“For well over two months, my days have ended and begun with the iPhone X,” Jessica Dolcourt writes for CNET. “Compared to older iPhones, the X feels impressively fast, slim and, with 5.8 inches of screen space, satisfyingly spacious. But as I’ve grown to appreciate some of its finer points, I’ve also discovered the traits that make me roll my eyes, gnash my teeth and occasionally erupt with a well-chosen expletive.”
“Face ID, Apple’s replacement for the secure fingerprint reader, uses the iPhone X’s front-facing camera to approve mobile purchases and unlock the phone,” Dolcourt writes. “It works by making a 3D map of your eyes, nose and mouth — except when it doesn’t. Face ID recognizes me often, but fails enough times to make me notice. For example, I have about a 50-50 success rate while wearing my polarized sunglasses.”
MacDailyNews Take: You’re using it wrong. From Apple’s Face ID support document: “If you’re wearing sunglasses designed to block certain types of light, then your sunglasses might be blocking the infrared light used by the TrueDepth camera. Try using Face ID without your sunglasses.”
“When it doesn’t work is when I want it to most: as soon as I wake up in the morning. Part of the problem is biological,” Dolcourt writes. “I’m near-sighted, which means that when I first reach for the phone while my glasses and contacts are resting in their cases, I wind up holding the phone closer to my face than the 25 to 50 centimeters that Apple recommends.”
MacDailyNews Take: So, to quote Steve Jobs, “you’re holding it wrong.”
“I use maps navigation quite a lot. When you pop out of either Google Maps or Apple Maps to do something else, the iPhone X helpfully puts a tiny blue Tic Tac around the clock, turning it into a nifty little button you can tap to pop back into the map again,” Dolcourt writes. “This is great, but Apple stops short. See, you can toggle from any app back into the map, but you can’t toggle from the map back to what you were doing before. So if you’re reading an article, you can pop into the map to check on the directions (using the shortcut) but won’t be able to return to the story (no shortcut).”
MacDailyNews Take: Swipe up and hold. Tap your app. There is no step three.
“But the biggest problem is… The first iPhone was so beloved because — in a world of hard-to-use phones that acted like mini computers with file systems, keyboards and styluses — it was simple. Anyone could pick it up and figure it out. 10 years on, you can’t use the iPhone X without a tutorial, which Apple does provide,” Dolcourt writes. “Apple, in paving the way with some new technologies, had the opportunity to rethink how we use a phone, and wound up making it more complicated to use — not less.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Yes, it got slightly more complex. We’ve found even the most average people can get used to operating an iPhone X in a few days. Technically-minded people can get it down in a few hours. It’s not that hard.
We’ve gladly traded a few hours of relearning for never having to press that damnable Home button ever again! We hate our iPads’ antiquated Home buttons!
