Month: September 2018

Enlarge / The iPhone XS will be available to pre-order on Friday. (credit: Valentina Palladino)

It’s iPhone season, which means it’s once again time for millions of Apple diehards to drop what they’re doing and immediately upgrade their daily drivers.

To be clear, we recommend waiting for the Ars review of the new iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max—which go up for pre-order at 3am ET on Friday and begin shipping to customers on September 21—before throwing more cash in Tim Cook’s direction. But we also recognize that a whole lot of people decided they would buy one of the new handsets as soon as Apple introduced them.

So for those who are dead set on grabbing an iPhone XS straight away—and don’t want to wait for the more affordable iPhone XR next month—we’ve broken down where to get the new handsets and what the major sellers and mobile carriers are offering for your purchase.

Enlarge / The iPhone XS will be available to pre-order on Friday. (credit: Valentina Palladino)

It’s iPhone season, which means it’s once again time for millions of Apple diehards to drop what they’re doing and immediately upgrade their daily drivers.

To be clear, we recommend waiting for the Ars review of the new iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max—which go up for pre-order at 3am ET on Friday and begin shipping to customers on September 21—before throwing more cash in Tim Cook’s direction. But we also recognize that a whole lot of people decided they would buy one of the new handsets as soon as Apple introduced them.

So for those who are dead set on grabbing an iPhone XS straight away—and don’t want to wait for the more affordable iPhone XR next month—we’ve broken down where to get the new handsets and what the major sellers and mobile carriers are offering for your purchase.

Enlarge / Concept illustration of the Big Falcon Spaceship flying around the Moon. (credit: SpaceX)

On Thursday evening, without any advance notice, SpaceX tweeted that is had signed the world’s "first private passenger to fly around the Moon aboard our BFR launch vehicle." Moreover, the company promised to reveal "who's flying and why" on Monday, September 17. The announcement will take place at the company's headquarters in Hawthorne, Calif.

There were only two other clues—tweets from Musk himself. Was the rendering of the Big Falcon Spaceship in SpaceX's tweet new? Yes, Musk said. And was he the passenger? In response to this, the founder of SpaceX simply tweeted a Japanese flag emoji. This would seem to be strong clue that the passenger is from Japan. Or maybe Musk was enjoying the epic Seven Samurai movie at that moment.

By announcing this on Thursday, and waiting four days to provide more details, the company has set off a big guessing game as to who will fly. Of course that is an interesting question, but we have many other questions that we'd like to see answered before that. We've included some of those questions below, along with some wild and (slightly) informed guesses.

Enlarge / Concept illustration of the Big Falcon Spaceship flying around the Moon. (credit: SpaceX)

On Thursday evening, without any advance notice, SpaceX tweeted that is had signed the world’s "first private passenger to fly around the Moon aboard our BFR launch vehicle." Moreover, the company promised to reveal "who's flying and why" on Monday, September 17. The announcement will take place at the company's headquarters in Hawthorne, Calif.

There were only two other clues—tweets from Musk himself. Was the rendering of the Big Falcon Spaceship in SpaceX's tweet new? Yes, Musk said. And was he the passenger? In response to this, the founder of SpaceX simply tweeted a Japanese flag emoji. This would seem to be strong clue that the passenger is from Japan. Or maybe Musk was enjoying the epic Seven Samurai movie at that moment.

By announcing this on Thursday, and waiting four days to provide more details, the company has set off a big guessing game as to who will fly. Of course that is an interesting question, but we have many other questions that we'd like to see answered before that. We've included some of those questions below, along with some wild and (slightly) informed guesses.