#APPLE LOOP: APPLE REMOVES IPHONE 7 FEATURE, A FASTER APPLE WATCH, SOLVING SIRI'S PROBLEMS#
Taking a look back at another week of news from Cupertino, this week’s Apple Loop includes another feature removed from the iPhone 7, the magic being held back for 2017′s iPhone 8, the success of the iPhone SE, John Gruber’s review of WWDC, a preview of iOS 10, a new filesystem and name for macOS, faster Apple Watch software, single sign-on for Apple TV, Xcode improvements, and the problem with Siri.
Apple Loop is here to remind you of a few of the very many discussions that have happened around Apple over the last seven days
Say Goodbye To The Home Key
Apple is looking to make the iPhone 7 stand out when it arrives in September, and it looks like one more thing is being taken away. The removal of the 3.5mm stereo jack is already controversial, but the replacement of the physical home key with a capacitive surface has caught Gordon Kelly’s investigative eye:
Following leaks in April, MobiPicker has published photos of what it claims is a new iPhone 7 home button and it is the biggest redesign since Touch ID. In short: it’s no longer a button.
Instead Apple has turned it into a touch sensitive surface. As MobiPicker explains:
“Our source tells us that this button is perfectly in level with the rest of the bezel and cannot be pressed in. The button is touch-sensitive and users will have to perform tapping actions for various functions, like tap and hold for Siri, double tap to see the running apps, etc.”
When Magic Is Left In The Laboratory
The problem with trying to sell the iPhone 7 or iPhone 7 Plus as revolutionary is the excitement that is building up around 2017′s iPhone 8. That is symptomatic of a new-found reluctance by Apple to take risks with new technology such as a curved glass screen. I’ve explored the issues here on Forbes:
Patents take time to process, and companies will generally file many patents that will never show up commercially available hardware. But Apple’s recent hardware releases have all felt safe in terms of pushing new technology to consumers or making notable departures from the expected form factors, especially in the smartphones and phablets of the Tim Cook years.
Should Apple really be seen as a company that waits for the competition to perfect an idea before it decides to join the party, especially when it is working on the idea in its own labs? Or should Apple continue to take risks and look for more than a collection of small wins that will keep its product lines selling but hands control of ‘this is what an innovative smartphone looks like‘ to another manufacturer?
Just How Well Is The iPhone SE Doing?
While the focus on the unreleased iPhones, Apple’s other 2016 smartphone release – the iPhone SE – has been doing a lot of good work in the $300-$500 price range. It’s grabbing market share and helping Apple grow in new territories. Alice Truong reports for Qz:
With the iPhone SE, Apple, a luxury brand that has been hesitant to lower its prices, is now targeting price-sensitive customers in two markets with the biggest potential for growth: India and China. While analysis of Apple’s web traffic overall following the iPhone SE’s unveiling reflected relatively lukewarm interest, visits from India and China spiked 160% and 150%, respectively, far above the 80% average jump globally.
WWDC Highlights
The big tentpole of Apple’s week is WWDC, so let’s get started on coverage from around the web on the main topics. Before that it would remiss of me not to pick out John Gruber’s collected thoughts on the announcements and the venue:
Moscone West isn’t big enough for 5,000 attendees to fit in a room, so a few thousand WWDC attendees always had to sit in an overflow room where they’d watch the keynote on video. That’s a major reason why attendees would line up at the crack of dawn, even though the keynotes start at 10 am. The Bill Graham Civic Auditorium has no such limitation, and it was nice to see (and hear) all attendees. The sound system there was just great, and the huge screen behind the stage was good too. I give the new venue a thumbs-up.
iOS 10 Announced
The lion’s share of time on stage was handed to the launch of the tenth major version of iOS. Highlighting the ten, Apple’s Craig Federighi and Eddy Cue went through the popular Buzzfeed format of ‘Ten New Things’ about iOS 10. Which was cute, but hid a lot of new features in the mobile operating system. Never fear though, Forbes’ Gordon Kelly is on the case:
Yes, after hints, Apple is finally going to allow the removal of core iOS apps. And not just a few but every single one. Here’s the list in full:
Calculator, Calendar, Compass, Contacts, FaceTime, Find My Friends, Home, iBooks, iCloud Drive, iTunes Store, Mail, Maps, Music, News, Notes, Podcasts, Reminders, Stocks, Tips, Videos, Voice Memos, Watch, Weather.
How does it work? Just hold a finger on the app and it will jiggle like any third-party app and an x will appear allowing you to remove it.
Be warned, the hiding of the app icon will remove user data. As these apps are linked throughout the OS you may lose some functionality in other apps, so take care!
A New File System For A Newly Named OS
Ewan Spence , CONTRIBUTOR I look at the impact of mobile technology and online media.
Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own. Continued from page 1
WWDC Highlights
The big tentpole of Apple’s week is WWDC, so let’s get started on coverage from around the web on the main topics. Before that it would remiss of me not to pick out John Gruber’s collected thoughts on the announcements and the venue:
Moscone West isn’t big enough for 5,000 attendees to fit in a room, so a few thousand WWDC attendees always had to sit in an overflow room where they’d watch the keynote on video. That’s a major reason why attendees would line up at the crack of dawn, even though the keynotes start at 10 am. The Bill Graham Civic Auditorium has no such limitation, and it was nice to see (and hear) all attendees. The sound system there was just great, and the huge screen behind the stage was good too. I give the new venue a thumbs-up.
iOS 10 Announced
The lion’s share of time on stage was handed to the launch of the tenth major version of iOS. Highlighting the ten, Apple’s Craig Federighi and Eddy Cue went through the popular Buzzfeed format of ‘Ten New Things’ about iOS 10. Which was cute, but hid a lot of new features in the mobile operating system. Never fear though, Forbes’ Gordon Kelly is on the case:
Yes, after hints, Apple is finally going to allow the removal of core iOS apps. And not just a few but every single one. Here’s the list in full:
Calculator, Calendar, Compass, Contacts, FaceTime, Find My Friends, Home, iBooks, iCloud Drive, iTunes Store, Mail, Maps, Music, News, Notes, Podcasts, Reminders, Stocks, Tips, Videos, Voice Memos, Watch, Weather.
How does it work? Just hold a finger on the app and it will jiggle like any third-party app and an x will appear allowing you to remove it.
Be warned, the hiding of the app icon will remove user data. As these apps are linked throughout the OS you may lose some functionality in other apps, so take care! More details here.
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Apple CEO Tim Cook (image: Getty) Apple CEO Tim Cook (image: Getty)
A New File System For A Newly Named OS
The presentation around the desk bound OS stared with the expected name change (OSX is now macOS), but the focus from the stage was about Apple’s ‘continuity’ function and the ability to reclaim space in your local storage by putting little-used files into the cloud (both of which require users to have iCloud accounts and potentially purchasing extra storage). The big change in macOS was the new file system, better suited for the huge multi-media files and SSD drives of today. Lee Hutchinson looks at AFS (Apple’s File System) for Ars Technica in exquisite detail:
To start, it shows that APFS is based around inodes, with 64-bit inode numbering support. It also massively increases the granularity of object time-stamping: APFS supports nanosecond time stamp granularity rather than the 1-second time stamp granularity in HFS+. Nanosecond timestamps are important in a modern file system because they help with atomicity—in a file system that keeps a record of writes, having nanosecond-level granularity is important in tracking the order of operations.
APFS also adds a copy-on-write metadata scheme that Apple calls “Crash Protection,” which aims to ensure that file system commits and writes to the file system journal stay in sync even if something happens during the write—like if the system loses power.
More than most features, remember this is still a developer preview with huge restrictions and the potential for an almighty screw-up. Do not use this unless you are ready to lose all of the test data you will be working with.