MacRumors

Apple is reportedly "mulling" the idea of launching a stylus compatible with iPhone, believed to be a new iteration of the Apple Pencil, which is currently only supported by the iPad Pro. The rumor comes from industry sources speaking to The Korea Herald (via The Investor), which claimed that Apple engineers "have recently been working" on a new iPhone device that "comes with a digital pen," aiming for a potential launch in 2019.

The sources said that the iPhone stylus is likely to adopt a "supercapacitor stylus type" for price benefits, contrasting with Samsung's Galaxy Note pen which is based on electromagnetic resonance technology that needs additional panel components to be installed underneath the smartphone display. "A supercapacitor type is cheaper to make compared to the EMR stylus. It also offers a more pen-like feel," according to the industry sources.

Notably, Apple's current A-series chip would see a "drastic upgrade" as well in order to fuel a better handwriting experience for the stylus on iPhone.

Apple is mulling something that its late founder Steve Jobs had outright rejected -- adding a stylus to its iPhone, according to industry sources on Oct. 13.

“Apple is preparing to launch the phone as early as 2019,” an industry source told The Investor on condition of anonymity. “It is also in talks with a couple of stylus makers for a partnership.”

The Apple Pencil launched nearly two years ago in November 2015 alongside the 12.9-inch iPad Pro. Apple's first stylus was designed specifically to work with the iPad Pro, and gives users the feel of using a real pen or pencil with sensors that determine the orientation and angle of the Apple Pencil, and pressure sensitivity allowing for darker or lighter pen strokes.

Former Apple CEO Steve Jobs was famously against launching a stylus for iPhones, during the original iPhone event stating: "Who wants a stylus? You have to get them, and put them away, and you lose them, yuck. Nobody wants a stylus."

Apple executives and current CEO Tim Cook have repeatedly avoided referring to Apple Pencil as a "stylus" over the years, with Cook commenting in an interview last year that "we launched a pencil not a stylus." The Apple CEO further stated, "I think that Steve would have loved" the Apple Pencil, and even gave early mention of a pencil device potentially supporting iPhones in the future: "if you’ve ever seen what can be created on an iPhone or an iPad with that pencil is really unbelievable."

All of the iPhones Apple plans to produce in 2018 are likely to abandon the Touch ID fingerprint sensor in favor of facial recognition, KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo told investors in a note sent out this evening.

According to Kuo, Apple will embrace Face ID as its authentication method for a competitive advantage over Android smartphones. Kuo has previously said that it could take years for Android smartphone manufacturers to produce technology that can match the TrueDepth camera and the Face ID feature coming in the iPhone X.

We predict all new 2H18F iPhone models will likely abandon fingerprint recognition. We believe this change will allow all new models to realize a competitive advantage via differentiation, on the back of an integrated user experience of full-screen design and TrueDepth Camera/ Facial recognition/ Face ID/ AR applications.

Face ID, says Kuo, will continue to be a major selling point of the new iPhone models in 2018, with Apple planning to capitalize on its lead in 3D sensing design and production.

Kuo's prediction suggests that all upcoming 2018 iPhones will feature a full-screen design with minimal bezels like the iPhone X, meaning no additional models with the iPhone 8/iPhone 8 Plus design would be produced.

That would spell the end of the line for Touch ID in the iPhone, which has been available as a biometric authentication option since 2013. It's not clear what that means for the Mac and the iPad, but Kuo has said he expects next year's iPad Pro models to transition to Face ID.

Should Apple decide to abandon Touch ID, it also means development would potentially end on a rumored under-display Touch ID solution.

Back in September, Kuo predicted 2018 iPhones would fully adopt the TrueDepth camera and facial recognition if Face ID was "well received" by customers, but further research conducted by KGI Securities has led him to believe it will indeed be successful, leading to today's more definitive prediction.

Kuo believes that Apple's transition away from Touch ID will also turn Android smartphone manufacturers away from fingerprint recognition. As he said in an earlier note, he expects high-end Android smartphones to "ditch" under-display optical fingerprint recognition in favor of 3D sensing techniques.

Despite Kuo's prediction, Apple software engineering chief Craig Federighi recently hinted that Apple may not be ready to abandon Touch ID across all its products just yet. While he said Face ID is the future of biometric authentication, he also noted that there are settings where different biometric techniques or combinations of biometrics could make sense.

A little over three weeks after being released to the public, iOS 11 adoption has reached its 47 percent, successfully overtaking iOS 10, according to data collected by analytics company Mixpanel.

With iOS 11 installed on 47 percent of devices, iOS 10 is now installed on 46 percent of devices. 6.7 percent of devices also continue to run iOS 9 or earlier.

iOS 11 adoption has been much slower than iOS 10 adoption during the same timeframe last year. It took just two weeks for iOS 10 to overtake iOS 9, while iOS 11 was only installed on 38.5 percent of devices at the two week mark.

Adoption rates have been steadily increasing, though. At 24 hours, iOS 11 was installed on 10 percent of devices, and at one week, it was installed on 25 percent.

Apple has released three minor updates to iOS 11 so far to fix bugs and issues discovered since its launch. The most recent update, iOS 11.0.3, came out just yesterday.

The first major update to iOS 11, iOS 11.1, is in the works and that update may spur people running iOS 10 to upgrade to iOS 11. iOS 11.1 introduces new emoji characters, often popular with users, and it reintroduces a 3D Touch gesture that lets the App Switcher be accessed with one hand.

Apps that use the ARKit framework Apple introduced in iOS 11 have been installed 3 million times around the world since September 19, according to new data shared today by analytics firm Sensor Tower (via TechCrunch).

Many of the ARKit-only apps that are available are games, accounting for 35 percent of ARKit apps worldwide. ARKit-only apps include those that are built entirely around the new ARKit technology, rather than apps that have added some ARKit features.

Utilities are the second most popular ARKit category, accounting for 19 percent of apps, while 11 percent of ARKit apps are in the Entertainment category and 7 percent are in the Education category.

Many of the top ARKit-only apps are games, with four games among the top five highest-grossing ARKit apps. Titles like AR Dragon, Zombie Gunship Revenant, The Machines, and Monster Park -- Dino World have proven to be the most popular AR games with consumers.

Games have accounted for a total of 53 percent of all ARKit-only app downloads and 62 percent of ARKit app revenue since the launch of ARKit.

With games taken out of the top app listings, apps that allow users to measure 3D spaces or demo furniture are some of the top performers. Among free apps, IKEA Place, the furniture app from IKEA that lets consumers see products in their homes before purchasing, is one of the more popular apps.

Sensor Tower's data covers only apps that are primarily focused on the augmented reality experience and it did not take into account apps that offer limited ARKit content like photo modes or mini games.

When iOS 11 launched on September 19, ARKit became the largest augmented reality platform in the world thanks to the huge number of iPhones and iPads out in the wild.

Apple CEO Tim Cook just this week said augmented reality may not be huge right now, but that it will experience a "dramatic" climb to take over the world much like the App Store did when it was first launched.

Bloomberg has partnered with iFixit to provide a high-resolution look at how the inside of the iPhone has changed since first launching a decade ago.

The original iPhone, above left, is equipped with a bulky, yellow lithium-ion battery rated for 1,400 mAh. Apple said that was good enough for up to eight hours of talk time, six hours of web browsing, seven hours of video playback, or 24 hours of audio playback, but real-world results certainly varied.

In the top-left corner sits a 2-megapixel rear camera that lacks an LED flash and shoots photos that are unequivocally blurry by today's standards.

While shielding covers many of the other components, the original iPhone is equipped with 4GB, 8GB, or 16GB of storage, a single-core ARM11 processor downclocked to 412 MHz, just 128MB of RAM, and a PowerVR MBX Lite graphics processor. It also has Bluetooth 2.0 and 802.11b/g Wi-Fi chips.

The original iPhone supports EDGE cellular networks, often referred to as 2G. The technology is so outdated that AT&T, which was the exclusive carrier of the device in the United States, doesn't even operate a compatible network anymore.

Other hardware in the original iPhone includes a 3.5-inch display with a resolution of 320×480 pixels, a mechanical Home button, and a deeply recessed 3.5mm headphone jack that was hard to use. The device's iPod-like 30-pin dock connector was succeeded by the Lightning connector in 2012.

By comparison, the iPhone 8 has a tall, slim battery rated for 1,812 mAh, a 12-megapixel rear camera, up to 256GB of storage, 2GB of RAM, a six-core A11 Fusion chip, Bluetooth 5.0, 802.11a/c Wi-Fi, and LTE Advanced. It has a Lightning connector, a capacitive Home button, and no headphone jack.

The inside of an iPhone has looked similar since the iPhone 4, while the iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS below look noticeably different.

While we've already seen the inside of every iPhone model thanks to iFixit's teardowns over the years, Bloomberg's full feature article provides high-resolution photos and is worth a look for iPhone aficionados.

A new report today yet again suggests that customers looking to get an iPhone X this year might face quite the challenge.

Jeff Pu, an analyst with Taipei-based Yuanta Investment Consulting, has cut his forecast of the number of iPhone X devices that will be produced this year from 40 million units to 36 million. It's the second time he has revised down his estimate, which originally totaled 45 million earlier this year.

The underlying reason is that Apple's suppliers are still struggling to perfect manufacturing of the iPhone X's TrueDepth camera and 3D facial recognition system, according to Japan's Nikkei Asian Review. We first heard about the production issues from KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo a few weeks ago.

Multiple reports have claimed it has taken more time to assemble the TrueDepth system's so-called "Romeo" module than the "Juliet" module.

The "Romeo" module reportedly includes the dot projector that beams more than 30,000 invisible dots to create a precise depth map of your face, while the "Juliet" module includes the infrared camera that analyzes the pattern. Together, they help power new iPhone X features such as Face ID and Animoji.

Pu maintained his belief that the iPhone X will enter mass production in mid-October and begin to be shipped from China to the first wave of launch countries next week. iPhone X pre-orders begin Friday, October 27, just over two weeks from now. The device officially launches Friday, November 3.

After first traveling around France earlier in the week and meeting with French president Emmanuel Macron, then heading to Oxford University in the United Kingdom for the opening of The Oxford Foundry, Apple CEO Tim Cook has now traveled to Stockholm, Sweden today. Just after 9 a.m. local time, Cook was spotted getting out of a black, unmarked Mercedes in Stockholm.

Cook was on Kungsgatan, a street in central Stockholm where Apple's office is located within the city, and an eyewitness speaking to Breakit [Google Translate] said that the CEO traveled with "a whole entourage" into the building, then "rushed out" a few hours later. Cook is likely making the usual rounds to other Apple locations, including potentially checking on the progress of Apple's upcoming flagship store in Kungsträdgården, a park located near Apple's offices in the city.

"He had a whole entourage around as he walked across the street," says an eyewitness to Breakit. Tim Cook and his co-workers entered the gateway to Apple's Stockholm office. A few hours later, the Apple boss rushed out of the building again.

Breakit's reporter Jon Wahlqvist asks Tim Cook what he does in Stockholm. However, the Apple boss did not seem to be interested in addressing any such details: "The only thing he said was terrific, terrific, terrific and gave up his thumb. From the car he then waved in the nearest presidential style, "says Jon Wahlqvist.

Cook also stopped to discuss augmented reality with Feber [Google Translate], where he explained that the first few apps using ARKit are comparable to the opening of the App Store in 2008. Even though this first wave of apps might not wow everyone, Cook said that eventually iPhone users will not be able to "imagine a life without" augmented reality. Cook has made similar AR-related comments for years now, and just this week sat down with The Independent and Vogue to discuss the topic even more in-depth.

I do not think they need to understand, not directly. I would like to compare it with when we opened the App Store 2008. When the first apps came out, people were not so impressed. I remember people wrote things like "this is not so amazing" and "this will not be so important". Today, we can not imagine a life without mobile apps and we use them for everything.

I think we'll see a similar curve that we saw with the usual apps. After a first phase, the curve of use will point straight up. AR is fundamentally different to VR because AR can be a part of everything you do, every day.

The interview further discusses how AR can "enhance" human experiences and day-to-day life without replacing anything, as well as how the technology needs to coexist with Apple's initiatives in the artificial intelligence space. Cook also continued championing students learning to code: "I think everyone who goes to school should learn how to code, but I do not think everyone should be a computer engineer. I think the knowledge to know what's possible is the most important, whether you're a fashion designer or journalist or whatever it is."

Update: Tim Cook has also visited with Iggesund Paperboard, a manufacturer of high quality virgin fiber paperboard and Apple's partner in sustainable packaging.