Wednesday Morning News

Originally published at: http://appletalk.com.au/2017/10/wednesday-morning-news251017/

With iPhone X pre-orders opening this Friday, Apple has announced that there will be limited stock available in store for those wanting to try their luck the week after. November 3 is when the iPhone X officially launches, but we should see how bad the iPhone X shipping situation is once pre-orders open. Apple has also invited members of the iPhone Upgrade Program to check their eligibility, but unfortunately that’s not an option for any country outside of the US.

I’m pretty curious about the number of devices that will be available in store. If the iPhone X has had half as many production constraints and issues as the rumours have said it has, it seems unlikely that Apple stores won’t sell out of the iPhone X on launch day within minutes. Given that the iPhone X launches in 55 countries, and there’s some pretty serious regions in that list, I suspect that Apple has prioritised store stock over pre-orders, but we’ll have to wait and see.

The latest report from the supply chain says Apple might only ship half the number of iPhone X units that it wants to this year. Faults in the OLED panel manufacturing process and problems assembling the modules used for Face ID are to blame, with new estimates putting iPhone X shipments at just 20 million units, with Apple’s production lines making around 10 million iPhone X units per month.

If you’ve bought a new car recently and it has wireless charging for smartphones, there’s a good chance that it’ll also work with the Qi-compatible iPhone 8 and iPhone X. Apple’s support article on the topic lists the car manufacturers that have been including Qi-compatible wireless charging pads that’ll work, although some US car manufacturers are using some different standard.

Apple’s latest videos on improving your smartphone photography skills are all about portrait lighting and the portrait lighting effects you can achieve with the new iPhone 8 Plus. The same Portrait Lighting feature works on the iPhone X when that gets released, too, and not just on the rear-facing camera, but on the front-facing one, too, thanks to the advanced sensors packed into the notch at the top of the screen.

The FBI says it has been unable to retrieve data from 6,900 devices, which were encrypted in such a way that the FBI couldn’t access them. While it seems like a large number, the 6,900 figure represents about half of all the devices that were accessed by the FBI, with the other half presumably successfully accessed, despite there being no clear statement on how many of those devices were iPhones or iPads.

Six Colors wants to believe that there’s a new Mac mini in the works from Apple. Jason Snell speculates that if Apple CEO Tim Cook says there’s nothing to announce right now, the implication is that there will be something to announce next year. It’s been three years since the last update to the Mac mini, and even longer since the form factor was changed.

Apple’s latest hire for international TV development is Morgan Wandell, former Amazon Studios executive. Wandall will be taking on the role of head of international creative development for worldwide video, reporting to the former Sony execs who now lead Apple’s original programming efforts.

Analytics claim that featuring an app in the new iOS 11 App Store as the “app of the day” can boost downloads by over 2000%, with games seeing slightly smaller increases at just under 1000%. Interestingly, weekday features are more effective than weekend ones, but unsurprisingly, free apps and games saw a high increase in downloads compared to paid ones.

Buzzfeed interviewed Apple CEO Tim Cook and SVP of Apple Retail Angela Ahrendts at the opening of Apple’s Michigan Avenue store in Chicago. The pair mostly discussed the new store, but there were also very brief statements on iPhone X availability, as well as succession plans for when Cook steps down as CEO, with Ahrendts denying she was next in line.

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There’d have to be a few people out there like me; I’ve held off getting an 8 so I could see the price difference between the 8 and the X phone plans. I may yet end up ordering the 8.

#RomanNumeralsAreStupid