Originally published at: http://appletalk.com.au/2017/12/thursday-morning-news071217/
Consumer Reports ranks the iPhone X lower than the iPhone 8 and 8 Plus in their 2017 iPhone rankings. Their reasoning includes battery life and durability differences; despite the iPhone 8, 8 Plus, and X all having similar double-sided glass designs, the iPhone X fared worse than the 8 or 8 Plus in their drop tests. Battery life on the iPhone X as tested was also lower than the iPhone 8 Plus, with the X coming in at 19.5 hours compared to the 21 hours of the 8 Plus.
MacRumors has the iPhone X charging speed roundup you’ve been looking for. They compare the differences between charging the iPhone X using a variety of wireless and wired charging methods. It should come as no surprise that 5W wireless charging was the slowest, followed by 5W wired, 7.5W wireless, 12W wired, with charging speed mostly plateauing with charging bricks capable of 18W or more, in either regular USB or USB-C flavours. The moral of the story? If you want the fastest and cheapest charging and don’t mind a cable, get your hands on an 12W USB power adapter charger.
Gizmodo tells us about the largest ever clinical trial to see if mental health apps really work in preventing depression amongst adolescents. Researches from a number of Australia universities recently received $2.18 million in funding to lead the study, which will involve 20,000 Year 7 students using mental health apps for a period of 12 months to see if they can help prevent depression.
Amazon Prime Video launches on the Apple TV today, letting owners of the Apple TV stream Prime Original Series and Movies. More significantly, the launch of Amazon Prime Video is one of the two deliverables Apple still has outstanding in 2017 — the other being the launch of the iMac Pro, seeing as HomePods were pushed to 2018.
Apple has also rebranded the iTunes Movies Twitter account to Apple TV. @iTunesMovies has been updated to @AppleTV, presumably to promote more than just movies, and potentially even Apple’s future video streaming service.
A new update for macOS High Sierra has been released, with macOS High Sierra 10.13.2 now available to all users following about a month of beta testing. The update notes say it improves compatibility with third-party USB audio devices, and compatibility with Braille displays in Mail, but there’s plenty of security fixes included as part of the release, too.
Portable photo printers aren’t exactly new, but the new Lifeprint photo and video printer prints even bigger pictures than before. It includes Wi-Fi if you want to print happy snaps from the other side of the world, or Bluetooth if you’re just printing some more personal shots, and built-in augmented reality features allow you to point your iPhone at the print to see it come to life as a moving picture. While the printer will set you back $205, the 30-print pack is over $1 per print, although the 110-print is a more reasonably $80.
If you use a bunch of messaging services and wish there was some way you consolidate them into the one app, look no further. Mac app Franz takes your Slack, WhatsApp, Messenger, and whatever other chat platforms you use and puts them all in the same place. Being free and open source is also a big plus, in my book, and if you swing that way, it’s also available for Windows and Linux.
AppleInsider says that recent Apple software issues are undoubtedly bad for a number of different reasons, but the company shouldn’t be looking to make reactionary personnel decisions as a result. To be clear, no one is suggesting that Apple leadership be fired over the issues.
A slightly different take on Apple’s recent software issues, especially concerning macOS, is that for whatever reason, large parts of the previously-untouched macOS codebase are now being touched. This could be for maintainability reasons, re-writing parts of it to be in Swift, or preparing for a large overhaul of macOS, but whatever the reason, things are happening.