Table of contents for Issue 132 in iPad & iPhone User

The reports of the iPhone X’s demise may have been a little premature. Apple has posted its best second quarter in history, with revenue of $61.1 billion and quarterly earnings per diluted share of $2.73. That’s good for a revenue increase of 16 percent over 2017 and a massive earnings-per-share boost of 30 percent. But all anyone cares about is iPhone numbers. On that front, Apple sold 52.2 million handsets (an increase of 3 percent over last year) at an average selling price of $728 (about £533). While that’s not quite as high as last quarter’s $796 ASP (about £583), it far exceeds last year’s $654 (about £479), and is a strong sign that iPhone X sales aren’t as dismal as analysts expected. In fact, Tim Cook took a moment…

Wondering whether your broken Apple product qualifies for a free repair, or is part of a replacement programme? You’ve come to the right place. If your iPhone or iPad has gone wrong and you don’t think it’s your fault, you may be able to get the tech giant (or a company authorized by Apple) to repair it for free, provide a replacement product, or refund your money. You can attempt this on an individual, case-by-case basis, but occasionally Apple institutes a general recall or free repair programme for a particular product or model that it acknowledges has a congenital problem. Over the following pages we cover the firm’s current replacement programmes: check to see if your faulty device is included. You might be in line for a free replacement. Will…

Many Mac users rely on the Image Capture app to transfer photos and videos from directly-connected cameras, memory cards, iPhones, and iPads. It’s an alternative to Photos (or iPhoto) if you’re not using iTunes for syncing, manually importing, or using iCloud Photo Library. But sometimes you may plug in your iOS device and Image Capture fails to show it listed in the left bar that displays devices from which it can acquire media. This appears to happen due to a trust issue. MacOS has been gradually upping how it closes a verification loop between an iPhone or iPad, and software on a Mac when you connect the iOS device via USB. That’s good for security – someone might be able to grab your device, plug it in, and rifle through…

Price: Free from fave.co/2jjZsFh Apple views Numbers for iOS as a tool for visualizing and presenting data, rather than as a workhorse spreadsheet app. But the latest update offers improvements on both sides of that equation. While not piling on features, Apple has brought the iOS version more in line with the Mac app, as well as harmonizing features with Pages and Keynote for consistency. This means less frustration when moving among apps and between platforms. What’s new Numbers 4 for iOS adds only two real flagship changes, although the importance of one of them is buried. The company promotes the addition for drawing using an Apple Pencil or your finger on iPads that Pencil. Because Numbers sheets can be quite elaborate and used for presentation purposes, I can understand…

With the new 9.7in iPad, the Apple Pencil at last comes to the masses. Apple’s recent push to get its scrappy tablet back in schools means you no longer how to shell out mountains of cash if you want to use the iPad like a digital notepad, and that’s good news for all of us regardless of whether we’re in boardrooms or the classroom. Even better for Apple Pencil newcomers, the App Store is already stuffed with note-taking apps that use it to its full potential. Here are our favourites. The best free app: Apple Notes Price: Free If you want a head start on writing on an iPad with an Apple Pencil, then there’s no better place to start than Apple’s own Notes app. It’s not exactly packed with…

Signing up for a service through iOS kind of fun. A menu pops pop, you activate Face ID or Touch ID, and the world’s most satisfying ding lets you know your purchase was successful. It’s simplicity itself. It’s funny, then, that Apple makes it such a Herculean ordeal to unsubscribe. Unsubscribing forces you to venture into depths of the Settings app that you probably never knew existed, and then through so many extra menus that you might start to worry you’re doing it wrong. Who knows? Maybe Apple wants to make it easy to hide your Tinder Gold subscription from prying eyes, but it’s a pain when you’re just trying to stop an app from sucking money from your wallet every month. Regardless of what you want out of, here’s…

The newest version of the iPhone 8 does justice to the Apple name, while also doing some good. Apple has announced the iPhone 8 and 8 Plus (Product)Red Special Edition. The latest in a long line of (Product)Red editions from the firm, a portion of every sale of these blazing red phones go to the Global Fund’s HIV and AIDS grants, with Apple donating more than $120 million since 2006. It’s not just the rear of the phone getting a makeover. Look closely and you’ll see that the iPhone 8 (Product)Red Special Edition swaps the standard model’s white front out for a slick black sheen, too. The flagship iPhone X isn’t available in a new crimson enclosure, but it’s still getting in on the fun with a (Product)Red iPhone X…

Police now have access to an inexpensive device that can crack iPhone and iPad passwords in a matter of minutes. First reported in early March by Forbes, GrayKey, from a company called Grayshift, is designed for turn-key cracking of iOS passcodes. In mid-March, Malwarebytes Labs explored the device in greater depth, noting that a four-digit PIN could be cracked in a couple of hours and a six-digit PIN would require as many as a few days. Tech website Motherboard extended this reporting in April with more details about how GrayKey has been used in the field. And security researcher Matthew Green posted a message on Twitter showing the theoretically fastest cracking time possible given the parameters he knew, which brought the issue back to the fore given the potential for…

As a technology columnist, it’s tempting to spend a lot of time noting the places where Apple can improve its products. There are always glitches, bugs, and design trade-offs to pick on. But, on the flip side, it’s worth calling out the places where Apple has made great strides, not just in terms of introducing new features, but also for those capabilities that actually improve our everyday lives, or even just refining the technology that already exists to make it that extra little bit better. So to shift gears a bit, over the following pages I’d like to mention a handful of Apple innovations that I’m pretty thankful for – even if they could occasionally still use a tweak here and there. Apple Pay is daring Apple Pay is one…

Price: Free from fave.co/1qaUHi1 Keynote for iOS has always been designed around interaction more than its macOS counterpart, partly because it’s more likely you’ll be using a single screen to present than multiple monitors. That shows clearly in this minor update. And many of the new features bring Keynote for iOS into feature parity with its macOS counterpart, as well as a consistent interface and set of options alongside Pages and Numbers on both platforms. Apple Pencil support Just as you can in the other iWork iOS apps (Pages and Numbers), Apple Pencil or your finger can be used to create drawings on iPads with Pencil support. This a useful improvement for Keynote – making as much sense here as in Pages – with the added benefit that Keynote for…

There’s always something new to play on your iPhone or iPad, but with loads and loads of games pouring into the App Store every week, it can be tough to find the real gems in the pile. Luckily, our monthly iOS games round-up is designed to alleviate that hassle. The largest release was surely the new Harry Potter game, which lets you create your own witch or wizard and begin training at Hogwarts, although we weren’t thrilled with the freemium approach. Luckily, there’s plenty more worth considering from the month. 1. Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery Price: Free from fave.co/2HPSd2J No, it’s not Niantic’s location-based Harry Potter game – that’s still coming in the future. Still, fans of the massively popular movie and book franchise might want to try Harry Potter:…

AmacOS pseudo-ransomware attack from September 2017 that could also be used to irritate iOS users may continue to plague Apple users. Reader Richard says one morning he found his iPhone and iPad locked in Lost Mode. He was unable to regain access, and had to use Apple’s recovery process to verify his identity. This happened two weeks later to his wife’s iPhone and iPad, and then a friend of his wife’s had the same experience. This is almost certainly related. In the previous attack, crackers would use database of passwords stolen and cracked from the many billions of leaked account/password combinations in the past few years. Some of those accounts were from iCloud users who used an icloud.com email address for their account name and reused the same password on…

One of the biggest dates in the Apple calendar is WWDC, short for Worldwide Developer Conference. It’s the firm’s annual, week-long event for software developers, but it’s also the venue where the tech giant makes some of the biggest announcements of the year. Apple fills most of the time with developer workshops, training, parties, and networking events, but it starts the week with a keynote speech announcing major updates to the software running on its Macs, iPhones, iPads, Apple Watches, Apple TVs, and other devices. There might be some significant hardware unveilings, too: WWDC 2017 saw the unveiling of the HomePod, and we usually see new Macs at the event, while the second, third, and fourth iPhones all made their debuts at WWDC in the past. We discuss what you…

Apple thinks it is critically important that everyone learn how to code. It may not help you in your job directly, but it teaches useful skills and creates a basic knowledge of the fundamental workings of the products and tools we all use every day. It’s not just something children should do at school, but an important part of an ongoing education for adults. So, the company created an initiative called Everyone Can Code that aims to make it easy for anyone, from kids to adults, to learn the basics of writing code. Naturally, it’s centred around Apple’s Swift programming language rather than, say, C++ or JavaScript. And it all starts with Swift Playgrounds, a cute iPad app that teaches the fundamentals of coding in a way so simple even…

Price: Free from fave.co/2HGryVJ With Pages 4 for iOS, Apple has shifted the app’s focus from being a fancy word processor with modest page-layout tools, to something that’s substantially more. Even as the app broadens its range of tasks, Apple also improved existing ones that lagged or were incomplete. As a result, Pages is a stronger overall app, and it also offers greater coordination and parity with the new Pages for macOS. Book creation Pages 4 now comes with book templates for creating interactive e-books, providing an end-to-end workflow instead of just an export option. These books can be nearly as richly capable and interactive (with a few exceptions) as those produced by iBooks Author. You can also now create drawings and use the Smart Annotation beta for graphical markup…

Apple’s camera app is just fine. It’s fast, and simple, and offers a few nifty features such as panorama shots and slow-motion video. But if you really want to make the most out of your iPhone photo and video experience – if you want more than ‘just fine’ – you’re going to want a third-party camera app. From precise expert controls to top-notch filters and the ability to save RAW images, there are lots of great reasons to keep a couple of camera apps on your home screen. A lot of these apps cost a few pounds, and even the free ones usually have paid add-ons. Don’t let that scare you off. Snapping photos is one of the most important features of our iPhones, and the ability to do it…

You’re tapping along on your iPhone or iPad, and suddenly an ordinary letter or word gets replaced by something bizarre. We’re all used to autocorrect picking up weird expansions, which happens partly because Apple has introduced machine learning into how it predicts what you might intend to type. However, you might also be the victim of a prank, and if you have children or people with child-like humour around you, you probably know who did it, too. A reader whose identity I shall wisely keep secret in order to spare them further embarrassment, wrote in with this question: “When I type in the letter ‘I’, I get ‘i see dem jeanzzz’, and when I type in the word ‘hi’, I get ‘You a big green stankie bugger’. How do I…