Austin Mann has been writing iPhone camera reviews for years and they’re great. It’s really nice seeing what a professional photographer can do with the new iPhone hardware. This year he took a trip to India and has some great examples of the new portrait features and comparisons to prior iPhone hardware. I can’t wait to see what he does when he gets his hands on an iPhone X.

Austin is a very nice fellow. He guested on Mac Power Users a few years ago and shared some great iPhone photography tips.

Apple’s review embargo on the iPhone 8 reviews lifted today and there are several positive reviews out concerning the new hardware. I’ve received several emails from listeners asking for advice about choosing between the iPhone 8 and iPhone X. If you’re reading these words, there is a good chance you are already in the iPhone X camp. However, what about all those people out there that don’t live and die by this stuff? I’ve yet to touch either device so you can take my advice with a grain of salt but from the outside, it seems to me that the iPhone 8 is the default recommendation when non-geeks ask which iPhone to buy.

Except for the addition of a glass back in lieu of aluminum, the iPhone 8 is largely the same design Apple’s used for the last four years. It’s tried and tested. Moreover, the iPhone 8 has the higher speed A11 processor that you will also find the iPhone X.

The iPhone 8 camera got better than the iPhone 7 and, with that new glass back, the device now supports inductive charging. Speaking of the glass back, early reviews say it’s a lot easier to hold than the prior aluminum casing. In addition to all of these improvements, the screen also got better with the true tone feature getting added.

Finally, it is going to be a lot easier to get your hands on an iPhone 8 than iPhone X. Telling a non-geek they need to be awake, online, with credit card ready at some point in the dead of night to get their phone simply verbalizes the insanity that us geeks live in every day. I think getting your hands on your own iPhone X is going to be difficult for the foreseeable future.

If the iPhone X didn’t exist, I’d be perfectly happy with an upgrade to an iPhone 8 this year. I, however, am a geek and the fact that something even newer and shinier exists would drive me nuts if I went with an iPhone 8 instead of an iPhone X.

My non-geek sister, however, could care less. She has a two-year-old phone and just wants a great iPhone. She’s never heard the term edge-to-edge and would not want to deal with the inevitable issues that will arise from the iPhone X’s new design and new user interface implementations, all of which will most likely be better in the second (or third) iteration anyway. That’s why when she asked me which phone to buy a few days ago, I told her to get an iPhone 8.

Because I’m such a geek, I often hear from my non-geek friends following a big Apple announcement. I would like to think my friends are generally pretty smart people. However, rarely have they actually watch the event. Instead, they’ve seen a headline or two or seen a joke on late-night TV somewhere and I’m always curious to see what these generally smart people actually take away at the end of all those filters.

By far, the most feedback I have received from friends on this week’s announcement is their outrage over price. Many are under the impression that the iPhone now starts at $1,000. I can see how they get that impression reading the headlines. I gently tell them that while there is a new $1,000 iPhone, there is a less expensive update that is still very nice. That usually quells the outrage.

Either way, it got me thinking. Apple may have a messaging problem on its hands. If everyone believes that all new iPhones start at $1,000, there is a non-zero number of people who won’t even go into the store to find out that is not true. I will be curious to see if they somehow cover pricing in any of their advertising around the iPhone 8.

Redmond Pie took a mock-up iPhone (Pro/Edition/8) and compared it to existing and past iPhones. Most interesting to me is the picture below pitting it against a 7 Plus.

For existing plus-sized customers, the phone would get smaller and have fewer pixels. However, with the edge-to-edge display, it appears you’ll get more vertical space, which is what I want most anyway. This product hasn’t even been announced yet and I’m already lusting for one.

While on the topic of the fancy new iPhone, I’d like to weigh in on its name. I’m against giving it a new number. For example, giving the upgrades to last year’s phones the names “iPhone 7” and “iPhone 7 Plus” while naming the fancy new iPhone “iPhone 8”. I think that does a disservice to the existing iPhone upgraded models, which will account for most of the sales. I would rather they all have the same number but different descriptors. For instance, “iPhone 8”, “iPhone 8 Plus”, and “iPhone 8 Pro”. As for descriptors, it seems like the two big options are either “Pro” or “Edition”. If I had my way, it would be “Pro”. “Edition” feels a little too elitist to me and reminds me of $20,000 watches. 

There are going to be so many rumors over the next few days before the Apple event. My recommendation is to not get too hung up on any of them and when Tuesday arrives, enjoy the show.

I did some traveling this week and that gave me an opportunity to observe a lot of people making their way through airports. Travel is just one more thing that has been revolutionized by the iPhone. When Apple released a touch screen computer that fits in your pocket, they changed the world.

I think a bit of this story that people miss is that it really took Apple to make this work. Apple’s engineering talent and user interface designers built a transformative bit of electronic gadgetry that I don’t think anyone else could have made and changed … well … everything.

I went back and read my comically bad review of the original iPhone from 2007. Most interesting for me was that I’d forgotten about several of my problems with the original iPhone. The device was limited and missing a lot of the features in phones of the day. I think the reason I didn’t remember so many of those original problems is because the iPhone was so good at the limited features it had. I vividly remember sliding to unlock, sending emails and viewing attachments on that screen, looking at maps on my phone, and … best of all … using Safari. If you’d ever attempted to access the Internet with any mobile phone made before the iPhone, you’d understand exactly how special the original iPhone was.

I don’t know if Apple will ever have another world-changing product like the iPhone. Indeed, I don’t know if any consumer electronic company will make something that changes the wold as much as the iPhone did. 10 years can feel like a lot of time. It also can feel like the blink of an eye. The iPhone has come so far in the past 10 years. Can you imagine what it will be like 10 years from now?

Later this year we’re going to get the next iPhone. There’s been a lot of rumors about this new one with talk of an edge-to-edge (possibly OLED) screen, embedded touch IT, and even maybe wireless charging. Chance Miller at 9to5 Mac did a nice job pulling together the current rumors. Personally, I’d be surprised if the next iPhone has all of the rumored features. The iPhone is nearly the whole story when it comes to Apple revenue and for every new iPhone they have to build millions of the things reliably and quickly. Too many big changes in one generation increases the possibility of delays for specific parts or, worse yet, defects in the phone. If I had to pick just one feature I’d like in a new iPhone, it would be that edge-to-edge screen. It looks pretty great in 9to5 Mac’s mock up photos in the above linked article.