Welcome to November! We have some fun news for you today, although it’s making us think that the website name should change to “iPhone X Today”:
- We’ve got the new iPhone X ringtone for you. It’s called “Reflection” and it’s actually quite nice
- The design for Apple’s newest iPhone (due on Friday) was actually locked in place a year ago, and the idea of the neural engine in the A11 Bionic processor was hatched in 2014
- iOS 11.2 public beta 1 is now available, as is tvOS 11.2. Get ’em today!
- How long can you run with an Apple Watch Series 3 while streaming music and using GPS? We tell you…but you have to listen to the podcast (or at least read the text version!)
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 Wednesday, November 1st, 2017.
In our effort to bring you every bit of news about the iPhone X, we found that the new high-end phone from Apple has an exclusive ringtone that sounds like this sample. The ringtone is called “Reflection” and it replaces the ringtone named “Opening” that has been the default since iOS 7. For those of you who still like the original “Marimba” ringtone, it’s still available as a choice on the new phone.
You might recall that we talked about how Apple apparently went “all in” on Face ID for the new iPhone early on in the design phase, as Apple’s Dan Riccio disclosed that they had never planned on using Touch ID. But what is quite amazing is that the technologies in the iPhone X weren’t supposed to ship until 2018. Riccio told Mashable that the November launch was made possible “with a lot of hard work, talent, grit and determination.” Apparently the design for the iPhone X was locked in place in November of 2016, and the neural engine used in the A11 Bionic processor in the phone was actually added in 2014, when design work for the processor began. At the time, Riccio says that the company had no idea what they would use that capability for. Apple’s marketing VP Phil Schiller says that the new phone’s edge-to-edge display goes back to the first iPhone 10 years ago, and it’s been a “dream since Day One” to implement that screen. Other exciting news from that interview: the OLED screen is produced by Samsung, but uses a custom component with additional capabilities to deal with color accuracy. And rather than scanning for the registered Face ID user all the time when an iPhone X is sitting idle, the phone actually makes an “attention scan” about every 30 seconds to decide whether or not to turn off the screen.
OK, enough news for today about the iPhone X. Things are already heating up for iOS 11.2; we mentioned the other day that the developer beta had been released, and now the first public beta has arrived. It’s expected that the final release of iOS 11.2 will finally bring several promised enhancements to our devices, including AirPlay 2 and peer-to-peer Apple Pay. tvOS 11.2 public beta is also available to members of the public beta program as of today.
Finally, the watchOS 4.1 update that came out yesterday allowed some dedicated runners to find out just how long they can stream music while using the Apple Watch Series 3 and using GPS. It turns out that — as expected — the battery life is limited to about 3 hours. That’s plenty of time for a professional marathon runner like Dennis Kimetto of Kenya, who currently holds the world record for the 26.22 mile run at 2 hours, 2 minutes and 57 seconds. But for the rest of us, the battery might not last through a full marathon.
That’s all for today; I’ll be back tomorrow afternoon with another edition of the AWT News Update.
