Why the iPhone 5 is too radical
cultofmac.com
cultofmac.com
The author has some very misguided assumptions beyond the fallacy of the general idea:
1. Apple is not the only game in town: Android is gaining market share (and not just on the low end devices, either), Jelly Bean is fantastic. Nexus 7 has converted few loyal Apple fans around me already.
2. Apple needs an appealing device to get the masses to buy new phones: they can't pull another 4S. Has to have a significant enough change to get the sales they are after (and frankly, expected to deliver). The 5 is a very good compromise between not alienating existing iPhone users and catering to the owners of the 4S.
3. The screen size of the iPhone was no longer competitive. The market clearly wants larger displays and there's only so much that people are willing to overlook to remain with their favorite ecosystem.
Apple won consumers by radical innovation, disruption in its fullest sense. Apple has proved that you don't make middle of the road products to appeal to all users, but rather that you can actively reeducate the general population using wonderful products.
Just 5 years ago, an iPhone-like device would have been considered an overly technological and complicated relic with usage far removed from anything in the market, and here it is used by elders. This is not because Apple (well, Steve) aimed at what the general population wanted, but because they gave users something exciting and useful, and everyone embraced it.
This quote is usually attributed to Henry Ford - "If I’d asked people what they wanted, they would have asked for a better horse" Apple shouldn't be giving us better horses, or locomotives or even cars. They should be giving us wonderfully designed and greatly usable spaceships that just work.
Clearly, other companies are prepared to ship with less preparation than Apple, but Apple would not have been where they are with the iPhone if their only reasoning was to "deliver a faster replacement phone at the end of contract". They innovated on iOS, app-marketplace, Siri (still being worked on...) and Airplay, to mention a few. All of them replacing similar too-early-too-crappy competitor innovations.
That the iPhone 5 did not add "one more thing" either means Apple does not think it's necessary (exposing themselves, like Nokia did, to the risk of the "next Apple" showing up with a great re-innovation), or because they couldn't get it done in time or with the technology available (which means they should invest more in R&D - they can afford it).
I'm very happy Apple both innovates and puts the bar high - I'd rather have good NFC from Apple than ok NFC from Google. It's good for users. For the time being, I will give them the benefit of the doubt that the new stuff - NFC, fingerprint, new batteries, etc - is simply not mature enough yet. But if Apple stops trying, they won't be able to sustain their curve. Android is already grabbing most new users - at which point will they start grabbing iPhone users?
This isn't entirely true. Apple themselves have improved things a bit with the Macbook Air, reducing weight and improving battery life to a ridiculous degree. They've also added the retina displays to their higher end macbooks. Even some of the functionality you mention in phones (such as airplay) has been put into these devices.
I'd say this is an improvement on the old design. Though not as pretty, it's more durable and lighter. Shattering the glass is a common and expensive problem for customers. It's nice to have one less fragile item on this expensive device.
More to the point, Apple tends to go for simple design and ignores fashion trends. They have the colored iPods but that's more to appeal to kids and people that want a little more personalization rather than because yellow and green are in.
Also, I'm going to slap the next pundit that refers to this as "scuffgate". Protip, guys: Watergate was a proper noun, not a random mashing-together of words.
Its not designed obsolescence, but rather a triggering with our general Western inclination to eschew any flaws in what is usually an extremely personal, desired object: the bar of soap.
The more our gadgets progress towards 'soap' in terms of physical usability, the more this factor comes into the design. Slight dings in perfect surfaces beget more dings, until eventually the device requires replacement..
Or you could instead compare it to the competition and realize Apple is leaving a lot of interesting and useful features on the table. The new hardware is nice but the software is either sitting still or actively regressing.
We don't have to imagine what a more innovative mobile UI would look like because they already exist.
The software isn't just bundled applications, you know. It's the OS APIs and what 3rd party application developers can do. iOS 5 and 6 are both great leaps for iOS. It still lacks many features, like "intents", but calling iOS 5 or 6 "actively regressing" is more than hyperbole.
And as an iOS dev I'd argue that the API advancements between iOS5 and 6 are fairly minor in comparison to the pace that Google is moving at.
I'm an iOS user, and my living comes from Apple's platform dominance, and even I will gladly admit that Apple has lost the initiative. Google now leads the pack in unearthing the next step in the smartphone evolution.
Yep, as unlikely as that seemed even a year ago. I've been doing iOS dev for the last 1.5 years too but I'm cross-training on Android now because the momentum there is just too huge to ignore.
> I've been doing iOS dev for the last 1.5 years
People like you are truly puzzling. Apple is just a business, not a religion.
If Apple drops these patent suits and starts allowing opt-in side loading of apps I'll happily come back.
Of course, if you're making a companion app for some other service which makes money it's largely irrelevant, but numbers alone don't tell the whole story.
I make my money doing freelance dev for other people and I charge the same rate for Android as iOS.
The age of direct app sales being profitable enough to float a startup are long over. iOS users are still massively outspending Android users, but overall profitability has sunk like a brick on both platforms over time.
Like you said, "companion apps" and games are pretty much the only viable routes now. Direct app sales at this point in the market's lifetime is a great way to make a modest pittance and then be committed to support forever.
(Again: I'm not arguing that you're wrong, you and I are both in an understanding! I just wanted to point these out in case someone who isn't an iOS programmer gets the impression that as cageface was implying (in humor, as you said) that the APIs are really regressing)
> Maps - which honestly is a huge capability regression
> for the end user.
Here I can finally have detailed, reliable and readable traffic information. Google Maps one was hard to read, and often simply wrong, while now I get much better coverage in all of time, space, and information (not only traffic jams but road work and accidents). Also now the official city's app for transit will be able to plug itself into Maps.app. I'm still looking into what I have lost.
Now, if you're willing to talk about the iTunes Match mess that came to be in Music.app, well yes, this is a huge regression. For those that missed it, Match is now stream+cache, and optionally download — really, force cache — whole albums, and can't delete anything except by obliterating the whole music library at once, or disabling Match. Previously it was brilliant and missed just the ability to stream without downloading. Now I might just as well stick with Spotify.
Respect to Mike Elgan for breaking out of the normal tech story narrative routine. I hadn't really thought of that perspective. The rest of the article seemed to be the old dualistic battle though.
Want to sell something? Tell a story.
It's not like Apple only has one phone available. You can still buy the 4S or the 4, each for $100 less than their successor. So I don't agree with the point on compatibility, I think Apple is smart to get it all out of the way (screen size, connector) in one upgrade.
Besides that though, I think this guy makes great points about Apple fanboy psychology and why people get "disappointed" about their releases like this. It's hard to remember what most "normal" folks are thinking when all you read is Hacker News. :)
> This is the first visible sign of a trend which began quite a while ago: iPhone has peaked (just like the iPod did)
What the results of this will be in the long run, especially with consequence to iOS-design, we'll have to wait and see.
> I think the response to the iPhone 5 so far
> I think the response to the iPhone 5 so far [...] can
> also be explained by something I claimed [...] iPhone
> has peaked (just like the iPod did)
The Micro-USB connector has big problems and I look forward to a new standard. Remember, Apple was the main driver behind USB with the original iMac's and it's missing floppy drive. I think they can do it again.
Bent pins are only ever the result of blunt trauma, like if you rolled over your cable with your desk chair. I see no evidence that this cable can withstand more brute force than a USB cable.
Also, I don't know what country you're from, but I've never seen anyone get frustrated by "getting their cable sideways".
The answer is "Yes". Without having an ok NFC, you are not going to get a good NFC. Apple can come out and make it perfect, awesome, amazing, but there has to be something to start with.
Hands down the dumbest thing I've read (half of) in the last few years. Wow.
Let's compare it to the Mac. Wow. Jesus. Mind-blown. Titanic stupidity.
Who wrote this thing? Should be persona non grata from the Internet.
This is collective, delayed bereavement, and it's not the last time we'll see it. The world really lost something when it lost Steve; he was a lightning rod for great products and great marketing. He made you believe.
We still want to believe, and we still want to feel that wonder. But we wonder if we'll ever feel that way again about an Apple product.
I think your point is valid. I have no doubt that Steve had his mind on the iPhone 5 well before he died, and may have even signed papers approving the exact final product. The question that remains is, in the year between his death and the release of the product, how many times would he have changed his mind or added something else? The answer to that determines if the current leadership at Apple knows how to properly shepherd the creative minds working for them or if they're merely following a directive set by someone who had bigger plans they might not be in alignment with.
I guess all we can say at this moment is that the new Apple is never going to be the same as the old Apple. The immediate question is, is that necessarily a bad thing?
Well, I already upgraded to iPhone5. I'm really not terribly interested in upgrading my aging Macbook Pro, 17" model, however. It bereaves me to no end that they have EOL'ed the 17" form factor, and have no solution for those of us who really need Pro features, like ExpresscardPCI slots, and so on.
Would Steve have axed the 17"?
Before that is sorted out, I think that mass adoption of NFC is unlikely, and it's very likely that we'll end up with either the carriers or VISA et al in control - not a very promising prospect, IMHO.