A Brazilian judge ruled that U.S. tech giant Apple engaged in an "abusive and illegal" practice by selling new iPhones without power adapters. From a report: In a decision dated April 12, regional judge Vanderlei Caires Pinheiro from Goias state in central Brazil ordered the company to pay compensation of 5,000 reais ($1,080) to a customer who made a complaint. In his ruling posted on a legal website, the judge said that the adapter is essential for the normal functioning of the iPhone, and found that the manufacturer is violating local consumer law by removing if from boxes. The decision could prove costly for the company if it is forced to compensate more Brazilian consumers, or start including accessories in products sold locally.

Citing an article from The Verge's Alex Heath, Fast Company breaks down "Meta's plan to shape the metaverse by building its own wildly ambitious augmented-reality hardware." From the report: eath's article, "Mark Zuckerberg's Augmented Reality," covers two codenamed products. "Project Nazere" is a high-end pair of AR glasses that don't require a smartphone, with the first version shipping in 2024, followed by upgraded ones in 2026 and 2028. Also due in 2024 is "Hypernova," a more economy-minded take on AR eyewear that does piggyback on a smartphone's connectivity and computing muscle. The piece is full of technical details, such as Nazere's use of custom waveguides and microLED projectors to fuse your view of the real with a digital overlay. Both Nazere and Hypernova will supposedly work with a wrist device that uses differential electromyography to detect electric neurons, allowing for input that feels akin to mind control.

But along with all the specifics in Heath's story, what's also striking is its discussion of how these planned products roll up into Meta's highest-level goals. They are, of course, an extension of Mark Zuckerberg's hopes, dreams, and aspirations: "If the AR glasses and the other futuristic hardware Meta is building eventually catch on, they could cast the company, and by extension Zuckerberg, in a new light. 'Zuck's ego is intertwined with [the glasses],' a former employee who worked on the project tells me. 'He wants it to be an iPhone moment.'"

Everybody's entitled to their own definition of an "iPhone moment." Presumably, it involves a product of truly epoch-shifting impact -- not necessarily the first in its field but an unprecedented blockbuster that defines the category by bringing it to the masses. Something like, well, you know, the iPhone. For a tech CEO such as Zuckerberg, creating an iPhone moment isn't just about selling something enormously successful; it also provides full control over an ecosystem. That lets a company chart its own destiny in a way it can never do if it's building on someone else's platform. Zuckerberg has long been bugged by the fact that Facebook/Meta's products have historically sat atop environments operated by other companies, such as Apple and Google. I know this because he told me so himself...

Push into the premium smartphone market is a 'life or death' battle for budget brand. From a report: In February, Xiaomi founder and chief executive Lei Jun threw down the gauntlet to Apple and Samsung, vowing to make his company China's top-selling premium brand in three years. "[It's] a war of life and death," Lei said in a post on Chinese social media site Weibo. Xiaomi, the world's second-largest smartphone vendor, is a master of reinvention, making everything from rice cookers to e-scooters. If all goes to plan, the company will roll out its electric vehicle in 2024, ahead of arch-rival Apple. But as Beijing's tech crackdown takes hold, Lei is facing the potential for greater regulation at a time companies around the world are suffering from a global chip shortage. As China works to bring Big Tech to heel, Xiaomi's Hong Kong-listed shares have fallen more than 50 per cent from a year ago to about HK$12 (US$1.50). Its growth momentum also hinges on whether it can fend off its domestic and international rivals, said analysts.

[...] According to former and current employees and industry analysts, Xiaomi's biggest hurdle to realising its goals of overtaking Apple and Samsung is convincing consumers of its high-end pedigree. Xiaomi, launched in 2010, made a name for itself building a loyal community of "mi fen," Xiaomi fans who bought products for the specifications, such as more advanced processors, at a cheaper price. While it ranks third in overall sales in China, it only holds five per cent of the global premium market, in which phones are priced at more than $400. "It will be difficult to defeat Samsung and Apple," said a former executive. "It does not play to Xiaomi's strengths, it doesn't have the brand power Apple and Samsung have, and they are not good at selling to people who don't care about specs." The company's phones have evolved. Xiaomi's 12 series phones, released in March and costing $749 for the most basic version, are designed to compete with Apple's $799 iPhone 13. As part of the launch, Xiaomi has pledged to open 20,000 more stores on top of the 10,000 they already have in China, and has changed the branding on its 12 series so they are no longer known by the "Mi" prefix that was the calling card of their previous hardware. But former company executives said the phones needed more than a name change. Xiaomi's previous attempts to break free of its budget image have ended in disappointment.

Mark Zuckerberg has a grandiose vision for the metaverse, and he hopes that you'll one day see the same thing, too -- quite literally, through a pair of augmented reality glasses. The Verge reports: Still, Zuckerberg has ambitious goals for when his high-tech glasses will be a reality. Employees are racing to deliver the first generation by 2024 and are already working on a lighter, more advanced design for 2026, followed by a third version in 2028.ââ The details, which together give the first comprehensive look at Meta's AR hardware ambitions, were shared with The Verge by people familiar with the roadmap who weren't authorized to speak publicly. A spokesperson for Meta declined to comment for this story.

If the AR glasses and the other futuristic hardware Meta is building eventually catch on, they could cast the company, and by extension Zuckerberg, in a new light. "Zuck's ego is intertwined with [the glasses]," a former employee who worked on the project tells me. "He wants it to be an iPhone moment." Meta's CEO also sees the AR glasses, dubbed Project Nazare, as a way to get out from under the thumb of Apple and Google, which together dictate the terms that apps like Facebook have to abide by on mobile phones. The first version of Nazare is designed to work independently from a mobile phone with the assistance of a wireless, phone-shaped device that offloads parts of the computing required for the glasses to operate. A marquee feature will be the ability to communicate and interact with holograms of other people through the glasses, which Zuckerberg believes will, over time, provide people with a more immersive, compelling experience than the video calling that exists today.

Apple Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook said that proposed app store regulations in the U.S. and European Union would put iPhone users' privacy at risk. From a report: "If we are forced to let unvetted apps onto iPhones, the unintended consequences will be profound," Cook said during a keynote address at the Global Privacy Summit on Tuesday in Washington. "Data-hungry companies would be able to avoid our privacy rules and once again track our users against their will." Apple is under global scrutiny over app store policies. The EU is working on legislation that would force the company to allow apps to be installed from outside the Apple App Store, threatening Apple's grip on its platform and potentially limiting its ability to collect a commission from developers.

Apple has started making the iPhone 13 in India, the company said on Monday. Reuters reports: The phone is being produced at a local plant of Apple's Taiwanese contract manufacturer Foxconn, situated in the town of Sriperumbudur in Southern Tamil Nadu state, according to a source. Apple has been shifting some areas of iPhone production from China to other markets including India, the world's second biggest smartphone market, and is also planning to assemble iPad tablets there. India and countries such as Mexico and Vietnam are becoming increasingly important to contract manufacturers supplying American brands as they try to diversify production away from China. The iPhone 13 is the fourth model to be produced locally after Apple launched manufacturing operations in India in 2017 with the iPhone SE.

Senior officials at the European Commission were targeted last year with spy software designed by an Israeli surveillance firm, according to two EU officials and documentation reviewed by Reuters. From the report: Among them was Didier Reynders, a senior Belgian statesman who has served as the European Justice Commissioner since 2019, according to one of the documents. At least four other commission staffers were also targeted, according to the document and another person familiar with the matter. The two EU officials confirmed that staffers at the commission had been targeted but did not provide details.

The commission became aware of the targeting following messages issued by Apple to thousands of iPhone owners in November telling them they were "targeted by state-sponsored attackers," the two EU officials said. It was the first time Apple had sent a mass alert to users that they were in government hackers' crosshairs. The warnings triggered immediate concern at the commission, the two officials said. In a Nov. 26 email reviewed by Reuters, a senior tech staffer sent a message to colleagues with background about Israeli hacking tools and a request to be on the lookout for additional warnings from Apple.

Apple faces an additional EU antitrust charge in the coming weeks in an investigation triggered by a complaint from Spotify, Reuters reported Monday, citing a person familiar with the matter said, a sign that EU enforcers are strengthening their case against the U.S. company. From a report: The European Commission last year accused the iPhone maker of distorting competition in the music streaming market via restrictive rules for its App Store that force developers to use its own in-app payment system and prevent them from informing users of other purchasing options. Such requirements have also come under scrutiny in countries including the United States and Britain. Extra charges set out in a so-called supplementary statement of objections are usually issued to companies when the EU competition enforcer has gathered new evidence or has modified some elements to boost its case.

A new article on the Verge argues that the era of fixing your own phone "has nearly arrived." When I called up iFixit CEO Kyle Wiens, I figured he'd be celebrating — after years of fighting for right-to-repair, big name companies like Google and Samsung have suddenly agreed to provide spare parts for their phones. Not only that, they signed deals with him to sell those parts through iFixit, alongside the company's repair guides and tools. So did Valve.

But Wiens says he's not done making deals yet. "There are more coming," he says, one as soon as a couple of months from now. (No, it's not Apple.) Motorola was actually the first to sign on nearly four years ago. And if Apple meaningfully joins them in offering spare parts to consumers — like it promised to do by early 2022 — the era of fixing your own phone may be underway. Last October, the United States effectively made it legal to open up many devices for the purpose of repair with an exemption to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Now, the necessary parts are arriving.

What changed? Weren't these companies fighting tooth and nail to keep right-for-repair off the table, sometimes sneakily stopping bills at the last minute? Sure. But some legislation is getting through anyhow... and one French law in particular might have been the tipping point.

"The thing that's changing the game more than anything else is the French repairability scorecard," says Wiens, referring to a 2021 law that requires tech companies to reveal how repairable their phones are — on a scale of 0.0 to 10.0 — right next to their pricetag. Even Apple was forced to add repairability scores — but Wiens points me to this press release by Samsung instead. When Samsung commissioned a study to check whether the French repairability scores were meaningful, it didn't just find the scorecards were handy — it found a staggering 80 percent of respondents would be willing to give up their favorite brand for a product that scored higher.

"There have been extensive studies done on the scorecard and it's working," says Wiens. "It's driving behavior, it's shifting consumer buying patterns." Stick, meet carrot. Seeing an opportunity, Wiens suggests, pushed these companies to take up iFixit on the deal.

Nathan Proctor, director of the Campaign for the Right to Repair at the US Public Interest Research Group (US PIRG), still thinks the stick is primarily to thank. "It feels cheeky to say 100 percent... but none of this happens unless there's a threat of legislation... These companies have known these were issues for a long time, and until we organized enough clout for it to start seeming inevitable, none of the big ones had particularly good repair programs and now they're all announcing them," Proctor notes.

Apple, looking to address criticism of its competitive practices by the European Union, developers and U.S. lawmakers, pointed to a report showing that third-party apps are thriving on the iPhone and other devices. From a report: In a study published by Analysis Group and touted by the iPhone maker, analysts said that Apple's own apps are infrequently the dominant option and only account for a small share of app usage. "We found that Apple's own apps, while used by many, are rarely the most popular of a given type and are eclipsed in popularity by third-party apps for nearly every country and app type we considered," the report said. In the U.S., the report found that Spotify is 1.6 times more popular than Apple Music, that Google Maps is used 1.5 times more than Apple Maps, and that Netflix is 17 times more popular than Apple's service. The Amazon Kindle service, meanwhile, was 4.5 times more popular than Apple's Books app.

Donald Trump's Truth Social has "been a disaster," says Joshua Tucker, director of NYU's Center for Social Media and Politics. According to the BBC, "The app launched on Presidents' Day, 21 February, but six weeks later is beset by problems. A waiting list of nearly 1.5 million are unable to use it." From the report: Truth Social might look like Twitter, but it isn't available on Android phones, web browsers or, apparently, to most people outside the US. And a Republican ally of Mr Trump's, who did not wish to be identified, said: "Nobody seems to know what's going on." On 21 February, Truth Social was one of the App Store's most downloaded apps -- but many who downloaded it were unable to use it. There was an assumption this problem would soon be resolved and Mr Trump would start posting his "truths" in the coming days -- but neither of those things happened. My attempt to register, this week, was placed at number 1,419,631 on the waiting list.

While YouTube, TikTok, Instagram and Facebook are among the 10 most downloaded apps, according to Similar Web, Truth Social is outside the top 100. Users who find their way in can find the app a little empty, as many big voices on the American right have so far stayed away. Another study found downloads have fallen by as much as 95%. And many are feeling frustrated. "Signed up for Truth Social a couple weeks ago and still on a waiting list," one Twitter user said, on Tuesday. "By the time I'm off the waiting list and on to Truth Social for real, Trump will be President again," joked another. The report says Mr Trump "has not posted a 'truth' for well over a month."

"Maybe they're holding him back," Mr Tucker said. "That's his last chance to launch it - when suddenly Trump comes in and starts being really active on it, that will get a buzz."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Apple is developing its own payment processing technology and infrastructure for future financial products, part of an ambitious effort that would reduce its reliance on outside partners over time, according to people with knowledge of the matter. A multiyear plan would bring a wide range of financial tasks in-house, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the plans aren't public. That includes payment processing, risk assessment for lending, fraud analysis, credit checks and additional customer-service functions such as the handling of disputes.

The push would turn the company into a bigger force in financial services, building on a lineup that already includes an Apple-branded credit card, peer-to-peer payments, the Wallet app and a mechanism for merchants to accept credit cards from an iPhone. Apple is also working on its own subscription service for hardware and a "buy now, pay later" feature for Apple Pay transactions, Bloomberg has reported. Part of the project has been dubbed "Breakout" internally, underscoring the idea of breaking away from the existing financial system, according to the people.

Apple Stores and Apple Authorized Service Providers will now be alerted if an iPhone has been reported as missing in the GSMA Device Registry when a customer brings in the device to be serviced, according to an internal memo obtained by MacRumors. From the report: If an Apple technician sees a message in their internal MobileGenius or GSX systems indicating that the device has been reported as missing, they are instructed to decline the repair, according to Apple's memo shared on Monday. The new policy should help to reduce the amount of stolen iPhones brought to Apple for repair. The GSMA Device Registry is a global database designed for customers to report their devices as missing in the event of loss or theft. The report notes that Apple Stores and Apple Authorized Service Providers "are already unable to service an iPhone if the customer cannot disable Find My iPhone."

juul_advocate shares a report from iTWire: Apple's output of the iPhone SE will drop by a fifth in the coming quarter, indicating that the Russia-Ukraine conflict and fears of inflation have affected demand for the device, a report claims. The Nikkei Asia website reported that the company had been telling a number of suppliers that production orders for the next three months would be lower by about two or three million units. Orders for AirPods earphones were also down, by about 10 million units for the whole year, the website said, citing four unnamed individuals as sources. Apple announced the third-generation iPhone SE earlier this month at its "Peek Performance" event. It features the A15 Bionic chip, improved battery life, 5G connectivity, and a new camera system, among other things, for a starting price of $429.

As viewership drops for Hollywood's annual Academy Awards ceremony, "Everyone has a theory about the decline..." argues an opinion piece in the New York Times.

"My favored theory is that the Oscars are declining because the movies they were made to showcase have been slowly disappearing." When the nominees were announced in February, nine of the 10 had made less than $40 million in domestic box office. The only exception, "Dune," barely exceeded $100 million domestically, making it the 13th-highest-grossing movie of 2021. All told, the 10 nominees together have earned barely one-fourth as much at the domestic box office as "Spider-Man: No Way Home." Even when Hollywood tries to conjure the old magic, in other words, the public isn't there for it anymore.... Sure, non-superhero-movie box office totals will bounce back in 2022, and next year's best picture nominees will probably earn a little more in theaters. Within the larger arc of Hollywood history, though, this is the time to call it: We aren't just watching the decline of the Oscars; we're watching the End of the Movies....

[W]hat looks finished is The Movies — big-screen entertainment as the central American popular art form, the key engine of American celebrity, the main aspirational space of American actors and storytellers, a pop-culture church with its own icons and scriptures and rites of adult initiation.... The internet, the laptop and the iPhone personalized entertainment and delivered it more immediately, in a way that also widened Hollywood's potential audience — but habituated people to small screens, isolated viewing and intermittent watching, the opposite of the cinema's communalism. Special effects opened spectacular (if sometimes antiseptic-seeming) vistas and enabled long-unfilmable stories to reach big screens. But the effects-driven blockbuster, more than its 1980s antecedents, empowered a fandom culture that offered built-in audiences to studios, but at the price of subordinating traditional aspects of cinema to the demands of the Jedi religion or the Marvel cult. And all these shifts encouraged and were encouraged by a more general teenage-ification of Western culture, the extension of adolescent tastes and entertainment habits deeper into whatever adulthood means today....

Under these pressures, much of what the movies did in American culture, even 20 years ago, is essentially unimaginable today. The internet has replaced the multiplex as a zone of adult initiation. There's no way for a few hit movies to supply a cultural lingua franca, given the sheer range of entertainment options and the repetitive and derivative nature of the movies that draw the largest audiences. The possibility of a movie star as a transcendent or iconic figure, too, seems increasingly dated. Superhero franchises can make an actor famous, but often only as a disposable servant of the brand. The genres that used to establish a strong identification between actor and audience — the non-superhero action movie, the historical epic, the broad comedy, the meet-cute romance — have all rapidly declined...

[T]he caliber of instantly available TV entertainment exceeds anything on cable 20 years ago. But these productions are still a different kind of thing from The Movies as they were — because of their reduced cultural influence, the relative smallness of their stars, their lost communal power, but above all because stories told for smaller screens cede certain artistic powers in advance.
The article argues that episodic TV also cedes the Movies' power of an-entire-story-in-one-go condensation. ("This power is why the greatest movies feel more complete than almost any long-form television.") And it ultimately suggests that like opera or ballet, these grand old movies need "encouragement and patronage, to educate people into loves that earlier eras took for granted," and maybe even "an emphasis on making the encounter with great cinema a part of a liberal arts education. "

In 2014 one lone film-maker had even argued that Ben Stiller's spectacular-yet-thoughtful Secret Life of Walter Mitty "might be the last of a dying breed."

Apple argued in court papers this week that appeals filings by Epic Games don't point to legal errors by a US District Court judge who ruled last year that the iPhone maker hadn't violated antitrust laws with its App Store. Instead, Apple cited the many times the judge said Epic had "failed to demonstrate," "failed to show" and "failed to prove" the facts of its case. From a report: "On the facts and the law, the court correctly decided every issue presented in Epic's appeal," Apple lawyers wrote in the company's filing. They repeated earlier arguments that Epic is attempting to fundamentally change the App Store. "While these appeals are both important and complex, resolving the issues should not be difficult: Applying settled precedent to the adjudicated facts requires ruling for Apple across the board." Apple's 135-page filing is the latest in the legal battle it's been fighting with Epic since August 2020. On the surface, the two companies are battling over who gets how much when consumers spend money on the App Store. Apple is fighting to maintain control of its App Store, which has become such a key feature of its iPhones that the company's ads saying "there's an app for that" are referenced in crossword puzzles and on the trivia TV show Jeopardy.

Over the past couple of years, though, Apple's runaway success with its App Store has been challenged. Epic, which makes the hit online battle game Fortnite, argued that Apple should loosen its control. In emails, court filings and public statements, Epic has said Apple should allow alternative app stores onto the iPhone and iPad, something it currently doesn't allow. Epic also says Apple should free developers to use alternative payment processors in their apps, rather than Apple's current rule requiring they use only its App Store, through which Apple takes a cut of in-app purchases on its devices.

Apple is working on a subscription service for the iPhone and other hardware products, a move that could make device ownership similar to paying a monthly app fee, Bloomberg News reported Thursday, citing people with knowledge of the matter. From the report: The service would be Apple's biggest push yet into automatically recurring sales, allowing users to subscribe to hardware for the first time -- rather than just digital services. But the project is still in development, said the people, who asked not to identified because the initiative hasn't been announced, Bloomberg News reports.

Arizona residents can now add their drivers' license, or state ID, to Apple Wallet, which lets them use an iPhone, or Apple Watch, to check in at selected TSA checkpoints. Apple Insider reports: As Apple continues to discuss bringing digital drivers' licenses to US states, Arizona has become the first to take the system live for its residents. "We're thrilled to bring the first driver's license and state ID in Wallet to Arizona today," said Jennifer Bailey, Apple's vice president of Apple Pay and Apple Wallet, in a statement, " and provide Arizonans with an easy, secure, and private way to present their ID when traveling, through just a tap of their iPhone or Apple Watch." "We look forward to working with many more states and the TSA to bring IDs in Wallet to users across the US," she continued.

At launch, Wallet can be only be used at an unspecified number of TSA security checkpoints at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport. Apple also announced that the states of Colorado, Hawaii, Mississippi, Ohio, and the territory of Puerto Rico plan to bring the technology to its residents. This is in addition to seven other states that Apple previously announced.

New submitter Dru Nemeton shares a report from 9to5Mac: Apple's new Studio Display officially hit the market on Friday, and we continue to learn new tidbits about what exactly's inside the machine. While Apple touted that the Studio Display is powered by an A13 Bionic inside, we've since learned that the Studio Display also features 64GB of onboard storage, because who knows why... [...] as first spotted by Khaos Tian on Twitter, the Studio Display also apparently features 64GB of onboard storage. Yes, 64GB: double the storage in the entry-level Apple TV 4K and the same amount of storage in the entry-level iPad Air 5. Also worth noting: the Apple TV 4K is powered by the A12 Bionic chip, so the Studio Display has it beat on that front as well. Apple hasn't offered any explanation for why the Studio Display features 64GB of onboard storage. It appears that less than 2GB of that storage is actually being used as of right now.

One unexciting possibility is that the A13 Bionic chip used inside the Studio Display is literally the exact same A13 Bionic chip that was first shipped in the iPhone 11. As you might remember, the iPhone 11 came with 64GB of storage in its entry-level configuration, meaning Apple likely produced millions of A13 Bionic chips with 64GB of onboard storage. What do you think? Will Apple ever tap into the A13 Bionic chip and 64GB storage inside the Studio Display for something more interesting?

The New Yorker argues that photos on newer iPhones are "coldly crisp and vaguely inhuman, caught in the uncanny valley where creative expression meets machine learning...."

"[T]he truth is that iPhones are no longer cameras in the traditional sense. Instead, they are devices at the vanguard of 'computational photography,' a term that describes imagery formed from digital data and processing as much as from optical information. Each picture registered by the lens is altered to bring it closer to a pre-programmed ideal." In late 2020, Kimberly McCabe, an executive at a consulting firm in the Washington, D.C. area, upgraded from an iPhone 10 to an iPhone 12 Pro... But the 12 Pro has been a disappointment, she told me recently, adding, "I feel a little duped." Every image seems to come out far too bright, with warm colors desaturated into grays and yellows. Some of the photos that McCabe takes of her daughter at gymnastics practice turn out strangely blurry. In one image that she showed me, the girl's upraised feet smear together like a messy watercolor. McCabe said that, when she uses her older digital single-lens-reflex camera (D.S.L.R.), "what I see in real life is what I see on the camera and in the picture." The new iPhone promises "next level" photography with push-button ease. But the results look odd and uncanny. "Make it less smart — I'm serious," she said. Lately she's taken to carrying a Pixel, from Google's line of smartphones, for the sole purpose of taking pictures....

Gregory Gentert, a friend who is a fine-art photographer in Brooklyn, told me, "I've tried to photograph on the iPhone when light gets bluish around the end of the day, but the iPhone will try to correct that sort of thing." A dusky purple gets edited, and in the process erased, because the hue is evaluated as undesirable, as a flaw instead of a feature. The device "sees the things I'm trying to photograph as a problem to solve," he added. The image processing also eliminates digital noise, smoothing it into a soft blur, which might be the reason behind the smudginess that McCabe sees in photos of her daughter's gymnastics. The "fix" ends up creating a distortion more noticeable than whatever perceived mistake was in the original.

Earlier this month, Apple's iPhone team agreed to provide me information, on background, about the camera's latest upgrades. A staff member explained that, when a user takes a photograph with the newest iPhones, the camera creates as many as nine frames with different levels of exposure. Then a "Deep Fusion" feature, which has existed in some form since 2019, merges the clearest parts of all those frames together, pixel by pixel, forming a single composite image. This process is an extreme version of high-dynamic range, or H.D.R., a technique that previously required some software savvy.... The iPhone camera also analyzes each image semantically, with the help of a graphics-processing unit, which picks out specific elements of a frame — faces, landscapes, skies — and exposes each one differently. On both the 12 Pro and 13 Pro, I've found that the image processing makes clouds and contrails stand out with more clarity than the human eye can perceive, creating skies that resemble the supersaturated horizons of an anime film or a video game. Andy Adams, a longtime photo blogger, told me, "H.D.R. is a technique that, like salt, should be applied very judiciously." Now every photo we take on our iPhones has had the salt applied generously, whether it is needed or not....

The average iPhone photo strains toward the appearance of professionalism and mimics artistry without ever getting there. We are all pro photographers now, at the tap of a finger, but that doesn't mean our photos are good.