Category Archives: iPhone

The iPhone push

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I explained that my device was randomly shutting down and wouldn’t come back on for several hours. As soon as I finished the explanation, the greeter said, “Have you considered upgrading to a new iPhone recently?”

I was holding my iPhone XS Max in my hand, but the Apple store employee clearly must have thought it was an iPhone X. I responded by saying, “There’s an iPhone newer than the iPhone XS Max?” and she quickly laughed and tried to play it off… More here.

I think many of us have been seeing this trend growing for some time.

I fail to understand Apple…

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I fail to understand why companies like Apple don’t address the entire market. That means various smartphone sizes and various smartphone prices. I don’t believe that making a less expensive phone with fewer features eats away at the higher priced items. People usually want the most features at a price they can afford. But some people really want a smaller phone. Or a less expensive phone. And if they find one elsewhere, Apple has lost a sale, and likely a customer forever.

As an example, I was at the Apple Store a few days ago getting the battery on my 6S replaced. It’s been acting strange for about 6 months but only in early January did it actually tell me that it needed to be replaced. After the special price ended. Hmmmm.

In any case, while there I looked at the XS and XR. The XR is a nice size but noticeably heavier. The XS is an okay size, but I have no compelling reason to buy one as my 6S is doing fine for what I need. And even if I wanted a new phone, I’d look at the X which is almost everything the XS is but a lot less pricey. Bob

Bob makes a very good point. Look at the number of budget and middle-range Android phones. Apple has nothing to compete on price alone which is the overriding factor for the vast majority of customers.

The iPhone SE is back, sort of

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It’s not certain why Apple is only now bringing the iPhone SE back for clearance sales. It won’t mind selling more iPhones, though. The company recently warned that it will miss holiday season financial estimates after iPhone sales in China and other areas fell short of expectations, and this could help shore up numbers (albeit in a modest way) as 2019 gets started… More here.

Apple needs to bring the SE back with a full coverage screen. It’s as simple as that really. Yes, it may haemorrhage the larger iPhone sales, but I suspect there are many many people who would like a smaller iPhone. I am one of them.

1 iPhone X, 15 months, 94%

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I received my iPhone X on 7th November 2017 and have used it extensively since. I consider myself a power user who uses it for a variety of tasks and who consistently does the following each day-

  • Approx one hour of navigation using TomTom
  • Three to four hours of podcast / music playback
  • Many notifications and communications throughout the day
  • Some game playing
  • At least an hour of reading
  • Web browsing and a multitude of other tasks to complete the set. The screen below says a lot-


So, after 15 months of heavy usage I have 94% battery health which Apple classes as ‘peak performance’. If that rate continued the phone would last for decades, but that will obviously not be the case.

The thing is that the X is still as fast as it was on the first day, it has no damage and there is no reason at all to replace it. The camera may not be the best on the market, the screen may not be the biggest, but every feature is either ‘good enough’ or ‘excellent’.

No smartphone is as buttery smooth as the iPhone in day to day use and this is one major reason why I will be sticking with it. 100% reliability to date, no glitches at all, and the same super quick performance is why I will keep this iPhone, and why Apple may struggle to make as much money as before in this area. IT REALLY DOES JUST WORK.

The (i)Phone business is not what it was

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But that wasn’t all. In an extraordinary letter to Apple investors, CEO Tim Cook also told stockholders what he should have been saying for years: The company’s iPhone business has shifted into a lower gear because of changes in the smartphone market and consumer behavior. This should have been absolutely predictable to anyone who was able to peer outside of Apple’s bubble. Executives have failed in their duty to warn investors ahead of time about all this, and reality is finally and all at once catching up to Apple… More at Time.

There is the expected panic from certain areas of the tech press who love to overblow things like this to get more traffic, but this also represents the early true evidence that the mobile industry is changing.

I cannot count the number of people I know who have owned their smartphones for more than two years, and especially iPhones, because they still work. I still use the iPhone X because the newer phones are so similar and it is working fine and so all I can do is throw some ideas out there as to why Apple is struggling-

The new iPhones are too expensive

The new iPhones offer little over the previous models

Trump’s trade war with China

The smartphone industry is unable to innovate at a level that spurs yearly upgrades – there are simply not enough obvious new features that make people run out and buy a new phone

Android is actually looking competitive in many areas and is running ahead in the ‘new feature’ sector

I don’t know what else, but I suspect the lack of profit will be made up for by AirPods, the Apple Watch and other products. Your thoughts?

Quick Transfer Revolution

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Wouldn’t it be great if there was a way to quickly copy any kind of media, document or file from any Mac or PC to iPhone and iPad in exactly 2 clicks? No iTunes syncs, without iCloud, and for free?

Well, today we’re announcing just that. It’s called Quick Transfer and it’s now available with no restrictions in the free version of iMazing… More here.

The promise is great. I do hope it works as good as it sounds.

iPhone X display issues acknowledged by Apple

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Apple has determined that some iPhone X displays may experience touch issues due to a component that might fail on the display module. An affected device may exhibit the following:

The display, or part of the display, does not respond or responds intermittently to touch
The display reacts even though it was not touched

Apple or an Apple Authorized Service Provider will replace the display module on eligible devices, free of charge.

No other iPhone models are part of this program… More here.

I have see this happen on mine for a while, usually at the far edges of the screen. I didn’t think much of it, but guess it will need a trip to the Apple store to fix.

iPhones are hard to use

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On two occasions on the same bus route, I couldn’t stand to watch late-middle-aged persons (eyeglasses perched on forehead in one case) struggle to read their iPhones. I took hold of their phones for a moment each (I got permission) and brought up the well-hidden screen for text-size selection. They picked the bigger fonts they’d needed all along. They were so grateful it was embarrassing… More here.

An interesting angle in this article. Not something many people think about.

on the iphone x and ios 12 gestures

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Conceptually, I still miss the home button a bit – there was something nice about how it was “out of band” from every app-interaction  – it was kind of reassuring that to know you were communicating directly with the device, and unlike a gesture it was tough to do accidentally. Also, the home button was always trivial to locate, no matter how you were holding the phone – if an app has switched into landscape mode, even though there’s that marker line, the direction to swipe might not be instantly clear… More at Kirk’s UI Dev Blog.

Good stuff as ever from Kirk.