No, This Is Not the Best iPhone Ever
slate.com
slate.com
Yes, I'm sure the creators of the product, which is faster, has a larger screen, a more high-quality screen, a better camera, an updated operating system, which is the thinnest iPhone yet, lighter than previous models...
Yes, I'm sure they were all lying to all of our faces about whether they believe this is the best iteration of the iPhone.
And then to follow that up with this?
> In truth, the iPhone 5 is a very impressive device. If you’re in the market for a new phone, you should certainly consider this one. [...] Despite its bigger screen, the iPhone 5 is the thinnest and lightest iPhone ever made, and the difference is palpable. I played with the device for a few minutes after Apple’s press event, and I was floored by how svelte it was compared to older versions of the iPhone. I also love the back of the new phone, which is made out of aluminum rather than the glass found on the back of the 4S. The iPhone 5 feels more substantial than past versions, and it’s probably less fragile as well. This, maybe, is a phone that you might not need to stuff into a case in order to use—if that’s true, then thin and light might really mean thin and light. [...] I’ve got only one major problem with the new iPhone.
So yes, basically, your point is that the phone is better.
But apparently all of this is invalidated by the fucking plug. The plug makes Apple executives liars. It makes iPhone enthusiasts chumps. It ruins the entire device, and certainly undoes the innovation/not-innovation (?) the author is so passionate about.
This whole article is, frankly, fucking garbage. The first few paragraphs are basically trolling, and the rest of it is overdramatic. I'm an iPhone user, and yes, if I decide to upgrade, the change in plugs is probably going to be annoying. Then again, I mostly use one plug for my current phone. So maybe not that annoying after all.
This is the best iPhone ever, with an annoying plug. That's essentially what this article says, but it's awful, worthless linkbait, so that's not what the article actually SAYS.
Truly terrible.
Naw, just truly obligatory. Remember when we were all reading a whole bunch of similarly insipid diatribes about how yes admittedly this new iPhone has X, Y, Z new things that are really pretty cool but it's still a total disappointment and doomed to be a failure because they didn't name it the right thing?
I think maybe there's just something in every tech columnist's contract mandating them to go a bit silly for a week every time Apple releases a new handset.
He also mentions that in the future Apple will change its dock connector again, throwing accessory makers "under the bus." I highly doubt this will happen. I highly doubt there will even be a "next" connector at all. Given the rate at which technology has progressed, In 11 years (the lifespan of the 30-pin connector) inductive charging will be omnipresent, and AirPlay-esque protocols will be the defacto way to send music between an iDevice and a dock. AirPlay is a software standard and thus can be supported indefinitely, so I imagine any phone that comes out in the future will be backwards compatible with current AirPlay docks.
I'm looking forward to the day wireless just works, but I'm not sure we're any where near close yet. I still have a problem with my WiFi dropping because next door is using theirs, and that's after I picked the least congested channel.
Arguably, Apple could have included both ports, but that increases cost and complexity and flies in the face of the Apple aesthetic.
To save costs, gadget manufacturers would just use the headphone port instead, and then you'd have to plug TWO things into your iPhone to hook it up. And it wouldn't have pause or volume controls because they don't want to spend the $1 on the USB chip for that functionality.
Micro-USB can't ever reassign pins or masquerade as something else, otherwise it's not USB. An active 30-pin adapter would be able to signal that it can handle 30-pin signals and thus perhaps something could be arranged in reverse, but then all the old Apple-specific capabilities will still always require an active dongle like they do now.
Then there's all the added joy of making sure you NEVER EVER get this auto-detection wrong and send juice down the wrong pin.
Apple announced that Lightning was all-digital. Therefore it does audio basically the same way that USB does.
And I'm willing to bet that, like the iPhone 4, Lightning requires an authentication chip before the play/volume/track buttons on accessories work. And that the authentication chip costs a lot more than a USB chip.
This is the thing that turned me off of micro-USB chargers, and it's a shame if Apple abandoned this feature.
Yes, it is.
Apple generally doesn't bother to release a new version of a product until they've managed to make it significantly better than the last version, hence nearly every Apple product is "the best ever" version of that product. That earlier iPhones were "the best ever" when they were released in no way suggests that this one isn't also "the best ever".
And the fact that they finally replaced the dock connector is one of the things that makes it better. They've removed that constant tiny annoyance of putting it in the wrong way, they've made a key part slightly more reliable than it was, and they've freed up more room to make products smaller or fit more stuff (including battery) in the existing space.
USB-PTP is already implemented on iOS. What's the win for going to Micro-USB beyond letting you reuse your Blackberry charger?
USB-MTP is a user experience disaster. USB-MSC is a user experience disaster in the context of a sealed filesystem. And moving to Micro-USB means you can't dynamically reprogram pins to support any of your old 30-pin shit via an adapter.
So we can either have no old shit at all, or have all the old shit via a $30 adapter, or put two ports on a phone, or stick with the old shitty port that's approaching the size of the products it's used in.
Complying with european regulations.
Does anybody who played with the 5 know whether Apple took any measures for one hand use to encounter the display growth to 4" in the OS or bezel, thickness or elsewhere?
If you hold it slightly differently in your palm, your thumb can reach all of a 4" screen just as well as a 3.5" screen, and with less strain.
When you go with Apple, you're along for the ride on their obsolescence decisions. There is never a great time for such discontinuities: you have to take the hit sometime, and putting it off would just mean an even larger ecosystem on the original connector.
Yes, Apple has gone their own way here... but matching the commodity/common-denominator practice has never been Apple's emphasis. I know that controlling/taxing the aftermarket is one part of their choice... but the size, durability, and reversibility of the connector will be offsetting benefits. (And an off-brand micro-USB-to-lightning adapter will probably be even smaller and cheaper than the 30-pin-to-lightning adapter.)
There's no excuse for having a proprietary connector, now not even for Apple.
You might not like the excuses but they exist beyond "no excuse". And the required micro-USB adapter will likely be tiny and cheap: just affix it to the end of your micro-USB cord.
The new lightning connector looks like it offers much better ergonomics and better durability than any of the existing USB plugs. So I'm happy to see connectors going in this direction. Let's see the USB standard copy the idea.