I can’t believe an entire year has passed since I upgraded to iPhone 7 plus. I love my iPhone and the plus form factor. My initial reason for going plus was to get the better camera features, it is after all my primary camera, but I found myself actually enjoying having the larger screen. While the iPhone 7 plus was an improvement over my iPhone 6 plus in almost every way it wasn’t a big leap in technology. That big leap in technology arrived today in the form of the iPhone X.

Unboxing

The most remarkable moment unboxing the phone is when you see the screen for the first time. It’s amazing how much it reminds me of the iPhone 3g and 3 gs. The chrome band around the face, the rounded corners are really striking after staring at the 7 plus front face for over a year and previous generations for ten. The lack of a home button also takes you aback. How are you going to unlock and work the damn thing? It brought the realization that I was going to have to learn a few gestures before I could even use this new phone. Getting the phone out of the box revealed the usual iPhone accessories. The usual charging block, USB-Lightning cable, wired ear buds, and headphone jack dongle are all under the phone.

Setup

In anticipation of getting the X, I started off the day making an encrypted backup on my laptop. I want all my settings and health data restored on the new phone so an encrypted back is the only way to transfer them to the new phone. Prior to the backup iTunes reminded me to install iOS 11 which I did assuming the iPhone X would come pre-installed with it. The new install process is very slick. Just put the phone next to another iOS device, enter your phone unlock pin, and the initial critical settings are transferred. The Face ID registration was very fast, probably less than a minute. Activation on the cellular network failed the first time but worked fine on the first retry. The last step asked me if I wanted to set the X up as a new phone or restore from iCloud or iTunes backup. I picked iTunes and connected the phone to my laptop. Then iTunes threw up a warning that my phone was running an older version of iOS and I would have to update the phone. (Airhorns) The upgrade took agonizingly long. I was getting antsy. I tried not to freak out when I saw the estimated time start at 2 hours, drop to 40 minutes, and then start counting down at 20 minutes. The actual upgrade took around 30-40 minutes. When it was done, I was able to get the backup restored to the phone and I was in. Here are some quick notes on my experience.

Size

After being in the “Plus Club” for so long this phone feels tiny in my hands. It feels small and as when holding other non-plus phones it should feel disappointing because of the non-plus screen size but not with this iPhone. The screen goes out to the edges. It looks so large in comparison to how it feels. It’s like the Tardis of iPhones.

True Tone

This is the first device I own with True Tone and I don’t think I want another device without True Tone. The color of this display is stunning. There were some times when I felt like I was looking at a printed page. It’s like looking at a Retina display for the first time. You never want to look at a non-retina display ever again.

The Notch

I thought I would hate it. It’s weird. I don’t hate it. But you stop noticing in in portrait mode. The same can not be said when you rotate the phone on it’s side. That black notch in my beautiful screen is very noticeable when you hold the phone in landscape. We are all going to need to get use to this new feature of our phones.

Face ID

Face ID works great and works best when you don’t think about it. During my first few minutes with the phone I did have a couple of misfires. One because of the angle of my phone (almost pointed away from my face) and the other because I flubbed the unlock gesture. After two to three minutes you just get used to it. Everything gets smoother when you just start to expect that it works. The new unlock gesture is that easy to learn. Later when I jumped in my car, Face ID worked fine with my sun glasses on and the phone at a low angle/position relative to my face. I thought for sure it wouldn’t work 100% of the time but sure enough it was reliable.

Speed

This phone is fast. It’s noticeably faster than my 7 plus.

Feelings After One Day

It’s not a minor incremental improvement. It’s a leap forward. It’s a blast to learn the new features, some so fundamental to the operation of the device. Very happy with this phone. Glad I upgraded.

A friend forwarded me this NY Times article about the mechanical watch makers responding to the Apple Watch. It prompted me to write a long email response which I thought would make a good blog post. So here goes.

After wearing the Apple Watch Sport for more than a month now I can tell you it’s going to stay on my wrist. It is not a reduction of the phone but rather an extension of it. A very useful one. I’ve purchased two additional color bands that I switch depending on what I’m wearing. I plan on purchasing additional straps/bands as interesting designers start creating them for Apple Watch.

I use Apple Watch for telling the time, fitness tracking, managing my appointments, and for checking messages/notifications. I’ve filtered down notifications so that only the most important make it to the Apple Watch. When I get a gentle tap on the wrist I simply glance at my watch to see the notification. If it’s a message that I can use a canned response for then I just reply right from the watch. I don’t take my phone out of my pocket if I get a notification on the phone. As a result, I use the phone a little less.

I do a lot of apple watching and over time I’ve whittled down the number of places I go for such information. Recently Neil Cybart (a former stock analyst) launched Above Avalon a throwback email newsletter that covers Apple from a finance angle. I normally would have unsubscribed by now, who needs more email, but Cybart has me hooked. Just today he introduced me to a few new companies with apps in a growing space aimed at the financial consumers: Robinhood, Affirm, and Oscar. (Robinhood sounds particularly interesting to me.) Short and to the point, I look forward to reading Above Avalon every weekday. I recommend it to anyone interested in news related to Apple as a business.

I’ve been trying to make sense of Apple’s acquisition of Beats by Dre. This Verge article made me understand that the Beats hardware business is very similar to Apple’s. They sell well designed hardware at high margins. That makes perfect sense. Then I started thinking about how do you deal with two iconic brands merging together like that? Will iPhones suddenly be packaged with a little sticker or stenciling on the back of the phone itself that says “Audio Powered by Beats”? I don’t think so. But you can’t just buy Beats and toss the brand. Then it hit me. What if Beats becomes the core of a new iTunes? What if Beats (the brand, the headphones, the music service, the execs, their relationships, everything) becomes the new music eco-system for Apple? .

The Beats acquisition is the beginning of the end of iTunes. iTunes is a bloated desktop app which is overloaded with functions. It’s how we buy music, movies, etc. It’s how we used to buy books and apps before the iBooks and App stores. iTunes needs to be broken up. It is being broken up and this move by Apple is how they handle the music aspect of this transition.

If this is Apples intent are there other media related companies Apple could buy in TV or the movie industry? Do the try to build as in iBooks or buy as in Beats for the rest of what’s left of iTunes? This will be fun to watch. Maybe as fun as hearing Dr. Dre say a few words at a WWDC keynote.

...when normal people — not gadget bloggers and geeks like us — need to consider an alternative to the iPad, they’re not just thinking of Apple’s lack of “openness” (as Google so vaguely and poorly defines it in relation to Android) or the iPad’s lack of some individual hardware feature. Buying an alternative means giving up Apple’s entire ecosystem. That’s worth it to some buyers, but it’s incredibly impractical for many.

Interesting post from Marco Arment. He may be right. A tablet probably can’t be successful without the kind of support ecosystem and the seamless integration between hardware and software that Apple can provide. My favorite part of the article is how he divides the tablet community along the lines of those that know what RSS is and those who do not. Seems like a simple acid test.