AWT News Update: November 8, 2017

Cloning APFS drives, looking at purchase history on iOS, bezel-less Face ID iPad Pros, using the iPhone X to see what glasses look good on you, and iOS 11 adoption rates all make the news on this pleasant autumn day…

• Beloved backup/clone app SuperDuper! receives an update to make it compatible with macOS High Sierra and APFS
• It’s now possible to look up a complete history of iTunes/App Store purchases on an iOS device
• Bloomberg and KGI agree: the iPad Pro line will be updated next year with Face ID, no bezel and no home button
• Warby Parker’s app now measures your face if you have an iPhone X, then suggests what glasses might look good on you
• Adoption of iOS 11 has climbed over 50%

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 8th, 2017. 

When it comes to backing up Macs, there are two apps that most professionals trust — Carbon Copy Cloner and SuperDuper! The latter app was just updated to provide not only support for macOS High Sierra, but also the new Apple File System (APFS) that is installed on most systems that use solid state drives. SuperDuper can create a bootable clone of any Mac running Mac OS X 10.9 through macOS 10.13 High Sierra, and those clones can save your bacon in the case of an issue. 

Those of us who have a lot of Apple purchases made through the App Store or iTunes Store now have a way to look at our purchase history in the Settings app on iOS. Up to this time, if you wished to look at detailed pricing information for those many purchases you made, you had to use iTunes on Mac or PC. Now, all you need to do is go to Settings, tap on your Name at the top of the Settings app, then tap iTunes & App Store. Tap your Apple ID and then tap View Apple ID — note that you might be asked to authenticate using a password, Touch ID or Face ID. Scroll down to Purchase History and tap it, and you’ll see transactions grouped by the date that they were charged to the payment method you have on file. Tap on any item in the purchase history and you can see even more details, like the purchase and download date, and even the name of the device you were using when you made your purchase. Need a receipt? Tap the “Resend” button and you can have one emailed to you. This should come in handy at tax time if you’re asked to document purchases made for work.

Those of us who have been lucky enough to have used an iPhone X in the five days since it was released know just how nice the bezel-less screen and Face ID are. It’s now expected that next year’s iPad Pros will be designed without a bezel and a home button, and with an Apple-designed GPU like the one used in the iPhone X. The word has sneaked out from Bloomberg, as well as from investment analysis firm KGI. As I mentioned to Marty Edwards on last night’s episode of AWT TV, I would gladly give up my new iPad Pro for a design with Face ID built in. 

Earlier this year I tried ordering a new pair of glasses from online spectacle company Warby Parker. Sadly, I wasn’t able to get a pair that worked for me because of a tricky progressive lens prescription, but I was very impressed with the company’s customer service and their selection of frames. The company’s app now has a feature that uses the TrueDepth camera system on the iPhone X to scan a face and make suggestions on which frames might look good on you. The company lets you select a number of frames to try on in home for free; this is a great way to narrow down the selection before you do the try-on. 

About a month and a half after the release of iOS 11, a full 52 percent of compatible devices are running the new version. 38 percent are still using iOS 10, while only 10 percent are running older versions of iOS. While this is a bit slower adoption than that of iOS 10, it’s still pretty incredible. By comparison, Android 8.0 Oreo — the latest version — is running on 0.2 percent of all Android devices.

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