The iPhone 5s Review
anandtech.com
anandtech.com
While getting hammered by Wall Street and the press for not innovating, they stick to their guns and keep evolving in incremental steps, and laying the ground for the innovation they want to do in the future.
For example, current iPhone battery life isn't the greatest compared to some of the larger phones out there that are packing much more battery.
But they keep making small efficiency improvements, over and over, so that if (when?) release a device with a larger battery, it will be like the MacBook Air situation, where the MBA gets staggering battery life on the next hardware iteration compared to competitors that have just adequate battery life, basically being carried by the hardware.
I imagine the larger display is a similar situation, they're not happy with some compromise they'd have to make to produce a display of the larger size, whereas competitors are happy to pump something out that is better by some metric (PPI, size), but has adverse effects (battery life, color oversaturation, artifacting).
I think Google has the ability to continue competing with them if they remain focused.
I have my doubts about any of the other Android manufacturers, though Xiaomi could be interesting in the future, due to their focus on services.
The iPad 3 is a counter-example; retina display almost for the sake of it, and the hardware suffered. The fact that Apple pushed out the iPad 4 so quickly thereafter can, IMO, be chalked up to the fact that the iPad 3 was either a stopgap device or immediately regretted internally and caused the schedule of the iPad 4 to be bumped up.
And did I mention that I don't have to use new charging cables? My family uses MacBook Pro, iPhone, iPod, iPad2, and iPad3 and I am happy I have to use the same cables for each.
I'll take iPad3 over iPad4 any day (at least for the next few years)
On it's own, it's certainly fine. However it's clear that there were trade-offs when moving from the iPad 2 to the iPad 3.
This is a nice phone, but I'm sorry - if you think Apple "remains in total control of the industry" with sub 20% marketshare and shrinking you are delusional.
Whatever you may think of the theorerical advantages that Apple has, its not working for them outside of the US.
BMW is definitely in control of the luxury car industry, which is quite huge worldwide in terms of revenue and more importantly, profit. It depends on how narrowly you define "industry."
I think VW Group and Mercedes-Benz might argue with that.
Of course, it depends how you define "luxury" but with Bugatti, Bentley, Lamborghini, Porsche and Audi brands, VW Group seem to be doing pretty well.
Except it doesn't: http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2013/07/26/samsung-dethrones-app...
You Apple fanboys are constantly moving the goalposts. First it was who sells more devices, then it was who had more revenue. Now you've lost the "who has more profits" argument as well. What's it going to be next? Who uses more aluminum in their devices?
But thanks for the link, I'll be using these statistics in future debates against the iCult.
Now don't get me wrong, a number of Apple-users are rational beings. They actually argue to me that they get huge value from iDevices, and I'm fine with that. If its your cup of tea, yes, go on and get it. (And I won't call these guys part of the iCult. Rational Apple-users are indeed... rational).
However, people like you argue that high margins are a good thing. NO THEY'RE NOT. Margins are: * Cost of the device MINUS cost that Apple spent to create the device
The larger the margin, the more Apple is screwing you out of your money. Period. No rational consumer should EVER be happy about being conned out of tons and tons of money.
And to see these idiotic members of the iCult, so proud... so happy to waste money, and BRAG about the margins that Apple is stealing from them... it really is enough to make me lose faith in the free market.
Remember, in a free-market with perfect competition, profits approach zero. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_competition / http://www.economicprofit.org/Zero-Economic-Profit.html. Consumers in a free market should NEVER be pleased when they learn that the products they buy are leading to record-breaking profits on top of record-breaking margins for a company.
The iCult doesn't exist, you are just trying to justify your own buying decisions. But go ahead and keep thinking otherwise, I really don't care.
But as long as you "brag" about Apple's profits, you are masochistically accepting punishment from a company that you hold dear. You are bragging about how much Apple manages to take your money away from you...
And that just isn't right.
So IMO, keep the arguments against Android, argue about why other systems are bad. But whatever you do, do NOT pretend like Apple's huge profits are a good thing for you as a consumer.
As long as we aren't forced to buy Apple products, i.e. we have a free market, Apple's huge profits don't matter to consumers. Perhaps Apple has a monopoly on smartphones that don't suck balls, but until the DOJ sees it necessary to break them up for it, I reserve judgement.
BTW, I happily use a Nokia 920, not an iPhone, but I'm tired of these Apple cultists economics-ignorant conspiracy theories. The cult argument is usually used by people who just can't understand free markets.
Profit margins are irrelevant to the discussion.
It may keep the shareholders happy, but ultimately it means nothing to anyone else. I don't see why people keep brining up this retarded meme.
And a new one from HTC probably in Q4 http://www.techradar.com/news/phone-and-communications/mobil...
I doubt that the scanner will be on the front, because it will take valuable screen space (there are no hardware buttons on android)
I also doubt the apart from a bunch of phones there will be many using this technology. It didn't catch with the motorola phone because the sensor was prone to errors.
Apple bought a fingerprint scanner company last year http://www.macworld.com/article/1167917/apple_acquires_finge... and had a good chance to create a good quality sensor, I don't think others will have the same technology available.
How exactly is putting a little scanner inside a button going to be meaningfully better? Like face unlock, it's at best a cute trick. Apple's past genius has been about finding new fundamental ways to use technology. Slightly easier protection against spousal snooping doesn't qualify, sorry.
Touch ID takes what you would have done anyways (thumb on home button to wake and then type in PIN) and makes it even faster. Now you still put your thumb on and eliminate the typing pin part.
I haven't used Touch ID yet but I wake my phone a lot during the day, so this seems like a nice (but not absolutely necessary) feature for me. Something small that makes the experience that much better.
For a phone, it's a poor fit. Variance in light levels is too high.
Fingerprint login is something I've had on my laptop for what seems like a decade. It's a gimmick there. But I anticipate that fingerprint unlock could be about as good as face unlock. It has the advantage of working in the dark.
Touch ID could have widespread application. Think e-commerce, banking/finance, physical access control, etc.
I have face unlock turned on, and so apparently, no, the natural way of picking it up doesn't perfectly center my mug.
Net effect is having waited however long to try to center and recognize my face, I end up having to realize it didn't work, so an exception case action is needed, and type in a pin and enter.
The implementation is unfortunate.
I, for one, open the phone and look at it a slight angle, not with the camera centered on my face as if I'm about to take a selfie.
Whereas Apple focuses on a few core features to improve on and communicate with each phone, and they're overwhelmingly cautious - like only integrating Touch ID with a few spots of the phone at first. But they nail the initial execution, and the communication. So their phones are still the absolute centre of the market. And no other company can inspire product lust to the degree they can.
I think Apple is in a unique place because they are beholden to no upstream provider (either hardware or software), retailer (they own their own stores) or component manufacturer (in the case of x64 chips, they flirt with AMD enough to keep Intel in check - for ARM solutions they run the show). They have volumes that can command suppliers' compliance.
Lenovo is hobbled by Windows, and the margins in that space are small enough that it's honestly not worth their time to simply "make it work right" w/r/t their drivers, which is why my Thinkpad fingerprint scanner never got used after about day 3.
Instead Apple's competition has fallen over themselves to try and chase every short-term opportunity, leading to constant reinvention, total lack of focus, and squandered potential. Frankly, it's embarrassing - you would think that enough people outside of Apple recognise the scale of the challenge Apple poses and decide to respond. Instead these companies come off looking like cheap idiots.
Lenovo bought IBM's business because IBM (who essentially made Microsoft who they were) decided it's a loser's game to depend on Microsoft. They are structurally incapable of meeting Apple's capabilities. If they do something novel, it will be reverse-engineered by Dell or HP and become commoditized (I would support that clandestine type of sharing if I were Microsoft).
About the only exception might be Samsung because of their dominant position supplying memory/disk/processors for Apple and other smartphone manufacturers. Apple is worried about Samsung, but Google should be as well.
He has been spouting rubbish like this all over the thread.
If he was just saying that Apple make great hardware, I dont think anyone would be disagreeing with him.
http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2013/07/26/samsung-dethrones-app....
The supposed "failure" Samsung seem to be doing pretty well.
http://appleinsider.com/articles/13/07/27/samsung-has-not-de...
Apple didn't start out making phones. Their computing business is still a fortune 100 company in it's own right.
If some company hade made a really good and well integrated fingerprint sensor, it might well have seen more widespread use.
I'm not implying that Apple can't make mistakes - it's clear they can with Maps and Siri - but a) it would be extremely uncharitable to judge them on version 1.0 of Maps and Siri, both ridiculously complex features, and most importantly b) their overall product strategy is still the best in the business. Doesn't matter how much people kick and scream about the newest Apple mistake - does anyone even remember Antennagate? Tech people cling to these memories, but normal people forgive and forget.
1. In other contexts, the sheer perfection of their 1.0 products are exactly what Apple is judged so successful by. As with the commentary on the fingerprint scanner: the praise is that while other manufacturers deliver buggy, incomplete features, Apple gets things right on the first try.
2. While it's true that everyone makes mistakes, Siri and Maps were arguably the highest profile features on the 4S and the 5, respectively.
I think when parent(s) were remarking on execution mattering they were implying: 'Execution is key ... to the success of the feature (and consequently) the brand'. My experience is very few people know what Google Now is. Your preference of it does not demonstrate an example of that sort of success-due-to-execution that other posters are suggesting Apple's products exemplify.
I've even found myself thinking 'Siri, where's my phone?' when I can't locate it in my flat. Siri is addictive if you learn to use the tool.
I also use for "what's the weather like today"
very convenient, give it a try, it's great
I hope touch id proves to be successful, but I'm really interested to see what happens if it's not. How do you save face and stop investing in a technology, while also weaving a story that convinces customers they don't need it anymore?
While they may have implemented Touch ID really well, it's still just yet another way of unlocking the device. Strategically it has little benefit to Apple.
How much would you pay for Touch ID? It offers little security benefit, only allowing you to log in a tiny bit faster. I can log in with my passcode fairly quickly and often without even looking at the screen. Maybe $5? $10 at a stretch. Definitely not worth getting locked into Apple's platform for another generation.
Edit: It will be extremely telling of the politics of touch ID internally within apple when we see the uptake of this stuff on non-iPhone hardware. Does the entire company believe in this technology? Will we see it on the iPad, iPad Mini? On Macbooks? Once we see deeper integration of touch ID across the rest of Apple's hardware devices and software services would a moat start being formed, but it would require a stern guiding hand within Apple to make it happen.
Uh, how many times a day do you perform some type of authentication of your identity? I have a feeling this will be one of those foot-in-mouth statements.
If this tech remains an iPhone (or even just iDevice) only tech, it's a (albeit impressive) party trick. Nothing provided by touch ID can't be eventually replicated by a competitor, patents notwithstanding.
No other OEM is positioned like Apple is to pull this off, but it won't be easy to elevate touch id to how we today perceive something like retina.
http://www.quora.com/Apple-Secure-Enclave/What-is-Apple%E2%8...
Apple bought a company that made fingerprint scanners (like the one in the Motorola Atrix HD) and put the secure info in the secure area of the ARM chip, which ARM designed for putting secure info in.
Except make that sound like the moon landing, SpaceX, Tesla and the Oceans 11 heist all rolled into one.
Are we still allowed to call Apple a cult? Or are they a full blown religion now?
-No, the Touch ID scanner is not like the one in the Motorola Atrix, at all. Totally different and superior technology. The Motorola uses the standard, inferior, straight-line fingerprint sensor that you have to swipe your finger across. These are easily fooled by many methods, including a lifted print or a mold of the user's finger.
-No, it's not an ARM chip; Apple designed the chip. Not ARM. Apple also designed the secure area of the chip; not ARM. It does use ARM CPU cores, yes. Which is different.
Are we allowed to call you a troll yet? Or just content-free and annoying?
Apple hasn't "made it sound" like anything except a fingerprint sensor with good convenience and very good security. Which is what it apparently is. So pipe down, mister.
That link also claims that Apple uses a "version of TrustZone" from ARM, which seems highly likely. We'll not hear about it from Apple just like Nuance aren't allowed to talk about the fact that they make the voice for Siri, and just like Samsung screen prints little Apple logos on the chips it makes for them.
But since you're so sure it's not, what's your source?
What was the point of that?
http://crave.cnet.co.uk/gadgets/apple-stimulates-brains-reli...
I guess this isn't true just for Apple, but for other major brands as well.
No, it's not.
It has two properties that are very important:
1) It's very secure (not like Face unlock, which could be fooled by a photograph or fail to work depening on poor lighting etc).
2) It's very natural (you already press the home button to open the phone anyway, you don't need good light, you don't need to hold it so that the camera centers your face etc). So people will use it, unlike Face unlock which is usually discarded.
Why are both of those things important? Because it means it can be used a authentication mechanism for buying stuff. In fact, Apple has already integrated it with iTunes IIRC.
BOOM, you don't even have to add your Apple ID password anymore!
Add Bluetooth 4, Passbook, camera for scanning codes and stuff, and half a billion iTunes accounts, and you have an "mobile payments" winner.
If Apple ever starts offering payment services through iTunes (using NFC or some other technology), authenticated payments can be done in an instant instead of "just wait a bit while I enter my password".
If you're an iPhone user and I took away your iPhone and replaced it with an Android phone, would the first thing you complain about be touch id?
Build quality, accessories, apps (maybe?) are all things that Apple has going for it with the iPhone that at the moment are more strategically important than touch id.
It's like free samples at Costco. They're awesome, you miss them when you shop at a different grocery store, but at the end of the day there are other reasons why you shop at Costco and if you decided you needed to go to a different grocery store, those free samples aren't going to sway you to come back.
Huh? Apple isn't a bunch of fiefdoms with competing and disparate product silos. Apple as a whole is completely behind this technology, and the fact that you don't understand that renders your opinion fairly moot.
See, that's exactly what the OP means. I tried to use face unlock on my Nexus 7 - it's just noot good enough. Too slow, too unreliable, especially in bad light conditions. I obviously haven't had the change to play with the iPhone 5s yet, but I'm quite confident that after getting used to keeping the thumb on the home button after turning it on, you won't event notice the fingerprint scanner.
But the most important thing is that it's a BS procedure, to have to look into the camera and get it to capture your face. Not the natural way to hold the phone when casually unlocking it (I, for example, as lots of people, do it casually at an angle to my face).
Putting your finger on the home button, on the other hand, is something you have to do anyway to open it, and you can even do it while the phone's getting out of your pocket.
Don't Android manufactures/users defending this see these OBVIOUS flaws?
I don't know whether that applies here, though. I have no experience with either the 'old' and the 'current' technology, and this review does not give much info, either.
You know, there were lots of mp3 players before the iPod too. If you wanted a bulky, crappily assembled gadget with a frustrating UI (and FM radio!).
Now consider that an attacker with physical access to your phone can either lift your fingerprint from the screen (you have been touching the screen, haven't you?), or can retrieve the software image of your fingerprint by plugging your iphone into their computer.
"As well as" == fine
"Instead of" == run!
The cynical part of me thinks that the proliferation of mobile devices + the close proximity of these new devices to danger (danger being people who would quite like you to give them access at every opportunity it seems. e.g. employees of an increasingly privacy-hostile government, such as the police) in the hands of users who don't know the implications is the biggest change/problem.
http://www.androidpolice.com/2012/08/03/android-jelly-beans-...
Touch ID is a capacitive fingerprint sensor embedded behind a sapphire crystal cover. The sensor works by forming a capacitor with your finger/thumb. The sensor applies a voltage to one plate of a capacitor, using your finger as the other plate. The resulting electric field between your dermis (layer right below your outward facing skin) and the Touch ID sensor maps out the ridges and valleys of your fingerprint.
They're so cheap to manufacture that you can sell them for $1 and still make a profit.
http://www.alibaba.com/product-gs/325177895/High_Performance...
That's exactly the point. It doesn't matter whether it's really hi-tech or unique or not. It's Apple's ability to present these things in a way which just makes you salivate that matters. This is a point which seems so hard for tech people to understand... it doesn't matter if you think people should see through Apple's claims, the spoils go to Apple because they know, as seemingly no other company on earth does, how to entrance people. A few key features, lavish, presentation, a feeling of luxury... that's what builds anticipation and excitement. Apple's closest equivalent are food companies, who have mastered the dramatic, salivatory description of products.
This ad campaign illustrates the point.
http://scoopertino.com/apple-blasts-into-supermarkets-with-r...
The only thing that is relevant is whether it works. Everything else is irrelevant.
http://www.citeworld.com/security/22399/iphone-fingerprint-s...
(Though it may work for a very short period of time if you were alive when they cut it off, but not for long)
Quoting from the article: "Apple's Touch ID was the biggest surprise for me. I found it very well executed and a nice part of the overall experience. When between the 5s and the 5/5c, I immediately miss Touch ID."
Coming from someone as respectable as Anand, I would call that reasonable grounds to call TouchID "meaningfully better".
Maybe you can point to something similar for face unlock?
I think it's these sorts of practical considerations that really make Apple products special. I feel like there is someone at Apple thinking through what happens when a dad carrying a baby gets a phone call. I don't feel like that's the case with say Samsung.
It doesn't.
It is about far more than that: it is about a new payment system, both more secure and more convenient. If that doesn't seem ambitious enough for you, I don't know what would.
You wouldn't trust face recognition to allow payments on stores or the Internet. Touch ID is designed so you can trust it, down to the separate secure storage for your fingerprint data.
It starts with being able to use your fingerprint to authorise payments at the App and iTunes Stores, and escalates from there.
From the review: "When [moving] between the 5s and the 5/5c, I immediately miss Touch ID."
Today it's a method to unlock your device, but there is no way that this is all Apple wants it to do. The possibilities are endless. Imagine not having to put your password into another website, instead you just touch the home button. Making a purchase on iTunes? Use the scanner instead of the password, etc.
But that's not all. This could easily be used in a retail environment, where a prompt on your screen shows up and says "Buy foobar for $5.99?". Touch ID does the rest.
1)Minor improvements get fawned over and made to seem like such a life-changing massive improvement and Apple fans gloat about how Apple is the best because of x, often when other manufacturers have had the same feature/capabilities for a long time. Doesn't matter, now Apple has it, it just sucked before.
2)Apple actually seems to regularly release just about as many new features/capabilities as the next guy, but then focuses in on the things that it's fan base promotes and is excited about, and that becomes a feedback loop regarding the 'few key features'. There was a tag-cloud image from the keynote that listed all the new stuff, and most of it you'll never hear about again. It isn't the focus on key features in every release, it's you, deciding what features are key and then telling your friends all about them, and then Apple also amplifying your message. If people latched onto iBeacons, we'd be reading about that non-stop now. The difference (and where you're correct) is that Apple focuses on these features vs. Samsung with the S4 commercial that tries to show you everything and you end up not remembering any of them. Contrast that with the MotoX ads (very well done), which are still a bit scatter-shod, but much more focused.
Question for you though, what's with the comment about "Google competing in the medium-term"?? I think you're more confident about Apple then they are ;)
Because this is very often exactly the case.
Apple get things wrong (especially when it comes to network services). But when they get things right — really right — you realise that no one else had done it properly before.
> Apple actually seems to regularly release just about as many new features/capabilities as the next guy, but then focuses in on the things that it's fan base promotes and is excited about
This is not true. Apple focuses on the features that it feels defines their products — not what their "fan base promotes." Apple didn't focus on Touch ID because everyone was clamouring for a fingerprint scanner; they focused on it because they felt it was a truly good solution to the problem of unlocking your phone (something many people didn't even consider to be a "problem").
The tag-cloud image is from WWDC. They always do this to show the new APIs and features that developers will be excited to use.
Apple focused on three features with the 5s. They did not choose to focus on these because of what people were talking.
I am not sure why you state:
> It isn't the focus on key features in every release, it's you, deciding what features are key and then telling your friends all about them, and then Apple also amplifying your message
This does not happen at all. Apple does not "amplify" what people are talking about.
No they haven't, nobody had such a fingerprint reader in the phone, all others (specifically I know of only one at the moment, do write if you know more) are "slide you finger, not too fast, not too slow, don't press the side, oops not good enough, slide it again." Having used such readers, I know they are really annoying. Not the one on iPhone 5S. You press the finger not having to care about the angle and that's it. Compared to the slide ones that reject your whole slide because it was a little to the left or to the right and where only one slide direction is allowed and it takes exact time, iPhone's is pure magic.
"Having something" is not "we can write it on the spec sheet even if it's unusable."
Also having not used the iphone 5s, you can not blindly say the solution will be market defining or very secure. Any technology like this will consistently work. Your phone will most likely ship with a backup security system that will be used when the phone can't match the finger prints. What would that mean ? Any random person can exceed the number of tries with finger print unlock and then go to the back up system that is no more secure than existing solutions.
> Apple is so far ahead of the competition it's ridiculous - maybe Google can compete in the medium-term, I'm not sure
This line just reeks of Apple fan boyism. There is literally nothing on the ios now that is ahead of android. Infact for the last couple of releases ios has been catching up with android (notifications, quick settings etc). It still does not have intents, widgets, default apps that can be replaced. But yes, live inside your own bubble and drool at everything apple.
Apple (and PowerVR) have made a couple tradeoffs in this generation that sacrifice performance on some tests for better shader capabilities.
Final point: it'll be interesting to see what these numbers look like when the bugs in the different graphics tests are resolved (are they compiled using the armv8 instruction set?)
Besides that, GFXBench 2.7 doesn't support ES 3.0 and that's what most of the comparisons with other current-gen GPUs have used.
I don't get this huge screen trend for phones. That's not a smart move from an ergonomics perspective. Almost person person that has a phone with a big screen has to use both hands to comfortably use the phone, one to touch and the other to hold.
One would argue that more pixels == more content. But that's not an issue with iPhone 5 even though was with previous models. I mean, not an issue if you don't have ads taking up your precious pixels. And that is easily solvable by paying for your content and apps which has other benefits too.
Anyway, I feel the iPhone 5 screen size is perfect. And I still have one hand free to do whatever I want. I think more pixels are not more useful than a hand. People who think that too won't get phones with cumbersome screens, unless they have huge hands.
I hardly notice the issue of having to use two hands to hold the phone. On the other hand, if you have to look at your phone while walking, which is uncomfortable when using a smaller screen and dangerous (bumping into people; maybe even uncivil towards others, come to think of it), the larger text on a larger screen makes it more comfortable and you get done taking a glance at what you want more quickly.
In the US, unlike here in Hong Kong, there seems to be a stigma attached to holding a large screen phone, almost as if people are extremely worried about looking uncool. In Hong Kong, the recognition of the practical advantages of the larger screen and the shift away from Apple to Android phones was overnight; the pace at which everyone adopted the Galaxy Note 2 (and other Android phones) after the iPhone 5 was fairly dramatic. I wish there were some statistics on this.
What's the infatuation with performance in a cell phone?
Snappy is snappy but there are diminishing returns here past a certain point; I think Anand stated it best when he said it is "the most future-proof of any iPhone ever launched"
With better raw CPU and GPU performances, it's easier and faster to write decent code with less time spent on optimisation and well as a great UI — Motion Effects and UIKit Dynamics (supporting parallax effects, physics engine, 30D/layered look) requires a powerful GPU. Games, of course always push the performance of CPU and GPUs. I doubt there'll ever be future-proof hardware in terms of performance, unless the software is dead.
If it's true that the iPhone 5s of today matches or exceeds the performance of a laptop from 5 years ago, that could mean we're not long away from full-featured convergence devices (plug your phone into a monitor+keyboard to turn it into a complete PC)
So, yeah, we're there.
Consider the case when Apple starts using these (ARM) in a MacBook Air.
Also, there are new games and other applications that are pushing GPU requirements to near desktop-class. For example, the Infinity Blade demo that was shown during the launch.
I think a lot of people care about having enough GPU performance to enable all of these.
If my phone is within a meter or two of my keychain, or I'm in my car, then it is unlocked. This is especially important if you want to use it while driving via voice and don't want to have to unlock after each interaction.
Ditto for Moto-X style notifications. I shouldn't have to press the home button to see that tweet that just came in, in fact, I should be able to ask the phone to read it to me, through my headphones.
The fingerprint scanner is definitely a step up from 2-N touches (swipe to unlock + passcode), 1 touch is better than 2*, but zero touches is even better in some circumstances. Never having to think about needing to unlock.
0: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.dinglisch....
In summary, I think beacons are useful but I think the most interesting stuff is for a smartphone to unlock a car not the other way around.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6747/htc-one-review
The only upsetting part was that it took eternity to come out :(
That and the architectural dissections they do every time a new CPU or GPU is even announced, only through anandtech do I look forward to new Intel or NVidia stuff, even though I'm not a hardware geek at all the reviews are engrossing, interesting and interested and strike a very nice balance of depth and clarity.
Did anyone notice during the Apple press conference, the head honchos tried to capture Steve's enthusiasm, but it seemed forced?
I don't understand why they are making such a big deal out of multiple colors? I guess it's a calculated marketing decision? Maybe they think the Iphone will end up a fashion statement? Sorry, but I don't think Job's would care about different colors, or a fingerprint scan--at this point in history. I'm pretty sure hackers will find a way around around the scan pretty quick? Out of respect for Jobs, I'm more than content with my Iphone 4, and my Ipad 2. They get the job done, and their still perfect for my needs. I don't think I'll buy another mac book pro for a long time. I have a feeling I'll be able to buy parts forever?
In fact, Apple had a poster with all the different colored macs in a circle, and below that it just said "Yum".
Steve Jobs said Tim Cook isn't so much of a product guy, correct. But that was Steve's opinion. I don't necessarily agree with that sentiment.
And out of respect for jobs you're sticking with dated technology? I don't quite understand... If he were alive he'd probably push you to update your device.
I'm sure Steve Jobs understood this - since his return, Apple has consistently made emotional appeals, not technical ones. Their "innovations" are generally improving on the execution of existing technology (music players, smartphones, tablets) but packaging it in a way that people connect with.
Colour, on a device that you carry with you everywhere you go, is very much a part of this.
Resistive touch screen may not allow multi-touch, but at least I can use them when wearing gloves (and no - gloves with a capacitive finger tip don't count).
The evidence is also on the phone itself where it says "Designed by Apple in California"
But I'm super disappointed that Apple didn't target 5S battery life for dramatic improvement. The 5's battery life is already awful and it looks like 5S is even worse. Ugh.
with the exception of cellular talk time, the 5 and 5S are near the top...
Personally I couldn't live like that (nor can you probably, if I interpret the tone of your post correctly), partly because I don't want to be enslaved to charging partly because I would forget it anyway, so the only option left is to either buy a phone that's not so 'smart' hence doesn't starve the battery in a day or get a smartphone and don't use it's smart features. As far as I can see, there's just no way around it. Which is an utter shame of course. As a comparision: I've always been a portable audio fan and in that area there seems to actually have been an increase in battery life while for the phone market it seems to be the other way around. I have a semi-professional portable player/recorder and using two standard AA batteries it serves me well playing audio for over a month. Or actually so long I never counted, but will be easily over 40 hours. It's a joy to use compared to any phone I ever owned, except the fixed on on my desk :]
The problem with battery life:
1) It's already terrible. If I go out to a bar or whatever after work and I haven't charged it through the day to >75%, it will be dead most likely by the time I'm trying to get directions home/phone a taxi.
2) No VoLTE support, so you need to have both the 3G & 4G radios on when making a call and using data at the same time, which sucks.
3) iOS7 will likely allow much more aggressive multitasking by developers, which will reduce battery life further. This hasn't really been seen on these benchmarks but I think once developers start pushing through these things, battery life is going to take a nose dive.
4) iPhone batteries aren't user replacements and people use them very heavily. I imagine many people will easily do 500 cycles a year, which makes performance suck pretty quickly.
It's hard for me to justify from a 'need' perspective to go from my 4S to the 5s, since to be honest the 4S has no slowdown at all and is a great phone.
I'll probably end up donating it to my mum and moving her from dumbphone into smartphone land.
edit: I'm stuck in past. This comment is about PS3 not PS4.
To maintain backwards compatibility between legacy 32 bit and new 64 bit processes Apple will have to stick two copies of their library into RAM, plus any native applications running in 64 bit mode will consume more RAM than their 32 bit counterparts anyway (12%~ more).
I love how this review is basically "THIS IS THE MOST EXCITING S RELEASE EVER (but I cannot really explain why, here is me dismissing most of the new features of this phone: Evolutionary camera, 64 bit which is meaningless today, gimmicky fingerprint reader, faster A processor which makes it almost competitive with Intel's last generation, etc)."
I think it is entertaining that tons of Apple's fans have been claiming entirely without basis that this phone would have 2 GB of RAM in it and that was largely their explanation for the 64 bit-eating RAM-issue, now it only has 1 GB still I wonder how they'll magic that huge deficit away.
Also, 64-bit addressing may be "meaningless" today if you disregard memory mapping of content (into virtual memory), but , as stated in the review, the 64-bit architecture comes with couple of other improvements including increasing the # registers.
Another way to look at it: if you're not rendering video ... I think we've reached the point where faster (benchmarked) hardware adds little to no functional benefit. So why upgrade?
I have an iPhone, it makes a pretty great mobile telephone!
The ARM ISA has different legacy issues: the design makes it much more expensive than it otherwise would be to pipeline the CPU in order to get decent performance. The ISA was designed for an in-order CPU: at the time pipelining was something that mainframe / workstation class CPUs did. (ARM was designed in the very early 80s; Intel released a pipelined CPU in 1989 - the 486, and then only for simple instructions.)
For instance, every ARM32 assembly instruction has a bunch of condition codes which determine whether to execute the instruction depending on the state of the status bits in the program counter. You can also determine whether a given instruction will set the relevant status bits in the processor. This means you can do nice things like encode an if (R2 < 0) then (Add 1 to R3) else (Add 1 to R4) in just three instructions: one for the test, an instruction if the relevant flag is set & a second instruction to run if it's not set. No branches! You can also branch on any or all of the condition flags. This makes for very compact code. The trouble is that it's hell to pipeline because you have to keep track of all the possible states of the status bits and follow all the possible branch paths that result, whilst keeping track of all the dependencies.
They've also done things like simplify the exception handling so that the CPU needs fewer shadow registers, which again reduces power requirements.
Yeah same as x86 -> x86-64, but x86 was really starved in general purpose registers with only 6 GPR. Even in ARMv7, ARM had 2.5 times the number of registers of x86 making register pressure a much lower issue.
This means the performance gains from lowered register pressure are going to be significantly lower on ARM, as register pressure was much, much lower in the first place.
What CNet lacks in depth, it gains in breadth. CNet has far far more reviews of decent quality than any other site I know. In comparison, the few reviews that Anandtech / TechReport do are far far deeper than anything from CNet.
I think overall, I prefer TechReport over Anandtech.
If they continue this - the next gen MacBook Airs will be running the A8 or even A7x with full day battery life. Intel better have something disruptive up their sleeves!
24 hour battery life (instead of 12) and half the performance in a MacBook Air seems hardly worth it to me. To my mind that device is already more constrained by performance than battery life.
(Conversely I also don’t see ARM/Apple getting too slow to keep pace with Intel on the mobile side, so I don’t see them switching there to Intel, either.)
e: I know they had a stake in ARM at one point, but I'm unsure if they still do.
For those that haven't read the full review, here's a quote from Anand that addresses this topic:
As far as Macs go though, there's still a big gap between the A7 and where Intel is at with Haswell. The deficiency that Intel had in the ultra mobile space simply doesn't translate to its position with the big Core chips. I don't see Apple bridging that gap anytime soon.
Interesting comment was made that the A7 seems capable of driving a larger Retina screen than the iPhone, which gives credence to the rumour that the next Mini will shift to Retina, if they've managed to offset the battery life concerns as well anyway. The A7 does seem really rather impressive, I don't know hardware as well as I'd like, but that was some fairly effusive praise in the review.
Current two-factor authentication on the web combines something you know (password) with something you have (mobile phone with an app that generates tokens).
The parent is suggesting this could change to something you know (password) and something you are (fingerprint). It could easily be extended to include something you have by combining the fingerprint with a token generator on your iPhone.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-factor_authentication