As October winds down things are starting to perk up in the world of Apple. Today we have stories about a historic high, a famous used car, iOS 11.2, and some early first impressions of the iPhone X:
- AAPL reached a new high today, peaking at $168.07 before closing at $166.72
- A BMW Z8 that once belonged to Steve Jobs is up for auction
- iOS 11.2 developer beta 1 is now available, along with new watchOS and tvOS betas
- Some very early first impressions of the iPhone X are out, with Apple using a different approach towards marketing the newest iPhone than it’s ever used in the past
The text version of the podcast can be read below. To listen to the podcast here, click the play button on the player below. Apple News readers need to visit Apple World Today in order to listen to the podcast.
Text Version
This is Steve Sande for Apple World Today, and you’re listening to the AWT News Update podcast for Monday, October 30th, 2017.
Shares in Apple hit a new record high of $168.07 today, falling a bit to $166.72 for a new historic close. Apple will deliver its earnings on Thursday afternoon, and many investment analysts are expecting the company to beat the Street estimates on earnings. Estimize, which uses an aggregation of estimates from investors and traders, foresees estimated earnings of $1.89 per share compared to the Wall Street analyst estimate consensus of $1.86 per share. We’ll bring you all the news on Apple’s earnings call on Thursday afternoon.
Many of us who have used Apple products for the past 35 to 40 years have a great deal of respect for the memory of Steve Jobs, who probably did more to ensure the company’s success in the 2000s than any other single person at the company. If you’re looking for the ultimate Steve Jobs collectible item, it’s going to be available in an upcoming auction at Sotheby’s in New York soon. The auction house is putting Steve’s 2000 BMW Z8 sports car up for grabs, and it’s expected to bring anywhere from $300 – $400,000. Jobs, who really wasn’t much of a car fan, did love German engineering and owned this Z8 for a while, had BMW motorcycles, and also owned several Mercedes-Benz SLs. The car comes with its hardtop and hardtop stand, a car cover, owner’s and service manuals, all service records, two keys, navigation CDs, and — are you ready for this? — an original BMW-branded Motorola flip phone that came with the vehicle. Jobs apparently hated that flip phone…
We’re absolutely sure that iOS 11.1 will be released this week along with several other OS upgrades. How are we sure? Well, iOS 11.2 is now in developer beta, bringing with it some nice new features. iOS 11.1 brings SiriKit to HomePod, so before the wireless speaker finally arrives in December developers can extend its voice interaction through custom features. You’ll be able to do some pretty impressive things, like tell your HomePod to text someone in Messages or a third-party messaging app, or create quick notes in third party cloud based apps like Evernote. iOS 11.2 also fixes an annoying user interface bug that caused the Calculator app to lose its ability to do simple math calculations. You’ll now be able to punch in numbers as fast as you wish and get an accurate answer on the Calculator. watchOS 4.2 and tvOS 11.2 are also available to developers today. While added features for watchOS 4.2 haven’t yet been identified, tvOS 11.2 on the Apple TV 4K adds two new switches to tell the box to match the native frame rate and dynamic range of video content automatically.
Apple’s letting some early impressions of the iPhone X — which will be released to the general public on Friday — be published, something that’s a bit out of character. The company let journalist Steven Levy of Wired release his review today, well, more of a first impression than a full review. Levy absolutely loves the screen on the iPhone X, saying that this is “a big screen in a compact form factor — Cinerama in a phone booth” when referring to the fact that the phone is about the size of an iPhone 8 with a screen the size of that on the iPhone 8 Plus. Levy says that he’s slowly relearning how to use the device without the formerly ubiquitous Home button, and goes into a lot of detail about learning to live with Face ID. He notes that you definitely have to make eye contact with the iPhone X for it to unlock, He says photos taken with the new phone are “super sharp”, and loves the increased battery life. His bottom line? “Those who shell out the cash for this device will enjoy their screen and battery life today. But the real payoff of the iPhone X might come when we figure out what it can do tomorrow.” A number of famous YouTubers were also given hands-on time with the phone, with a guy from the Highsnobiety channel jokingly performing the world’s first relationship breakup over Animoji. I have a feeling that you’ll be seeing a lot about the iPhone X in unexpected places over the next week or two.
That’s all for today; I’ll be back tomorrow afternoon with another edition of the AWT News Update.
