The new volume buttons, silence toggle, and power button all have a better feel than ever before.
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.
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.
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?
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.