Apple Operating Systems (macOS, iOS, watchOS, & tvOS) Catch-All

Docjoe wrote:

Wait, the battery is 4 hours?! Dang, I was going to pre-order one but I better research it a little better first.

And agree, if the ECG is accurate, that would be amazing for detecting afib and other arrythmias. Have had 2 patients who have needed implantable loop recorders just this month following strokes, would be crazy if you could just do it with your watch. Or better yet, pick up the afib and prevent ever getting the stroke in the first place.

Should be able to pick up irregular rhythms which is great. But I wouldn't count it as fairly accurate ECG. I mean, minimum you need 3 leads for an ECG. 12 lead is standard. I think it's doing some calculations from pulse data. Either way, its a great tool just being able to detect irregular rhythms.

DSGamer wrote:

Overall the X is such a frustrating phone compared to a 6S (the last phone with a real button and headphone jack) that I don't see myself upgrading for years. The guts of the X are amazing. But if they'd taken the guts and camera of the X and put it in a 6S body I would have just purchased that.

Yes! This would be an instabuy for me.

As things stand currently, I'm going to keep using my actual 6S as long as I can; and if there's no newer Apple phone that has a headphone jack at that point, then I guess I'll be making the switch to Android. (Assuming there's still a nice Android phone available with the jack at that point.)

Docjoe wrote:

Wait, the battery is 4 hours?! Dang, I was going to pre-order one but I better research it a little better first.

And agree, if the ECG is accurate, that would be amazing for detecting afib and other arrythmias. Have had 2 patients who have needed implantable loop recorders just this month following strokes, would be crazy if you could just do it with your watch. Or better yet, pick up the afib and prevent ever getting the stroke in the first place.

That’s in full exercise mode. Chances are most people aren’t doing that 4 hours straight. Regular use should easily get you through a typical day. I’ve yet to not make it a full day with an hour workout with anything less than 30% battery

Balthezor wrote:
Docjoe wrote:

Wait, the battery is 4 hours?! Dang, I was going to pre-order one but I better research it a little better first.

And agree, if the ECG is accurate, that would be amazing for detecting afib and other arrythmias. Have had 2 patients who have needed implantable loop recorders just this month following strokes, would be crazy if you could just do it with your watch. Or better yet, pick up the afib and prevent ever getting the stroke in the first place.

Should be able to pick up irregular rhythms which is great. But I wouldn't count it as fairly accurate ECG. I mean, minimum you need 3 leads for an ECG. 12 lead is standard. I think it's doing some calculations from pulse data. Either way, its a great tool just being able to detect irregular rhythms.

I didn't want to get too technical, but yeah, that's the first thing I thought of. How can a watch, which is located on your wrist, churn out an ECG? Three leads is a minimum, but yeah, you usually do more (I think we did ten electrodes when I was an intern: one on each arm and leg and six on the torso, which gives you the 12 lead ECG). But yeah, even basic detection with pulse would be super interesting.
Cautiously curious is what I am, I guess.

TheGameguru wrote:

FaceID fails for a myriad of reasons. Some I can understand. I get out of my car and it’s sunny my glasses darken and the phone can’t recognize me.

In fact bright sun at a certain angle can make it fail as well.

Other times it just doesn’t like the way I look at a given moment and won’t work those are the ones I can’t figure out.

I find most times it fails for me is if my expression is too happy. As long as I give it the death stare it works perfectly.

I noticed they've straight up discontinued the original X, so i assume they're so confident in the upgrades present in the XS and Max that there's no reason to keep the X around. I know the TouchID in my 8 Plus is light years better than it was on my old 6, so I'm hoping the same is true for the face ID stuff in the XS/R compared to the original X.

Also I saw a lot of people saying the Apple Watches get a full day of battery life, not 4, and that the new ones they announced are supposed to match that?

I thought the camera demos were pretty impressive. It will be interesting to see how they fare against the PIxel 3. My wife's Pixel 1 still takes better photos in many instances than my 8 Plus.

I've got a series 1 watch and will be happy to upgrade to a series 4. The 1 is getting a bit slow for my tastes (sometimes maddeningly slow).

Eleima wrote:
Balthezor wrote:
Docjoe wrote:

Wait, the battery is 4 hours?! Dang, I was going to pre-order one but I better research it a little better first.

And agree, if the ECG is accurate, that would be amazing for detecting afib and other arrythmias. Have had 2 patients who have needed implantable loop recorders just this month following strokes, would be crazy if you could just do it with your watch. Or better yet, pick up the afib and prevent ever getting the stroke in the first place.

Should be able to pick up irregular rhythms which is great. But I wouldn't count it as fairly accurate ECG. I mean, minimum you need 3 leads for an ECG. 12 lead is standard. I think it's doing some calculations from pulse data. Either way, its a great tool just being able to detect irregular rhythms.

I didn't want to get too technical, but yeah, that's the first thing I thought of. How can a watch, which is located on your wrist, churn out an ECG? Three leads is a minimum, but yeah, you usually do more (I think we did ten electrodes when I was an intern: one on each arm and leg and six on the torso, which gives you the 12 lead ECG). But yeah, even basic detection with pulse would be super interesting.
Cautiously curious is what I am, I guess.

It wouldn’t be good for picking up ischemia, you wouldn’t be able to see ST depressions for example. But it would basically be like a rhythm strip so I would think it would be perfect for picking up an arrythmia like afib where you just need to know if the rhythm is irregular. But will be interesting to see how it performs when there is more data available.

Ended up pre-ordering the Xs Max. Should be quite a leap from my old 6 Plus. Hopefully it lasts me just as long.

TheGameguru wrote:
Docjoe wrote:

Wait, the battery is 4 hours?! Dang, I was going to pre-order one but I better research it a little better first.

And agree, if the ECG is accurate, that would be amazing for detecting afib and other arrythmias. Have had 2 patients who have needed implantable loop recorders just this month following strokes, would be crazy if you could just do it with your watch. Or better yet, pick up the afib and prevent ever getting the stroke in the first place.

That’s in full exercise mode. Chances are most people aren’t doing that 4 hours straight. Regular use should easily get you through a typical day. I’ve yet to not make it a full day with an hour workout with anything less than 30% battery

This makes sense. I was looking at a review of the Series 3 last night that was specifically about whether or not it's all that beneficial to get the version with cellular support ($100 difference), and it specifically noted shortened battery life in cellular mode (while also using GPS). I think it cited that four hours number and that if you could live without the cellular (which won't be hard for me) it wasn't nearly as dramatic.

I've been holding out on getting an Apple Watch since the first one, but I went ahead and preordered on the series 4 (GPS only) as a present to myself. Looking forward to having a new gadget to play with!

The watch is becoming more tempting to me. Partly because I want to change color to silver (I currently have space grey) and partly because I like the look of the bigger screen.

JeremyK wrote:

Ended up pre-ordering the Xs Max. Should be quite a leap from my hold 6 Plus. Hopefully it lasts me just as long.

Me too. I'm going from the x to xs max. I really liked to full screen of the x, but I missed the size of the plus versions. Hoping this will help a bit to not need reading glasses for some of the tiny detail apps like ascension.

Yellek wrote:
JeremyK wrote:

Ended up pre-ordering the Xs Max. Should be quite a leap from my hold 6 Plus. Hopefully it lasts me just as long.

Me too. I'm going from the x to xs max. I really liked to full screen of the x, but I missed the size of the plus versions. Hoping this will help a bit to not need reading glasses for some of the tiny detail apps like ascension.

Yeah, I couldn't go back to a smaller phone after having the big screens. Never had an issue with size or putting them in my pocket. Heck, I frequently one hand my ipad. lol

I have also been looking at the Apple Watch for a couple years and now I’m finally thinking about getting one. I looked at the pricing in the series 3 is $279 GPS only the series for $399 GPS only. It seems like $120 is decent premium to pick up the new functionality.

muraii wrote:

I have also been looking at the Apple Watch for a couple years and now I’m finally thinking about getting one. I looked at the pricing in the series 3 is $279 GPS only the series for $399 GPS only. It seems like $120 is decent premium to pick up the new functionality.

I think you dropped some words there, and keep in mind that's always the smaller size whose price they quote.

Kurrelgyre wrote:
muraii wrote:

I have also been looking at the Apple Watch for a couple years and now I’m finally thinking about getting one. I looked at the pricing in the series 3 is $279 GPS only the series for $399 GPS only. It seems like $120 is decent premium to pick up the new functionality.

I think you dropped some words there, and keep in mind that's always the smaller size whose price they quote.

Siri, ironically enough, doing the dropping for me.

So far so good with iOS 12 on both my iPhone 8 and iPad Pro 10.5. I thought I'd hate having the iPad control center pull down from the top right (like the iPhone X) but it's actually a cleaner implementation. Having the date and clock on the left looks weird though.

Nice surprise: with devices without 3d touch, you can now long-press to clear all notifications at once!

The Siri shortcuts work, but are pretty weak sauce right now. I hope devs make their apps work with Siri. (I'm looking at you Waze and Spotify). The Workflow app got straight-up renamed to Shortcuts and thankfully kept the flows I already had.

I’ve never used Workflow. Maybe I should take a look.

Takes a look.

So it’s renamed and requires iOS 12. Guess I’ll wait.

Well, they did buy the Workflow app and hire the team.

Phone, 8+, went without a hitch, watch is installing. Thank deity for Keychain, it can also populate 2FA sent via SMS which is nice.

Shortcuts seem cool, will have to see whether I actually get anything out of it.

The biggest “feature” of 12 is that they took time to stabilize the overall OS.

First impression of iOS 12: my SE feels quicker. I don't know if anything is finishing faster, but it's responding to my inputs better. And web content seems to be loading/rendering faster, which is a sizable percentage of what I use my phone for. My gut reaction hasn't been this positive since the early days of OS X. And I haven't seen any marketing hype, so I wasn't especially primed for a performance boost.

I'm glad I took a few moments to poke at this new Measure app. Otherwise I'd have been pissed the next time I went looking for the level function in Compass. Maybe sometime I'll try to figure out how the whole measuring part of it works.

Ars is reporting performance increases across the board on older devices in their very comprehensive review of 12.

No support for the new Unicode 11 emoji set (https://www.unicode.org/emoji/charts...) in iOS 12, yet.

I've got iOS12 on a pretty creaky, full-to-the-brim storage-wise iPhone 5S and it has made it noticeably faster. App loading feels way snappier (particularly the pre-installed ones) and overall there's just a lot less lagginess in the interface. I'm quite impressed.

Siri Shortcuts are incredible - having Workflow but plumbed into Siri feels amazing - I've already got a bunch of apps I use regularly hooked up to Siri in really useful ways ('set up a new work trip' in Siri now generates and adds a new set checklist of things I always do before a trip in my todo app, Things, then asks me for a due date).

My only reservation is battery life, but I think that might be because I'm hammering my phone checking out all the new features.

WolverineJon wrote:

No support for the new Unicode 11 emoji set (https://www.unicode.org/emoji/charts...) in iOS 12, yet.

Expect it to be included in a point release as a sweetener to update.

DSGamer wrote:

The biggest “feature” of 12 is that they took time to stabilize the overall OS.

MacOS next please.

*Legion* wrote:
DSGamer wrote:

The biggest “feature” of 12 is that they took time to stabilize the overall OS.

MacOS next please.

Agreed. I'm not sure if you remember how things were last year. There were a slew of very serious security bugs across iOS and MacOS. iOS is just their most visible operating system so at the time they announced that they were going to use this last year to stabilize the OS and focus less on features.

Also this article - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...

It will be interesting to see how the overall market responds. I don't think it's gone unnoticed by users that Apple put a lot of energy into improving the baseline OS. Some of those fixes should make their way into MacOS as well. They do share some core libraries, underlying kernel code, etc.

Normally the Wall Street logic is that unless they have a blockbuster lineup of new features they risk getting stale. I think it's possible, though, that someday soon people will start to see these as simply tools. Tools you keep for 3, 4, 5 years. In that world it doesn't matter as much that you have the newest features as much as it matters that the tools you spend $750 - $1450 on are stable.

Holy Stromboli! Finally!!!

I just noticed that running phone-only apps (like Instagram) on iPad finally display in a more modern 16:9 aspect ratio! I can’t believe it took Apple this long to implement this.

Edit: Article explaining the change. https://bendodson.com/weblog/2018/06...

I’m really digging Siri shortcuts too. I have a bunch set up for Pandora and Todoist. I also have Safari load Google “News” and “GWJ.”

Wife's SE is noticeably faster and this update probably bought her another year or two before upgrading. I don't notice any improvements on my 8+ but I guess that's to be expected. Haven't gotten around to messing with the shortcut stuff, that's next.