What's wrong with the iPhone 4s, and why Jobs is not my hero

Essentially this article is what Salvatore dislikes about the iPhone 4 with two gratuitous paragraphs tacked onto the end about how he prefers to heroise those motivated by democratising access to the best technology rather than financial gain. I can only assume it was a controversial attempt at seeking attention (page views).

Even if you extremely dislike someone, it's best to maybe just keep your feelings to yourself immediately after their passing. Many people are in mourning and it's important to be mindful and respectful of that.

Personally I believe Steve was not motivated by money, he took a token $1 salary and to what extent is unknown, worked until the very end of his life, even though he was acutely aware of his own mortality.

I'm not an Apple fanboy and I don't deify Jobs, but I recognise and am grateful for his contributions. I also disagree with a lot things Apple has done in the past few years, but I think "What's wrong with the iPhone 4s" would have been just fine, and the rest is in slightly poor taste.

My apologies if you think I'm being over-sensitive.

This could be the best article in the world, but if I'm honest, I'm not gonna read it because the title sounds like blatant flame-/linkbait

I'm definitely no fanboy, but these "[Something controversial], and why I'm [something controversial]" titles really get my goat.

While I normally don't comment on controversial titles used to lure users, using a name of someone who recently died to do it is quite distasteful.

You could have just titled, "whats wrong with iPhone 4". But NO, you had to add "and why Jobs is not my hero" just to be a bit controversial and attract people. Am I the only one who find this distasteful? And is not because it's Steve Jobs, or I am an Apple fan, I would have said this regardless of the person.

To me the most interesting aspect of the iPhone 4S is the camera. I really want the camera in my phone to be good, and I was planning to look at other phones and move away from iPhone (currently have a 3GS) until this phone was announced. The new camera makes that much harder.

Siri seems like a total irrelevance unless it works really, really, really well. Every AI application I've ever had to deal with has been a major disappointment.

I'm not sure why he's assuming that Siri can run on the iPhone 4. From what I've heard, it is in fact rather processor-intensive, and therefore it can only run on the newer, dual-core A5.

That being said, it makes you wonder why it's not coming out on the iPad 2 as well, since it also has the A5.

"[Real heroes] want a world where everybody has access to the best technology, to the best hospitals, and making money is a side effect of contributing in a non evil way to the development of our culture."

I think that was pretty much true for Steve Jobs. See the Stanford speech where he says he's not interested in being the richest dead guy in the cemetary.

You can't just give away your product for free because than you go bankrupt. Also, concentration of wealth --- by charging a healthy price --- was in the case of Apple a net win for all of us, because it gave them the resources and peace-of-mind to work on the Next Big Thing.

Apple is the modern day equivalent of the Great Pyramids.

All that meticulous design, all that money, all the sweat and tears - and for what? So that, for a price, we may all have beautiful, lickable technical gewgaws to idle away the hours.

Apple revolutionized media distribution, mobile entertainment, phones, and tablet computing - that much is obvious. They may even revolutionize more. People will wax mawkish and claim that Apple has "given" them happiness and wonderment. I suppose not unlike the awe in the eyes of ancient Egyptian commoners as they gazed up at their civilization's most lasting technical achievements.

But at what cost? Eighty billion dollars in the bank and literally the largest market cap in the world and Apple gives a pittance in the way of charitable donations. Their corporate charity pathetically dwarfed by that of peers such as Microsoft or Google. Even more so by their financial equals like Walmart or Exxon Mobil.

All that money, all that energy and potential for humanity and it all goes up on the most finely crafted of altars. Disappearing in nothing more than a nice, tight little cycle of ever obsoleting gadgetry.

I'm over it.

While I don't really agree with the rest of the article, this was very well put:

> After all till yesterday Android was the state of art in voice interaction. But apparently Google is not able to connect the dots: they solve a given problem in a great way, that is, translating speech to text, but they can't translate that into great user experience for their users.

It's true - Apple didn't invent the tablet, touchscreen, mp3 player, etc. but they bring it to the masses with a great user experience (and rabid obsessive fanbase). It's not a guarantee but it's likely that voice interaction will improve and become a larger part of device interaction.

He doesn't have to be a hero to be missed. I'd like to think there are many people out that are missed terribly when the pass regardless of wether or not they were heros. Sometimes just being yourself is enough.

This article could really be condensed into one sentence. It seems the main beef is the author thinks Siri should work with the iPhone 4, making this upgrade unnecessary. With Siri system integration as advertised in the keynote, more processing will be done phone side, which will require a hardware upgrade.

As a developer, the enhanced hardware opens up avenues for many interesting app ideas. I'm particularly excited about display mirroring for games.

He sums up one of the major problems well:

The greatest innovation in this release of the iPhone (Siri) is actually just a software thing. It is really cool, but they could have put it in iOS5 for iPhone 4 users to have as well.

On the hardware front there really is nothing truly new, just better and faster. That is fine, but with an extra 4 months tacked onto the product dev cycle for this release, I think people (myself included) expected more.

Every one have/can express their own opinion being said that but speaking about some one dead recently on the merits of subjective term ('hero') is quite distasteful (IMHO) and makes me sad, makes me even sadder since it came from some one i respect.

I'm not a fan boy ( never owns a Apple made products so far) just that i don't think its going to constructive for any one around here, YMMV

I think Steve said it best himself:

"As for us, we’re just doing what we can to try and make (and preserve) the user experience we envision. You can disagree with us, but our motives are pure.

By the way, what have you done that’s so great? Do you…just criticize others work and belittle their motivations?"

- Steve Jobs

"Siri, open Facebook app" (or whatever other non-built-in app)

I think that is a use case that would be pretty popular, unfortunately it does not look like that is something Siri can do yet. Maybe a future release.

Without Jobs, we'd have no Android. We'd be stuck with Windows CE and Symbian.

story removed from the front page by HN medieval inquisition crew.

Edit: restored online. Don't know what to think.

It's cool if you expected more, just vote with your dollars and buy something else. There's no need to be upset about what the iPhone is, because no one is forcing you to buy an iPhone.

Personally I think it looks like a nice upgrade to my 3GS and I'm excited to get one. I know that liking the same product that tens of millions of people also like makes me a fanboy, but what can I say.