Linked List: November 1, 2017

Wednesday, 1 November 2017

The Talk Show: ‘If You Trust Your Twin’ 

Jim Dalrymple returns to the show to talk about the iPhone X, which is now in the hands of reviewers and just days away from the hands of customers.

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iPhone X’s Home Indicator 

Apple seems to be going out of its way not to give the horizontal bar at the bottom of the iPhone X user interface a name. For example, in the “getting started” pamphlet that ships in the iPhone X box, they don’t give it a name. They just show a picture of it, with an arrow indicating the gesture, and say “Swipe up to go home.”

Those of us who write about these things need a name for it, though. I suggest “home indicator”. In Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines for iPhone X, they use a similar but more verbose construction: “the indicator for accessing the Home screen”.

Update: It’s also called the home “indicator” in the UIKit APIs. (Thanks to Sachin Patel.)

Installing Custom Ringtones on iOS 11 Devices With iTunes 12.7 

One frustration I have with the way iCloud backups work is that they don’t (at least for me?) seem to back up custom ringtones. So when I set up my iPhone X review unit, I restored from an iCloud backup of my personal iPhone 7. None of my custom ringtones — neither the ones I bought from iTunes nor the ones I created and installed manually — made it to the new phone.

Previously, you could copy these over by connecting the phone to iTunes over a USB cable. But iTunes 12.7 dropped support for managing things like ringtones and iOS apps. And searching the web for an answer to this gave me a long list of articles that were all outdated. This support document from Rogue Amoeba (whose audio editing app Fission is a great tool for creating your own ringtones) explains how to do it with iTunes 12.7 — and also tells you how to restore the tones you previously purchased from the iTunes Store.

Update: A few readers have chimed in to say that their custom ringtones do get backed up and restored by iCloud, so maybe there’s something wrong with my iCloud backup. But I’m not alone. I seem to recall running into this same problem every time I get a new iPhone. But even putting that aside, it seems to me that managing these ringtones is something iOS should be able to handle on its own — especially now that iOS has a Files app. There aren’t many things left you need to connect to a Mac or a PC to manage on iOS, but ringtones are one.

Matthew Panzarino Illustrating Face ID’s Advantage Over Touch ID 

Matthew Panzarino:

If you want to open a notification, for instance, you have to tap it then Touch ID to open it. With Face ID, it’s already open when you tap.

Notifications are the best example of how Face ID is better than Touch ID. Check out Panzarino’s video to see it in action.

Paul Kafasis’s Apple Dumbwatch 

Paul Kafasis was on pace to hit an ambitious activity goal for October (3,347 exercise minutes for the month). But then he updated to iOS 11.1 on his phone and WatchOS 4.1 on his watch yesterday, and, somehow, the numbers add up differently. Very strange bug — computers are usually pretty good at math.

Don’t Treat Face ID as an Extra Step 

Mark Spoonauer, writing for Tom’s Guide:

I’ve been using Face ID on the iPhone X for more than 24 hours, and I don’t need a stopwatch to tell you that it unlocks my phone slower than when I was using Touch ID on my older iPhone 7 Plus. I used a stopwatch app anyway to prove my point.

With Face ID on the iPhone X, it took 1.2 seconds from pressing the side button to the iPhone X’s screen turning on and for the phone to recognize me and unlock the device. And it was another 0.4 seconds to swipe up to get to the lock screen. Total time: 1.8 seconds.

On my iPhone 7 Plus, I could get to the home screen just by pressing and holding my thumb on the Touch ID sensor in an average of 0.91 seconds. That might not seem like a lot of time, but it adds up quickly when you’re unlocking your phone dozens of time a day.

There is a workaround of sorts, though. You can swipe up from the bottom of the iPhone X’s screen even while the iPhone X is looking for your face. Sometimes you might briefly see the word “Face ID” flash as the iPhone X transitions to the home screen, but you will still get to start using your phone faster.

This is not a “workaround”. This is how you’re supposed to unlock iPhone X. Starting with a tap of the side button is not how you’re supposed to do it — you’re creating a two-step process where you only need one.

If raise-to-wake kicks in and turns on the display, all you need to do is swipe up from the bottom. Don’t wait for the lock icon to change — don’t even worry about it. Just swipe up. If raise-to-wake hasn’t kicked in, and you’re holding your iPhone X in your hand with the display off, just tap the screen near the bottom and immediately swipe up. The best way to use Face ID is to pretend it isn’t even there, and just swipe up from the home indicator.

Tapping the screen to wake the display is one of my favorite features so far. There’s really no reason to use the side button to wake the phone.