Happy Monday! Cheer up, buttercup, there’s lots of good news from the world of Apple today:
- Have the Kindle reader app for iPhone or iPad? Good, because it is World Book Day and Amazon wants to give you some free books to celebrate
- Two new Apple ads use light-hearted imagery to convince Android users that it might be a really good idea to switch to iPhone
- HomeKit fans in the US can now purchase the first HomeKit-compatible window air conditioner available in the country; just don’t expect to get a bargain price on it
- Does it seem like everyone loves the iPhone X? A survey by Creative Strategies shows that it’s extremely popular with the early adopters and has a very high satisfaction rate
- Snapseed has been update for the iPhone X
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, April 23rd, 2018.
Today’s World Book Day, and the folks at Amazon are celebrating by making a bunch of books available for free. All you need to have to read them is the Kindle reader app for iPhone or iPad, and then visit the Amazon Kindle store to get the freebies.
Apple has been doing some good work lately, trying to get Android users to switch to iPhone. In that vein, the company released two ads that point out features of the iPhone. The first compares “Your store” — which is most likely the Google Play store — with the iOS App Store in terms of security. The ad shows a person picking up icons off of a store shelf that are exploding, pointing out the fact that the Google Play store doesn’t have human curation to check for malicious apps like the iOS App Store does. If that’s not enough of a reason for an Android user to jump ship, the second ad compares Portrait Mode and Portrait Lighting on the iPhone 8 Plus and iPhone X to “portraits” taken with Android phones. Those studio quality effects are highlighted to show just how good portraits are on the new iPhones.
Want to get your home ready for summer with a Siri-controlled air conditioner? A while back, GE announced the GE AHP08LX HomeKit compatible window air conditioner, and it’s now available for purchase. This 8,000 BTU Energy Star rated unit also works with Alexa, Google Home and IFTTT, and it’s the first window air conditioner in the US to be compatible with HomeKit. It’s designed to cool rooms up to 250-350 square feet, and it’s available right now exclusively from Lowe’s. Here’s one interesting thing, though — although GE lists the MSRP of the AHP08LX as $269, Lowe’s is selling it for $319…
If it seems like everyone you know who owns an iPhone X loves the device, well, it’s probably because the phone has one of the highest customer satisfaction rates ever. Research firm Creative Strategies found that the sleek new phone has a 97% customer sat rate among early adopters, with 85% of those 1,746 respondents saying that they are “very satisfied” with the phone. Most features of the iPhone X were given satisfaction rates of higher than 90 percent, including looks, speed, quality of photos, the Super Retina OLED display, the lack of a home button, Face ID and battery life. Users weren’t so happy about two functions — portrait selfies, which I have to agree with because that mode tends to do surgery on my balding head, and Siri. Siri is turning into a big problem for Apple, with only 20% of the survey respondents saying they were satisfied with the digital assistant.
Speaking of the iPhone X, Google’s free and very popular photo editing app Snapseed has been updated to allow use in full resolution on the high end iPhone. The update came out late yesterday and support for the iPhone X is the only change listed in the release notes.
That’s all the news for today – join me tomorrow afternoon for another edition of the AWT News Update.
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