Apple suffers 'major iPhone X leak' | Hacker News Reader

Apple suffers 'major iPhone X leak'

bbc.co.uk

71 pointsdberhane109 comments

A bit sensational to call a reference to an unknown product that's likely going to be unveiled in 2 days, as well as some minor feature like Animojis, a major leak. This is what suffering a major leak looks like: http://gizmodo.com/5520164/this-is-apples-next-iphone

I disagree. We now know what FaceID is called, how it works, exactly what the device looks like and how the status bar works, that there are new AirPods coming, the name of the new thing, the name of the updates to the old thing, and a software feature that no one could've ever gotten out of hardware chain leaks.

This is without a doubt the biggest leak since the iPhone 4 you pointed too. If it wasn't for the HomePod firmware leak a month ago this would've been even more devastating.

"Devastating" is an awfully strong word for what's happened. Really curious people know a few features a little earlier than they would have otherwise. It's hard to prove that this will even have any negative effects; it generates buzz and excitement around a launch.

For a personal anecdote, I honestly didn't know there was a new iPhone coming out soon. Now I do, and I'm curious. Plus, my sister-in-law mentioned this morning that she wants a new phone, this might help her decide. I don't understand why this is such a terrible thing.

Negative affects? No, not really. But Apple managed to have a TON of secrecy this year where no one was really sure what was going on. We didn't even have much in the way of hardware leaks this year.

Then they had the HomePod leak, now this. A lot of the surprises that we're going to be in their presentation are now known by the enthusiast set.

It's really a stolen thunder/pride thing.

I'm a little surprised you didn't know a new iPhone was coming as they announce them the same time every year.

> If it wasn't for the HomePod firmware leak a month ago this would've been even more devastating

The latest "leak" conveniently happens days away from their new release and gets everyone talking about it. Wow, so harmful!

Let me ask you this: everyone was going to be talking about it on Tuesday anyway. In what way would Apple benefit from having this news released two or three days early?

If a competitor put out a bunch of news on Friday then this would be taking up their PR time so there could be a benefit, but as far as I'm aware that didn't happen.

There isn't really anything in here that will help people get used to some possible controversy (like the leaks of the lack of the headphone jack on the seven).

What would this accomplished other than to make the Tuesday event less special/magical?

I think it's obvious that people are more likely to buy products with hype around them.

I agree, but I don't think this raises the hype over what we would've had after Tuesday anyway. If anything I think it slightly weakens what would have come from Tuesday.

> everyone was going to be talking about it on Tuesday anyway

I imagine I'll see a headline in the news on Tuesday, probably a HN thread, and maybe a 30% chance someone at work will mention that there's a new iphone coming out. The 10 minutes I spent reading this article are a fairly significant increase in total attention I'll give to the release.

"magical" :-)

It's not like there's only the One Big Leak that can be called major. This is pretty damn big. Now the whole damn world know what the next iPhone looks like, what features it will have, and then some.

Before the GM leak, we had no idea how the status bar and face recognition would operate. Now we know all of it.

Unless Apple has other hardware in the pipeline or another hardware feature for the TV or Watch, there will be no surprises. I'm sure the execs are pissed, as they want people to watch the keynote completely unspoiled.

I think the quotes in the headline might be better suited around 'suffers.' I'm half convinced these sort of things are intentional.

Apple does leak things intentionally, we pretty much know that. For example last year it's widely assumed that they were responsible for the leaks about the headphone jack disappearing so that the enthusiasts set would know what was coming and have some time to "get over it" some.

It's also assumed that Apple leaked the thousand dollar price for the original iPad just so they could announce it at $500 and blow everyone away.

In both cases the leak benefited Apple.

I'm not sure what in this leak would be beneficial to Apple. All it does is make it so people will be less surprised on Tuesday and they won't be able to catch people by surprise as much.

I'm strongly willing to bet that this leak (in the HomePod a month ago) we're purposefully done by Apple.

It's pretty obvious someone did this purposefully, but I don't think they did it with Apple's blessing/planning. It was an individual employee (or a few) doing it on their own.

Would you say they suffered? It would be interesting to know which leaks are sanctioned, as well. This one? It looks like it just gives them more free publicity.

Anything about Apple gets publicity, but now it's not as much of a surprise on Tuesday. They work really hard on that surprise so I don't see why they would leak it Friday.

Sometimes the leaks have a clear benefits to Apple, I don't think this is one of them.

I'm going to speculate that anyone who was interested in Tuesday's revelations will still be observing on Tuesday. This is Apple, after all. They have a pretty dedicated following.

I'd argue that this is even worse than the misplaced prototype. This leak confirms much of the speculation around the design of the new phone but also gives away new information about the software it will use (animojis, faceID) plus the new Apple Watch with LTE.

Don't be fooled, it's desperate PR.

Our current phones have all we need. Nobody cares about any new over-engineered and over-priced iphone anymore, we've got bigger issues at hand now.

"Our", "we", "nobody", "we've" ... was there a election I missed?

What was the nature of MTV? For me it was insatiable desire. Thats the very nature of Americans. We want what we don't have. One of the characteristics of American consumers in the early 80's was Shop till you drop. "I want it. I don't know what it is but I want it." - Dale Pon, Advertising exec part of the MTV launch campaign in Aug 1981

Who cares? It was once a big deal what the 1956 Chevy would look like. Now, nobody cares. It was a big deal when the original iPod and iPhone came out, but version N+1? It's going to be another black rectangle.

Hype is how new products sell out at launch. They want people to be as surprised as possible and mindlessly hop on their bandwagon

For a sense of history, here's the General Motors introduction ceremony for the 1953 models.[1] This was a Big Deal in its day. National TV coverage.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCutLTuIqOo

The new SoC sounds like it's going to be amazing [1]. I don't think Qualcomm or Samsung are going to be able to compete for years.

[1] https://twitter.com/stroughtonsmith/status/90692329088688537...

They haven't been able to compete since the A6... it's hard for them though because Apple makes the chip very large while Samsung and Qualcomm don't wish to take that risk

Eh? Android, led by Samsung, is way way ahead of Apple. Most non technical people don't even know what a CPU is and aren't about to spend $1000 on a new phone.

That's not to say this chip doesn't sound impressive. But it's not going to change market shares.

the processor might not be important but they (we?) are going to spend 1000 on a new phone if it's an iphone (actually also for a samsung like the new note), did you live under a rock in the last 10 years of smartphones? Sure not every person on the planet is going to, but a significant amount is (we'll see if it's enough to keep the expensive model on the shelf or not, that's a different story)

When it comes to performance Apple has been leading for a couple of years. The only android phones that have been able to be at the top of the line iPhone do it because they had twice as many cores. In any single core benchmark Apple seems to wipe the floor with competitors.

And there's a battery price to be paid by winning that way.

So if Apple doubles the number of power course they have where does that leave Android phones for competing on the ultra high-end?

(Before anyone says "Android phones are fast enough"/"It doesn't matter" I totally agree. To the normal user this isn't a real problem, it's just fun tech geekery)

In day to day usage, vanilla Android on entry level hardware has felt faster than iOS on subsequent generation premium hardware for years now. iPhones have always beaten Android phones on certain graphics benchmarks, but for general business usage, they remain too[1] laggy[2]. I and several others I know who have switched to vanilla Android from iPhones have had the same experience.

[1] https://youtu.be/hPhkPXVxISY

[2] https://youtu.be/h5bDuvn_Tjw

I suspect you will get the same result as in these videos with a $235 Xiaomi Mi A1 and a $1000 iPhone X.

Anyone who says "Android phones are fast enough"/"It doesn't matter" is absolutely fooling themselves, and may as well be saying "640k is enough for anybody". Mock them accordingly.

Honestly I've never used an android phone for more than five minutes because I've never owned one.

But that's my impression from people I've talked to who use flagship devices. It wouldn't surprise me if the hundred dollar ones feel slow, but that's to be expected.

I mean I love my iPhone getting faster every time I buy a new one but generally my old one feels fine. It's not like I'm suffering from a slow phone.

big.LITTLE has been a thing for years, and at least Qualcomm has had 4+4 chips out for about as long.

Besides, performance doesn't matter if it's locked into a walled garden.

How do you figure that?

IMO, the damage from this is negligible given that it's only a couple of days before the release.

- Competitors can't respond in any material way that will take away from the announcement.

- Journalists (and thus consumers) get more time to grok the feature enhancements.

- Developers (the general 3P devs who don't have strategic partner early access) will have time to dream up how they'll extend the new features.

That being said, if this happened 3 or 6 months before the release, there would likely be more measurable damage.

- This goes way beyond the supply chain leaks that power Ming-Chi Kuo's analyst reports. Perhaps an Apple QA engineer or contractor? Disgruntled SWE? In any case leaker is in a world of hurt if Apple identifies him/her

- Wonder if 9 to 5 Mac and MacRumors get limited access from Apple now that they published these leaks. I'd say yes.

- "As best I've been able to ascertain, these builds were available to download by anyone, but they were obscured by long, unguessable URLs [web addresses]," wrote John Gruber, a blogger known for his coverage of Apple.

Sounds like an inside job.

That's one possibility. I've also seen suggestions on Twitter it might've been from a carrier who is doing some sort of final testing.

It would be ironic if some third-party connected to Apple tested iOS 11 and used Internet Explorer to download the release which causes the visited URL to be indexed by Bing. Maybe the download URL pops up in Bing if you find the right keywords.

These search engines... I do not think you understand how they work :-)

Bing doesn't index and then serve URLs you visit in your browser, even IE.

Are you sure? From https://blogs.bing.com/search/2011/02/02/setting-the-record-... (context: Google did a sting operation by faking search results for made up terms, Bing ended up showing the same results):

"We do look at anonymous click stream data as one of more than a thousand inputs into our ranking algorithm. We learn from our customers as they traverse the web, a common practice in helping to improve a wide array of online services. We have been clear about this for a couple of years (see Directions on Microsoft report, June 15, 2009)."

And from here: http://searchengineland.com/google-bing-is-cheating-copying-...

> Indeed, the statement that Stefan Weitz, director of Microsoft’s Bing search engine, emailed me yesterday as I worked on this article seems to confirm the allegation: As you might imagine, we use multiple signals and approaches when we think about ranking... Opt-in programs like the [Bing] toolbar help us with clickstream data, one of many input signals we and other search engines use to help rank sites.

Also (same link): > Microsoft does disclose that Suggested Sites collects information about sites you visit. From the privacy policy: When Suggested Sites is turned on, the addresses of websites you visit are sent to Microsoft, together with standard computer information. To help protect your privacy, the information is encrypted when sent to Microsoft. Information associated with the web address, such as search terms or data you entered in forms might be included."

And (refering to Bing toolbar): > The install page highlights some of what will be collected and how it will be used: improve your online experience with personalized content by allowing us to collect additional information about your system configuration, the searches you do, websites you visit, and how you use our software. We will also use this information to help improve our products and services."

From the same article (at the time, in 2011) Google deny using their services to index search results, FWIW. But AFAIK Microsoft never made such a clear denial - do you have a reason to be so confident in your claim?

There's also this followup: http://searchengineland.com/bing-why-googles-wrong-in-its-ac...

> Bing says it does NOT do this. It says there is no Google specific search signal that it being used, no list of all the popular pages as selected just by Google users. Instead, it has a “search signal” based on searching activity observed across a range of sites. For example, if you did a search on Amazon, Bing might detect that. A search on eBay might get spotted. A search on Yahoo, that also might get extracted. Any number of searches might be identified. Bing would associate the next page you went to after doing those searches as being a possible “answer” to those searches.

> “We aggregate the information,” Shum said. “The entire clickstream gets weighted along with different signals,” he explained. “For head queries, we have more signals. For tail queries, we have less. For the Google ‘synthetic’ queries [done for the Google sting operation], we have nothing.”

---

So Bing seem to, as a ranking signal, capture URLs that look like searches, and then the next page - which is pretty clever. If that next page is not already indexed (or alternatively perhaps if they have no other ranking signals for the search they spotted) they seem to index that site as part of ranking that signal. And that was 2011, who knows how much cleverer Google and Bing have got since then.

I can’t find the recent news article but this story[1] is the same in essence: Bing starts indexing web pages it impossibly can know about unless some Microsoft software sends visited URLs to Bing. In the news I remembered it caused some sensitive leaks because company secrets, only obscured by unguessable URLs, were suddenly listed on Bing.

[1] https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/bing/forum/bing_websearc...

FaceID sounds like a security nightmare. I still can't believe they opted to totally remove the fingerprint sensor.

Are you sure they're removing TouchID? I think FaceID is just another option for logging in.

All the rumors point to that. It’s pretty confirmed at this point.

iPhone 8 keeps the home button and thus TouchID. iPhone X loses the home button and with it TouchID. As its replacement they use a 3D camera for facial recognition.

Didn't the leaks "confirmed" that IPhone 8 is going to be called Iphone X?

The 7S and S Plus keep the current design.

The GP is right. Apple has decided to call the updates to the current phones the 8 and 8+ instead of going with the 7S monikers.

The new phone that's even better is the X as you said.

It's a Kinect-style 3D sensor, so it shouldn't be that easy to fool.

I can use the incorrect finger under duress and lock the device out.

I can't change my face. Faces are not passwords.

Remember that we just found out that the next version of iOS has a special feature where you can press a button five times to disable the biometric stuff and force someone to use a password to login. I imagine that's their solution to this (and TouchID).

You have to blink five times.

I used Windows Hello on my Lumia 950 for a while back in the day and it seemed fine. It did the recognition work on-device and didn't involve sending anything to "the cloud," which was nice.

But yes, I eventually turned it off for the same reason I would turn off fingerprint authentication.

What reason is that?

They're both flawed, since they are easy to replicate and impossible to replace once the attacker has your credentials.

Now that the iPhone has NFC, OLED, and is water resistant, literally the only thing only thing holding me back from finally switching is the lack of a damned head phone jack. Apple has managed to close the gap with competitors in hardware, and even as an Android user I can acknowledge iOS is a bit more polished on the software side.

But seriously: head phone jack. It is indispensable.

It has a headphone jack. It's called the Lightning port.

Weird, my headphones (1/8" jack) don't fit.

So you buy the $9 adapter and attach it to the cable of your headphones so it's always with them.

Last year you got one of them for free in the box, for all we know they'll do that again this year.

Ah, that's right. I just bought a handful of them and put one permanently on everything I use with my iPhone

They fit just fine; there's a tiny little adapter which is included with your iPhone. Leave it attached to your headphones. It's really not a big deal.

As someone who has lived without one for the last year: it's not. Just leaving adapter on the end of your headphones works fine, switching to Bluetooth works even better (for non-interactive content).

Removing the jack was one thing but definitely gave me pause about my upgrade to a seven but it turned out to be a complete non-issue.

Where do you put the adapter when you're listening through some other 3.5mm source though? That's what I'm most worried about, as someone who will be buying his first headphone jack free iPhone.

Basically the only time I used headphones in my normal life is at work. The only time I stop using them with my phone was when I would plug them into my desktop for some reason. That was usually temporary so I just left the adapter next to my phone and it wasn't an issue.

These days are use AirPods and just switch them between computers so I don't have to worry about the adapter anymore.

But the adapters are only $10 so it's not that hard to have a spare or two.

Not sure how I feel about the premium model's name. Is it pronounced as in the letter 'X' or ten/10? I'm guessing ten, as in the 10th anniversary edition iPhone (which will certainly confuse things in 2-4 years).

I would hope 10 based on what they did with macOS, but you're right we're probably going to end up having that fight again.

I think this sort of makes sense for this year but I would assume that they'll end up re-naming things after this. You're right that having the bottom phone call 10 would certainly make things confusing.

With the iPads recently, and Macs since Jobs returned they've been using the same names without numbers. It wouldn't surprise me too much if we went to iPhone, iPhone+, and something else. To specify we just refer to them by the year they were released.

I had read that their intent is to mean both...10 for 10th year, and X for experimental/new...

They pretty much settled that whole thing when OSX (now macOS) came out.

Well, this tells us Apple has plans for facial expression mapping to emoji. Sounds a lot like the technology from their FaceShift acquisition.

As soon as I heard this it seemed like a major phone seller. It will only be on the top of the line phone but wow does it sound fun/appealing.

It sounds pretty darn creepy to me. And it's sure to lead to social disasters - how can you boil down all the nuance and uniquenss of an individual human's facial expression to a smiley? It's bound to make the wrong face at least sometimes.

The target audience will love it, mistakes will become memes, and most won't find it creepy. I however, agree that it is creepy as hell.

What makes you think it's creepy? My sister said something similar but I don't really see it myself. Are you worried it's going to be some sort of uncanny valley kind of thing?

I'm worried about how much the camera is watching and analyzing my facial expressions.

I can't imagine that you'd be forced to use it. Disable it. (I would.) Cover up your camera.

Sure, it wouldn't stop me from buying a phone with this feature, but I still find it vaguely creepy.

OK, that I understand. I would assume it's not doing it unless an app is explicitly using it at the moment, and there's still the permission that app to need just to have access to the camera.

It would be interesting to see if there's a new permission they need to get access to this kind of stuff, but I haven't seen anything about that in the leaks.

I would assume trying to do this all the time would use up a ton of battery.

Is this different from using an emoji to approximate an emotion? Or abbreviations like lol? Or language in general? Or any communication? People will get used to it and it'll become popular if people find it useful. I personally don't use emoji much and likely wouldn't use this much either. But I can imagine others might.

  Is this different from using an 
  emoji to approximate an emotion?

Yes, very. Say I crack a joke :) You see the smiley, and it's the same (alright, roughly the same ;o) ) as the smiley someone else would use to express the same approximate emotion.

If, on the other hand, my smile looks like 8-D but someone else's looks like :=) and that other guy's looks like %} - the consistency vanishes. And that's before you start factoring in people with, say, Bell's Palsy.

I understand what you're saying. All communication has the possibility of miscommunication: and it's not just on the sender. Ever been misunderstood in face-to-face conversation? Over text? Over the phone? Over email? On an Internet forum?

If it's not useful, people won't use it. If there's a miscommunication, we have ways to resolve those. I can't imagine this is something people will be forced to use, just as people aren't forced to use emoji, or markup images.

I generally trust Apple to get this kind of stuff right, we'll see.

When my little sister saw the demos that were on 9to5mac that was sort of her reaction. She thought somewhere cute but at the same time she thought others looked kind of creepy. She had a similar reaction to some of the giant emojis The watch could send.

At the same time I could see having a ton of fun with this. Make some sort of funny voice, choose an emoji to go with it, and send it to someone as a joke.

My guess (in this is slightly based on some of the leaks from last month) is that it doesn't do any actual representation of your face. It figures out specific faces/gestures (smiling, winking, raised eyebrow, etc.) and shows those along with maybe the direction your head is looking. I'm assuming it's not real motion capture style.

> It's bound to make the wrong face at least sometimes.

I'm guessing you can cancel and try again before sending it in that case.

Really??? It sounds like something I would try once and then disable and never use again.

How can one reasonably assume that Apple has our PII self-interests in mind, whilst simultaneously building the most comprehensive PII-Invading-Spying (PII-I-S) device ever built?

FB and Goog seem to have the most PPII-I-S services on the planet, but Apple has the HW "cornered" on that invasion...

How can we even uphold a non-dystopian future.

Just look at the last decade has played out. Imagine the reverse-hockey-stick of the next decade.

So; again - How can there possibly any reasonable expectation of privacy going forward?

Given that Apple keeps a hash of your fingerprints stored on the device in a way that even Apple can't get to it (and I would assume something similar for the facial scan stuff) how are they in the same league as Facebook?

Apple doesn't even share the facial recognition data for iPhoto between your own devices.

Facebook has a profile of every one they've ever seen in a picture and can guess who they are even if they're not on Facebook.

It's completely different.

The article references a leaked hour-long recording from a meeting at Apple. Where is this available online?

Why do you think it would be?

Because it was leaked

Well, Apple "officially leaks" some info to the press before major events, though this seems to be something unofficial

Still, the impact is much smaller than implied by the article

> "As best I've been able to ascertain, these builds were available to download by anyone, but they were obscured by long, unguessable URLs [web addresses]," wrote John Gruber, a blogger known for his coverage of Apple.

Does anybody have any idea why they'd do this, assuming they don't want it to be leakable? Why not make it accessible only on their network/VPN, and/or have it behind the company SSO?

"It revealed that Apple had hired ex-workers from the US National Security Agency (NSA), FBI and Secret Service to help catch tattletales."

Edward Snowden? ;)

The high quality image of the upcoming cellular connected Apple Watch is probably the biggest news to come out of this leak. The features of the ‘iPhone X’ have been pretty well known, but details on the new Apple Watch have been scarce. Having high quality marketing images of an unreleased Apple product is really unprecedented.

When it comes to the X we learned the name, what FaceID is called, the Animoji stuff, and how the status bar works.

How will Apple Pay work without Touch ID? The double tap on the home button to initiate and confirm contactless transactions is priceless.

Going back to pin or having to look at the phone to use Apple Pay is going to be annoying especially for public transport.

They may have just changed what you double tap to one of the other buttons.

Or maybe they've improved the battery life enough that it can always be sensing for a payment terminal so you don't have to double tap to initiate the process, just something to confirm.

Someone is going to get in a TON of trouble if found.

We still don't know two things: the iPhone X price and if it launches at the same time or later than the iPhone 8 and 8s.

Bonus: Verizon just confirmed the existence of the LTE Apple Watch due to their own leak.

I guess now we will find out just how important element of surprise is for Apple marketing.

And prediction: in the future they will separate all new hardware features to .1 release (iOS 12.1, etc).

> I guess now we will find out just how important element of surprise is for Apple marketing.

I don’t think we will. iPhone X doesn’t really sound like a bargain.

I was hyped up to upgrade my 7 plus, but then I saw that the price stars at $1000, that they remove the TouchID, and that the rumors say they didn’t include it because the run out of time, so there is a good chance if will be there in the next version.

Add to this the usual 1st gen problems Apple is always facing, and waiting for iPhone Xs is sno brainer.

We still don't know the price but you're right that's where rumors are pointing. The idea (from analysis, we'll see on Tuesday) is this is the high-end fancy phone for people who want to pay extra. If you want to bigger screen without the phone being much bigger, if you want to better looking screen, if you want more battery life (maybe, OLED uses less than LCD) then this may be the phone for you.

They obviously have to be careful because they don't want to promote it in such a way that it makes the other two phones look terrible and not worth buying.

How they market all of this is going to be fascinating to see.

discoveries so far include:

* a reference to iPhone X, which acts as fresh evidence that Apple intends to unveil a high-end model alongside more modest updates to its handset line

* images of a new Apple Watch and AirPod headphones

* a set-up process for Face ID - an alternative to the Touch ID system fingerprint system - that says it can be used to unlock handsets and make online purchases from Apple, among other uses

* the introduction of Animoji - animated emoji characters that mirror a user's captured facial expressions

This whole doubling down on security thing isn't working. What Apple needs to do is triple down and place a chastity belt on security.

I usually skip spoilers. Even though I'm not as fan as in the "jobs/one more thing" era, I still like the surprise.

All these stories and comments need spoiler tags. I was curios enough to read them but now regret it. I want to be surprised at the event, not nod with my head and think “Hm, that’s it?”.

Disappointed no one is talking about the 4+2 cpu, we maybe able to get 2 day battery life out of the device.

The OLED screen could also mean a noticeable boost.

As Steve Trouten-Smith has been digging into things on Twitter he has said it doesn't look like a big.LITTLE style configuration.

https://twitter.com/stroughtonsmith/status/90696042504829747...

and

https://twitter.com/stroughtonsmith/status/90699098650456883...

Aren’t the iOS betas being distributed fairly frequently to public beta testers? Why’s this a big deal?

I don’t know for sure, but I believe the betas are stripped of references to unreleased hardware.

Yes, but normal iOS betas have everything related to unannounced products stripped out first. So you can't actually find anything about the new iPhone. The best you can do is look at the APIs that they already told you about in WWDC and try to intuit where they might be going.

This wasn't supposed to get out to people until after the products have been announced and thus no more secrecy was needed.

It is incredible how seriously Apple takes itself.

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