AWT News Update: November 14, 2017

A Tuesday in November with no Apple events in the foreseeable future means…a short Apple World Today New Update podcast!

• Steven Soderbergh has filmed a full-length movie to be released in March of 2018…on an iPhone
• Mozilla released Firefox Quantum today, and it’s getting rave reviews for speed, RAM usage and privacy. It’s available for Mac and iOS
• Have an iPhone X, iPhone 8 or iPhone 8 Plus? iOS 11.2 beta 3 switched on 7.5W wireless charging on the devices, which speeds up charging time considerably

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 Tuesday, November 14th, 2017. Not too much news today, but we have a few fun stories.

On March 23, 2018, you’ll be able to go to theaters around the world to see a movie that was filmed entirely on an iPhone. Steven Soderbergh is a very well-known film director who is known for such movies as “Ocean’s Eleven” and “Erin Brockovich” and his new horror movie “Unsane” was filmed this summer in secret entirely on an iPhone. There’s no word on which iPhone it was, but we’re guessing that it was the best iPhone available at the time — the iPhone 7 Plus. Soderbergh’s shoot lasted just over a week, which is much less than the usual time period required to do the photography for a feature film. Soderbergh actually began editing the film on set so he could let actors view a near-final cut before finishing their parts. Soderbergh isn’t the first person to shoot a full-length movie with an iPhone; that distinction goes to the Sundance hit “Tangerine” that was filmed in 2015 with an iPhone 5s, an $8 app and an inexpensive anamorphic adapter lens from Moondog Labs. 

Tired of Safari and bored with Chrome? You might want to check out Mozilla’s new version of the Firefox browser that appeared today. Firefox Quantum has a completely new engine driving it that is much faster than just about any other browser, and it comes with a customizable toolbar interface that Mozilla claims can be set up in over 265 nonillion (that’s 265 followed by 30 zeroes) ways. It’s also a very lightweight browser, using 30% less memory than Chrome. If you’re looking for private browsing, there’s probably no better browser either — Quantum is set up with tracking protection right off the bat. It’s available now for free for Mac and iOS.

iPhone X, iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus owners who are using Qi-compatible wireless charging accessories will be happy with this next news. iOS 11.2 now allows those devices to charge at 7.5 Watts instead of the current 5 Watts. That means that the phones will charge faster on the same wireless chargers that support the higher wattage. We can only hope that future iPhones will support 15 Watt wireless charging, which is common on Android devices supporting the Qi 1.2 specification. 

That’s all for today; I’ll be back tomorrow afternoon with another edition of the AWT News Update.