iPhone 5S verdict: the surprises

Apple's iPhone 5S was the company's riskiest undertaking since the launch of the original iPhone, so did the risk pay off? Photograph: Eduardo Barraza/Demotix/Corbis

"I will withhold judgment on the new iPhone until I have a chance to play customer, buy the product (my better half seems to like the 5C while I pine for a 5S), and use it for about two weeks – the time required to go beyond my first, and often wrong, impressions".

I wrote those words a little over a month ago. I've now played customer for the requisite two weeks – I got an iPhone 5S on 3 October – and I'm prepared to report.

But first, some context.

iPhone launches always generate controversy, there's always something to complain about: Antennagate for the iPhone 4, the Siri beta for the 4S, the deserved Maps embarrassment last year – with a clean, dignified Tim Cook apology.

(Whether these fracas translate into lost revenue is another matter).

As I sat in the audience during the introduction of the original iPhone, back in January, 2007, I thought the demo was too good, that Steve was (again) having his way with facts. I feared that when the product shipped a few months later, the undistorted reality would break the spell.

We know now that the iPhone that Steve presented on the stage was unfinished, that he trod a careful path through a demo minefield. But theJesusPhone that Apple shipped – unfinished in many ways (no native apps, no cut-and-paste) – was more than a success: It heralded the Smartphone 2.0 era.

This year, Tim Cook introduced the riskiest hardware/software combination since the original iPhone. The iPhone 5S wants to be more than just "new and improved", it attempts to jump off the slope with its combination of two discontinuities: a 64-bit processor and a new 64-bit iOS. Will it work, or will it embarrass itself in a noisome backfire?

First surprise: It works.

Let me explain. I have what attorneys call "personal knowledge" of sausage factories, I've been accountable for a couple and a fiduciary for several others. I have first-hand experience with the sights, the aromas, the tumult of the factory floor, so I can't help but wince when I approach a really new product, I worry in sympathy with its progenitors. The 5S isn't without its "aromas" (we'll get to those later), but the phone is sleek and attractive, the house apps are (mostly) solid, and the many new Application Programming Interfaces (API) promise novel applications.Contrary to some opinions, there are fewer warts than anyone could have expected.

Surprise #2: The UI: I had read the scathing critiques of the spartan excesses, and, indeed, I feel the drive for simplicity occasionally goes too far. The buttons on the built-in timer are too thin, too subdued. When I meditate in the dark, I can't distinguish start from cancel without my glasses. But I'm generally happy with the simpler look. Windows and views get out of the way quickly and gracefully, text is neatly rendered, the removal of skeuomorphic artifacts is a relief.

The next surprise is the fingerprint sensor – Touch ID. Having seen how attempts to incorporate fingerprint recognition intosmartphones and laptops have gone nowhere, I had my doubts. Moreover, Apple had acquired AuthenTec, the company that created the fingerprint sensor, a mere 15 months ago. Who could believe that Apple would be able to produce a fingerprint-protected iPhone so quickly?

But it works. It's not perfect, I sometimes have to try again, or use another finger (I registered three on my right hand and two on my left), but it's clear that Apple has managed to push Touch ID into the category of "consumer-grade technology": It works often enough and delivers enough benefit to offset the (small) change in behaviour.

A personal favourite surprise is motion sensing.

When Apple's marketing supremo, Phil Schiller, described the M7 motion processor, I didn't think much of it, I was serving the last days of my two-month sentence wearing the JawBone UP bracelet mentioned in aprevious Monday Note. (A friend suggested I affix it to his dog's collar to see what the data would look like.)

Furthermore, the whole "lifestyle monitoring" business didn't seem like virgin territory. The Google/Motorola Moto X smartphone introduced last August uses a co-processor that, among other things, monitors your activities, stays awake even when the main processor is asleep, and adjusts the phone accordingly. A similar co-processing arrangement is present in Moto X's predecessors, the Droid Maxx, Ultra and Mini.

But then I saw a Twitter exchange about motion sensing apps about a week after I had activated my iPhone 5S. One thumb touch later, the freePedometer++ app asked for my permission to use motion data (granted) and immediately told me how many steps I'd taken over the past seven days.

I went to the chauffeured iPhone on my wife's desk and installed the app. I did the same on friends' devices. The conclusion was obvious: The M7 processor continuously generates and stores motion data independent of any application. A bit of googling shows that there are quite a few applications that use the motion data that's obligingly collected by the M7 processor; I downloaded a number of these apps and the step counts are consistent.

(Best in class is the ambitious MotionX 24/7. Philippe Kahn's companyFullPower Technologies licenses MotionX hardware and software to many motion-sensing providers, including Jawbone and, perhaps, Apple. Wearable technologies aren't just for our wrists … we carry them in our pockets.)

My wife asked if her iPhone would count steps from within her handbag. Ever the obliging husband, I immediately attended to this legitimate query, grabbed her handbag, and stepped out of the house for an experimental stroll. A conservatively dressed couple walked by, gave me a strange look, and didn't respond to my evening greeting, but, indeed, the steps were counted.

A question arises: Does Apple silently log my movements? No, my iPhone records my locomotion, but the data stays within the device – unless, of course, I let a specific application export them. One must be aware of the permissions.

Other 5S improvements are welcome but not terribly surprising. The camera has been smartly enhanced in several dimensions; search finally works in mail; and, to please Senator John McCain, apps update themselves automatically.

All of this comes with factory-fresh bugs, of course, a whiff of the sausage-making apparatus. iPhoto crashed on launch the first three or four times I tried it, but has worked without complaint since then. A black Apple logo on a white background appeared and then quickly disappeared – too brief to be a full reboot, too sparse to be part of an app.

I've had to reboot the 5S to recover a dropped cellular connection, and have experienced hard-to-repeat, sporadic Wi-Fi trouble that seems to spontaneously cure itself. ("How did you fix it?" asks my wife when her tech chauffeur gets the sullen device to work again. "I don't know, I poke the patient everywhere until it responds.")

From my admittedly geeky perspective, I'm not repelled by these glitches, they didn't lose my data or prevent me from finishing a task. They're annoying, but they're to be expected given the major hardware and software changes. And I expect that the marketplace (as opposed to the kommentariat) will shrug them off and await the bug fixes that will take care of business.

So, yes, overall, the "discontinuous" 5S works

Microsoft working on a fix for Windows RT 8.1 update issues

Microsoft's Windows RT 8.1 update rendering some Microsoft Surface RT tablets inoperable after significant issues. Photograph: Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Microsoft is working on a fix for a "issue" that bricked Microsoft Surface RT tablets after updating to the new Windows RT 8.1 operating system.

Microsoft was embarrassingly forced to "temporarily" remove the operating system update for its Surface RT tablets from the Windows Store after some of the updated devices could not be restarted.

One user has posted a suggested fix for the problem, which involves creating a bootable USB drive from another Windows computer, and then repairing the boot drive on the tablet.

The update is limited to a small number of Windows RT tablets – using ARM chips – and not full Windows 8 PCs with Intel chips, including the Surface Pro.

"Microsoft is investigating a situation affecting a limited number of users updating their Windows RT devices to Windows RT 8.1. As a result, we have temporarily removed the Windows RT 8.1 update from the Windows Store," a Microsoft Surface support engineer explained on a Microsoft community forum.

"We are working to resolve the situation as quickly as possible and apologise for any inconvenience. We will provide updates as they become available," he said.

 Tablets damaged by the update can be recovered

The number of Microsoft Surface RT machines affected by the update issues is unknown. Microsoft was estimated to have shipped 260,000 Windows RT tablets in July when it reported a significant $900m writedown on its quarterly results due to unsold inventory and price cuts on the tablets.

Released on Thursday 17 October at the same time as a Windows 8.1 update for Microsoft's full Windows 8 PC operating system, the Windows RT 8.1 update is designed only for a limited number of Windows RT machines, which include the Microsoft Surface RT tablet, as well as the Dell XPS 10 and Samsung ATIV Tab.

The update issues are therefore all the more embarrassing for Microsoft as the Windows RT 8.1 operating system is designed to run on a restricted range of devices, unlike its full Windows 8.1 operating system for desktop, laptop and tablet PCs.

Unlike Windows RT 8.1, minimal issues have been reported concerning the full Windows 8.1 update.

Facebook defends looser restrictions on teen usage

Facebook has defended lifting restrictions on young people on its site. Photograph: David J. Green - lifestyle 2/A/Alamy

Facebook has defended its decision to make the posts of its teenage users more visible, claiming that “teenagers are expert at controlling who they share things with”.

The social networking site says that it has tightened privacy settings for users aged between 13 to 17, restricting the sharing of posts to friends only by default. The previous default included friends of friends, who might not be directly known by the user.

The company has also introduced “additional tools to help educate teens on the implications of sharing a post with a public audience, with reminders as they post”, explained a Facebook spokesperson.

“This means they have to make a conscious choice before they share publicly. When teens choose ‘public’ in the audience selector, they’ll see a reminder that the post can be seen by anyone, not just people they know, with an option to change the post’s privacy.

“We think it is better that teens can choose to share publicly on Facebook than spend time elsewhere on the web where safety tools and resources are limited.”

Since December 2009, younger users of the site have been able only to share posts, pictures and updates with a limited selection of the social network: friends, friends of friends, and other members of their school, college and verified networks. This applied even if the young person told the site to share certain updates with “everyone”.

Those restrictions have now been removed, allowing teens to have the same control over their privacy settings as everyone else, so that photos and status updates can be made fully searchable.

A little under 10% of users don’t change the privacy settings applied when they sign up at all, and so the default setting has a great effect on the amount of data they share. Even for those who do change their settings, the default plays a role in anchoring perceptions.

“The National Crime Agency welcomes the announcement in relation to the default sharing setting,” said Facebook's spokesperson, adding that it “will help young people understand the need to manage their privacy settings carefully and to control who they share their information with".

Around 20% of Facebook’s UK users are aged between 15 and 24, according to an analysis by the firm ComScore, but the exact number affected by the changed settings isn’t known outside Facebook.

“While we don't believe all our young people will necessarily choose to post public updates,” said anti-bullying campaigner Alex Holmes, “we know that being able to do so on Facebook as on other platforms is important to them.”

Tony Neate, the chief executive of Get Safe Online, concurred. “Kids have been asking for this functionality because the way they use social media is fundamentally different to older generations, even those just three or four years older. And of course Facebook is going to give their users what they want.”

The company remains one of the few social networks to offer any extra privacy features at all to younger users. On the vast majority of networks, including Twitter, Instagram (owned by Facebook) and Google Plus, privacy settings are the same no matter what the user's age is. Some, such as Twitter, don’t even ask how old a new member is.

“Obviously they have to be able to compete with Twitter,” said Lizzie Dean, a secondary school student from Manchester who has been on Facebook since she was 14. “I actually use Twitter more, but you know the views are going to be shared publicly there.”

She also argued for an understanding of the rights at stake. “Why shouldn’t teenagers have the ability to share as much as adults do? We’re predominant users of it. We know what we’re doing.”

Dylan Collins, an entrepreneur who creates digital products for children, agreed. “We generally see kids being pretty cautious with this stuff. They've grown up with these platforms as digital natives, so I think they absorb the changes with less drama than older generations.”

“The way young people use the web has changed dramatically,” said a Facebook spokesperson. “We know from their use of Facebook that teenagers are expert at controlling who they share things with. In recent years we’ve seen the rise of services that enable teens to share with a public audience – often as a default setting.

"We’re giving teens the choice to share some of their posts with public audiences if they want to, so that they can join public conversations that might range from politics and activism through to sport or television.”

All major social networks require users to be at least 13 years old, thanks to a requirement under a US law called the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, or COPPA. That law vastly increased the regulatory burden involved in letting children sign up for accounts online, with the result that most websites simply changed their terms of service to prevent people younger than 13 from signing up.

“Creating good, practical legal frameworks for kids online is a huge challenge,” said Collins. “I think it's made even more difficult by the experience gap between the people creating the law and the people [children] whose activities it tries to protect.”

Edward Snowden: I brought no leaked NSA documents to Russia

Edward Snowden says there is no chance of leaked NSA documents falling into the hands of Russian or Chinese officials. Photograph: AP

Edward Snowden, the source of US National Security Agency leaks, has said he left all the leaked documents behind when he flew from Hong Kong to Moscow and there is no chance of them falling into the hands of Russian or Chinese authorities.

In an interview with the New York Times, Snowden said he had decided to hand over all digital material to the journalists he had met in Hong Kong because it would not have been in the public interest for him to hold on to copies. "What would be the unique value of personally carrying another copy of materials onward?"

Snowden disputed speculation that he had run the risk of China andRussia gaining access to the secret files. He said he was so familiar with Chinese spying operations, having himself targeted China when he was employed by the NSA, that he knew how to keep the trove secure from them. "There's a 0% chance the Russians or Chinese have received any documents," he said.

The 30-year-old said he had previously been reluctant to disclose that he no longer had the files for fear of exposing the journalists – Glenn Greenwald and Ewen MacAskill of the Guardian, and the independent filmmaker Laura Poitras – to greater scrutiny.

Snowden conducted the interview over the past few days, communicating from Russia, where he has been granted a year's asylum, with an NYT journalist in the US via encrypted email. He took the opportunity to try to quash several of the most widely aired criticisms of his actions.

Snowden said he had decided to become a whistleblower and flee America because he had no faith in the internal reporting mechanisms of the US government, which he believed would have destroyed him and buried his message forever.

One of the main criticisms levelled at Snowden by the Obama administration has been that he should have taken up an official complaint within the NSA rather than travelling to Hong Kong to share his concerns about the agency's data dragnet with the Guardian and other news organisations. But Snowden dismissed that option as implausible.

"The system does not work," he said, pointing to the paradox that "you have to report wrongdoing to those most responsible for it". If he had tried to sound the alarm internally, he would have been "discredited and ruined" and the substance of his warnings "would have been buried forever".

Snowden's comments go to the heart of the dichotomy within the Obama administration's policy towards whistleblowers. It has introduced new protections for whistleblowers uncovering corruption and inefficiency, including a presidential order that extends the safeguards to the intelligence services. But contract workers such as Snowden are not protected by the executive order, and the government has pursued official leakers with an aggression rarely seen before.

Eight leakers, including Snowden, have been prosecuted under the 1917 Espionage Act – more than twice the number under all previous presidents combined.

Snowden singled out one of those eight, Thomas Drake, a former senior NSA executive who turned whistleblower, after he became alarmed about the agency's choice of tools for intelligence-gathering. Drake, who was prosecuted but had all the charges dropped, was in Moscow last week to honour Snowden with an award.

The author of the NYT article, James Risen, is himself at odds with the Obama administration. Risen uncovered the original warrantless wiretapping of phone calls by the Bush administration, for which he won a Pulitzer prize. He is under intense pressure to divulge the name of one of his sources at the criminal leak trial of Jeffrey Sterling, a former CIA agent who is another of the Espionage Act eight. Risen is refusing to reveal his source, and is likely to appeal right up to the US supreme court.

Snowden said it was a report on the wiretapping programme that Risen uncovered that had first piqued his curiosity.

He said he was shocked when he came across a copy of a classified report from 2009 dealing with the NSA's warrantless wiretapping under Bush. "If the highest officials in government can break the law without fearing punishment or even any repercussions at all, secret powers become tremendously dangerous."

He said his main objection to the NSA dragnet of data was that it was being conducted in secret. "The secret continuance of these programmes represents a far greater danger than their disclosure. It represents a dangerous normalisation of 'governing in the dark', where decisions with enormous public impact occur without any public input."

Snowden would not discuss the conditions of his life in Moscow. His father, Lon Snowden, returned to the US this week from a visit to see him and reported that "he's comfortable, he's happy, and he's absolutely committed to what he has done".

Tim Cahill scores fastest goal in MLS history

Tim Cahill scored the fastest goal in Major League Soccer history when he struck for New York Red Bulls just seven seconds into their clash with Houston Dynamo.

Cahill took the kick-off then ran forward to receive a lobbed pass from Dax McCarty, brought it down and blasted home a right-footed shot from outside the area.

The goal was four seconds faster than the previous MLS record of 11 seconds and it set the Red Bulls on the way to a 3-0 away win on Sunday.

"Instead of playing in the middle, I was playing up front today," said Cahill. "It was a big game for us and the ball got played into me from the middle of the park, I took it on my chest, took a bounce and it ended up in the top corner.

"That was a massive win for us and it's a proud achievement for myself and obviously the MLS."

It was another highlight in a memorable season for Cahill. He has scored 10 goals from 25 games, one more than his celebrated team-mate Thierry Henry, as well as four assists.

If the Red Bulls win their final game of the regular season at home on Sunday against the Chicago Fire, they will claim the Supporters Shield for the best record in the MLS regular season in either conference. They will also ensure they have home field advantage throughout the post season.

Tom Sykes wins World Superbike title with third place in Jerez opener

Briton Tom Sykes won the World Superbike Championship a year after missing out on the title by half a point. Photograph: Rui Vieira/PA

An emotional Tom Sykes admitted he shed tears after winning the World Superbike Championship.

The Huddersfield-born 28-year-old Kawasaki rider, who missed out on the 2012 title by half a point, finished third in the opening race of the final round at Jerez.

That was enough to take the title at the Spanish circuit as he finished behind Ireland's Eugene Laverty (Aprilia) and the Gold Bet BMW of the Italian Marco Melandri. Sykes, who lives in Coventry, became the fourth British winner of the title after Carl Fogarty, Neil Hodgson and James Toseland.

"I'm absolutely over the moon, so emotional. I was shedding a few tears on the slowing-down lap, I was shaking," Sykes said. "There have been lots of sacrifices to get here. Finally we're here and what a feeling."

Mohammad Amir's spot-fixing ban is to be reviewed by the ICC

The Pakistan fast bowler Mohammad Amir could be granted the chance to renew his career by the ICC. Photograph: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

The disgraced Pakistan fast bowler Mohammad Amir is to have his five-year ban for spot-fixing reviewed by the International Cricket Council. The ICC has confirmed it would look into the 21-year-old's suspension "in due course" after its final board meeting of the year in London at the weekend. Any decision on reducing Amir's ban – which ends in 2015 – will not be made until the ICC has adopted its new anti-corruption code. That document could be approved as early as the ICC board's next meeting in January, when Amir could be granted the chance to restart a career that was left in tatters after he was part of a plot to bowl no-balls during the 2010 Lord's Test against England. After their two-day meeting the ICC board released a statement confirming their intention to look into Amir's case.

"The ICC board was informed that a revised version of a more robust and strengthened ICC anti-corruption code will be submitted for discussion/approval at the January 2014 meeting," the statement read.

"During the discussion, the matter of Mohammad Amir's five-year ban also came up for discussion.

"The ICC board decided to review the matter in due course after the revised ICC anti-corruption code has been finalised and adopted."

Amir has not played in international cricket since the Lord's Test and, after pleading guilty to the spot-fixing charges, spent three months in a British prison.

Reports in Pakistan before the ICC board meeting had suggested that a plea would be made to allow Amir to make an early return to cricket.

It was suggested the left-armer might be allowed to resume training at the National Centre in Lahore, and even play domestic cricket before his ban ends.

A five-member ICC sub-committee was set up in July to look into the possibility of relaxing Amir's ban.

The ICC also confirmed it had agreed to delay the deadline for the completion of the stadiums for next year's World Twenty20 in Bangladesh.

A decision has now been pushed back to 30 November after a request by the Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB), although the format and schedule for the tournament is due to be announced on 27 October