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Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

The iPhone 4 is (apparently) Apple's most successful product launch ever. It has been for me their most useful product ever. I am rarely without it. It's my phone, my music player, my camera, my alarm clock, my kitchen timer, my only game system, and often my web browser. It is also the most solid-feeling, elegant, understated thing Apple has ever sold me.

Apart from "faster", "better at connectivity", and "better at taking pictures", where does Apple have to go with this thing? A new chassis design? Why?

I agree that this was a boring keynote. But I think it's boring because Apple has got this particular product design nailed. It may not be the best phone we'll ever see, but they're holding 20 and the dealer is showing 6.

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Apart from "faster", "better at connectivity", and "better at taking pictures", where does Apple have to go with this thing? A new chassis design? Why?

And that's my fear. The first decade of the 2000s' Apple would answer this question with something you didn't think you needed. But it was a gamechanger.

I could imagine Steve Jobs walking out on stage and saying:

"We did the Retina Display. We changed displays forever. The iPhone4 is the best display on any phone, and it's been almost a year and a half since we released it. But there's a huge glaring problem with it -- it's 2D." At this point you begin to hear the audience pick up in anticipation.

"The world isn't in 2D. You can't appreciate the vibrance of a 3D world fully when projected onto a 2D surface. People have tried 3D though." Steve pulls out a the red/blue paper glasses from his pocket. Tosses it on the floor. The modern 3D TV glasses from his pocket, tosses it on the floor. Pulls out an EVO 3D. Looks at it for a second. Tosses it on the floor.

"You don't do something, unless you can do it right. We figured out how to do 3D right."

Maybe next year.

So we're setting the bar for new Apple products at "3D cell phone". Got it. :)

Maybe I shouldn't speak for kenjackson, but I don't think 3D was actually the feature he was hoping for, just an example of the kind of industry-changing innovation of which Apple is capable but was completely absent today.

And I say this not because I think you missed his point, but in a probably futile attempt to head off discussion about how 3D is stupid.

Yes, I'm no Steve Jobs. I have no idea if 3D is a dead fad or the next big thing (even in Android land it appears to have died pretty quickly) -- it just made for a convenient example narrative. Although I must admit I think taking out an Evo 3D, looking at it, and then tossing it away would be get a fair bit of applause. :-)

3d is a fad that will most likely never be a differentiating feature in a cell phone.

How many people at the Sprint store are seriously going to pick up the HTC Evo 3D and say "screw the iPhone 4S, I'm buying this thing because it's 3D!"

Next year, people will be wondering why they bought an HTC Evo 3D when Apple announces the iPhone 5D. :)

any "3D" where the images are on one plane and the brain thinks that it is seeing depth—that is, several planes—will ultimately fail. so my prediction is that the iphone will never get 3D until it becomes, the eyePhone.

..and lots of people will be disappointed if they keep the chassis design on the iPhone 3D :)

I think it's funny how everyone expects a new design every year, just because that's how the cell phone world has always been. Looking at the iPod, Apple only had a few designs that they gradually improved and made smaller.

My concern is that even Apple doesn't think this phone is innovating enough to be a real successor to the iPhone 4.

I've been waiting to buy an iPhone for half a year, because I assumed that getting the iPhone 5 would be worth the wait. Oh, well...

The big clue I got to this not being a successor to the iPhone 4 was when they continued to call it an iPhone 4.

Just buy the new i4S. The i4 is a great, great device.

I've been thinking about it and I've decided that I will buy the new i4S. I am still disappointed, but you're right: it's a great product.

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