Linked List: November 20, 2017

Monday, 20 November 2017

iPhone 7 Plus and Portrait Mode Lighting Effects ★

Steven Troughton-Smith discovered that portrait mode lighting effects can be edited on an iPhone 7 Plus after using a hex editor on an exported photo to enable the feature:

Just to add insult to injury, if you AirDrop that photo back to the iPhone 7 Plus now it shows the Portrait Lighting UI, and lets you change mode. So Portrait Lighting is 100% an artificial software limitation. 7 Plus photos can have it, 7 Plus can do it.

My understanding is that these effects aren’t enabled on iPhone 7 Plus because performance was really slow at capture time. It really does require the A11 Bionic chip for adequate performance live in the camera. And Apple decided against shipping it as a feature for 7 Plus that could only be applied in post, because that felt like half a feature. So I’ve heard.

What I don’t know is why the new lighting effects are not available when you use an iPhone X or 8 Plus to edit a portrait mode photo that was taken using an iPhone 7 Plus. This should be possible.

The Best iPhone Fast Chargers and Wireless Chargers ★

Joanna Stern, writing for The Wall Street Journal:

Wireless charging means you can toss your phone on a pad (sold separately!) on your desk and it will charge throughout the day. With a fast charger (sold separately!), you can plug your phone in and go from zero to 50% in 30 minutes.

Both can make a real difference in how you combat battery anxiety disorder. But figuring out which gear you need is complicated.

I went in search of the best options for both speed and wireless convenience, charging and draining iPhones nearly 30 times. My finding: Getting the best chargers doesn’t mean running up your charge card.

I second her recommendation of this 3-in-1 cable from Monoprice — Lightning, USB-C, and micro USB all on a single cable.

BuzzFeed: McMaster Mocked Trump’s Intelligence in a Private Dinner ★

Joseph Bernstein, reporting for BuzzFeed:

Over a July dinner with Oracle CEO Safra Catz — who has been mentioned as a candidate for several potential administration jobs — McMaster bluntly trashed his boss, said the sources, four of whom told BuzzFeed News they heard about the exchange directly from Catz. The top national security official dismissed the president variously as an “idiot” and a “dope” with the intelligence of a “kindergartner,” the sources said.

A sixth source who was not familiar with the details of the dinner told BuzzFeed News that McMaster had made similarly derogatory comments about Trump’s intelligence to him in private, including that the president lacked the necessary brainpower to understand the matters before the National Security Council.