ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet was joined by NASA astronaut Shane Kimbrough on a spacewalk outside the International Space Station. The outing was fairly routine, but this amazing footage captured by Pesquet gives all of us stuck here on Earth an amazing first-person look of what it’s like to be an… Read more…

Read More:
Incredible First Person Footage of a Real Spacewalk Will Leave You Speechless

iOS 10.3.2 arrives with nearly two dozen security fixes

Enlarge Apple has just released iOS 10.3.2 to the public, following around a month and a half of beta testing that began shortly after iOS 10.3 came out. It’s available as an over-the-air update or through iTunes for any devices that run iOS 10: the iPhone 5 and newer, the fourth-generation iPad and newer, the iPad Mini 2 and newer, both iPad Pros, and the sixth-generation iPod Touch. Like the intervening iOS 10.3.1 update, the release notes for 10.3.2 only say that it “includes bug fixes and improves the security of your iPhone or iPad,” which suggests that the release is primarily focused on security updates. According to Apple’s security update page , it fixes quite a wide range of bugs that affect everything from the iPhone 5 on up: one in the AVEVideoEncoder, one in CoreAudio, two in iBooks, one in IOSurface, two in the kernel, one Notifications bug, one in Safari, four SQLite bugs, one TextInput problem, a whopping eight WebKit-related fixes that address an even larger number of vulnerabilities, and an update to the certificate trust policy. As with any update that fixes a large number of bugs, you should patch as soon as you can to prevent exploits of the now-public vulnerabilities. Read on Ars Technica | Comments

View the original here:
iOS 10.3.2 arrives with nearly two dozen security fixes