What to expect from Apple: the main thing about iOS, macOS, Watch 3, iPhone 8

Apple's capitalization is approaching a trillion dollars, but not everyone approves of the path chosen by the company. Critics point to the lack of a wow-effect in recent releases, the stagnation of technology, the copying of ideas from competitors who have come a long way in the technological race. It is possible that part of the claims can be dispelled very soon, when the Yabloko employees will begin the presentation of several long-awaited products.

The main thing that Apple will enjoy this fall is the iPhone 8. After lengthening the update cycle of the iPhone and iPad, user expectations have increased. But not only the iPhone is interesting the upcoming season. Smart HomePod column, Apple Watch 3, macOS High Sierra - all these new items should appear in the very near future. The amount of information is multiplying (both reliable and in the form of rumors), but this collection contains only data confirmed from several independent sources.
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iPhone 8: Following the Trends

A very exact copy of the device is presented in the video above. The video accumulates all previously collected rumors. It is already difficult to distinguish where the Apple iPhone 8 prototypes with the final design are found, and where the copies collected by the skilled craftsmen are presented. Many preliminary reviews contain very detailed models.



So, what is known at the moment according to the source . The iPhone 8 will be slightly larger than the iPhone 7, but noticeably smaller than the iPhone 7+. The 5.8-inch screen will be practically “from edge to edge” - it will occupy almost the entire area of ​​the front panel. The side frames will not disappear, but their width will be reduced to 4 millimeters.



The device will receive a Super AMOLED display with a resolution of 750x1334 (~ 300 ppi) and 16 million colors.



The smartphone will remain a small frame at the top of the screen. In a special cutout will put the speaker, front camera and proximity sensor.



iPhone 8 will receive a glass case. On the back are a vertical dual camera and LED flash, and on the side are the volume and on / off buttons.



Wireless charging (judging by the scheme obtained directly from the factory) will consist of two thin layers of PCB. Battery capacity is comparable to the iPhone 7 Plus battery capacity. By the way, iPhone 7S, 7S + will also receive wireless charging.

It is possible that the iPhone 8 will receive ProMotion technology, already presented in the new iPad Pro tablets. ProMotion screens using the Neuro Engine chip are able to update at a higher frequency, reducing the blurriness of the image when scrolling and in some other situations. In addition, the technology allows to reduce the refresh rate to save battery.



But the number of body colors will be reduced. Most likely, the flagship will be presented only in black and white colors.

New Camera, Augmented Reality and Face ID


The iPhone 8 camera is equipped with a VSCEL touch laser sensor (“surface-emitting laser with a vertical resonator”), which allows determining the depth of a scene with high accuracy. This technology will improve the quality of the work of augmented reality systems and will allow for more accurate autofocus for photos.

Many thought that Apple would embed a fingerprint scanner into the screen, but the company decided to completely abandon the Touch ID and Home button in favor of Pearl ID (scanning the iris of the eye and face). The function will allow you to unlock the smartphone, as well as conduct transactions.
In the process of studying the firmware of the HomePod smart column, a line of the code “com.apple.accessibility.resting.pearl.unlock” was revealed, which may indicate that the iPhone's face recognition function works even if the device is just lying on the table.
How exactly this function will work is still unknown. The main issue that concerns everyone is safety. Many face recognition systems can be fooled just by shoving a user's photo.

According to another leak , the iPhone 8 will shoot 4K video at 60 frames per second from both cameras. Shooting will be conducted in the new HEVC format, in which the file size will be halved compared to the files in the iPhone 7.

The code in the smart speaker firmware , which became the source of a multitude of news, indicated the appearance of the SmartCam mode, in which the camera recognizes objects inside the scene, and also analyzes it as a whole. For example, the camera will understand that objects are inside the scene "sunset", "sky", "sport", "snow" and so on, to determine the presence of children and pets. A new feature freezeMotion will allow you to make photos of moving objects with maximum clarity.

macOS High Sierra

macOS High Sierra has already been announced, but will be available for download in the fall. By the way, as partners with Apple, we had access to the prototype system in advance, which allowed us to incorporate High Sierra support into the latest version of Parallels Desktop 13 .

The update continues the Snow Leopard and Mountain Lion line, mainly adding performance enhancements to the system thanks to the new Apple File System (APFS) file system.
APFS is optimized to work with large-volume files, provides data preservation in case of power outages or system failures, and also has built-in encryption (it doesn’t disclose which one yet).

High Sierra will have an effective HEVC video compression format (H.265 helps compress video more than the previous codec, not inferior in quality) and a new platform for working with Metal 2 graphics, supporting interaction with external graphics cards. Metal 2 can be used for machine learning in speech recognition, computer vision and other areas of the development of artificial intelligence.

High Sierra supports the Unreal Engine, Steam VR, and VR virtual reality game engines, as well as the HTC Vive virtual reality glasses.

There are many other less noticeable changes. So, the Safari browser will automatically block auto-play videos and banner ads, and the Photos application will safely synchronize face recognition data within the Apple ecosystem using iCloud.

Smart HomePod column

Siri will get a new home - now inside the music column. As stated by Tim Cook:

“ We wanted to create something that would sound incredible. I think that when people hear HomePod, they will be shocked by the sound quality. Of course, he can do a lot of the rest! ".



As for sound, here we can only judge by the description: a subwoofer + a block of seven multi-directional tweeters with our own amplifiers. HomePod, working on the A8 processor, will receive as many as six microphones responsible for capturing voice commands. HomePod will probably go on sale at the end of the year for about $ 350.

Apple Watch 3

Apple Watch 3 can show along with the iPhone 8, but so far it is necessary to collect the available information bit by bit. The most important of the innovations of the smart watch is the presence of an LTE modem that allows the use of a virtual card of individual operators. Thus, Apple Watch 3 works as a standalone device, without being tied to a smartphone.

A new dial with an assistant will appear in watchOS 4, with the latest information displayed on it: traffic jams, weather, tasks for the day and so on. Music from Apple Music will be automatically saved to your watch so that you can listen to it through wireless headphones.

iOS 11

The new iOS has already been introduced at the summer WWDC, but since then many new updates have appeared: cash transactions through iMessage using Apple Pay, the new image format HEIF (photos weigh less) and the already mentioned HEVC codec.



Regarding the missing Home button, designer Max Rudberg published his conceptual solution. Various indicators in the status bar are located on the sides of the "cut" in the screen.



However, the solution is likely to be different. Probably, Home will automatically hide or appear depending on the context - the button disappears when you need space for “full-length” content on the screen. Interfaces of the lock screen and the control panel, which “moves out” from the bottom, will change. Menu items can add and change their order.

IOS 11 Beta 6 for developers is already available. There is less and less time until the moment when the news collected on the basis of leaks and rumors cease, and we can check whether the expectations coincide with reality. It is likely that the iPhone 8 will be announced along with the iPhone 7S and iPhone 7S + in early September, but the delivery of the iPhone 8 will begin in October-November. The price of iPhone 8 will be from 1,200 to 1,400 dollars.

ZY Well, Tim, do not let me down!