bill42

pte apple said:

iPhone X - love it.
Only issue is face ID - I've reset 4x now and it's 50/50 whether my phone will recognize me or not .

This comment stands out. Your phone is most likely defective. Somewhere last week I read that Apple is now officially swapping out some face-ID cameras due to some being defective. It should always work, all the time. Mine works with my bike helmet and sunglasses on, flawlessly. Take yours to the Apple Store.

SendMcjak said:

zone said:

... If this was not an Apple product people would be saying how great it is!

Apparently, a fairly small number of people who actually bought one.

HomePod is a well-engineered product with fairly poor market fit + a terrible launch strategy.

I would buy two of them or maybe three if you could use voice commands to tell the home pods to play any songs in your main computer's iTunes library. Alas that only works if you pay a monthly subscription to Apple Music. No thanks Apple.

SpamSandwich said:

How about just be a smarter consumer and buy almost any kind of case for the phone? I’ve always purchased a case, have managed to drop multiple phones repeatedly and have not cracked a single screen yet.

Or, if you are like so many of us who never dropped a phone only a hard surface in over 10 years, why not continue to do what you are doing, and if you never bought any insurance in over 10 years for all your phones, you have already saved around $1000 which will cover quite a few repairs!

DavidAlGregory said:

It is amazing what Apple and others have been able to do with camera phones, but as someone who used to make their living as a photographer during the film era I have a real problem with the idea of investing so much into something that will be traded or given away in about 2-3 years. Maybe it’s generational, but $1,000 for a throwaway point and shoot camera- even nice ones like the iPhone 8 and X are- is just not something I have any interest in.

I would love to see what Apple could do if they tried to make a serious stand alone camera that could work with and be controlled by a Mac or iOS device. If they built a camera on the Micro 4/3rds platform there would be a whole universe of great glass that could find new life.

I'm 47 and I grew up with film SLR cameras. It took many years for digital cameras to surpass the image quality of a good film camera but now even the cheaper ones leave our old film cameras in the dust. Now we are approaching the era when phone cameras take sharper and less noisy/grainy photos that our old film SLR cameras. Is $1000 a lot? Maybe compared to my pocket SONY camera but an iPhone is even more convenient as it fits in my jeans pocket. But you aren't just buying a camera, right? $1000 gets you a 4k video camera as well in your pocket. And a computer more powerful than desktop computers before 2013. And a photo viewer that contains every single photo and video I have ever taken since I started scanning photos or shooting with digital cameras. (I have well over 40,000 photos in my pocket) Add a GPS navigator for your car. I even use my iPhone for my motorcycle GPS. Add a date planner, a jukebox of every song I ever bought in my life, a personal assistant, an encyclopedia of every fact known to mankind, a pocket store to order anything I could ever want with free 2 day shipping, an instant messaging device and oh yeah, a phone and a video phone to call anyone on the entire planet for free.  If we paid $10,000 that would still be cheaper that it should be. And, in 3 years you can sell that iPhone X for $400.

saarek said:

Apple seems to be slipping a lot these days. The lack of fusion drive support at launch for their new file system, as an example.

maybe they should just release new features throughout the year and forget the annual release cycle that they are stuck in.

That is the entire point of beta testing... Apple thought they had a new system covering all the bases but then learned thanks to beta testing that certain drives were having some issues so they pulled the support for now. There is no annual release cycle. They will put features into iOS 11 during updates when ever they are ready, at multiple times during the year, just as they always have done. Apple systems today are far more solid than they used to be. You think Apple is slipping these days? What about The update to System 8 o the Macintosh line where most people had to wait a full year before it would work with their software? Or the first OS X that many waited for 1-2 full years before they dared install? Today you can install an iOS or mac OS update today on the very first day and almost everything will work flawlessly.