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Comment by danielsju6 | Hacker News Reader

A lot of people miss how big of an advantage Apple is continually taking by being first to market.

People try to pin their mobile success on Apple fanboys or their "magic" user experience/ecosystem but Apple is simply just x-many months ahead of everyone's product roadmap and continually throwing curveballs at the rest of the players in the market. "Real world" benchmarks aside their 64-bit CPU has everyone else distracted, rethinking their product roadmaps, and demanding it in their devices while Apple works on it's next trick.

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There is no "magic" that having more computing power on a phone can enable. The vast majority of consumers are more than happy with the speed of their phone. The most impactful ways that Apple could significantly improve the iPhone right now would be to (a) double or triple the battery life, (b) make the screen unbreakable, and (c) make the screen bigger. These are the most common complaints I hear from iPhone users. Everything else really isn't that important. And I don't see any progress in any of those areas.

The screen size part is what keeps me on an android. With fat fingers its more important to me to be able to type out long messages without having to hit the backspace every few characters, that saves me more time then any speed increase that can be brought in the near term from 64bit processors.

a - I agree, I would pay for thicker/heavier iphone with 2x battery life. However this will fracture Apple's product lineup, thus economically unfeasible.

b - screen on iphone 5S is already very strong.

c - After lots of thinking I agree with Apple. Current form factor is just right for communication device [1]. If you need bigger screen, chances are you do not want a phone - you want a tablet.

[1] Iphone user here, take this with a grain of salt. Over 3 models of iphone I never had a case. Phone is small enough for a proper grip with one hand while using thumb to control it.

Anecdotal experience: I know 12 people with phones that have large screens. 7 of them had screens cracked due to dropping the phone. Every single one has a case (People who dropped their phones got a case after). What is the point of getting super light and thin phone just to put bulky case on it?

As someone who might have larger than average hands (I don't know), I find the iPhone rather small. I currently have a SGS3, and I find it a much better fit for my hand than the overly skinny (and previously too short) iPhone. However, I may very well be an outlier in that.

>c - After lots of thinking I agree with Apple. Current form factor is just right for communication device [1].

All that thinking got you one vote - unfortunately for apple, most votes want a bigger phone (the numbers don't lie).

>If you need bigger screen, chances are you do not want a phone - you want a tablet.

So now people buying larger phones don't really know what they want? This is typical, flawed Apple superiority complex thinking.

Who wants to carry a phone AND a tablet around (one in each pocket?) How is this even portable or feasible in most cases? No one wants to carry a tablet around with them everywhere they go. A larger phone is a logical compromise. Besides, economics is often the biggest decider. If someone really wants a tablet, but really needs a phone are they going to buy an iPhone AND an iPad? Can they even afford that? or can they really justify spending $1,000 for it when they can spend less than half of that for a well polished Android phablet?

Typical Apple fanboi downvotes without rebuttal or explanation.

> If you need bigger screen, chances are you do not want a phone - you want a tablet.

This kind of remarks is really annoying because it suggests that you know better than us (the people who want larger screens) when you really don't. Either that, or you are incredibly blind to the difference between a freaking tablet (7", designed for browsing on WiFi) and a telephone with a decently sized screen (4.7 ~4.8" compared to the 4" of the iPhone - this makes a HUGE difference).

I doubt this is a case of hubris, but rather of the Pareto principle. For 80% of all users, the iPhone is either the right size or they want a tablet. What you (and others making similar comments in reply) fail to account for is that this still leaves 20% of users who actually do want a bigger screen on their phone.

Yes, 20% of all users is still a lot of users, but it's not the 80% that Apple has traditionally targeted.

> Current form factor is just right for communication device [1]. If you need bigger screen, chances are you do not want a phone - you want a tablet.

Who are you to decide that for others? When I pick up an iPhone, the screen is way too small. I have a 5.2" display on my phone, and so 4" seems comically small.

And I also have a Nexus 7, so I can assure you that there's a huge difference between a 5" phone and a 7" tablet. The latter cannot substitute for the former.

> Anecdotal experience: I know 12 people with phones that have large screens. 7 of them had screens cracked due to dropping the phone

And in my anecdotal experience, everyone I know with a broken screen has an iPhone. So this sort of conjecturing isn't very helpful.

While others will value other things, I vote for (b) - longer battery life. I've hated the barely-one-day life of most phones, it's downright ridiculous. However, I'm a person willing to sacrifice "sleekness" for longer battery life, and because of that I have an extended battery for my current phone (which I highly recommend if you're ok with a thicker phone).

Lenovo already has the P780 with a 4000mAh battery which lasts for multiple days:

http://www.gsmarena.com/lenovo_p780-5544.php

I had a Sharp Actius MM10 in 2003, which in some respects was way ahead of where most of the market is today. Criticism centered on the lack of an internal CD-ROM (yeah) and video playback performance. But I could hack on something in Visual Studio for 6-8 hours with the extended battery. A quick search pulls up a Wired article that calls it a 'fugly black box' (mine was a silver Mg-alloy case actually), but people would ask me about it so frequently that I printed up an info card to hand out. I'm not even mentioning some of the more interesting features. Of course the thing was expensive, but so is a 13" Air today (and it doesn't come with a docking station). Then vmware came out and I was sure it wouldn't be long before I'd be able to dynamically share compute power between my laptop and workstation, when I plugged the former into the docking station. Then OQO showed up and I thought the same thing there. But all of it died, for various reasons.

Apple deserves credit for pushing a more aggressive roadmap than most, and I'll be buying another round of systems here shortly, but being 'first' isn't enough. The Transmeta chip in the MM10 was dual-core 128 bit VLIW with a soft x-86 translation layer. The next chip was 256 bit. Both were very low power devices for their day.

Joel Spolsky covers this well in his essay "Fire and Motion." http://joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000339.html

>Apple is simply just x-many months ahead of everyone's product roadmap

I don't know. I think the lack of water resistance makes the iphone obsolete for many.

That advantage is running out. You can only have a new revolutionary product every 30 years (this 64 bit chip's effect is quite oversold in this article). See Mac vs PC in the 90s. Apple is still playing the same game (Expensive, Closed and non expandable Hardware, limited hardware choices, Lone Wolf, act alone mentality, not reacting to consumer's requests because they smugly always know best) Android has filled in the role of PC. The difference now is that there is no Steve Jobs leadership and cult following to bring Apple to prominence after this era fades.

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