Posts in Linked

iPhone XS Line Capturing Selfies with the Appearance of Skin Smoothing→

The iPhone XS and XS Max have been in the hands of users for a week now, and during that time many selfies have undoubtedly been taken on the new devices. Some users have noticed an unexpected difference with their selfies, however: their skin looks smoother and less realistic than it should. Juli Clover reports on this for MacRumors:

When taking a selfie in a situation where lighting is less than ideal, such as indoors or outdoors in areas with lower lighting, the iPhone XS Max appears to be applying a drastic smoothing effect that can hide freckles, blemishes, and other issues.

In full outdoor lighting the problem is less apparent, which has led to speculation that the skin smoothing is actually a result of some heavy-handed noise reduction techniques.

You can test the new camera yourself with an iPhone XS Max and an older iPhone like an iPhone X model by taking selfies indoors and outdoors and comparing the differences between the two. In almost all cases where the lighting is low or uneven, photos captured with an iPhone XS Max look dramatically different.

9to5Mac has a quote from one user, Abdul Dremali, who said, “Apple reached out to me yesterday and are working on this issue actively.” That isn’t necessarily confirmation that a skin smoothing effect is being applied, but it does indicate that something’s happening with the XS front-facing camera that wasn’t intended.

There’s often one controversy or another surrounding the launch of a new iPhone, such as antennas not working properly or iPhones bending under pressure. This issue doesn’t seem quite like those past problems, as it should be a quick fix in software if something’s not functioning correctly. In 2018 there’s a lot that happens in software every time a photo is taken on an iPhone; it wouldn’t surprise me if a small tweak arrives in iOS 12.0.1 that helps skin remain natural to the eye no matter the lighting conditions. One way or another, we should hear more from Apple before long.

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Connected, Episode 211: That’s Enough To Shrink Some Jeans→

The guys debate the Mac’s future being tied to the quality of Marzipan apps before sharing their impressions of the iPhone XS Max and the Apple Watch Series 4. Some advice on how to listen to the show correctly is also shared.

On this week’s episode of Connected, we talk about iPad apps on the Mac and share our thoughts on new iPhones and Watches after nearly a week of usage. You can listen here.

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Apple Rolls Out TestFlight Public Invite Links→

Benjamin Mayo, writing for 9to5Mac:

Apple is rolling out a new TestFlight feature which enables developers to share a public URL for an app beta. Customers can simply open the link on their iPhone or iPad and automatically enroll into the beta testing group through the TestFlight app.

This feature was announced back at WWDC in June but has only just started showing up for developers inside the App Store Connect interface. Previously to public links, developers had to manually ask people for email addresses and then send out invite in emails to each person individually.

As someone who’s routinely testing dozens of apps for review purposes, this sounds a lot more convenient than the current email-based invitation system, both for developers and users. By default, developers don’t see the names and emails of users who sign up with a link. I have a feeling this option is going to be frequently used for public betas with large pools of testers.

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Apple Completes Acquisition of Shazam→

Late last year, Apple announced that it had agreed to purchase Shazam, the music-discovery service. The acquisition was held up for a time by an investigation by the European Commission, which ultimately said the deal is not anti-competitive and could go forward. Today Apple announced that the deal had been completed.

In a press release, Apple said:

Shazam has been downloaded over 1 billion times around the world, and users identify songs using the Shazam app over 20 million times each day. With pioneering innovation in music identification, Shazam helps people discover, interact with and share video, audio or printed content across devices and mediums — and allows music fans to follow their favorite artists and share in the thrill of discovery.

Apple also announced that Shazam would soon be offered ad-free to all users.

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iOS 12 on the iPhone 5S, iPhone 6 Plus, and iPad mini 2→

Andrew Cunningham, writing for Ars Technica:

I’ve been testing iOS on old devices for six years, and I’ve never seen a release that has actually improved performance on old devices. At best, updates like iOS 6, iOS 9, and iOS 10 didn’t make things much worse; at worst, updates like iOS 7 and iOS 8 made old devices feel like old devices. Anyone using an older device can safely upgrade to iOS 12 without worrying about speed, and that’s a big deal. You’ll notice an improvement most of the time, even on newer devices (my iPad Air 2, which had started to feel its age running iOS 11, feels great with iOS 12).

As I noted in my review, I was hoping someone would run actual measurements for different system features on older devices running multiple versions of iOS. Cunningham did exactly that, going all the way back to iOS 10 on the iPhone 5S.

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Connected, Episode 210: Cold Feet Apple Blogger→

Federico has published his iOS 12 review, and the boys get nerdy talking about Siri Shortcuts and some updated apps before Stephen talks about macOS Mojave’s launch.

On last week’s episode of Connected, we covered some behind-the-scenes aspects of my iOS 12 review and the upcoming release of macOS Mojave. You can listen here.

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How Apple Made Its New Apple Watch Faces→

Apple has a variety of new watch faces built into watchOS 5. A couple are exclusive to the new Series 4 Watch, but older models will still have access to faces like Fire and Water, Vapor, and Liquid Metal. What you may not know about these faces is that they were all created using practical effects. Josh Rubin at Cool Hunting writes:

Talking to Alan Dye, Vice President of User Interface Design at Apple, about this particular project he shared that “it’s more of a story about the design team. We could have done this digitally, but we shot this all in a studio. It’s so indicative of how the design team works—bringing our best and varied talents together to create these faces.” Surely it would have been cheaper to just render fire, water, liquid metal and vapor, but this is what makes Apple special—putting in the time and effort to do something right and real might only be noticed directly by a few, but is certainly felt by all.

To see this watch face project in action, check out the behind-the-scenes video below.

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Austin Mann’s Review of the iPhone XS Cameras→

In addition to the early slate of iPhone reviews from the press, it’s become tradition in recent years for each iPhone to be graded as a camera by professional photographer Austin Mann. I especially enjoyed Mann’s review this year of the iPhone XS camera system. He writes:

Most of the time my expectations for camera upgrades on “S” years aren’t so high, but after shooting with the iPhone XS for a week, I can confidently say it’s a huge camera upgrade. There’s a lot of little improvements, but Smart HDR definitely takes the cake. This is a feature and technology that improves virtually everything you capture with your iPhone camera. I think you’ll be really thrilled when you experience the results yourself.

As I shared in last week’s issue of MacStories Weekly for Club MacStories, the iPhone XS and XR announcements caught me by surprise in that I expected there to be more change in the devices compared to last year’s iPhone X. I’ve ordered a XS Max, but the primary reason for my upgrade was the additional screen real estate compared to my X; bigger display aside, September’s keynote didn’t provide much of a compelling reason for me to purchase a new phone this year. However, Mann’s review and that of John Gruber have helped provide much-needed additional detail on the camera upgrades in the XS, which sound impressively significant.

One of the standout lines in Mann’s review for me comes near the beginning, where he says, “iPhone XS captures what your eyes see.” It’s hard to find higher praise than that.

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The iPhone XS’ Camera and Neural Engine→

Apple describes the XS as sporting “dual 12MP wide-angle and telephoto cameras”. This will be obvious to most of you, but in case it’s not, they’re not just dual rear-facing lenses, they’re dual rear-facing cameras. The wide-angle and telephoto lenses each have their own sensors. As a user you don’t have to know this, and should never notice it. The iPhone XS telephoto camera is the same as in the iPhone X — same lens, same sensor.

But the iPhone XS wide-angle camera has a new lens, which I believe to be superior to last year’s, and an amazing new sensor which is remarkably better than last year’s. And last year’s was very good.

Anytime an iPhone review gets too technical about camera details and photography lexicon, I tend to gloss over it and move on. I’m not a camera expert and I usually don’t care about the nitty-gritty. But John Gruber’s analysis of the iPhone XS’ camera stack, A12 SoC, and seemingly unadvertised improved sensor is one of the most interesting camera-focused iPhone reviews I’ve read in years. I don’t want to spoil it – move past the photos at the beginning and keep reading.

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