IPhone 4
daringfireball.net
daringfireball.net
Really? On the next paragraph...
There is, however, one problem with Helvetica Neue in iOS 4.0: it doesn’t include italics.(...)I can only assume this is an oversight on Apple’s part.
Yes, it is a small thing. I really don't care whether the phone comes with the Heuvetica Neue bold, or not. But I can't stop thinking about how Apple's marketing (or Gruber's writing) is eerily similar to hypnosis: you provide a baseless assertion that "sort of" makes sense intertwined with contradictions, making the target's brain take everything as valid.
I think it's a valid point and a great critique -- how is it contradictory to praise what is praiseworthy and point out what is wrong?
and later saying "Of course Ford did forget to include wheels on this particular model"
Again, Neue is leaps and bounds ahead of regular old Helvetica. It's a total bonehead move to leave out italics even though most people won't notice it's absence.
I don't think I've seen oblique, sans serif type used in an iOS user interface. Content, sure, and Helvetica is there for you, but this is the system user interface font. I think the clarity demanded of the system user interface argues against the subtle change afforded by slanting the font.
Oblique sans serif fonts are generally sort of an apologetic placeholder for: "Here is where I would have used a nice italic font, but my type designer couldn't pull that off in this clean, minimalist font, so please imagine that he did."
The system font in OS X (Lucida Grande) doesn't have an italic style either.
For Apple, anything negative results in this type of response: positive, negative, positive.
For anything not-Apple, response is: negative, negative, negative.
Do other people actually like reading stuff like this? I mean, regardless of what you think of the iphone 4, that level of praise almost makes me feel bad for him. It's like romantic love for an object.
Or just his feed sponsorships and Deck ads?
As far as I can tell the subject of his blog could be summarized as something like “high signal-to-noise and semi-technical discussion of Apple, the web, and graphic design, with occasional sports and politics related tidbits.
“The Apple faithful” as a group is quite different from “technical and semi-technical readers interested in Apple and the web”.
HN does have a strong Apple lean, although it has subsided quite dramatically over the past year (for reasons that PG has documented).
It might be a little over the top sometimes, but that's part of what I like about him.
In the design documentary, Objectified, by Gary Hustwit, Dieter Rams is asked if there is any company that really gets design today. He answers after a moment's pause: "Apple".
I believe Apple is integrating design down to lower levels than anyone has done before. Some companies talk about corporate DNA but Apple is going to Jurassic Park levels.
It feels natural. Even though the object has been artificially and painstakingly engineered with love.
Excerpt from "Objectified": Dieter Rams
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBF1rOxWsxg
Excerpt from "Objectified": Jonathan Ive
Is that sufficient? This seems at least as balanced and credible as the Ars Technical review.
It's the same reason he'll link to images or videos or sound clips, but he never posts them directly on his site.
He wrote a bunch a while back about how Apple needs an equivalent rival like Nikon/Canon. It would sure make his writing a lot more interesting -- they've now got a Dreamworks to their Pixar in Android, but that's just giving Gruber more insubstantiative shit to sling.
"The overall quality seems impossibly good. The proof is beautiful to behold and there is a timeless nature to it. It’s like a love letter to Pierre-Simon Laplace."
Sure its a little corny, but F#ck, for the majority of even moderately wealthy designers the iPhone 4 is probably the most well designed item they have ever touched. Yes, the average person could care less of the design quality, but for those who do care its a big deal.
Writers don't have to be objective, so long as they point out their biases clearly. Gruber does. More and more I don't want to read blatantly pro-Apple stuff, but that doesn't mean Gruber's wrong to write it.
Gruber’s frequent criticisms of Apple are ones I think most people on this board would agree with (probably including you).
Your comparison is so absurd as to be trivially dismissible, and implies that either you’re irrationally angry/resentful about something, or trolling.
Still, the level of reassurance Apple fans need is a bit disturbing. If it is so great, why not just shut up about it and enjoy it?
Oh come on...Pro mouse, Mighty Mouse, Magic Mouse, current and previous gen macbook trackpad buttons, the previous gen desktop keyboards, iPod click-wheels, Apple Remote...these are some of the worst buttons I've used. Apple has made some decent buttons (I think the current and previous gen MBP keyboards are well made), but they're way too inconsistent to make a claim like that.
- requires too much force to depress
- the travel distance is too far
- the hinged design means that the necessary pressure varies at different locations
I've noticed there is a bit of variation between machines, but most seem to exhibit these behaviors in my experience
I think it requires the perfect amount of force to depress – I don’t press it accidentally, but it presses easily when I want it to – and just the right travel distance. The noise is a nice confirmation that I just pressed it (then again, I use a Model M when possible so YMMV).
It’s a matter of personal preference, but I would be surprised if most people share your opinions about it.
"tap-to-click" is an abomination I wish to abolish from the face of the earth. I find it incredibly frustrating myself, but the older folks I know that already have problems with instinctively double-clicking everything are debilitated by it.
For those reasons, I find it neither aesthetically pleasing nor a joy to use. It's unfortunate that aesthetics have been merely associated with how something looks when it's just sitting there and doesn't take into account a pragmatic, active angle (not saying that that's how you associate aesthetics, brianwillis).
If it was shaped to rest your palm on it, you wouldn't be able to use any of the multitouch features without fully removing your hand first.
Destroys the aesthetics and probably the weighting, but potentially ameliorates the palm support issue.
Apple makes great computers, great phones and sucks at pretty much everything else.
Microsoft, a company that found out in the mid seventies that the software business would be much more profitable than hardware, is making software of questionable quality but manufactures fantastic keyboards and mice.
Universe, you win.
"... but I’ve had fun trying out FaceTime with a few iPhone 4-enabled friends"
Is this how we've really all come to think of devices now? Are they extensions of our bodies? A whole raft of questions has drifted to the shores of my mind.
"A month ago, I bought an iPhone. The iPhone has already taken over some of the central functions of my brain. It has replaced part of my memory, storing phone numbers and addresses that I once would have taxed my brain with. It harbors my desires: I call up a memo with the names of my favorite dishes when I need to order at a local restaurant. I use it to calculate, when I need to figure out bills and tips. It is a tre- mendous resource in an argument, with Google ever present to help settle disputes. I make plans with it, using its calendar to help deter- mine what I can and can’t do in the coming months. I even daydream on the iPhone, idly calling up words and images when my concentra- tion slips. Friends joke that I should get the iPhone implanted into my brain. But if Andy Clark is right, all this would do is speed up the processing and free up my hands. The iPhone is part of my mind already."
Think of other types of tools like hearing aids and artificial limbs. Over time, the brain adapts to use them much like the real thing. Some tools are just "upgrades" far removed from what the human body is naturally capable of.
The tools we use definitely shape the way we think.
Marshall McLuhan: "We shape our tools, and thereafter our tools shape us."
Samsung is doing this for their new displays. And they were out before the iPhone 4 was even announced. But, to Gruber, if it's not Apple, it's automatically crap. No sense acknowledging its existence.
(Does Samsung use glass in their displays? They all look plastic to me.)
The reason other phones don't have a "retina display" is because it's expensive, and the other phones are trying to win market share by being cheap. Sadly, this works better than making a quality product.
No way. The buttons feel cheap compared to the 3GS. The silence toggle is a piece of shit. And I preferred the volume up/down as one button.
Feature X on my new Apple product is great. It's much better than the flawed version on my earlier Apple device.
The retina screen and camera are two big areas where Apple might have previously been considered behind the curve, yet they get strongly praised for being better than their earlier efforts rather than benchmarked against current rivals.
Compare the gasps of delight of someone comparing a Retina display against years old iPhones, compared with the "meh, looks about the same" response when compared with a Super-AMOLED screen from Samsung.
The Retina display is nice, but I find myself appreciating it for how it's used, not for its resolution (apps that don't accommodate for it look terrible). There is probably a lot of better technology out there, but soldering and gluing parts together does not a product make. People like it because of the whole package, and see it as greater than the sum of its parts.
Like you, I think it shows that if you get the important stuff right, then people will be very forgiving of your faults, while still being harsh about similar level faults in competing products (which perhaps get a different set of important stuff right for other folks). People are funny that way and while I find it interesting, I don't think people should celebrate it any more than placebo effects should be attributed to new medicines.
I know a lot of people who have problems with super-flickering vibrate mode.
maybe how a button feels to an individual is a bit subjective?
How biased he is can certainly be borderline infuriating at times but I don't know any other blogger right now that writes about Apple and consistently makes observations that weren't obvious to make. He also has a compelling talent for seeing the big picture and making pieces of the puzzle fit.
My point is that people are putting a lot of stock in signal-bars, assuming if there are 4-5 bars local service is good (and conversely that drops in signal-bar count mean bad service). That's not my experience in SF at all; the correlation used to exist, but in the last year, it broke. I can have usable calls at 0-2 bars; I can be unable to initiate or hold a call at 4-5 bars. It's some other capacity issue that's not measured with signal-bars that's AT&Ts giant problem.
A little over 2,200kbs untouched. 0kbs when lightly holding it with two fingers.
I'm starting with 5 bars reception here in my office too, not a weak signal.
I tend to agree on that criticism of Gruber but it isn't really worth pointing out. Everyone here already knows he is very biased and it is reflected in his writing.
Considering that similar issues were reported with the Nexus One, why don't you go find the 10,000-word "LOL DROID SUXORS" rant that Gruber -- as just another Apple fanboy, aiming to make the competition look bad whenever possible -- undoubtedly wrote about it? Then you can link it here and use it as justification for your post.
"No other company gives a shit about things like this."
...pretty much sums up the major difference between Apple and every other electronics company, perhaps with the exception of litl.
Except its less durable and the unsymmetrical breaks in the steel band take away from its clean, minimal aesthetic. The band's function as an antenna is compromised by conductive fingers.
I normally would not be so critical, and I do not know I have designed it better... but when you gush like this for Ram's style of functional industrial design, the criticism is a comin'. The 27" iMac I'm writing this on however, may be the truest object to Ram's style that exists.
FYI Dieter Ram's 10 principles of good design:
Good design is innovative
Good design makes a product useful
Good design is aesthetic
Good design makes a product understandable
Good design is unobtrusive
Good design is honest
Good design is long-lasting
Good design is thorough down to the last detail
Good design is environmentally friendly
Good design is as little design as possible
If good design is supposed to be timeless, how can once-beautiful pieces of design now be considered as "rounded blob[s] of plastic" that "isn't very exciting"?
This is the kind of fanboyism that really turns off a lot of us.
Thought experiment: if Apple came out with a new phone with the exact design of some previously maligned older phone, I'd be willing to bet that most Apple fans would immediately claim that this "new" design is amazing and perfect and all the other superlatives that are pitched about...
If you line this up next to their current line of products it fits right in.
I love the thing, it has a Bang and Olufsen vibe to it.
"I think Apple is going to be able to get the price on such an iPod Touch below $200 before Cisco is going to create iMovie-like editing software for the Flip."
In all seriousness though, I don't understand why Gruber posts this garbage and feels compelled to defend Apple at every turn. We don't need Apple's every action fucking analyzed to death by someone who is obviously too invested in the company to be objective. If I want to read this type of inane pandering, I'll ask the hipsters at Starbucks for the URL to their blog.
In fact, I just wrote the complete opposite of Gruber article: a comparison of the GREAT things that are unique to iPhone and to Android for startups trying to get something done.
http://www.ringio.com/2010/06/29/iphone-vs-android-getting-o...
For example: I said that Android's turn-by-turn navigation will lower the chances of you getting lost on the way to the airport.
Or that the pictures and videos you take on an iPhone will look better.
What I'm trying to get at is that a lot of these reviews (like Gruber's) focus on irrelevant or marginally relevant issues for real users.
It's great that the iPhone 4 has a hi-res display, but what is the impact?
As it happens, nobody that I know personally cares about turn-by-turn navigation at all. I probably use that capability twice a year just for shits and giggles. A marginally better turn-by-turn implementation would have no impact for me or anyone I know, but that's because there's nothing terribly complex about navigating around my region.
It also happens that the display resolution on the latest iPhone was a major selling point for me, as I end up doing a lot of reading on my phone for the simple fact that I read a lot and it's always with me when I have those random, spare minutes throughout the day where I have nothing else to do but kill time. I just want the internet in my pocket, and not to strain my eyes.
I suspect I'm not alone in my priorities. Did you really not suspect that there are people out there who are dissimilar from you?
But then you go on to state that "nobodody that I know" ... which is just the same kind of selection filter.
There are well over 50 million Garmin style GPS units in the market offering turn-by-turn navigation. While you may not have a need for them, they are providing widely adopted functionality, and since Android is the first mobile platform doing this, it is potentially disruptive.
Is the higher resolution display of the iPhone 4 disruptive, or an enhancement?
All that aside... I can't say I really enjoy reading daring fireball, for many of the same reasons eloquently described in this thread. Substance (of a sort), but without soul.
There was a time where I really liked John's articles. Now he's sounding like just another fanboy...
I remember reading something a while back about how much time Apple spent on getting the angle (directon) of the mouse pointer right on the original Mac.
I am not an Iphone user, but I held friends 3gs and the 4 to compare, and found the smooth block disconcerting, it was harder to cup the phone, and introduced a mild strain on the fingers, it felt slippery, prone to fall out of my hands if i am not too careful, which is often the case when i pick my cell. I suspect that I would have got used to it had I handled one for a longer period of time , but I have to ask, why should I?
The design strikes me as beautiful (the most elegant mobile phone design i have seen to date) But I also think that the design choices Apple imposes, exclude a good number of people physically,(minor discomfort for me, due to a hand injury) some people prefer physical keyboards because of the physical capabilities of their hands,why not make a version for them? Not to mention the great benefit IOS4 and apps can give people working in more physically hazardous environments that are missed by not having a little more variance in industrial design choices.
Its pretty much agreed by both people who dislike and people who love apple, that Apple is not looking to fulfill every niche of the market, it is a source of contention or pride, depending on where your sentiments are.
I am too much of a tinkerer to use an Iphone, i feel it restricts me. Indeed, Apple products, restrictions and other idiosyncrasies drive me mad, and so i don't use them.
I do recognize that these are issues of personal preference, and by most measures i am not the hypothetical "normal person" that always appears in most Apple reviews.
So I fully recognize the genius behind the design, it is elegant and beautiful, without peer in the industry (for shame) and it is also true that the "just works" cannot be overstated. It is simply of no personal concern to me, because i take pride in making things work on my own, and rather enjoy it, as i mentioned... tinkerer
But I would have bought my mom one without thinking twice about it, ware it not for the limited physical options, she cant handle it in her age with her hands, this exclusivity by Apple is a pity, and in that sense it is a bad design choice, I suspect elderly people, factory workers, or people that need to work with gloves would love to have a phone that indeed "just works". this exclusion is something I always found to be the chink in apples design ethos, imagine an apple designed product specifically tailored to the elderly, or an Apple designed tough industrial strength laptop or Ipad.
Before I clicked the link I bet myself I would not see a single criticism and Gruber was predictable in his praise. The iPhone 4 is perfect, like every other piece of anything Apple puts out. yawn
So you just skipped the parts where he brought up criticisms and pointed out things he thinks are missing and speculated on ways Apple could resolve them?
I count it as 7, 14, 28 seconds for 4, 3GS, 3G - seems like x2 per generation to me.
>In fact, Apple seems very confident regarding everything it decided for the original 2007 iPhone
Except multitasking in apps. Actually, scratch that, except apps altogether. Two major shifts in direction.
Of course Gruber led into that talking about hardware. There you can look at the fact that the iPhone pre-4 had a worst-in-class DPI, but now with the 4 it's all about the Retina display. DPI is suddenly where everything is.
The original iPhones were about feminine curves. The new iPhone is about kick-you-in-the-face masculine squares.
And then the front-facing camera (a common complaint on the original iPhone). The volume buttons. And on and on. Original perfection indeed.
The iPhone 4 is a brilliant phone. I'm morally against Apple's dominance of mobile, yet it's hard to gather the strength to argue when a friend talks about possibly getting an iPhone 4: It's a hard choice to argue with.
Yet Gruber's salacious, disturbing love of all things Apple; his automatic justification of everything Apple does; is very tough to stomach.
As a somewhat unrelated aside, one thing that really strikes me about the iPhone is the large amount of wasted space. It's interesting seeing it near >=4" phones and they barely eclipse the iPhone in size, the huge bezel (esp. on the bottom) of the iPhone making a small screen in a large phone.
* In fact, Apple seems very confident regarding everything it decided for the original 2007 iPhone. There are no new buttons, or even moved buttons. The Retina Display is emblematic of the iPhone 4 as a whole, both hardware and software: the same fundamental idea as the original iPhone, but clarified. It hasn’t really changed so much as improved — like the same picture in increasingly sharper focus.*
Insofar as the automatic justification how does that explain his questions on the durability of the glass back? Missing italics which he urges people to bring to Apple's attention? His statement that the antenna issue is, worse case, a fatal design flaw? Seems like you're kind of spinning the article a bit to me by omission.
Maybe I’m naive but I really do think that way too many people read way too many things into what Gruber is writing – things he never actually said.
He isn't hard on Apple about the missing italic face in the same way he is about e.g. Microsoft's errors (he basically treats it as a regression for Apple to fix), and it's a gross distortion to characterize his verdict on the antenna as "This could be a fatal design flaw." Almost every mention of the antenna issue is cushioned with soothing positivity. He repeatedly states his belief that reception only drops when your reception is lousy to begin with, and overall he seems to think it's likely that the issue will be helped by a software patch, or maybe a small hardware fix. The "fatal design flaw" angle is brought up very briefly, immediately said to be unlikely, and then further softened by reiterating his belief that the issue doesn't affect your reception that much anyway.
I mean, I like Gruber. He's a good writer and has a lot of interesting insights and I actually value his opinion, but you'd have to be stark raving mad to read his blog and think, "Wow, this guy is kind of hard on Apple."
So call him "optimistic" in his analysis, but if his experience is anything like mine, he is right to be wary of all the reports of the "death grip" as much as I am.
I do want to point something out about bezels on iDevices, though. They make accidental touches with the base of your thumb rarer when you're using the device one-handed. With only one hand, and holding the device in your palm, your thumb becomes your primary way of interacting. But that means that the base of your thumb is pushed against the edge of the device, and slightly touching the front of the device. This turns into either spurious touches, or spurious multi-touches (think: drag turns into zoom) if the very edge of the device is sensitive to touch.
The solution is to have a little bit of a dead zone there. This is the one area of my Nexus One which annoys me - the N1 seems to have a comparable bezel, but it's actually sensitive very close to the edge. Consequently I often have to hold the N1 not securely in my palm, but resting on my fingers, so that the base of my thumb is nowhere near the edge of the device.