Opinion

Best & Worst Features of iOS 11

By Sarah Kingsbury

In the 67th episode of the iPhone Life Podcast, the team shares their most loved and hated features of iOS 11 (spoiler: Donna's a big fan of Drag and Drop and Sarah loves lane guidance in Apple Maps). They also address concerns about the privacy and security of the iPhone X's Face ID feature and teach you how to optimize your storage with iOS 11.

The new home of Apple headquarters, Apple Park, is nearly complete. With a spaceship for an office building, the 2.8 million square feet of space will be home to some 12,000 employees, bringing Steve Jobs’ vision for a new Apple campus to life. The campus spans a whopping 175-acres; and everything runs on 100 percent renewable energy, which is a massive feat for one of the largest office buildings in the world. Before his death, Steve Jobs worked to get the city of Cupertino to approve construction of the spaceship-like building. And now, at the highest point of the Apple Park campus stands the Steve Jobs Theater, which will no doubt be the auditorium of choice for the upcoming iPhone 8 release.

Apple kicked off this year with the highest-grossing quarter of all time, earning $78.4 billion in revenue. In the first quarter, Apple beat analyst’s expectations and reversed its trend of declining revenue. There are a number of reasons for the strong performance, including high demand for the iPhone 7 Plus, as well as strong sales in China. One of the most interesting trends to emerge from Apple’s earnings call though was the sudden growth in Apple’s services category. 

I've tried to not go overboard in writing about the Pokémon Go sensation, but I did point out the dangers in cycling, or even worse, driving, while playing the game. Niantic, the makers of the popular app, have just released an update that addresses this issue, to some extent. The app can detect your speed and if it senses you are driving, it will display a warning message. It doesn't deactivate the game, but it will ask you if you are a passenger. 

In the 36th episode, listen along as members of the iPhone Life team share their experiences with the iOS 10 public beta and give advice on whether or not to install the test software on your own device. They'll also explore the hype surrounding Nintendo's new augmented reality game Pokémon Go and why this year's Amazon Prime Day beats last year's by a mile.

I will be honest, I talk to my Amazon Echo’s agent, Alexa, more than I talk to Siri. In many ways, the Echo is a completely different creature than Siri. I don’t need Siri to use my iPhone. Apple hopes that Siri makes me more dependent on my phone, but there is no using the Echo without Alexa. Echo is designed primarily as the home for an intelligent assistant and little else.

My coworker recently shared with me Mashable's article, “The iPhone 7 Sounds like It Will Be Totally Boring,” an opinion piece by Raymond Wong. In summation, the article states that the iPhone 7 will be boring, because we already know all the details far before the keynote. But has anyone stopped to think, “Yeah, it’s nothing revolutionary to me, but I have access to this technology and the money to own it — and that’s amazing.” Just so we can really get an idea of how fortunate we are to have any iPhone at all, let’s take a look at a map of how much of the population has access to smartphones globally. Then tell me how boring any iPhone is.

“Many people are telling us that the iPad Pro has become their primary computing device,” said Apple CEO, Tim Cook at last Monday’s Apple Spring Event. One question Tim, who? When the 12.9-inch iPad Pro was released last year, Cook said, “They will start using it and conclude they no longer need to use anything else, other than their phones.” Sure, that might be true depending on what you use your computer for; however, even then, there are major gaps between the two devices that have me rolling my eyes at another iPad and waiting for an updated Macbook.

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