Year: 2018

Finding clothes that are the right fit can be a laborious, psychologically challenging experience. RedThread, a custom clothing startup founded by former GoPro VP of Direct to Consumer, E-commerce and Digital Meghan Litchfield, aims to do away with sizes and instead focus on actual fit.

“What we’re doing is we’re kind of challenging the apparel industry and everything that it does, from how women shop, to how clothing is designed, to how it’s manufactured, and ultimately, to how women feel about themselves and perceive their bodies,” Litchfield told TechCrunch. 

Currently, RedThread makes and sells four items: ankle and wide legs pant for $148 each, a snap jacket for $168 and a tee-shirt for $78. Down the road, RedThread plans to expand its apparel offerings, but the goal will always be to offer everyday basics for working women. RedThread designs its clothes to ensure they’re easily tailorable.

“We’re able to [custom fit] more quickly than if you just brought in a random pair of pants and tried to get it tailored,” Litchfield said.

 

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Using its patent-pending tailoring algorithms, manufacturing process and designs, RedThread delivers clothes direct to consumers within one week of purchase. All RedThread requires from you is a short fit quiz — where you answer questions about your fit challenges — and four photos (three from different angles and one of an empty room). To capture the photos, RedThread texts you a link after purchase to scan your body. For each angle, RedThread tells you exactly how to stand.

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From there, its 3D mobile body scanning technology pulls 15 specific measurements from the model and inputs them into RedThread’s algorithms to calculate the best fit for you. Today, the process is about 80 percent math and 20 percent human, Litchfield said.

“But the more the algorithm learns about how to do this, the more the technology can drive the decisions,” she said. “We envision a world where we’re at 95 percent math, five percent human.”

As you can see, I went through the body scanning process and it was pretty straight-forward. If this actually works (which I’ll report back on), that’d be pretty magical. But here’s the thing: these clothes really aren’t my style. I’d much rather RedThread license its technology (assuming it works well) to brands from which I already buy clothes.

Down the road, RedThread would be open to partnering with other clothing brands, Litchfield said. But the priority for the company is to “build an apparel brand that women love,” Litchfield said. “And I don’t think there’s one out there right now. Because the industry is toxic and creates these standard sizes and doesn’t make women feel great about themselves. So, therefore, we want to own the whole experience.”

If nothing else, Motiv’s fitness ring was a welcome reprieve from the umpteenth wrist-worn tracker. And it worked surprisingly well. The followup essentially looks the same as the original (save for some new finishes), but features a couple of new tricks, including two-factor authentication.

The new hardware is available today, bringing with it the ability to log into supported accounts using a gesture. The ring is also offering up something called WalkID in beta, which essentially measures the wearer’s gait to further verify identity. It’s not nearly as distinct as, say, a fingerprint, but the way we walk is distinct enough to further distinguish fakers.

In the near future, the product will support passwords in Google Chrome and Windows Edge, courtesy of the FIDO2 and WebAuthn standards. The company says the ring will soon add support for fingerprint and facial recognition in-app, adding another layer of protection for users.

It’s a bit of a strange addition for what is primarily a fitness device, and probably not enough in and of itself to convince users to pick up a ring — though it does further distinguish a product that, quite frankly, is probably already distinguished enough.

If nothing else, Motiv’s fitness ring was a welcome reprieve from the umpteenth wrist-worn tracker. And it worked surprisingly well. The followup essentially looks the same as the original (save for some new finishes), but features a couple of new tricks, including two-factor authentication.

The new hardware is available today, bringing with it the ability to log into supported accounts using a gesture. The ring is also offering up something called WalkID in beta, which essentially measures the wearer’s gait to further verify identity. It’s not nearly as distinct as, say, a fingerprint, but the way we walk is distinct enough to further distinguish fakers.

In the near future, the product will support passwords in Google Chrome and Windows Edge, courtesy of the FIDO2 and WebAuthn standards. The company says the ring will soon add support for fingerprint and facial recognition in-app, adding another layer of protection for users.

It’s a bit of a strange addition for what is primarily a fitness device, and probably not enough in and of itself to convince users to pick up a ring — though it does further distinguish a product that, quite frankly, is probably already distinguished enough.

Gamers, worldwide! A new seasons is upon us. New games like Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 and Red Dead Redemption 2 have either arrived or are on the way, which means we’re wading into a holiday season of fresh gaming.

But with new games also come new esports to watch.

The competitive season for Black Ops 4 Multiplayer (the CWL) doesn’t start until December. But TwitchCon still has some Black Ops 4 goodness coming our way on October 27. Four teams, made up of pro players/streamers, will compete in the first high-stakes Blackout tournament. Blackout is the new Battle Royale mode for Black Ops 4.

Officially, the Doritos Blackout Bowl starts on October 27 at 3:30pm ET, and interested viewers can check out the stream here.

Here’s how it will work:

Four teams of four pro players/streamers will drop into the Blackout map alongside public players. As with any Battle Royale game, they’ll loot up and start picking players off. The tournament will be scored based on kills and match placements.

Kills are worth one point, and various placements will earn the team a multiplier. A top ten placement yields a 0.5x multiplier, a top five placement yields a 0.75X multiplier, and a top 3 placement wins the team a 1.25x multiplier.

So who’s playing?

Team Ninja will be led by none other than Tyler “Ninja” Blevins, who will be joined by his teammates JoshOG, Gold Glove, and Fearitself. Team Shroud will include Shroud as team camptain, alongside Just9n, Chocotaco, and Chad. Jack “Courage” Dunlop, who transitioned from CoD pro caster to professional content creator for Optic Gaming last year, will lead a team comprised of Karma, TeePee and Hysteria. And finally, Dr. Lupo will lead the fourth team, with teammates including Annemunition, Mad Ruski, and Ninja with no L.

What’s interesting about the Doritos Blackout Bowl is that the organizers have opted to make this tournament a public affair. Not only will it be livestreamed, but the players themselves will actually load into a public Blackout lobby, meaning the pros will be battling it out with real-life Black Ops 4 players.

The prize pool for the tournament is $250,000.

Disclosure: The author’s father works for Pepsico, which owns Doritos. The author does not own any Pepsi stock. She’s just a gamer who loves CoD.

While the blockchain world has seemingly blazed along in the last 18 months, much of the action has been in the currency world. The underlying technologies building this world are growing at an equally blistering rate, but until now few have threatened to ‘game the game’. Today at the Web3 Summit in Berlin, Parity Technologies founder Gavin Wood demoed launching a blockchain in under 60 minutes, a previously unheard-of feat. Although it was hard to ascertain the demeanor of the quiet, and often subdued crowd of hardcore, hoodie-wearing blockchain developers arraigned before him in the vaulted, wooden paneling of East Berlin’s old DDR-era symphony hall, the excited chatter in the hallway after the presentation was palpable.

In a grand gesture, Wood launched a new blockchain in about 15 minutes from a brand new Mac laptop, from which he dramatically tore off the shrink wrap, in order to demonstrate how little time and set-up it would take, and how few tools would be needed to pull off what might previously have taken days or even longer, depending on the complexity of the project. Developers sitting in the front row of this live demonstration literally gasped as Wood fired-up the platform.

While startups – whether web, mobile, crypto or blockchain-based – routinely launch themselves literally from software built for the last 25 years, the blockchain world, with its many idiosyncratic ways of creating new products, has not had the same luxury. Polkadot, under Wood’s tutelage, seems on the brink of changing all that, and the summit clearly understood the ramifications.

Parity’s Substrate 1.0-beta will be out in November 2018, and, he says, will be “the biggest bet against blockchain maximalism.” Decoding that in his speech, he said the industry had become too “nationalistic” about one type of blockchain beating another: “Maximalism creates barriers to entry and reduces the fun for technologists,” he said.

Substrate, which is the foundation for Polkadot (a ‘para chain’ aiming to act as a link between many different types of blockchains) will now come as a standalone blockchain framework. This will allow developers to build highly advanced blockchains customized for any project. And that, say seasoned observers who spoke to TechCrunch, is ‘game-changing’ and could radically accelerate the development of blockchain technologies.

In a statement, Parity explained that while Polkadot and Substrate share a goal to spark new a wave of blockchain innovation, they remain two distinct technologies. Substrate, says Parity, is “like the software or PC” that people choose for their application, whereas Polkadot, a protocol that connects blockchains together, “is like plugging a network card into that computer”.

Substrate, they say, will give blockchain innovators the framework for “maximum freedom with minimal effort” as it is “highly customisable, adaptable, and made by blockchain developers for blockchain developers”. It allows developers to focus their effort “on the thing they care most about — the state transition function,” while providing them with the networking, consensus and security as well as an upgrade path to interoperability with Polkadot.

Additionally, Substrate promises a future where developers won’t have to wait for (for instance) the core team that controls the development of Ethereum, to implement improvements. The idea is that they can build what they want to build, knowing that Substrate is ‘generic’ enough to be able to fit with new versions of Ethereum that come down the line.

Asked to unpack this by TechCrunch, Wood said on stage: “All of the lessons we learned developing Ethereum and Polkadot have been distilled down into a single stack of tooling that allows you to get all these advantages, in terms of time, cost and money. How well this works is going to be dependent on us. But it’s my hope that when we put out Substrate 1.0 this will be a turning point that makes the promise of a multi-chain world a captivating one… I hope this creates a new class of developers that sits in the sweet spot [between low and high skilled developers], where you can do just enough that allows you to get a job done and well without having to create your own blockchain.”

At the conference, Wood also announced that the Substrate software will be relicensed to Apache 2, which will “instantly open the door to all of the Fortune 500 to actually experiment with it.” He also presented a new Polkadot design that, he says, allows for “infinite scalability.”

Commenting, Trent McConaghy, founder of Ocean Protocol and also a speaker at the conference, said that with Substrate, Pokaldot had just made the whole blockchain developer ecosystem jump forward “between 2 and three years”.

Attendee Keld Van Schreven, partner of blockchain project investor KR1, said: “It’s like being able to generate HTML pages without having to know HTML. In the Web 1.0 world that was transformational to the early Internet ecosystem. Substrate will make it much easier to deploy blockchains. And the Lease model means there is a quality control there. What they’ve done here is extremely hard, technically. They just made it look easy.”

Paul Dabrowski, the chief executive officer of Synthego, which provides genetically engineered cells to scientists and researchers, worries about a future where access to the genetic technologies that will reshape the world are only available to the few who can afford them.

To hear him tell it, that’s why Dabrowski began working on Synthego in the first place — to democratize access to the new technologies that will give scientists, researchers, and consumers new ways to rewrite the code that has defined human existence.

“People talk about access to the tools, but the question is access to the therapies,” Dabrowski said. “We’re talking about the basis of what does it mean to be human not right now, but in the next 100 years.”

Now, the company has a fresh $110 million in cash from new investors at Founders Fund and the company’s previous backers — 8VC and Menlo Ventures — to try and drive costs down.

“This new funding allows us to expand our reach and build out of our full stack platform capabilities at a perfect time,” said Dabrowski, co-founder and CEO, Synthego, in a statement. “Biological medicines are on the cusp of a revolution with the coming curative cell and gene therapies, and we are proud to support this industry.”

While Dabrowski said the financing will be used for further research and development — and bringing new services to market — in the near term the funding will be used to expand two main areas of interest for the company. One is the creation of CRISPR kits that can create different genetic lines based on the requests from researchers and scientists, and the other is creating materials that are “clinical-grade”, which means that they can be used in clinical trials on animal (and potentially human) subjects.

“In general the demand for these products is quite high. Building capacity and building out the informatics models for the predictability on the CRISPR research side. 

In all, the Redwood City, Calif.-based company has raised $166 million in funding to develop its technology that makes research and development using the gene editing tool known as CRISPR more economical and faster for researchers. Synthego claims that  by offering researchers one-click access to engineered cells with guaranteed edits in their desired target, the company can slash the time it takes to conduct experiments by months, enabling predictable and rapid outcomes in cell and gene therapy research and development. 

As we’d written previously, Synthego launched its first CRISPR offerings to the market earlier this year.

There are two basic functions that people use CRISPR for, said Dabrowski. The first is to remove a gene or function and the second is adding a function to genetic material.

Both of those processes involve three (very complicated) steps. First scientists have to identify the gene that they want to target and then understand what genetic material within that gene they want to target for removal. Then a research team would need to identify and procure the reagents and components they need to edit a gene. Finally, the team would need to figure out whether the edit was made successfully and watch for results when the edited genetic material is cultivated.

Synthego’s first set of products were designed to simplify the process for identifying and designing genetic material for experimentation. This next set of tools are supposed to help scientists by providing them with the material they want to observe or experiment with.

“Our vision is a future where cell and gene therapies are ultimately as accessible as vaccines, so that everyone can benefit from next-generation cures,” said Dabrowski in a statement. “Synthego will continue to innovate to help researchers redefine the boundaries of transformative medicines.”

The Israeli cybersecurity venture studio Team8 has raised $85 million in new financing from a clutch of new and returning strategic investors including Walmart, Airbus, SoftBank, and Microsoft’s investment arm, M-12.

The studio’s plans to raise a larger fund were first reported by PEHub in May.

Team8 has long believed that by combining the strengths and security interests of strategic corporate partners it could develop better cybersecurity solutions (or companies) that would be attractive to its investors and clients.

Indeed, that was the thesis behind the $23 million that Team8 raised in 2016 when it was still proving out the model.

The company’s previous rounds of funding managed to bring Cisco Investments, Bessemer Venture Partners, Innovation Endeavors and Alcatel-Lucent into the fold. Now banks like Scotiabank and Barclays, ratings agencies like Moody’s, and insurers like Munich Re are coming on board to add their voices to the chorus of wants and needs that keep the crack cybersecurity experts from Team8 churning out new companies.

This model, of partnering with the corporate clients who will become the customers of the startups that Team8 creates isn’t confined to the security industry, but it’s where the idea has already created successful outcomes for all parties.

Earlier this month, Temasek (also a Team8 investor) acquired Sygnia, a company from the venture studio’s portfolio that had only emerged from stealth a year ago, for $250 million.

As we’d written at the time, Sygnia was typical of a Team8 investment. The company had only secured $4.3 million in funding and it was staffed by elite security specialists from Israel. Shachar Levy (who was the chief executive), Ariel Smoler, Arick Goomanovsky and Ami Kor, with its chairman Nadav Zafrir, the co-founder and CEO of Team8 and a former commander of Unit 8200.

Zafrir and Sachar are both full-time members of Team8 along with Israel Grimberg, Liran Grinberg, Assaf Mischari, a former technology leader in Unit 8200, and Lluís Pedragosa, former partner at Marker LLC.

The Tel Aviv-based company has invested in four companies that are currently selling their wares on the open market and has another four that are still operating in stealth mode. IN all, the group has raised $260 million to date, and employs 370 people around the world.

What is seemingly unprecedented is the level of cooperation among organizations with the Team8 organizations to identify threats and develop technologies that can respond to them.

According to a statement announcing the fund’s launch, companies investing into Team8 will be required to contribute insights from their Chief Information, Technology, Data and Security Officer to identify problems, develop solutions, and work on sales and marketing services for these new businesses.

“Rogue states, hackers, terrorists and criminals are intent on wreaking physical, financial and societal havoc and catastrophic damage on governments, corporations and individuals,” said Eric Schmidt, Founding Partner of Innovation Endeavors, a lead investor in Team8, in a statement. “As data continues to proliferate and our technical capabilities expand, cyber attacks and wars will increase in number and intensity.”

Team8 investors are required to nominate a “senior champion” from their business unit in addition to the corporate venture capital or corporate development team, to guide the partnership and provide executive mindshare for the mutual work together.

As shared owners in Team8 companies, these investors are deeply invested in ensuring only the best ideas, technologies and companies are created. Besides meeting in person and as a group throughout the development process of new companies, strategic investors bring their chief executives to Israel as well as host Team8 and its portfolio companies for workshops at their headquarters for continuous knowledge-sharing and strategy building, according to a Team8 spokesperson.

And the company will be expanding its focus beyond just cyberdefense thanks to its latest funding and its new partners.

“Going forward, we will continue to focus on the enterprise, but not necessarily just defense,” a spokesperson for the company wrote in an email. “The indirect impact of cyber on the enterprises are the missed opportunities to experiment, integrate and onboard new technologies because of security, compliance and fear of exposure. We’re currently working on zero-trust networks for multi-cloud environments, secure on-ramping of blockchain, safe collaboration on sensitive data; and rethinking how machine learning can significantly impact the business. These are designed with built in security, data science, and intelligence, to allow companies to prosper and not be inhibited by security controls.”

This iPhone is great. It is most like the last iPhone — but not the last “best” iPhone — more like the last not as good iPhone. It’s better than that one though, just not as good as the newest best iPhone or the older best iPhone.

If you’re upgrading from an iPhone 7 or iPhone 8, you’re gonna love it and likely won’t miss any current features while also getting a nice update to a gesture-driven phone with Face ID. But don’t buy it if you’re coming from an iPhone X, you’ll be disappointed as there are some compromises from the incredibly high level of performance and quality in Apple’s last flagship, which really was pushing the envelope at the time.

From a consumer perspective, this is offering a bit of choice that targets the same kind of customer who bought the iPhone 8 instead of the iPhone X last year. They want a great phone with a solid feature set and good performance but are not obsessed with ‘the best’ and likely won’t notice any of the things that would bug an iPhone X user about the iPhone XR.

On the business side, Apple is offering the iPhone XR to make sure there is no pricing umbrella underneath the iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max, and to make sure that the pricing curve is smooth across the iPhone line. It’s not so much a bulwark against low-end Android, that’s why the iPhone 8 and iPhone 7S are sticking around at those low prices.

Instead it’s offering an ‘affordable’ option that’s similar in philosophy to the iPhone 8’s role last year but with some additional benefits in terms of uniformity. Apple gets to move more of its user base to a fully gesture-oriented interface, as well as giving them Face ID. It benefits from more of its pipeline being dedicated to devices that share a lot of components like the A12 and True Depth camera system. It’s also recognizing the overall move towards larger screens in the market.

If Apple was trying to cannibalize sales of the iPhone XS, it couldn’t have created a better roasting spit than the iPhone XR.

Screen

Apple says that the iPhone XR has ‘the most advanced LCD ever in a smartphone’ — their words.

The iPhone XR’s screen is an LCD, not an OLED. This is one of the biggest differences between the iPhone XR and the iPhone XS models, and while the screen is one of the best LCDs I’ve ever seen, it’s not as good as the other models. Specifically, I believe that the OLED’s ability to display true black and display deeper color (especially in images that are taken on the new XR cameras in HDR) set it apart easily.

That said, I have a massive advantage in that I am able to hold the screens side by side to compare images. Simply put, if you don’t run them next to one another, this is a great screen. Given that the iPhone XS models have perhaps the best displays ever made for a smartphone, coming in a very close second isn’t a bad place to be.

A lot of nice advancements have been made here over earlier iPhone LCDs. You get True Tone, faster 120hz touch response and wide color support. All on a 326 psi stage that’s larger than the iPhone 8 Plus in a smaller body. You also now get tap-to-wake, another way Apple is working hard to unify the design and interaction language of its phones across the lineup.

All of these advancements don’t come for free to an LCD. There was a lot of time, energy and money spent getting the older technology to work as absolutely closely as possible to the flagship models. It’s rare to the point of non-existence that companies care at all to put in the work to make the lower end devices feel as well worked as the higher end ones. For as much crap as Apple gets about withholding features to get people to upsell, there is very little of that happening with the iPhone XR, quite the opposite really.

There are a few caveats here. First, 3D touch is gone, replaced by ‘Haptic Touch’ which Apple says works similarly to the MacBook’s track pad. It provides feedback from the iPhone’s Taptic vibration engine to simulate a ‘button press’ or trigger. In practice, the reality of the situation is that it is a very prosaic ‘long press to activate’ more than anything else. It’s used to trigger the camera on the home screen and the flashlight, and Apple says it’s coming to other places throughout the system as it sees it appropriate and figures out how to make it feel right.

I’m not a fan. I know 3D touch has its detractors, even among the people I’ve talked to who helped build it, I think it’s a clever utility that has a nice snap to it when activating quick actions like the camera. In contrast, on the iPhone XR you must tap and hold the camera button for about a second and a half — no pressure sensitivity here obviously — as the system figures out that this is an intentional press by determining duration, touch shape and spread etc and then triggers the action. You get the feedback still, which is nice, but it feels disconnected and slow. It’s the best case scenario without the additional 3D touch layer, but it’s not ideal.

I’d also be remiss if I didn’t mention that the edges of the iPhone XR screen have a slight dimming effect that is best described as a ‘drop shadow’. It’s wildly hard to photograph but imagine a very thin line of shadow around the edge of the phone that gets more pronounced as you tilt it and look at the edges. It’s likely an effect of the way Apple was able to get a nice sharp black drop-off at the edges that gets that to-the-edges look of the iPhone XR’s screen.

Apple is already doing a ton of work rounding  the corners of the LCD screen to make them look smoothly curved (this works great and is nearly seamless unless you bust out the magnifying loupe) and it’s doing some additional stuff around the edge to keep it looking tidy. They’ve doubled the amount of LEDs in the screen to make that dithering and the edging possible.

Frankly, I don’t think most people will ever notice this slight shading of dark around the edge — it is very slight — but when the screen is displaying mostly white and it’s next to the iPhone XS it’s visible.

Oh, the bezels are bigger. It makes the front look slightly less elegant and screenful than the iPhone XS, but it’s not a big deal.

Camera

Yes, the portrait mode works. No, it’s not as good as the iPhone XS. Yes, I miss having a zoom lens.

All of those things are true and easily the biggest reason I won’t be buying an iPhone XR. However, in the theme of Apple working its hardest to make even its ‘lower end’ devices work and feel as much like its best, it’s really impressive what has been done here.

The iPhone XR’s front-facing camera array is identical to what you’ll find in the iPhone XS. Which is to say it’s very good.

The rear facing camera is where it gets interesting, and different.

The rear camera is a single lens and sensor that is both functionally and actually identical to the wide angle lens in the iPhone XS. It’s the same sensor, the same optics, the same 27mm wide-angle frame. You’re going to get great ‘standard’ pictures out of this. No compromises.

However, I found myself missing the zoom lens a lot. This is absolutely a your mileage may vary scenario, but I take the vast majority of my pictures with the telephoto lens. Looking back at my year with the iPhone X I’d say north of 80% of my pictures were shot with the telephoto, even if they were close ups. I simply prefer the “52mm” equivalent with its nice compression and tight crop. It’s just a better way to shoot than a wide angle — as any photographer or camera company will tell you because that’s the standard (equivalent) lens that all cameras have shipped with for decades.

Wide angle lenses were always a kludge in smartphones and it’s only in recent years that we’ve started getting decent telephotos. If I had my choice, I’d default to the tele and have a button to zoom out to the wide angle, that would be much nicer.

But with the iPhone XR you’re stuck with the wide — and it’s a single lens at that, without the two different perspectives Apple normally uses to gather its depth data to apply the portrait effect.

So they got clever. iPhone XR portrait images still contain a depth map that determines foreground, subject and background, as well as the new segmentation map that handles fine detail like hair. While the segmentation maps are roughly identical, the depth maps from the iPhone XR are nowhere as detailed or information rich as the ones that are generated by the iPhone XS.

See the two maps compared here, the iPhone XR’s depth map is far less aware of the scene depth and separation between the ‘slices’ of distance. It means that the overall portrait effect, while effective, is not as nuanced or aggressive.

In addition, the iPhone XR’s portrait mode only works on people.You’re also limited to just a couple of the portrait lighting modes: studio and contour.

In order to accomplish portrait mode without the twin lens perspective, Apple is doing facial landmark mapping and image recognition work to determine that the subject you’re shooting is a person. It’s doing depth acquisition by acquiring the map using a continuous real-time buffer of information coming from the focus pixels embedded in the iPhone XR’s sensor that it is passing to the A12 Bionic’s Neural Engine. Multiple neural nets analyze the data and reproduce the depth effect right in the viewfinder.

When you snap the shutter it combines the depth data, the segmentation map and the image data into a portrait shot instantaneously. You’re able to see the effect immediately. It’s wild to see this happen in real time and it boggles thinking about the horsepower needed to do this. By comparison, the Pixel 3 does not do real time preview and takes a couple of seconds to even show you the completed portrait shot once it’s snapped.

It’s a bravura performance in terms of silicon. But how do the pictures look?

I have to say, I really like the portraits that come out of the iPhone XR. I was ready to hate on the software-driven solution they’d come up with for the single lens portrait but it’s pretty damn good. The depth map is not as ‘deep’ and the transitions between out of focus and in focus areas are not as wide or smooth as they are on iPhone XS, but it’s passable. You’re going to get more funny blurring of the hair, more obvious hard transitions between foreground and background and that sort of thing.

And the wide angle portraits are completely incorrect from an optical compression perspective (nose too large, ears too small). Still, they are kind of fun in an exaggerated way. Think the way your face looks when you get to close to your front camera.

If you take a ton of portraits with your iPhone, the iPhone XS is going to give you a better chance of getting a great shot with a ton of depth that you can play with to get the exact look that you want. But as a solution that leans hard on the software and the Neural Engine, the iPhone XR’s portrait mode isn’t bad.

Performance

Unsurprisingly, given that it has the same exact A12 Bionic processor, but the iPhone XR performs almost identically to the iPhone XS in tests. Even though it features 3GB of RAM to the iPhone XS’ 4GB, the overall situation here is that you’re getting a phone that is damn near identical as far as speed and capability. If you care most about core features and not the camera or screen quirks, the iPhone XR does not offer many, if any, compromises here.

Size

The iPhone XR is the perfect size. If Apple were to make only one phone next year, they could just make it XR-sized and call it good. Though I am now used to the size of the iPhone X, a bit of extra screen real-estate is much appreciated when you do a lot of reading and email. Unfortunately, the iPhone XS Max is a two-handed phone, period. The increase in vertical size is lovely for reading and viewing movies, but it’s hell on reachability. Stretching to the corners with your thumb is darn near impossible and to complete even simple actions like closing a modal view inside an app it’s often easiest (and most habitual) to just default to two hands to perform those actions.

For those users that are ‘Plus’ addicts, the XS Max is an exercise in excess. It’s great as a command center for someone who does most of their work on their iPhones or in scenarios where it’s their only computer. My wife, for instance, has never owned her own computer and hasn’t really needed a permanent one in 15 years. For the last 10 years, she’s been all iPhone, with a bit of iPad thrown in. I myself am now on a XS Max because I also do a huge amount of my work on my iPhone and the extra screen size is great for big email threads and more general context.

But I don’t think Apple has done enough to capitalize on the larger screen iPhones in terms of software — certainly not enough to justify two-handed operation. It’s about time iOS was customized thoroughly for larger phones beyond a couple of concessions to split-view apps like Mail.

That’s why the iPhone XR’s size comes across as such a nice compromise. It’s absolutely a one-handed phone, but you still get some extra real-estate over the iPhone XS and the exact same amount of information appears on the iPhone XR’s screen as on the iPhone XS Max in a phone that is shorter enough to be thumb friendly.

Color

Apple’s industrial design chops continue to shine with the iPhone XR’s color finishes. My tester iPhone was the new Coral color and it is absolutely gorgeous.

The way Apple is doing colors is like nobody else. There’s no comparison to holding a Pixel 3, for instance. The Pixel 3 is fun and photographs well, but super “cheap and cheerful” in its look and feel. Even though the XR is Apple’s mid-range iPhone, the feel is very much that of a piece of nicely crafted jewelry. It’s weighty, with a gorgeous 7-layer color process laminating the back of the rear glass, giving it a depth and sparkle that’s just unmatched in consumer electronics.

The various textures of the blasted aluminum and glass are complimentary and it’s a nice melding of the iPhone 8 and iPhone X design ethos. It’s massively unfortunate that most people will be covering the color with cases, and I expect clear cases to explode in popularity when these phone start getting delivered.

It remains very curious that Apple is not shipping any first-party cases for the iPhone XR — not even the rumored clear case. I’m guessing that they just weren’t ready or that Apple was having issues with some odd quirk of clear cases like yellowing or cracking or something. But whatever it is, they’re leaving a bunch of cash on the table.

Apple’s ID does a lot of heavy lifting here, as usual. It often goes un-analyzed just how well the construction of the device works in conjunction with marketing and market placement to help customers both justify and enjoy their purchase. It transmits to the buyer that this is a piece of quality kit that has had a lot of thought put into it and makes them feel good about paying a hefty price for a chunk of silicon and glass. No one takes materials science anywhere as seriously at Apple and it continues to be on display here.

Should you buy it?

As I said above, it’s not that complicated of a question. I honestly wouldn’t overthink this one too much. The iPhone XR is made to serve a certain segment of customers that want the new iPhone but don’t necessarily need every new feature. It works great, has a few small compromises that probably won’t faze the kind of folks that would consider not buying the best and is really well built and executed.

“Apple’s pricing lineup is easily its strongest yet competitively,” creative Strategies’ Ben Bajarin puts it here in a subscriber piece. “The [iPhone] XR in particular is well lined up against the competition. I spoke to a few of my carrier contacts after Apple’s iPhone launch event and they seemed to believe the XR was going to stack up well against the competition and when you look at it priced against the Google Pixel ($799) and Samsung Galaxy 9 ($719). Some of my contacts even going so far to suggest the XR could end up being more disruptive to competitions portfolios than any iPhone since the 6/6 Plus launch.”

Apple wants to fill the umbrella, leaving less room than ever for competitors. Launching a phone that’s competitive in price and features an enormous amount of research and execution that attempt to make it as close a competitor as possible to its own flagship line, Apple has set itself up for a really diverse and interesting fiscal Q4.

Whether you help Apple boost its average selling price by buying one of the maxed out XS models or you help it block another Android purchase with an iPhone XR, I think it will probably be happy having you, raw or cooked.

Spot, the chatbot that enables individuals to document and report harassment and discrimination, has launched a tool for human resources departments. This version enables HR departments to manage and track anonymous reports of harassment and discrimination, and follow up on those reports.

Spot relies on memory science and artificial intelligence to address harassment and discrimination at work. Using the chatbot, employees can anonymously document inappropriate behavior, the ability for HR workers to follow-up, the ability to export reports as signed, time-stamped PDFs and more. Employees can, of course, choose to use their name if they’d like.

“Spot places companies in the best possible position to build a healthy work culture,” Spot co-founder Dr. Julia Shaw said in a statement. “By taking an evidence-based approach to help break down the barriers to reporting harassment and discrimination, Spot allows companies to provide timely, transparent, and unbiased responses and mitigate the negative consequences of harassment.”

For small teams (up to 100 people), Spot costs $800 per year. For larger companies, Spot offers additional tools — like custom follow-up questions, single sign-on for admins, group email and Slack notifications, and charges $2 per person per month.

Spot is part of the All Turtles startup studio, which was created by Evernote co-founder Phil Libin. Dr. Shaw’s other co-founders include Daniel Nicolae and Dylan Marriott.

Spot, the chatbot that enables individuals to document and report harassment and discrimination, has launched a tool for human resources departments. This version enables HR departments to manage and track anonymous reports of harassment and discrimination, and follow up on those reports.

Spot relies on memory science and artificial intelligence to address harassment and discrimination at work. Using the chatbot, employees can anonymously document inappropriate behavior, the ability for HR workers to follow-up, the ability to export reports as signed, time-stamped PDFs and more. Employees can, of course, choose to use their name if they’d like.

“Spot places companies in the best possible position to build a healthy work culture,” Spot co-founder Dr. Julia Shaw said in a statement. “By taking an evidence-based approach to help break down the barriers to reporting harassment and discrimination, Spot allows companies to provide timely, transparent, and unbiased responses and mitigate the negative consequences of harassment.”

For small teams (up to 100 people), Spot costs $800 per year. For larger companies, Spot offers additional tools — like custom follow-up questions, single sign-on for admins, group email and Slack notifications, and charges $2 per person per month.

Spot is part of the All Turtles startup studio, which was created by Evernote co-founder Phil Libin. Dr. Shaw’s other co-founders include Daniel Nicolae and Dylan Marriott.