In the run-up ahead of Apple’s iPhone media event, news emerged that Touch ID wasn’t part of the picture on the iPhone X. Apple allegedly had problems outfitting the system to work beneath an edge-to-edge OLED display and all that, so they brought out their trump card — Face ID.

The impression that story conveys is that Apple rushed the thing out, and thus it may be seriously flawed.

The facts are otherwise. Face ID requires several components that aren’t needed with Touch ID. Apple has been working on the system for several years. The 2013 purchase of PrimeSense, an Israel-based developer of 3D technology, formed a key part of the its facial recognition capability. This obviously means that Apple thought about moving past Touch ID four years ago.

Again, the thought that this was a rush job is absolutely not true. I suppose, of course, that Apple could have considered offering two biometric systems, with Touch ID in the rear, but opted not to. The Samsung Galaxy S8 has three; the third being iris recognition, but since two of the systems are seriously flawed, it hardly matters.

In any case, there’s yet another fear-mongering article online (I won’t link to it), suggesting that, “Apple has a mountain to climb to get people to use Face ID.”

Well, actually it involves buying an iPhone X, since that’s the only biometric system it’ll have, and customers will likely want to use it, particularly if they use services and apps that previously required Touch ID. I would think that’s a given, but the Apple critic world appears to sometimes exist in another universe.

Now the fear, uncertainty and doubt about Face ID in part mirrors what you heard about Touch ID when it arrived with the iPhone 5s in 2013. To be fair, it wasn’t as fluid then. It was a little sluggish, and it didn’t always work. As the system and iOS advanced, it became faster and more consistent. These days, it’s almost seamless for most users.

There were elaborate and gruesome tales of killing someone or cutting off their fingers to unlock an iPhone, but it actually required the fingerprint of a living, breathing person. Such stories were doubtless based on movies and TV shows that used such actions as plot devices. But Touch ID existed in the real world, and it was certainly a secure system. Indeed, the fingerprint data was encrypted in a secure enclave on the device itself so Internet criminals couldn’t dig up the data from a cloud server somewhere.

Up till now, facial recognition has had a checkered history. It goes back a few years on some Android handsets, and you could always defeat it with a photo. And, as I wrote above, you can still defeat it on the latest Samsung Galaxy smartphone.

None of that should mean anything, however. Fingerprint sensors were far flakier before Apple bought AuthenTec in 2012 and adapted its technology for Touch ID.

Now I do not expect Face ID to be necessarily perfect. There’s always a passcode backup if it fails. The system tries twice to get it right before going to Plan B. This compares to Touch ID, which can fail up to five times before the passcode screen appears.

Indeed, some have pointed to Face ID’s apparent failure on an iPhone X during the Apple media presentation, although it’s now claimed that those who set up the demonstration may have triggered a couple of recognition errors, which is why the password screen appeared. They should have simply restarted the unit, but a second handset was available for a proper demonstration.

Reporters who attended the Apple event tried Face ID, and there were some reports of failures or flakiness. No doubt Apple will be working on improving accuracy up till the time the iPhone X goes on sale in early November. As it is, a GM seed of iOS 11 came out right after the event, and it’s quite possible it already has some fixes.

Remember that Touch ID wasn’t perfect either. The real concern, however, is security and a decent level of reliability. So the facial data will be stored in a secure enclave, same as Touch ID. But in light of the early encounters, I wouldn’t be surprised to see some bugs that will be addressed over time.

The most important concern is whether it’s safe, and the fact that Apple is following the Touch ID playbook ought to assuage concerns on that score.

But the state of Face ID won’t be obvious until reporters have shipping products to test. No doubt Consumer Reports will jump into the fray as soon as they have a unit, and if there are problems, you can bet they will make sure to write lurid headlines about it.

Funny thing, though, CR hasn’t been making such a big deal about the failure of two of the three biometric systems on the latest Samsung Galaxy handsets. Or maybe it’s assumed a Samsung gadget will be flawed, and such defects just don’t matter.

But if any Apple product exhibits a potential security issue, it’s close to front page news. In the meantime, however,  critical stories about Face ID can only be taken seriously once they are based tests of a production unit. And, lest we forget, it hasn’t shipped yet.

The other day, I made some pointed comments about a certain national newspaper that ran a silly article about alternatives to the iPhone 8 before it was outed as the iPhone X. The argument was solely about buying something other than some — as yet — unannounced Apple product. It feel apart real quickly when the blogger tossed in Andy Rubin’s Essential smartphone even though it had what he admitted was a subpar camera.

Now that the rumors have been mostly confirmed about Apple’s new stuff, one criticism won’t go away. Indeed, the fears have been confirmed. Apple is daring to charge just one dollar short of $1,000 for the 64GB iPhone X. The 256GB version will be $150 more.

Outrageous!

Or maybe not!

Remember, Apple is the company that charged over $10,000 for an Apple Watch before taking a more measured approach beginning with the second version last year. But there will be an iMac Pro that will cost nearly $5,000 for the entry-level model, and match the price of a compact car when maxed out. The Mac Pro’s price will be off the charts!

But you have to put these things into perspective. Professional movie makers, scientists and other power users demand the most powerful personal computers on the planet. Intel charges up to $13,000 for a single 28-core Xeon processor, all by itself, although Apple pays far less than the retail price. Such chips are used for servers and workstations. Add it all up and these machines will be very expensive even when they don’t bear the Apple brand name.

The complaints against a $1,000 iPhone X ignore reality. Last year, Apple was already selling iPhones priced over $969 for an iPhone 7 Plus with 256GB storage. This year’s similarly equipped iPhone 8 Plus is $949. So selling an iPhone X, a higher-end model, for $200 more, isn’t out of the question. The $999 payment gets you the 64GB model; the 256GB model is $1,149.

But Apple is not the only company to sell smartphones for over $900. The Samsung Galaxy Note 8, which is more directly compared to the iPhone X although it has a larger display, lists for $949.99.

I’ll leave it to the reader — and the critics — to decide whether Apple has the right to charge $49 more. Obviously they have the right to charge whatever the traffic will bear. Business 101 and all that.

If you buy your iPhones with a credit card — or via one of the lease/purchase programs from Apple and various wireless carriers — the difference in the monthly cost is trivial. All right, some carriers are evidently liquidating Samsung smartphones with a two-for-one deal. Evidently it’s more important to push product than to make a decent profit from every sale.

Now I’m not aware of tech pundits — or industry analysts — going around doing surveys as to whether you’d should pay over $900, or close to $1,000, for a Samsung handset. It never seems to come up. But if Apple releases a premium-priced gadget, even if it’s only a tad more expensive, that’s some sort of moral transgression from those greedy so-and-sos. How dare they?

Again, when you consider a $1,149 iPhone X, remember that Samsung isn’t offering a Galaxy smartphone with 256GB storage. If they did, you can be reasonably assured the price would increase by roughly the same amount for the added storage. In the words, a Galaxy Note 8 might indeed cost $1,099.99, based on its cost difference for the iPhone X.

In the real world, most people aren’t going to want to pay a few dollars more, or a few hundred dollars more, for the 10th anniversary iPhone. That’s only logical. But Apple also cut the price of the 4-inch iPhone SE to $349, with monthly payments reduced accordingly (less than $12 a month at AT&T), if the top-of-the-line is too rich for your blood.

I’m also reminded that, due to currency exchange rates, shipping costs and other factors, the price differences may be larger outside of the United States.

But what this means is that there are more options than ever from Apple, from a moderately priced iPhone to something that’s a little more expensive than premium smartphones from other companies.

Now I wouldn’t predict what sort of sales Apple might achieve with the iPhone X. I expect the iPhone 8 and its big brother/sister will do quite well, and that the premium model will be backlogged for months due to high demand. Or maybe Apple is holding out until November 3rd to be sure there is enough stock at hand to fill orders without undue delay during the holiday season.

Of course, the blogger alluded to above imagines that November 3rd lies in the middle of the holiday buying season, which is bound to mean lots of trouble for Apple. Maybe he didn’t learn about Thanksgiving when he went to elementary school. But if Apple can deliver millions of them for Thanksgiving delivery, that ought to be fine.

Besides, why should it matter to anyone but Apple and Apple customers?

I’m not sure whether all this carping is genuine, or just something fed by Apple’s rivals. Either way, it’s nonsense. People can decide for themselves how much they can afford to pay for a new gadget, from Apple or another company. They can decide whether paying $49 less for the Samsung Galaxy Note 8 instead of an iPhone X is a better choice.

But when the sales are tallied, assuming Apple can get a decent number of the 10th anniversary iPhones into the channel, the sales figures ought to be pretty high. After all, the iPhone X — then known as the iPhone 8 — has been talked about since last year, even before the iPhone 7 came out. Demand has to be off the charts regardless of the price.

As you might expect, the Apple critic population will have its way with the announcements from the September 12th iPhone media event. How could it be otherwise?

But there was plenty of positive news to consider, even if most of product introductions and specs were pretty well known ahead of the event.

So there really is an iPhone X, and it does have a 5.8-inch OLED edge-to-edge display. At a resolution of 458 pixels per inch, roughly twice that of a normal retina display, Apple calls it Super Retina, which is not altogether different from what the Android smartphone makers have been doing for a while. The difference is that Apple’s brand new in-house designed GPU is without doubt powerful enough to push those pixels without the typical stalling you see on handsets from the competition.

That said, despite the promise of superior color, you probably won’t see a sharper display compared to a regular iPhone since, again, it’s retina, and thus the differences will be beyond normal visibility.

As the rumors stated, Apple’s facial recognition technology, Face ID, replaces Touch ID. It may be true that Apple had trouble getting its existing fingerprint sensor to work with the new display. Samsung had a similar problem. But while Samsung’s facial recognition is easily defeated with a digital photo, Apple is using something called TrueDepth to make a 3D map of your face, and it’s touted as being far more secure than Touch ID (compare a chance in a million to a chance in 50,000).

It goes without saying that the iPhone X will have inductive charging support, which is usually referred to as wireless charging. But the charging pads will be optional. And, as predicted, the Home button is history. Prepare to swipe up.

The critics are carping at the $999 starting price for the 64GB model; it’s $1,149 for the 256GB version. But it’s only $30 more than the Samsung Galaxy Note 8, which also comes with 64GB storage. The most expensive iPhone 8 Plus, with 256GB storage, is $949. The 128GB option is no longer available.

To be sure, the entry-level iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus are both $30 more than last year. I’m sure the critics will pounce on that, too. On the other hand, if you use want a relatively cheap iPhone, consider the iPhone SE. The price for the 32GB model was reduced by $50 to $349.

That said, the USA’s largest mainstream daily newspaper curiously claims that the iPhone X is “Apple’s latest attempt at a Samsung killer. But it’s coming late.”

As your mind continues to boggle, it is a strange twist of the usual way a Samsung smartphone is presented, that it is meant to be an “iPhone killer.” So why the turnaround? Well, because the iPhone X has some features that are already present in gear from Samsung and other companies. Beyond preliminary benchmarks that indicate that even the regular iPhone 8 smokes the latest Samsung Galaxy in benchmarks, remember that the iPhone X has a facial recognition feature that actually appears to work. Two of the three biometrics in Samsung’s Galaxy S8 succumb to digital photos.

And don’t forget that, among premium smartphones, Apple sells far more product than Samsung. The latter’s advantage is confined to low-profit feature phones, or entry-level smartphones, where Apple wisely doesn’t compete.

Now if you want to buy an iPhone X, prepare to wait. Reports of production delays may be true, and while you’ll be able to place your order in late October, it won’t ship until November 3rd. The article in question complains that this puts its arrival in the middle of the holiday season, but most of us know that sales don’t really start to peak until after Thanksgiving. So much for foolish spin.

The iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus will ship on September 22nd. iOS 11 will be released on September 19th, but the GM version has already been made available to developers and public beta testers. watchOS 4 and tvOS 11 are also due to arrive with the new iOS. macOS High Sierra is due on September 25th, and its GM has yet to arrive.

Now predictions about the Apple Watch Series 3 containing an LTE radio turned out to be correct. The 38mm version will start at $399, and I presume the 42mm model will be about $50 more. You can save $70 if you buy one without the cellular radio. With LTE, it shares the same phone number as your iPhone, so I suppose you can regard it as something of an extension, although you likely can’t use both at the same time.

Lest we forget, there is really no smartwatch market aside from the Apple Watch. Android Wear and other products have gone nowhere. Sales of Fitbit, once the king of wearables, have gone down. So the addition of LTE means that Apple is taking its product in a logical direction. Again, health and fitness are front and center, and Apple is evidently adding a heartbeat complication to the feature mix.

The new Apple Watch will otherwise look nearly identical to its predecessor. It ships on the same day is the iPhone 8 family.

Also as expected, the fifth generation Apple TV will offer 4K and HDR as the main improvements. A key advantage is that Apple is also including 4K streaming from different services plus a growing library of 4K movies to the mix. The competition from Amazon and Roku rely on the likes of Amazon Prime Video and Netflix to deliver such content, and there isn’t much available yet.

While I’m sure some of you will chafe at Apple’s $20 price increase for the 32GB Apple TV — $179 — there is a sweetener. A big one. Huge.

So Apple has arranged with the movie companies to offer 4K movies for the same price as HD, and, as they become available, you’ll be entitled to free upgrades from HD to 4K for your existing iTunes digital library. So while the Apple TV may cost more, you’ll save on the content, and that’s sure to make up the difference fairly quickly if you actually plan to make some purchases, such as Wonder Woman, which is due for release on September 19th.

I expect Apple Watch sales will continue to grow in light of the addition of an affordable LTE model. I’m not at all sure about the Apple TV, since you have to take the time to consider the wider availability of 4K content, and the fact that this is no price increase, compared the competition. Will customers consider the real cost before buying a streamer? I’m not at all sure.

The success of the iPhone X appears to be a sure thing. I just wonder how long it’ll take for Apple to catch up with the backlog, and whether large numbers of buyers will prefer it to the other iPhones. But it’s also likely that a starting price of $999 will be too much for many, even though monthly prices aren’t that much higher than the other models.

All in all, Apple presentation was slick and smooth, as usual, but otherwise mostly predictable.

All things being equal, is it possible to skip Apple’s September 12th media event and still know everything that’s going to happen — or enough not to care about a few isolated details? You almost get that impression what with the torrent of leaks in recent days.

Supposedly the one group of leaks emerged from the alleged firmware for a forthcoming product, the HomePod.

Yes, I know Apple doesn’t like to use “the,” but I still don’t care!

So I suppose it might have come from a disgruntled Apple employee who wanted to make a difference in spreading the word before being axed. But I am just shooting from the hip here, though I hardly think anyone who cares about Apple would want to violate their NDAs so blatantly.

That said, this product won’t be out until December. So any genuine firmware leak now would be in preliminary form, and thus might not accurately provide the inner details that the tech media has seized on. I’ll leave it there for now.

Then there’s the alleged iOS 11 GM. It appears to be credible, but I have no interest in checking out the link. For one thing, the developer and public betas out now are no doubt near-final versions, and thus there may not be a whole lot of difference. That said, this GM includes previously unknown details about the 10th anniversary iPhone not being named iPhone 8 after all. Instead, it’ll be the iPhone X. The other models will be iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus. There will be no iPhone 7s or iPhone 7s Plus.

I’m going to assume that news is correct. It made less sense to refer to a specialty iPhone as the iPhone 8 in light of the fact that you’d expect that to be the name of next year’s model. Then again, perhaps the form factor of the iPhone X will filter down to the rest of the lineup in 2018, they’ll all receive OLED displays and we’ll move to iPhone 9.

Now someone wrote using the number “9” isn’t cool, pointing out that Microsoft went from Windows 8 to Windows 10. But it’s also true that Microsoft had released an OS that utterly failed, and thus moving far away from its numbering scheme made sense from a marketing point of view.

Besides, Apple did well with the number 10, only in “X” format. Microsoft wouldn’t risk that.

And there was indeed a Mac OS 9. It was a modest upgrade from Mac OS 8, and existed until it was replaced by Mac OS X.

Have I bored you enough yet with this trivia?

Despite these details, there are no doubt things Apple can keep to itself despite rampant leaks from the supply chain, OS or firmware. So don’t expect the media presentation to be completely predictable.

But I’m more interested in the potential sources of this GM release. Some speculate it came from yet another disgruntled Apple employee who had a beef with the company, or wanted to strike out on his/her own. But if they were summarily dismissed from Apple for violating a secrecy agreement, how credible would they seem in seeking venture capital, a business loan, let alone finding employment elsewhere? Such a move could be a career-ender.

On the other hand, Apple releases an iOS GM to wireless carriers for final testing before it is made available to the public. If there’s a last-minute issue, a fast update can be pushed even for new products flashed with the original OS.

So it’s very possible someone who works with one of the carriers was responsible for this move. That might make it more difficult to locate the culprit, and it’s not that Apple has much authority to deal with such a transgression. The carriers may promise to look into it, and that will be it. They may not be so inclined to care, particularly since this maneuver merely created more interest and possible demand for the new Apple gear. The means sales, profits. Maybe one of the carriers did it for marketing reasons.

You get the picture.

Or we can look at the reverse of those theories, which is that both the HomePod and iOS 11 GM leaks were quietly released by Apple to generate discussion. It sure boosted publicity and product anticipation, particularly among fans of the company. They might feel empowered by learning a few secrets from Apple, even though the information mostly confirms products and perhaps some generalized specs that have already been speculated on.

So, if the real names for the 2017 iPhones are correct, it’s nice to know but nothing special. The apparent existence of Face ID only reinforces something that was already known. Apple will evidently eschew Touch ID for 3D facial recognition, and go at great length to explain why it’s so special.

I’ll set aside rumors of an Apple Watch Series 3 with optional LTE radio, and an Apple TV with 4K and HDR.

But do you wonder, then, why I have a nagging feeling that these leaks may just have emerged from Apple after all? It’s well known that the company will quietly feed key members of the tech media news about possible new products and strategy on background. That means Apple and/or Apple spokespeople can’t be directly quoted. But a reporter can write about “sources close to the company” or something similar to make it clear that the report is genuine and from where it came.

Now let’s get on with the show.