I’ve enjoyed my first week with the iPhone X more than I’ve enjoyed my first week with any other iPhone except perhaps for my first iPhone, the iPhone 3G back in 2008. I’ve picked up my iPhone 7 several times this week, and it now seems so dated because they lack the huge screen. The larger screen on the iPhone X quickly feels like this is the screen that was always supposed to be on an iPhone, and I’m sure that in a few years almost all iPhone users will feel the same way. The screen in the standout feature, but Face ID runs a close second because it is so incredible to have the iPhone unlock without my having to do anything. And thanks to the release of the new Clips app (discussed below), we are now starting to see new and interesting things that can be done with all of the front-facing cameras the sit in the notch at the top of the screen. And now, the news of note from the past week:
- California attorney David Sparks gave some of his initial thoughts about the iPhone X.
- South Carolina attorney Justin Kahn explains what he likes about the iPhone X on his iPad Notebook website.
- Jason Snell of Six Colors discusses the iPhone X after using it for a week.
- Michael Gartenberg of iMore discusses what makes the iPhone X so special.
- By default, you need to look at an iPhone X to unlock it. With earlier iPhones, you can unlock with a fingerprint, even if someone else puts your finger on the device while you are asleep. That led to some chaos this week when a woman on a Qatar Airways flight put her sleeping husband’s finger on his iPhone to unlock it and discovered that he was having an affair. The woman, who reportedly had been drinking, then became disruptive, and ultimately the flight had to be diverted to get her and her husband off the plane. Saurabh Sinhai of The Times of India has additional details.
- Nick Compton of Wallpaper interview’s Apple’s Jony Ive to discuss Apple’s new Apple Park building, and other Apple design issues. The photography in this article is impressive.
- Now that we all know what the new iPhone looks like, what will the next iPad look like? Mark Gurman and Alex Webb of Bloomberg have some ideas, and Jason Snell of Six Color notes that these predictions seem reasonable — stuff like Face ID on an iPad and a new Apple Pencil.
- Peeking further into the future, Michael Simon of Macworld discusses a possible wearable device by Apple that could be targeted for a 2020 release. Apple CEO Tim Cook does love to talk about Augmented Reality, and as cool as it is on an iPhone, it does seem like Apple has additional applications in mind for this technology.
- Apple may be working on a second edition Apple Pencil, but what are the best styluses today? The GoodNotes Blog selects some favorites, and I agree with this list. The Apple Pencil is by far the best choice, but if you don’t have an iPad Pro there are some other good ones to choose from.
- John Gruber of Daring Fireball discusses the new Clips app by Apple, which is now at version 2.0. As Griber notes, it is a major upgrade. One of the fun new features is to use the iPhone X TrueDepth camera to place yourself on the Millennium Falcon. I showed off a little by making this short video right after the app was updated, but then Rian Johnson (the director of the upcoming Star Wars movie The Last Jedi) posted this video and immediately put mine to shame.
- Speaking of the front-facing cameras on the iPhone X, Jason Snell wrote a good article for Tom’s Guide explaining how to use Face ID on the iPhone X.
- The visitor center at Apple Park opens a week from today, November 17, according to Chance Miller of 9to5Mac. It’s nice that Apple will finally have a designated area for the general public to visit the Apple campus. I’ve visited Apple’s Infinite Loop campus in the past with an Apple employee escorting me, but having that friend on the inside was always critical. That changes next week.
- Jessica Smith of Business Insider reports that the attempted merger between T-Mobile and Spring is now called off.
- Tomorrow, November 11, if you exercise for 11 minutes with your Apple Watch, you’ll earn a Veteran’s Day badge. iMore has the details.
- David Pogue of Yahoo compares the Apple TV, Roku and other streaming boxes. He says that the Apple TV is the best, but the Roku is a great value because it is less expensive. If you have lots of other Apple devices, however, I think that the Apple TV makes the most sense.
- And finally, Joanna Stern of the Wall Street Journal discusses how to use the iPhone X, but does it by taking on the personality of the new Animoji in the Messages app. The video is amusing and informative:
Dear Jeff. like you I have been an early adopter of the iPhone X and have loved it, with the exception of one serious problem which has impacted me and, I understand, a number of other persons. I would like to take this opportunity of explaining the problem and then the solution. I believe that I and the others affected have encountered a bug in the iPhone X and the way that it works with iOS 11.
Living in Hong Kong and being an international businessman I use a lot of VoIP services. When I received my iPhone X on that Friday morning when they were released, I did my installation using my iPhone 7+ which was already running iOS 11. This gave an extremely simple and fast replica of the iPhone 7+ installation on my iPhone X.
However, I rapidly discovered that the call functions of my VoIP apps were not working, although the chat functions were. The affected apps included WhatsApp, Skype, Duo, Viber and Groundwire. What made things even more frustrating was that I could receive and make VoIP calls on my iPhone 7+, connected to the same Wi-Fi network as my iPhone X, at the same time that the same calls on my iPhone X would fail.
I checked that all of my VoIP apps had been given access to the iPhone X microphone, and I deleted and reinstalled the said apps, but the VoIP call function would still not work.
I contacted the developers of my VoIP apps and started exchanging log files with them, ran various tests et cetera but none of them could see what was the cause of the problem.
I contacted Apple and spent about an hour on the phone (they called me on my mobile carrier number) with a very helpful gentleman from New Zealand who said he had not heard of an issue like this before and put me on hold several times whilst he consulted with colleagues and researched internal materials. He had me upgrade my iOS 11.1.1 to iOS 11.1.2, delete and reinstall the VoIP apps and eventually admit that Apple had no solution and that they did not support third-party apps. Whilst I understood his position, I pointed out that it did seem to be a rather unusual coincidence that all of my VoIP apps would all fail to be able to make telephone calls, but nonetheless could provide chat services. He agreed that this was unusual and said that he would report this pattern.
I also posted a few requests for assistance and or information on various Internet forums and besides the standard derogatory comments about using Apple products, switching to android and generally being criticised for being an early adopter, several people confirmed that they too were having the same problem.
Today, I believe that I found the solution which has apparently worked for others and has worked for me and I thought that I would share it with the readers of your blog, because being major users of iPhones, a number of your readers may have also encountered this problem. The answer is in this thread, in the official Apple support communities, https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8150545
Basically, you have to go to the iPhone X settings, go to General, go to Reset and select ” Reset All Settings”. This will bring up a message that says” This will reset all settings and your Apple pay cards will be removed. No data or media will be deleted”. Whilst that is true, because it deletes all of your settings, for me it took about three hours to reset Apple pay, login details for each app where appropriate, insert my various Apple IDs, iCloud accounts, reset wallpapers, reconfigure control centre, etc etc.
As far as I can tell, this reset has solved the problem and I hope that it is resolved it permanently. No one seems to know why it works and my best guess is that it is somehow related to setting up my iPhone X from my iPhone 7+, rather than doing a fresh installation from scratch. Having said that with nearly 200 apps on my iPhone , doing a fresh installation would have taken probably an entire day if not two. It seems to me, as I mentioned at the beginning that there is a bug somewhere in the iOS system that Apple is currently unaware of. I have written this not as a complaint but rather to bring it to your attention so that if you feel it is appropriate, you may share my experience and the solution with your readers.