Thoughts and Observations Regarding Yesterday’s iPhone 5 and Music Event
daringfireball.net
daringfireball.net
I think I may actually be physically sick from reading this. There's just no room to satirize something this ridiculous.
For Apple to maintain its market-leading brand prestige and profit margins it has to be hands-down better than the competition and no matter how much heavy breathing hype you want to shower on them the last two iPhones have been predictable, incremental upgrades that in some important ways are actually playing catch-up to the competition. Good, but not good enough.
Steve's most successful keynotes were noticeably devoid of this kind of Las Vegas showroom trickery.
Uhh what ? How many Steve Jobs keynotes have you seen ? Most of them had these idiotic things. The one most ridiculous moment which instantly comes to mind is the Intel CEO appearing in that suit. You know Intel chips that every otehr laptop manufacturer made but the move was made a bigger show of ?
"This would never have happened under Steve Jobs" is not the same as "I don't like this".
Steve Jobs is gone, Apple will not be the same but is not doomed without him either. His single biggest accomplishment was having left in the state that it can continue without him.
Refrain from what?
Damning him with faint praise and labelling him a cult elder seems pretty cynical to me.
> iPhones have been predictable, incremental upgrades
> that in some important ways are actually playing catch-up
> to the competition. Good, but not good enough.
Actually, the combination of new hardware + ICS was really a huge step forward and the first phone I'd really consider an overal better phone than the iPhone. And thanks to the diversity of the Android ecosystem we also have things like the note or the 7" tablets to choose from today.
If Apple wants to play one-size-fits-all then that size has to be in a different class.
I personally think that the big screen, and ICSs speed is pretty damn attractive - but I don't know how it would fit into my life over a year.
Regardless - Samsung now has a slight lead when it comes to overall mobile performance (Screen/CPU) - Apple has the lead in App Ecosystem and (in my opinion) - design tweaks. They do sweat the pixels a bit more than Samsung.
If you want to compare something with some other thing, make sure you know what the second thing is.
If they become a niche market again, no matter how lucrative, they lose their power.
> If they become a niche market again, no matter how
> lucrative, they lose their power.
Btw, to expect single model of the phone to outsell the all the models of Android… well…
"iPhone 5 is made with a level of precision you’d expect from a finely crafted watch — not a smartphone.
Never before has this degree of fit and finish been applied to a phone...
Look at iPhone 5 and you can’t help but notice the exquisite chamfer surrounding the display. A crystalline diamond cuts this beveled edge. It’s what gives iPhone 5 its distinctive lines. Fitting for a phone so brilliant."
Regarding Apple being better, I still think they have the edge on the apps front if not on the hardware front. Its also where the money is if you're a developer trying to make a living from developing apps.
I find it truly fascinating how magnificently Apple can spin anything it wants any way it wants and have people buy it. For years people have told me how their iPhone's were made of better quality materials and you could feel it in the weight. It was the sign of quality. It's awe inspiring to witness now how after spending so long as a sin, lightness has transformed in the space of 24 hours into a virtue.
Almost weirdly light, to my oh-so-utterly-accustomed-to-the-heft-of-the-iPhone-4(S) hands.
I think the thing that bugs me is the tacit admission that he hasn't even tried any other devices. I own (although no longer use) a Samsung Focus S- a 4.3" Windows Phone. Weight? 110g. At this point the Focus S hardly a new phone- Apple was behind the times and is just catching up, it's not blazing ahead.
But then, Gruber is only reviewing this for people that have already decided they want one, so the bar is lower.
Why is it a bad thing that they've innovated to the point where they can get the level of quality they're happy with and lowering the weight?
While I had not seen this argument with weight, I have seen it multiple times with Screen Size. And now that it has changed I am pretty damn sure that 4inch screen will not be the only form factor that is perfect and everything else will be 'not-for-the-masses'.
What the tech-elite are upset about is that the iPhone is the product of -SAFE- design. They made safe design choices, safe technical choices, safe aesthetic choices, and paved over some platform disruptions that are going to stick in more than a few craws (new maps, new dock connectors, new advertisement rules, etc). There was no zing zap zowie twist, no manic panic streak, just safe iterations like thinner/faster/tighter/stronger.
Think about it: there isn't one new sensor type, one new I/O type, one signature new datatype (save for possibly Passbook), nothing. The smartphone is becoming mature and the 8000 pound gorilla isn't willing to start zigging and zagging with the highest profile product in technology.
People want to be wowed, and when all they got was a thorough refinement of what they had, they left disappointed. My mom is going to love the decisions Apple made regarding her iPhone 5. John X. Android won't.
It doesn't matter though. This phone is going to sell tens of millions a month, be the safe #2 market seller, be the #1 money spinner, and stand for another year as the overall best.
You want daring phones? You want risky phones? Look elsewhere.
But to me, where you see safe I see refined. They focussed on building them better. They focussed on putting in the different radios, better/larger screen, while keeping consistent battery life. While making it smaller.
Just because there's no NFC (of arguable real-world usefulness, and I'm sure that's not what you're talking about anyways) doesn't mean its not innovative.
Apple doesn't really innovate on hardware features very often. They put capacitive touch in the mainstream with the original iPhone. They pushed HiDPI displays into mainstream with the iPhone 4. They redefined the tablet computer form-factor with the iPad.
Why change a great thing?
Unsafe was cashing in 100% of their market credibility to drop an uncompetitive keyboard-less featurephone into the 2007 market. Unsafe was Retina. Unsafe was the iPhone 4 design. Unsafe was Siri. Unsafe was the sealed filesystem. Unsafe was unsubsidized sales.
Of all of their dozens of unsafe decisions, I think only two burnt them: unsubsidized sales and Antennagate. And they course corrected on both of them as soon as feasible.
But here we are 6 product cycles later and they've successfully gotten to where they wanted to be: The Unquestioned Best. It's the safe choice. It's the sure thing. It's the one everything else is compared to. It's the standard bearer.
And seriously? I can't think of what the next Unsafe decision is. Is it in payments? Is it in docking? Is it in Zigbee/NFC? Is it in broad identity management? Developing markets?
Apple is in a position where they don't -have- to make Unsafe decisions anymore, and that roaring sound you hear is tens of billions of dollars rushing their way. They survived the gauntlet. Now it's time for them to feast.
Pardon my metaphor soup.
I think we can expect Apple to do unsafe things in the future, but outside the realm of iPhone. The iPod (classic) was in a fairly safe place when Apple started disrupting with iPhone. The iPhone and iPad are coupled tighter than the iPod and the iPhone, but there's a hint of the same thing here; the iPhone is refined, and the newer iPad disrupts.
I think iPad, not iPhone, is where we should look for unsafe. Or perhaps something else altogether.
I assure you they are in the process of "thinking different" about a number of new markets and form factors. For the ones that are gushing money? "Think Dominant"
Well, that goes fairly well with their 1984 commercial I suppose.
Of course Lightning is better for Apple. It's going to make them gobs of money. That doesn't make it better for the consumer than microUSB.
What does this mean for the existing ecosystem of 30-pin accessories and the customers who bought into it?
Plugging in to your Kindle PowerFast adapter that only fast-charges a Kindle? Plugging in to a PMP that that supports USB-MTP or USB-MSP, which Apple doesn't support at all? Plugging in a HDMI or VGA adapter? Wait... they don't have those for micro-USB. Reusing your PDMI gear? Ooops, those are only pin-compatible with 30-pin and haven't gotten any real traction. Plugging into a USB audio device? Oh wait, THAT STANDARD DOESN'T EXIST EITHER.
So I'm begging you, tell me, my mind is OPEN on this: describe the benefit of Apple moving to micro-USB beyond "I can reuse my BlackBerry charger from 2005".
I can't come up with enough pros for anyone, including the customer.
Just because you don't hear about these things in the Magical Revolutionary Wonderful Apple bubble doesn't mean they don't exist. MHL to HDMI cables exist today and are usable today.
CEC, video, audio, DRM, and power over a single cable, with two physically and electrically compatible micro-USB implementations. Hrm.... I am intrigued. I'll have to think on this.
I hope companies start developing MHL compatible docks now that many high end Android devices are shipping with it. A good ecosystem of devices would prevent "improvements" like Samsung's from taking root. (obviously, Apple adopting it would have been enough to finally make one unified accessory ecosystem, but Apple can't charge exorbitant licensing fees for "Made for MHL" logos...)
Now fill the entire board up with Pros and Cons, then matrix that across Apple, Regulators, Carriers, Engineering, and Third Party Concerns. And then get back to me on what you think the correct answer is if your name is Apple and you have 200M customers to serve.
But if you are going to make ridiculous demands in lieu of argument, then you shouldn't really expect much of value in return.
So let's try again! Perhaps 4 out of 10 iPhones sold today are sold into the American market, where the 30-pin dock platform dominates. It's not a non-factor: compatibility with this platform was a key feature of the original iPhone.
Now we're in 2012 and Apple's gone with a similar but incompatible proprietary adapter for charging and media instead of an evolving global standard that has clear consumer benefits. "Why?" is an interesting question. "Because they're greedy gobshites" is an uninteresting answer.
Do you, ktizo, have some light to share?
From the consumer perspective, and I could be biased because I have a ton of apple's hardware, I see trouble when making a dock. From my experience with microUSB it's fragile, you can sway it by pulling not exactly right, you will have to aim every time you put something in dock. Where as with new connector you don't have to aim - it will slide in, it will easily slide out because of locking mechanism.
[edit] Also, if I wanted to predict where this is headed, if all cable production can be brought in house, then why not go the whole hog and chip the cables [edit - I just looked up the spec, given that thunderbolt is an active cable, this has to be the direction they are headed], with some introduced functionality to sweeten the deal on the consumer side and then you can get total lock-in on peripherals, if you like.
Additionally, last week Chinese state-run news media reported that several vocational schools in the city of Huai’an, in eastern China, required hundreds of students to work on assembly lines at a Foxconn plant to help alleviate worker shortages. According to one of the articles, Huai’an students were ordered to manufacture cables for Apple’s new iPhone 5, which is expected to be introduced on Wednesday.
http://m.sltrib.com/sltrib/mobile2/54873765-218/foxconn-stud...
[edit] Also, the financial benefit to apple of doing this is not just in the sale of cables, but also in the control of licensing for third party peripherals, which it is losing a grip on as there are so many people geared up to produce their old connector. There is also a possibly huge lump of money from content producers if you can sell them the promise of being able to restrict the devices you can plug their content into.
http://www.slashgear.com/micro-usb-formally-chosen-as-cellph...
Apple get around this by promising an adaptor for the european market.
Mandated standards can be useful if you want to waste less resources making duplicates of everything in slightly differing shapes. And consumers get to carry less tatt around and can borrow charging leads off each other and stuff. This isn't rocket science.
Micro-USB is used universally for charging and photo transfer, and in some platforms it's used for block-storage and/or file-transfer. On Apple's gear it's just used for the first two. So it's not as valuable for iOS customers.
Furthermore, Apple is in the unique position of also owning a dominant ecosystem of media devices that have nothing to do with USB, micro-USB, or any variant thereof. They have to service -that- platform too.
Umm... globally it doesn't, and most of it's market is outside the US, where it is forced to play ball to a degree by providing converters for those markets.
And if you think that consumer electronics companies have it harder than the space industry, then you are completely delusional.