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▲ Head-mounted AirPods icon found in iOS 14. Image from 9to5Mac

Wasn’t these teachers Guo predicted before? Why is it better than Teacher Guo?

The point is, how accurate are the predictions they makeIt’s almost 100%.

Time back to three years ago and see how they unveiled the mystery of iPhone X

I know it ’s useless to say, we might as well go back to the time before the iPhone X was released in 2017 and see how this group of Apple Spelunker gradually shows us the iPhone X in various rumors. Real look.

No doubt, the most important thing at the time was the appearance. After all, since the iPhone 6, the front appearance has hardly changed, and as the 10th anniversary version of the iPhone, everyone definitely wants to take it out of your pocket and be recognized at a glance.

In the half year before the iPhone X was released, there were a lot of renderings and model machines on the Internet. At the time, there were only three kinds of positive designs in rumors.

One is a complete screen, which is the true full screen we are talking about now. The second is that a small slot will be dug out in the middle of the screen, where speakers and cameras are placed. The third is Liu Haiping’s design.

▲ Rumored digging iPhone X

In fact, the true face of the iPhone X was already hidden by Apple in a place that no one would have thought of in July of that year: a beta version of HomePod’s firmware.

A week after the firmware was released, a developer named Steve Troughton-Smith dug out a new internal codenamed D22 from the firmware.iPhone, and found a matching rounded bangs screen appearance vector illustration.

▲ Photo from: Twitter

Although the first exposure of Liu Haiping’s design was not through the way of digging through the system code, before this, many models, renderings, and even so-called factory leaked parts have shown this kind of Liu Haiping. design. But to a certain extent, the appearance of this vector illustration basically satisfies the front design of the iPhone X.

Joke-loving Steve Troughton-Smith found this vector, and even worried that people inside Apple would have a bad Monday because of it …

In addition, I also took a special look at 9to5Mac (a foreign media website that is fast and well-known for collecting information about new Apple products), two months before and after the news came out. In previous reports, there is actually no shortage of information that the iPhone X will use a grooved design. There are also a variety of designs on the iPhone X’s layout from time to time.

After the exposure of this vector diagram, the discussion of the appearance on the website is basically designed around Liu Haiping. Instead, how the top status bar should change becomes a new topic. 9to5 Mac has also initiated a vote on this.

▲ Picture from: 9to5Mac

However, this topic soon ended with Steve Troughton-Smith’s later discovery.

▲ Photo from: Twitter

Since it has become a full screen, the Home button, which has served the iPhone for 10 years, has also been “optimized”, so the interaction is definitely different.

At the time, there were several statements about the interactive operation:

1. Although the flesh of the Home button is gone, the soul is still there. The full-screen iPhone will have a virtual home button similar to the “white dot”.

2. Full screen The bottom of the iPhone will have a horizontal Function area, similar to the virtual buttons at the bottom of Android.

3. Use 3D Touch and give it more operations.

4. Introduce multi-finger gestures similar to iPad and MacBook touchpads.

Because these interaction predictions are different from the hardware, it cannot obtain relevant information through the leakage of the supply chain or even factory parts, so the predictions on the full-screen interaction have always been divergent. No convincing evidence.

▲ Function Area predicted by Guo Mingji in a report

Until the introduction of iOS 11 GM, the puzzles were finally solved.

Guillherme Rambo found a small bar at the bottom of the interface in the iOS 11 GM. Although everyone did n’t know what the small bar was called at the time, you can know from the code that this small bar It is the role of the virtual home button, but it also combines gesture operations. The function is a little more than the home button. By sliding in different directions, you can return to the desktop and switch tasks.

▲ Photo from: Twitter

There is also a question about the Home button being removed, which has a big impact, that is how to unlock it.

The discussion of this issue is relatively less complicated than the interaction described above. In other words, one is the fingerprint on the screen, and the other is facial recognition. And combined with the maturity of the fingerprint technology at the time, analysts’ predictions, and judgments on the function of big bangs, most people are more inclined to facial recognition.

But it’s interesting that the facial recognition clues that were originally found from a software perspective are also not found on iOS, but still on that HomePod firmware.

An anonymous developer at the time discovered some clues in the BiometricKit code section of the new HomePod firmware. Because this part of the code is responsible for connecting the biometric part of the iPhone, previously it was some fingerprint identification codes, but in the new version it contains many new codes with the name “FaceDectect”.

Subsequently, many software engineers, including Steve Troughton-Smith mentioned above, also found more code evidence in the iOS and HomePod firmwares, respectively, confirming that the face recognition of the iPhone X requires multi-angle entry and the use of infrared light. Device and key information that can be used for payment.

Even two days before the conference, the little round face animation that appeared when using Face ID was dug up.

What’s the name of this tenth anniversary iPhone? It is not difficult to predict the new iPhone according to the previous iPhone naming rules. If it is behind the iPhone 7S, it should be the iPhone 8.

However, this product is not only the representative work of the iPhone for the past 10 years, but also the Kaishan work that will lead the next 10 years. There must be any difference in the naming. So the name of this tenth anniversary iPhone was circulating on the Internet in various versions. Is that iPhone 8S, iPhone 10, iPhone X, iPhone Edition, or iPhone 10th Anniversary Special Commemorative Edition?

In the end, it convinced people that this product was named iPhone.X’s is still Steve Troughton-Smith. He dug deeper into the iOS 11 GM version. Finally, three days before the launch of the conference, he determined the names of the three new iPhones at the conference that year, that is, the iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus, and iPhone X, which we later knew, and confirmed indirectly. Rumors that Apple will release three iPhones at this conference.

At this point, almost all the important parts of the iPhone X have been wiped out.

Of course, their record of digging for clues goes far beyond that. For the most important products in the past two years, including the latest iPad Pro will use a full-screen design, AirPods Pro with noise reduction, 16-inch MacBook Pro frame will be narrower these key messages, they are also in a variety of One by one in the system.

This job is even harder than being a detective.

The reason why it can be done almost 100% is because the source of this information is actually from Apple itself. But because of this, it will become very difficult.

Apple not only hides information deeply, but also hides and disguises this critical information. So if you want to discover clues about new products by deconstructing these codes, you must not only be professional and patient, but also need strong organizational skills and identification skills.

This is one of the most iconic Guilherme Rambo quotes from Apple Spelunker in an interview. Guilherme Rambo is best known in the industry for developing a third-party WWDC support application on macOS. But what really got him into the public eye was a lot of new product clues that he had dug in recent years.

▲ Guilherme Rambo

Everyone knows that Apple’s confidentiality has always been strict, especially in the supply chain and production lines. But the scope involved is so wide that it is actually difficult for Apple to plug every loophole.

The same is true of software.

Guilherme Rambo said that Apple’s ecosystem is too powerful, such as iOS, macOS, watchOS, and tvOS. These software support the entire Apple hardware and service system, which are independent and accessible to each other, so the area involved is too wide, and it is almost impossible to leak water.

But it doesn’t mean that this is easy, it is even more difficult than being a detective to solve the case. Because these clues are not directly there. The code that this group of Apple Spelunke has to deal with is fragmented. Not only do they have to read it, they must also be good at association and induction. Speaking of how to dig clues, Guilherme Rambo said:

Everyone may think that we can finish as long as we continue to dig. It’s not. There is a file in my computer that contains a lot of clue fragments. When I come across some code that I can’t guess for a while, I will record it. If later I see code in the new system that looks familiar, such as D33, J230, etc., I will re-search those tags in that old document, look at some of my previous records, and try to find them Association.

For example, I broke a lot of information about the iPad Pro at the time. In fact, it was combed for a long time, and the clues in it passed through multiple iOS Beta versions.

This means that this work is not only cross-system but also cross-version.

In addition, Guilherme Rambo also said that these codes are the same as people writing, and different people have different styles. It’s quite difficult to read someone else’s code, especially if it is disguised. Their group of Apple Spelunkers often share their results with each other. Although most of the time their findings are consistent, sometimes they will find that their interpretation is a matter of two different directions.

In order not to let yourself go in the wrong direction and take a less devious way, in fact, based on some industry chain information forecast reports, they often pay attention to and get a lot of help:

I think it ’s not just our own credit to be able to discover this information, because the predictions obtained through industry analysis will be of great help to us. We often refer to this information to understand the general trend of Apple. Try not to let yourself go further and further in the wrong direction.

Applause is not the only thing facing

With such a powerful spoiler, A like Guilherme Rambopple Spelunker is quite popular both on the news site and on its own social accounts. Of course, we also have to face a lot of accusations:

Most people love our work and think it’s cool. But some people don’t think so. They said that the Apple conference was a long-awaited two-hour TV show for them, but after our spoiler, it became a two-hour commercial.

I respect their opinions, but I disagree. I will watch almost every press conference, but my focus is not on what will be released, but on why Apple will release these new products. These new products are the most important to me and consumers.

These information cannot be found by our work.

Guilherme Rambo said when asked if he was under pressure from Apple. But these pressures are not the means of suppression, but with the upgrade of various anti-reverse compilation methods, it is no longer easy to find clues.

Guilherme Rambo ’s Apple Developer account was banned in August last year. This issue has also been hotly debated on the Raddit forum and other websites. Many people suspect that the leaking work of Guilherme Rambo violated some of the confidentiality matters in the developer agreement, and said that it is likely to be permanently banned.

But after two months, the developer account of Guilherme Rambo was restored. Although Guilherme Rambo did not explain the reason for the ban, he previously revealed in an interview about the relationship between him and Apple:

I cannot reveal too much about these issues. But what I can say is that, although not often, we do maintain contact. And I learned from friends that some employees inside Apple actually like my job, although I don’t know why.