iPhone at ten: the revolution continues
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Not only do I find it nicer to use (which is somewhat subjective), but I still feel that Apple are standing up for user rights (e.g. FBI/government requests to make phones less secure) more than any other mobile manufacturer.
I did swap out of the version 4 simply because my lack of grace meant I had to replace the back glass more than once.
(Yes, I turned off the fancy stuff like Springboard background parallax. It helped but not enough.)
What right? Most people (but not enough) have some sense that privacy is an actual right. The number of people who think that it's a right that every device you own with an MCU or CPU should be a completely open general programming platform is a fraction of a percent.
> Standing up for your right to lock-in your data with a single vendor?
What lock-in? You can have all your iPhone data (contacts, notes, etc.) on Gmail if you want, you can have all your photos synchronized to Dropbox. Which data are you referring to?
I have to be honest and say that this comment comes off as a knee-jerk reaction. I mean, you probably have some valid criticism in there if you worded it better. It would definitely be much better for us geeks if iPhone was more open. But a right? Get real.
Ultimately, those are the same thing. There is no privacy if you can't inspect it and verify that it's upholding its promises.
> What lock-in? You can have all your iPhone data (contacts, notes, etc.) on Gmail if you want, you can have all your photos synchronized to Dropbox. Which data are you referring to?
If you've used one word processor, how do you open them in another without using any external service?
But unless you're a top-end OS developer AND a top-end embedded systems designer at the same time, how are you going to analyse something as complex as the iPhone and verify that?
By using a share sheet to send it to the other word processor, surely.
If you want to go down that road the software you need to inspect includes all the software with access to your data.
In android's case this includes all sorts of proprietary code running in google's infrastructure that you'll never see. If you enable all the features of a modern android phone the amount of data google tracks about you is staggering. All that data is available to any government that asks for it directly from google. Google is actively incentivised to data mine, use and sell my data. I don't think they sell it - but thats the direction the incentive arrows point.
If you want to roll your own, or use one of the non-google android forks then I respect that decision from a privacy standpoint. (Although my security engineer voice is much more nervous.) But stock android is a privacy disaster (at least if you worry about google / the US govt). The ability to root your device is nice, but in google's ecosystem the computers that really matter are the servers.
> The ability to root your device is nice, but in google's ecosystem the computers that really matter are the servers.
Funny that, does Apple allow push notifications without telling APNS about the notification message yet?
Yes, of course they do. That's what remote-notification UIBackgroundMode is for. How did you think encrypted messaging apps like WhatsApp and Signal showed message previews?
I don't use iCloud for backup. I use my own mail provider. What lock-in are you referring to? I think it would be pretty painless for me to move to Android if I wanted.
I agree the AppStore is more limiting than some alternatives, but overall I think Apple have more interest in user rights than Google.
Android development is not paid for through licensing fees (to any great degree) it's paid for by advertising via Google being the default service/search provider on the platform. This puts you in the position of the advertiser being the customer and the phone user being more like the product.
I personally prefer the Apple model where the phone user is the customer. However I do realize it's not entirely ideal. It just feels like the best option currently available to me.
I think it's great that in five years of iPhone ownership that's not a problem I've ever had, or even had to think about. And the only Apple service I use is the app store.
Horses for courses. If you want total control and software freedom, you won't prefer an iPhone. If you want the closest available approximation to appliance-level reliability, you won't prefer anything else.
Android is far for a standard Linux/UNIX system. And it's hard to build one on top of Android because of their use of BIONIC rather than glibc.
So, I feel that Android has taken Linux and crippled it to suit their ends. To me jailbroken iPhones felt much more like standard UNIX phones than Android phones.
My ideal phone doesn't exist. But he iPhone is still the nearest match right now.
Right. But, to my earlier point, you never really need to, either, because the OS does a good enough job of managing resources that such intervention is not required. I'm sure there exist corner cases, but having never hit one in half a decade of extensive use, I am prepared to argue they are vanishingly rare.
That's the tradeoff: a lower granularity of control over the system, in exchange for a system well enough designed that such granularity is not required for stable and performant operation. There's an argument to be made that the tradeoff shouldn't exist, but that's theoretical unless Craig Federighi is actually on the panel. Here in the world of things that are, it's worth keeping in mind that the compromise is exactly that: yes, we give something up, but we get something in exchange for it, too.
What do you mean? I'm not aware of any SSH which fulfils my needs on iOS. Or Android for that matter. On Jolla (and MeeGo/Maemo) you had a CLI at your command. The conundrum is you don't know what you're missing unless you had it before to begin with. Case in point: there's an entire generation of children raising up with touchscreens. That exposure has a price.
What do you consider the best browser on macOS? I don't consider Safari the best one. YMMV. At least you and I got the freedom to run another browser on macOS (those versions of Firefox and Chrome on iOS are not the real deal). I got the freedom to run Tmux, Vim. I got the freedom to compile my own version of OpenSSH which includes a patch for additional functionality. I get to decide which browser extensions I get to run (without having to rely on Apple to decide which extensions are allowed for Safari). I get to configure ssh and sshd. I'd like to take the risk myself of taking it for granted when/if it breaks.
I am actually OK with all of this as long as I don't have to rely overly on my phone. However, smartphones have become so important now, and I end up having and needing a MBP to make up for it. There's going to be a time where the computers (smartphones, tablets, etc) running iOS are so powerful that you can easily run a lot more on them. And, with that progress, they become less of an embedded device and therefore the freedom to decide what you run is increased.
Finally, there's Apple who decides who's in and who's out. Americans are totally cool with violence of all sorts and kinds, but as soon as the first thing a baby sucks on is shown its suddenly drama. I find that bollocks, and I don't want to be scrutinised to such a culture deciding on what I am and am not allowed to run on my device. The device I (not an American) worked hard for to afford, the device I bought, and the device I own (not rent). No, Google isn't perfect either; Google earns money via advertising, Google just blocked an anti adware extension in Chrome called Ad Nauseam, and they also don't allow certain software in GCM.
What's wrong with Mosh?
I wonder what it is that your acquaintance and I do differently than you? I've been an iPhone user for a bit less than two years, and I am frustrated with it almost every day. Of course, the same was true of my HTC and Samsung Android phones previously, and even to some degree of the Nokia N900 (still the best phone I ever had).
It is not a common occurrence, but every now and then I do have some issue where my iPhone freezes and I have to reboot it to get it to come back. More commonly, miscellaneous things go wrong, like text in some areas becoming invisible, or opening an application showing me a blank screen for twenty seconds before the application either comes up or silently quits for no apparent reason. Most frustratingly, the sequence of touches I need to go through to do something requires me to react to each individual screen that results, rather than being something that I can do all at once, or even just being fast enough that I'm not paused, waiting, while some application screen takes its time loading.
If the delays were consistent, I wouldn't be very upset about it, because I would expect a certain time in between each action. If the phone could keep up the UI interactions, then that would be even better.
And typing lag... don't get me started. :(
I feel like expectations for hardware that is unrelated to the function of my phone has gone way, way up (thinness, smooth edges, tiny bezels) and the attention to the actual functioning of the phone in a consistent and timely manner is now much worse than it used to be, all around.
In general I tend to agree with those who argue that Apple's peaked and is going downhill, and I accordingly expect that, whatever the new bells and whistles, iOS 10 will work less well for things I actually do every day (like typing!) than iOS 9 does, which in turn has been a regression from iOS 8. The hardware's not improving, either, and I don't think Apple has correctly understood occurrences like the difference between expected and actual demand for the SE versus the 7 and 7+.
But, as best I can judge from the experience of Android-owning acquaintances and colleagues, for all iOS' and the iPhone's flaws, it's still by far the most solidly reliable smartphone platform on the market, and that's what counts the most for me. Others who feel differently will make different choices, and that's fine. I don't see why people seem to want to make such a big fight about it.
Apple didn't lock me in, I gladly locked myself in, because Apple's ecosystem is cohesive in a way that nobody else even comes close to.
I love being able to make and receive calls and texts from my MacBook, I love having my documents in the cloud waiting for me wherever I am, I love being able to start browsing a site on my laptop and transfer it seamlessly to my phone on my way out the door, I love being able to take photos while I'm out and have them sitting on my PC before I even get home, and most of all I love that all of these things just happen without me even having to think about it.
There are a million different options for me, I could very easily switch to Android and use a dozen different services like Dropbox and Flickr and whatever the messaging app du jour is on Android these days to achieve the same results, but why on earth would I want to?
Google is fine if all you need is the sliver Google offers, and if you're okay with Google doing their level best to violate your privacy, but there's so much more to Apple's ecosystem that nobody has replicated right now.
App integration between phone and laptop looks nice but in fact for most people all it matters is email and files, mostly pictures and musing. Those are covered by Google and possibly by Dropbox, plus some streaming service.
Anyway, yes, even a slight edge over the competitors is better than no edge.
But, to use Android Wear on an Android phone would involve activating various Google account settings I don't want to turn on.
huh? The Apple Watch user interface is the worst of the smartwatches on the market. Even Apple themselves were practically apologizing for how slow and crappy the Applewatch UI was during the last WWDC event. Apple had to completely remove what they had previously touted as core features (side button for friends/heartbeat, Glances) in previous watchOS versions. Yet it's still a clusterfuck without an always-on display. AndroidWear is more simpler/intuitive and Samsung Gear is more elegant with the rotating bezel
I also tried a Pebble Time; the display being always on and the longer battery life didn't really make any difference and the non-touchscreen UI seemed much more fiddly to me.
If it's the former, however, then it's arguable and a little subjective so I won't go into that.
Security to a second degree? One of the (valid) criticism to Android is that OEMs don't provide firmware updates or at least security and reliability fixes. This is a fair claim; you need to be careful about this if you decide to buy an Android phone (although there's the option to root a phone and install CM or LineageOS).
Google however in this case rules correctly by example. They've been updating Android firmware for their devices regularly, up till 2 years after purchase of device. If you want a secure Android phone, software-wise a recent Google device is one of your safest bets. Motorola's track record pre Lenovo was also good. Ever since Lenovo bought Motorola, not so much.
Of course, the privacy issue stands (insofar to profiling and internally in Google as they profit from knowing as much of you so they can advertise effectively) but that is the price of any Google product. That is where Google and Apple differ (at this time of writing; it can change, just look at Microsoft).
Eh? On the contrary; the iPhone appears to be the most popular phone on the market. Although there is not 'one' iPhone. There is the iPhone 6, 6S, 7, 7 plus, and the small SE.
For me, I'd like a small phone which I can easily hold in one hand. One I can remain using various years. Of which I can replace the battery myself. And, where it is I who decides which software I run (ie. not a review time ran by an American corporation). Of those 4 factors, sadly only the SE covers two (since iOS will run for say 3-4 years on SE). I'm also a proponent of longevity and reducing e-waste and while I cannot replace the battery of an iPhone myself the iPhones have a relatively large resale value, which is a plus compared to a lot of Android devices.
> I still feel that Apple are standing up for user rights (e.g. FBI/government requests to make phones less secure) more than any other mobile manufacturer.
Its easier to just buy a phone from a company who can't comply with such ridiculous claims from the US government. Imagine Apple was based in Ireland. Suddenly, the claim to insert a backdoor for the FBI in every iPhone is more ridiculous.
That was one of the reasons why I bought a phone from a company based in the same country as where I live.
I think there's value in challenging the US government on these issues. It also helps set the tone in general.
Also, which non-US phone would you suggest? The only real alternative is Android. While there are various vendors, the software is almost completely written by Google. And therefore open to the possibility of a backdoor (or other) requests by the US government.
Sure, but a lot was and is also being decided behind the screens.
> The only real alternative is Android.
Depends on use cases. Also, there are Android derivative works.
> Also, which non-US phone would you suggest?
The Fairphone 2 allows one to run a completely open source version of Android which doesn't rely on Google [1]. But there are other alternatives as well. Jolla, for example.
> And therefore open to the possibility of a backdoor (or other) requests by the US government.
Is the software compiled deterministically?
Also, the hardware of nearly every phone is assembled in China. The chips nearly all come from China (Fairphone tried to work around it; couldn't). And therefore open to the possibility of a backdoor (or other) requests by the Chinese government.
[1] https://www.fairphone.com/en/2016/04/28/releasing-the-fairph...
Almost all the recent features on android phones require uploading crazy amounts of personal information to google's servers. While I had an android phone every new feature felt like a faustian bargain - "Let us store a bit more information about you and we'll make your phone better! C'mon it'll be fiiiine"
Governments don't need to touch your device when its uploading copies of everything to google's servers anyway. They can just ask google for the data directly.
And to be clear about what we're talking about, if you say yes to all the prompts (which I bet 90+% of people do) then google stores location history, audio recordings of all 'ok google' requests, email, contacts, call history, search history and a list of installed applications (so they know which 3rd parties to go after for more data). I don't know if they store SMSes, and I'm not sure what the update frequency of the location data is. But if you use google services, there's not much else for a device level backdoor to do.
But i could never believe the "user rights" thing. They may stand up in a few cases, but ultimately this kind of thing lies beyond their reach. I don't trust any phone maker with data.
But there are two point really:
1. I think it's worth fighting (and they have had some success). 2. May telecoms vendors have volunteered more information than required in the past, I think it's unlikely Apple would.
Moveover, just having a large company challenge these issues changes the political environment.
Apple builds iOS to sell hardware. Google builds Android to vacuum up more data to sell.
Have you had a look at the iOS Security white paper [1]?
"Spotlight Suggestions never sends exact location, instead blurring the location on the client before sending."
"iOS also uses a randomized MAC address [...] so it can’t be used to persistently track a device by passive observers of Wi-Fi traffic."
Spotlight: "Unlike most search engines, however, Apple’s search service does not use a persistent personal identifier across a user’s search history to tie queries to a user or device; instead, Apple devices use a temporary anonymous session ID for at most a 15-minute period before discarding that ID."
Apple Pay: "Full card numbers are not stored on the device or on Apple servers. Instead, a unique Device Account Number is created, encrypted, and then stored in the Secure Element. This unique Device Account Number is encrypted in such a way that Apple can’t access it."
iMessage: "Apple does not log messages or attachments, and their contents are protected by end-to-end encryption so no one but the sender and receiver can access them. Apple cannot decrypt the data."
FaceTime: "The audio/video contents of FaceTime calls are protected by end-to-end encryption, so no one but the sender and receiver can access them. Apple cannot decrypt the data."
"Location Services can be turned off using a single switch in Settings, or users can approve access for each app that uses the service. [...] Additionally, users are given fine-grained control over system services’ use of location information."
Plus you have fine-grained controls for access to microphone, camera, pictures, etc. per app. Has Android caught up with that, or is it still all or don't use the app?
[1] https://www.apple.com/business/docs/iOS_Security_Guide.pdf
All of those features don't matter if there's a backdoor, and from what I read of the FBI case there is one they just foolishly closed it.
First the constant nagging for apple services (iCloud, Apple Pay, Apple Music, etc). I have to opt out to each of them every time they push any minor (but mandatory) update to iOS.
Then the removal of the audio jack. I just have no appetite for dongles or additional batteries to manage and I need to be able to charge my iphone when I listen to my music.
Then the UI that used to be quite natural now has hundred of hidden gestures, that either make the UI non intuitive, or trigger when trying to do something else.
I'd like them to improve it. I have very appetite to switch to android, which I find a lot more problematic from a privacy point of view. But that doesn't look like the direction of the world.
How about bluetooth headphones? AirPods or otherwise? I highly recommend them. I happened to receive a pair of powerbeats wireless2 headphones a while back and while they're not perfect, using regular wired headphones feels incredibly archaic these days.
I'm sorry but someone had to say it.
However, I'm far less happy with the iPhone than the smartphone that I was expecting in the early 00s. I mean, why are we still stuck with this thing that we hold? It's like the Jetsons' version of a Bell handset. I was expecting on-body networking, heads-up display, virtual keyboard and pointer, etc. OK, so we have decent a decent speech-to-text interface. But it's not usable for actual work. /rant
edit: grammar
Heads-up display: Google Glass is a proof of concept and then there is https://www.magicleap.com
Virtual keyboard and pointer: https://www.myo.com/
Speech-to-text interface: Not that useful for mobile, imho. Seems to work at home (Alexa, etc).
Heads-up display: Google Glass was weird. The focus was on "gargoyle" stuff, not on AR. The display needs to integrate with and enhance reality. Not a small area in a corner.
Speech-to-text interface: That works very well for me. For short messages, anyway. Proofreading and editing is essential, however. To avoid embarrassment and confusion.
There is nothing more pitiful than being offline on vacation and someone with an amazing flagship android phone can't share the videos with everyone. And then their phone predictably gets lost or explodes.
15 years in and bluetooth file sending is still horrible and basically nonexistent, Apple's airdrop is pretty amazing. That'll keep me in the Apple ecosystem for now.
It's amazing. Especially Apple Pay. I could never get my Android to work with mobile payments for any of my banks in Canada... Apple Pay just works beautifully.
The slightly weaker phone is worth it for the really top notch user experience. And it seems like iPhone is better programmed or optimized, because the performance feels waaaaay better than my latest gen "powerful" Android.
Before the iPhone, carriers billed on individual metrics like bytes transferred or connections to servers, the first few months of iPhone bills were sometimes hundreds of pages long. The real revolution that Apple brought was in forcing carriers to become one step closer to being dumb pipes. It's an agreement that even today no other maker of Smartphone has really quite gotten to with the same companies. Google phones still ship with crapware on them.
At the same time, Apple showed structural weaknesses in competitors and exploited them, Microsoft, Nokia, Blackberry, Palm, etc. all couldn't build offerings as good as the iPhone and if it weren't for Google we'd very much be using a monoculture of devices these days.
At the same time Android devices took a "try it first, try it every which way" approach that has also forced the iPhone to come along kicking and screaming, then putting Apple in a position to integrate some new innovative feature that Android devices don't have, putting them both into a state of perpetual innovation.
Consumers win in this and I find it remarkable how many things the little device in my pocket has simply and entirely replaced.
Note, these usually aren't "Google phones", they just happen to have Google's OS on it. Eg, i haven't dealt with crapware on my phone in ~7years, as i don't buy phones from 3rd parties who have incentives to put crapware on the phone.
If Apple allowed anyone else to use their OS, i'm sure iPhone would have crapware on it too. Well, unless Apple had a contract that required a clean OS, which i would honestly hope they would - i'm annoyed Google doesn't.
The next phone, a Samsung Note 3 had Samsung's adoring additions, but less what I'd consider "crapware".
My current phone, a Nexus 6p, on Google Fi is pure Android, and finally doesn't have any extra nonsense on it.
(I also had a couple other Android phones before these that also had various carrier garbage on them).
Apple hasn't allowed this nonsense on their phones ever AFAIK and it's amazing that you can still buy an Android device, or at least a flagship one, that has anything but the stock OS on it. Considering that Android devices are by far more often sold than iOS devices, it's frankly inexcusable at this point.
* They saw the premium niche. Ballmer ridiculed them for the price of the iPhone, but now we know, people are fine with paying 800$ for a smartphone. It is still a niche if you compare the sheer number of Android phones, but a very profitable one.
* They removed the pen from the PDAs and had an innovative touch interface. More intuitive user interfaces is something Apple was known for before and they went further with it.
* They got the carriers to cooperate and give up some control. While the story is not as strong, we could compare that to IBMs decision to licence an operating system for the PC.
* At that point in time, it was (finally?) very useful to have Internet access on the go.
If you look at iPhone as a low-price disruptor to computers (and I think that's fair when you consider how many people use iPhone as their primary or only computing device), its pricing makes perfect sense.
Also - a lot of the story is about marketing, creating a huge status symbol and convincing people to pay so much for it, and that money fueled to reach faster and further than it might have reached otherwise.
It was more than that, though. It really pays to watch Steve's introduction of the iPhone in detail, and recall how utter crap "smartphones" were back then, and how innovative the iPhone was.
For example:
* Multitouch/Scrolling. Yes, other phones had touch screens, but they often relied on pen, and mimicked traditional desktop OSes. To scroll, you had to press the little triangle on the bottom or top of the scrollbar. In the presentation, Steve has to explain how to scroll through the contact list by, well, just flicking through it - that was a new gesture back then. Similarly, pinch to zoom in/out was a new thing.
* Fully featured web browser. You basically couldn't browse the web on a smartphone back then, period. There was this protocol for mobile web, WAP, but it was crap and not widely available anyways.
* Syncing. There were decent PDAs, but integration with the desktop (contacts, calendar) was mediocre. When someone had a phone lost or stolen, you'd get these emails "Please text me your phone numbers again". And, as with the iPod before, you could trivially sync your music/photos/etc. via iTunes.
The bigger leap was from resistive to capacitive screens which ultimately allowed for multitouch and great scrolling feel. Many credit card machines still use resistive screens which is why it is so unnatural and awkward to sign
> Fully featured web browser
Probably the biggest innovation
> Syncing
It could sync but many things required iTunes which sucked
Also, the original iPhone lacked things like MMS and, for some unknown reason, a proper call history screen.
Hasn't it? They still sell nearly twice as many iPads as all Macs combined. Relative to units sold I think Apple invests heavily in the Mac platform you may (dis)like the new MacBooks and MBPs but clearly a lot of time and effort has been invested into their design.
Now they're a victim of their own success. All their product lines are relatively successful. There's not a significant product that they can kill (they killed the routers now, but that probably doesn't free up too much focus anyway). I think even Steve would've struggled with this conundrum.
Internally, they've tried to merged Mac and iOS, ala Windows 8/10, to allow them to keep a single focus.. but their conclusion was that it compromises both Mac OS and iOS in a way that they don't want to do. And if they made the merged OS closer to iOS, it would alienate a lot of Mac users and developers.
So how should Apple refocus? Who knows. I think it's a flaw to think that Steve Jobs would have magically solved the problem already. He was smart, but not a god.
> how do you plug your lightning headphones into your Mac?
You don't buy lightning headphones.
Apple will kill the lightning on iPhone too. Either replacing it with USB-C or removing it altogether. This is all part of a transition which is unavoidably awkward.
Apple is betting heavily on wireless, and lightning headphones is just a stop-gap solution while wireless headphones improve. A way for people to be able to buy some cheap, simple headphones to replace the bundled ones if they need to. If you buy an expensive lightning-only headphone you're a fool.
The moment that wireless charging is fast enough to completely replace wired charging, they will kill the lightning port and perhaps bundle a case which bridges lightning or USB-C to wireless charging+bluetooth 5. Third parties will deliver cases with bundled battery, USB-C and 3.5mm jack, and since the phone will be even thinner without any ports, the phone+case will still be plenty thin enough for daily use, and sturdier too. Everyone will be happy (hah, as if..)
They could have made the transition much better if they just included Airpods with iphone 7 onward..
They could have delayed the iphone 7 launch by a few months but (especially given what happened in their other product lines) that would probably have been a mistake.
Except that a pair of lightning headphones comes with iPhone 7. (And before "nobody uses the supplied Apple headphones".. actually yes a lot of people do.)
Buy a 2015 MacBook Pro and iPhone 6S. You get headphones that plug into both devices, and a USB-lightning cable that links the two.
Buy a 2016 MacBook Pro and iPhone 7. You get lightning headphones that won't plug into the computer, and a USB-lightning cable that won't plug into the computer.
I know there are "reasons" but isn't this just... silly?
The greater scratch resistance of the new glass is nice, but I'd be willing to pay the cost in added weight for a more resilient body and frame. Alas, Apple does what Apple does, and has unaccountably failed to consult me.
Impressive, sure, but not ideal. As a result of this commitment, you can, variously, click, double click, double tap (not actually click, just touch like on a capacitive screen), long press the button. Furthermore, many of these actions have context-sensitive responses, like opening the camera from the lock screen or bringing up music controls if that's playing. And other common functions, like "back" are relegated to various icons and locations on the touchscreen depending on the app.
On other phones, the common "back", "home", and "switch app" functions are on separate buttons rather than being different interactions with a single button.
The Apple single-button phone, like the single-button mouse, is less discoverable and less easy to use, while being better looking and easier for some common use cases. Unlike the single-button mouse, though, I think it's likely to stick around for a long time.
The camera/music controls are linked with the control center but that is operated differently. Double tapping is definitely a weird choice for accessibility.
Also, you can also triple click the home button as an accessibility shortcut. But it has to be enabled.
The Back button for instance can be infuriatingly unpredictable to the point where you just revert to the touch screen. It just isn’t productive to have to wonder how many screens back you will go, or if you will end up in another application, or if the button will be ignored completely.
On the other hand I'm amazed at how long Apple is keeping and evolving iOS and its API.
The iPhone 6 and 7, on the other hand: there's something weird about the proportions (eg: the Touch id ridge, button isnt flush, weird two-tone plastic ridge on the back). The thinness of the phone makes the curved aluminum seem cheap and fragile. That Camera lens bump isn't attractive. They look no better than your average Android phone to me.
I think this is my last iPhone purchase for personal use.
If the 7 had a headphone jack, buying it would be a no-brainer. As it is I've held off upgrading because to get the same basic functionality I'm going to have to spend $$$$ on dongles or an external Bluetooth DAC or wireless headphones or something to replace a connector that costs maybe $0.10 in bulk.
Instead of buying and using the damn phone I'm having to engineer a solution around it to get it to do something that previous versions did effortlessly.
It's a decision that adds cost and complications, but provides absolutely no user benefit.
It's fast and the battery always lasts 2.x days to me, I charge it again at around 20%. It lasted 3 days 18 hours last time over a long weekend, down to 9%. I checked and I made 8 hours of screen activity so it wasn't in my pocket all the time.
Given how long it lasts I wish they traded some battery to make the phone thinner and lighter, exactly as the SE.
I'm not saying anything bad about the iPhone, but I can really do without the constant "magical! amazing! beautiful! best ever!" stuff. At this point, can't they just rest on having a great product without the need to amp up the marketing so over the top?
There have been versions of IOS I'd call significant large releases. The issue with Apple is they act like every release is a revolutionary upgrade.
IMHO, build great products， be proud of them, and people will come. The superlative stuff just sounds inauthentic these days.
No sane company is going to say "it's the second best <product> ever, the last one was the best and we decided to make the new one worse".
Individual technologies each follow their own advancement curve. Jet and rocket engine advancement flattened out in the 60s and 70s. Moore's Law is history. Rising life expectancy are now mainly about expanding long life to more people, not extending how long the longest lived survive.
New technologies generally have a slow start, then a sharp rise in performance/drop in cost, then those advances level off. But where are the new technologies that will provide further rapid advances? Our aircraft still have jet engines, our rockets still burn the same fuels, our chips are still made of silicon. Electric cars are great, but battery technology is reaching it's limits, as is solar tech which is finally coming into it's own after a very long development history. Finally, on AI research I recently posted the following on a different thread:
1960s Herbert Simmons predicts "Machines will be capable, within 20 years, of doing any work a man can do." 1993 - Vernor Vinge predicts super-intelligent AIs 'within 30 years'. 2011 ray Kurzweil predicts the singularity (enabled by super-intelligent AIs) will occur by 2045, 34 years after the prediction was made. So the distance into the future before we achieve strong AI and hence the singularity is, according to it's most optimistic proponents, receding by more than 1 year per year.
It made sense for Robert Heinlein to believe this in the 1950s, when he wrote an article prefiguring the "technological singularity" concept by a good forty years.
It may make less sense for someone to continue to believe the same thing in 2017.
That's always seemed like an early symptom of dotage to me.
(1)https://infographic.statista.com/normal/chartoftheday_5390_c...
(2)http://www.asymco.com/2013/11/25/one-billion-ios-devices/
(3)http://www.asymco.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Screen-Shot...
Also a bit of Orwell's Newspeak in here as well. In the end it's funny of course :)
The iPhone 7 and 7 Plus: - Better camera - Better processor - Better speakers - Better screen - Almost waterproof this time
I see nothing groundbreaking or life changing here. Something that might actually BE life-changing is a molecular sensor and better health monitoring / diagnostics tools.
If you look at their recent iteration (removing the headphone-jack) and rumors from internal development (fast wireless charging, edge-to-edge display tech).. it's moving towards a phone that's more like a thin slate of glass where everything is wireless. Think the tablets from Westworld.
Either Apple will bundle a case with extra battery and USB-C (bridged to wireless charging+bluetooth 5), or third parties will do so. Given that this approach will allow Apple to push the thinness even further, using a case when you're out and about will probably be more or less essential.. but it won't be so bad since the combined thickness will be on-par with iPhone 3-4.. and you get the flexibility to choose between different designs, battery sizes, ports, etc.
It's not super groundbreaking ala iPhone 1, and it's where everyone will end up eventually anyway, but Apple is positioning themselves to go there before anyone else. Hence the awkward timing surrounding 3.5mm jacks, lightning and USB-C.
Products used to offer exciting user benefits, with a significant new user benefit in each update. But going completely wireless is an engineering fantasy, not a user benefit.
Let's say iPhone 10 arrives as a shiny slab of ceramic. So what? Even if it looks glisteningly pristine and cool, users care more about functionality and ease of use.
The first few iterations were all about the latter.
The last few iterations have been about engineering and design for the sake of it. Delighting users seems to have slipped down the list.
It was such a relief when the Walkman and later mp3 players/ipods had everybody using headphones again. I'm not anxious to go back.
Until they catch up with things like wireless charging - or introduce something 'revolutionary' like a shatter-proof screen or a graphene rapid charge battery - I won't be buying another iPhone. They've stagnated over the past few years while Android overtakes them.
EDIT: To allay the seeming confusion - I am saying it WAS definitely a revolution when it first came out. It is just that I don't think you can still chant and wave the "Viva La Revolution!" banners 3650 days later when it has just been a series of iterative changes during that time.
I'd say they made some pretty major strides and set the standard for what a smartphone would look like for the years to come, and by and large all phones still follow the iPhones original path. Sure, different phones and different Android releases now do stuff different and sometimes better than iOS, but for the most part, it's all just following the iPhone.
[1] http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/12/the-da...
Its just that now it has had about 7 major iterations (not counting 'S' models etc.), it is really in the 'consolidation' stage of the battle. The storming of the castle is done, now the army is battening down for the long siege and the door to door skirmishing, slowly moving the front forward.
The only way Apple (or any manufacturer) can claim another 'revolutionary' step is if they come out with a foldable display screen, or a 30 day battery life or similar.
It's a shame. The only smartphones I've ever had have been iPhones, and I don't want that to change. But I'm not seeing much reason lately to believe that Apple can continue going from strength to strength.
I would agree that their newest changes aren't revolutionary in my mind and are more iterative, just spec bumps and features added, but everyone is still taking their cues from Apple when it comes to functionality.
I would argue that some of the S models are more significant iterations than the main numbered ones. Siri shipped with the 4s, the Appstore shipped with the 3G (IMO it's fair to call the 3G and 3GS "S models" of the original).
As an aside - I wonder what the average time span of a revolutionary war is? I tried Googling, but there doesn't seem to be a definitive answer to this - possibly because a 'revolution' isn't measured as a span in time, but rather as a momentary event (usually marked by the start date of the revolution). Anything after that seems to be considered a 'war' or a 'rebellion'.
So no, not really a revolution.
Nothing to do with the device itself.
By value the Apple computing ecosystem is utterly and completely dominant. Their annual revenue is $215 Bn. That's about the same as Microsoft, Intel and Google put together. By a recent estimate they make 104% of the profits in the mobile industry (taking into account other company's losses) and for along time made more profit in the PC market than all the Windows OEMs put together (edited - not sure if that's still true).
I worked in telecoms back in 2006. Nobody knew what a smartphone should look like. There were all kinds of crazy ideas that the mobile handset form factor could come in various different shapes with curved screens, circular screens, voice interfaces with no screen. Apple showed us what the future would look like and why. They figured it all out and got it right first time not just in terms of physical design but multi-touch interface, app store, open internet connectivity (remember WAP?). It was a slow-burn revolution though. It took time for them to scale up production and perfect the product, and for the market itself to catch up to what was happening so a lot of people just didn't realize what was happening or why.
edit - ok, sorry if I misunderstood your point. Fortunately I didn't down vote you, but I usually don't when I reply to people. I think the above stands on it's own though.
Citation needed.
Apple likely has much deeper market research than you or I do, and so do their competitors.
We've been able to verify it from third party sources like Flickr for those 5 years as well.
People are annoyed at you because your original post was rudely curt and demanding for a throwaway marketing line that as I said above, we have no reason to doubt.
As much as you'd like them to, no company is ever going to thoroughly reference their press releases. If you want sources, the media contact details for Apple are readily available on their site.
Then you went on to say the same thing that it's been popular on Flickr. I'm done here.
I'm honestly very confused about you. There seems to be a great communication gap here between you and the people responding to you that might be helped by you explaining your motivations in asking the question.
Why won't you accept Flickr as an indicative proxy as to the accuracy of the statement? Surely you realise it's impossible to provide a perfect measurement of all camera use for all photos published and unpublished in the world? I see no reason and you've provided none to not use proxies to give us some kind of answer.
That flickr link helps because it shows specifically the iPhone 6 to be the device most people us to upload pictures to the service. But that's hardly a perfect metric.
I bet, that would look like a neutral and balanced statement to all and most people would be happy with it, but as you can see, it's easy to fake it. The truth is I'm tired of Apple's hyperbole and people should question them. If you make a claim, support it with facts, otherwise don't write it.
[citation needed] is just snark.
That's how you look at it. People can look at your (barely) rephrased question as a snarky comment too.
- OP (me) actually did do a simple (rather a little elaborated) search before writing that here. Yes, sometimes we do need to take things as 'given' and all, but it's also true that sometimes you do need to confront people when it becomes their habit of making hyperbolic claims.
The truth is, it's the general tendency of people to dislike someone asking for citations against the things they 'believe' are true, be it HN or wikipedia (but facts generally win on Wikipedia). This works similarly in religion.
It's that brazenness that I don't like about Apple.
2) Google paid DxOMark some good money for that, they better get some usage out of it
3) The iPhone 7 Plus is going to reviewed by DxOMark "really soon"
Congratulations Sony!