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iPhone X Teardown

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361–370 of 372 posts

Re: iPhone X Teardown

#361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A company absolutely has a zero-sum 'focus' just like a person. You dismiss the idea that resources are the limiting factor, but that is absolutely what the limiting factor is. You really think that with unlimited money they couldn't have better software? They could, but they don't because it does not have enough of a return on investment. They 'focus' their resources on areas that will return them profit.

You're casually insulting everyone who is working hard on the software. Consider that the team sizes are surprisingly small. Consider that throwing more people at a project does not scale, and famously just slows things down after a certain, fairly small threshold. Consider that software is still really really freaking hard to do. Unlimited money does not solve all problems, contrary to what you may think. You can't…

Wait, what? How was I insulting the people working on the software? I am saying they aren't getting the resources they need to do everything they want to do.

I am a developer on a team, too, and I know that sometimes you can't do everything you want because you simply don't have enough time, money, and developers to get it done.

I know it is hard, that is why I was saying it is a company resource issue, not a 'bad developers' issue. Even the best developer in the world can't complete a huge project by themselves in a short amount of time. You need company support, which means ample developers, QA, support, and time.

Not sure where you ever got 'malice' or 'carelessness' from.

Re: iPhone X Teardown

#362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we can have an honest conversation even if it hurts peoples feelings.

I think it would be easier to have a conversation that cares about human emotions and get results, than to insult others and lose perspective of those involved. The recent flak over Node COC is a extremely good example about how "having an honest conversation even if it hurts people," is extremely destructive. [1] [1] https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/08/24/nodejs_forks_ayo_co...

I am really confused as to where anyone in this thread is insulting people.

Re: iPhone X Teardown

#363
post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have an X Face ID unlock is waaaay faster than touch ID every was for me. Especially considering how often touch ID failed due to sweat / grease.

My phone is typically resting on my desktop most of the time. I want an unlock solution that doesn't require picking up the device. Touch ID authentication misses are rare in my experience with the devices I've owned since the 5S.

You can tap the turned off screen to wake up and it works from a surprisingly steep angle. (I just did this exact workflow)

Re: iPhone X Teardown

#364
post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The X has 3gb of RAM, this is one of the drivers moving me to upgrade

Yeah, the X is nice, but when I trying it out I felt a slight bit of sluggishness - like when the 6 was newly released. A high jump in resolution/PPI will do that. It really should have shipped with 4GB of memory.

>It really should have shipped with 4GB of memory.

Why? The iPhone 8 doesn't even have the 3GB that the X has and it's been deemed the fastest smartphone ever tested. That sounds like a case of valuing specs more than the actual usage.

Re: iPhone X Teardown

#365
post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't they need to at least need to log in with your iCloud credentials?

nope iMessage does not require iCloud

This is wrong. iMessage uses your Apple ID and is definitely iCloud based. That's how it can tell the state of messages from device to device.

Re: iPhone X Teardown

#366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And despite all that engineering their reliability was terrible due to various plug design problems with the predecessor to MagSafe or the cords getting damaged from point stress. Meanwhile, Dell and HP make mediocre stuff that somehow hardly has such a problem by using much thicker gauge wiring and tougher rubber / plastics.

Dell power supplies, cables, receptacles and batteries fail all the time and I've seen the docking station connectors burn from shorts.

Yea, clearly these people have never supported dell laptops in an office environment. I have more dead bricks than i can mail back, especially from older machines. Fail in the exact same way as the apple ones

Re: iPhone X Teardown

#367
post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have an X Face ID unlock is waaaay faster than touch ID every was for me. Especially considering how often touch ID failed due to sweat / grease.

My phone is typically resting on my desktop most of the time. I want an unlock solution that doesn't require picking up the device. Touch ID authentication misses are rare in my experience with the devices I've owned since the 5S.

I have an X right here, and it usually rests on my desk. It will unlock from a VERY oblique angle, way beyond what i expected it to be able to handle. The only failures i've gotten with the scanner were when a pillow was covering part of my face and i was in bed. Basically any position that i can reasonably read the display from that isn't a joke or a test will unlock the device if i'm glancing at it.

I have some complaints about the device, but this feature rocks as far as i'm concerned

Re: iPhone X Teardown

#368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're casually insulting everyone who is working hard on the software. Consider that the team sizes are surprisingly small. Consider that throwing more people at a project does not scale, and famously just slows things down after a certain, fairly small threshold. Consider that software is still really really freaking hard to do. Unlimited money does not solve all problems, contrary to what you may think. You can't…

Wait, what? How was I insulting the people working on the software? I am saying they aren't getting the resources they need to do everything they want to do. I am a developer on a team, too, and I know that sometimes you can't do everything you want because you simply don't have enough time, money, and developers to get it done. I know it is hard, that is why I was saying it is a company resource issue, not a 'bad de…

I am sorry if I misconstrued your comment. I thought that you said that bugs and issues are caused by the people working there caring more about return on investment than quality, and not caring about fixing issues, which implies carelessness. By extension, people developing slap-dash product to rip off users without care for how things impact them implies malice.

It felt insulting because people I know personally do deeply care, and do spend a lot of effort for things that do not necessarily have a lot of return on investment (just for one example, iOS accessibility features for visually and hearing impaired are designed deep into the system and still have no equal). Aside from that, fixing bugs and improving stability does offer return on investment by building customer loyalty (case in point, after each major release I still see people mentioning Snow Leopard, an OS release dedicated exclusively to stability and performance improvements).

I’m not saying that things couldn’t be better, they always could, but I don’t think that all problems are as easily solved as you think. To take a classic counter example, Microsoft employs at conservative estimate twice the number of engineers compared to Apple, but still has not yet made a product twice as good or with half the bugs, imho. At a certain point, the system complexity just gets too great, and we need better architectures, tools and processes to get beyond that level.

Again, I am not saying you were intending to insult anyone, and apologies if I misunderstood something in your post. It’s just how it came across to me.

Re: iPhone X Teardown

#369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're casually insulting everyone who is working hard on the software. Consider that the team sizes are surprisingly small. Consider that throwing more people at a project does not scale, and famously just slows things down after a certain, fairly small threshold. Consider that software is still really really freaking hard to do. Unlimited money does not solve all problems, contrary to what you may think. You can't…

I think we can have an honest conversation even if it hurts peoples feelings.

My feelings are fine, but thanks anyway :)

Re: iPhone X Teardown

#370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Axiom in the tech world is that "Apple is a software company that builds hardware". " Is that really a common belief? I know many people who think the opposite - apple is a hardware company. In fact Tim Cook went out of his way several times to remind people that apple isn't a hardware company.

In terms of profits, yes. But many of us don't buy Apple for the hardware, but because we want to stay in their software ecosystem. I'd rather use a Nexus running iOS than an iPhone X running Android, and I'm even more invested in macOS. That Apple builds nice hardware is a bonus for me (but I'd honestly prefer better software right now). I mean, on paper Apple is making more money from hardware than from software, b…

Apple is making buttload of money on hardware because it does not sell any software anymore. I mean, in the mass consumer market – and they are cutting off the Pro software (which is sad). But remember the hardware sales pay for the software, too. So basically people say Apple is making $$$ on an iPhone price minus manufacturing costs and R&D but great slice of the zillion $$$ is the software part.

Anyway, not sure who said what exaclty, but Steve Jobs repeatedly said that Apple is great because of the tight interconnection between sw and hw. So Apple is not a hw company. It is not a sw company either. They do both and the result is greater than just a combination of the two.

I see Apple, and the way they present their products supports it, as an appliance company. It's harder and harder to repair their devices and the software is more and more integrated with the hardware – examples: force touch and feedback, Touch/Face ID, all the camera magic, Apple Pay, MBP Touch Bar etc. So basically the sw and hw are more and more inseparable unless you lose "half" the features.

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