Where else do you want to look? Instagram? Facebook? It dominates those as well. Point-and-shoots are dead. While all professionals will prefer DSLRs, they only comprise a small part of the population. By any account iPhone cameras are the most popular. Anyway they're only saying popular, not "highest megapixel" or "highest quality" which would be something to be contended.
Undisputed? How? Also, if they have much deeper research, why don't they come up with a link or something to support their claim? Why is asking for a reference offending so many people here?
Undisputed in that in the 5 or so years they've been making it, it's been undisputed - even by competitors that would have good reason to prove it wrong.
We've been able to verify it from third party sources like Flickr for those 5 years as well.
People are annoyed at you because your original post was rudely curt and demanding for a throwaway marketing line that as I said above, we have no reason to doubt.
As much as you'd like them to, no company is ever going to thoroughly reference their press releases. If you want sources, the media contact details for Apple are readily available on their site.
If it's been undisputed in the time they've been making the claim - how is it disputed?
I'm honestly very confused about you. There seems to be a great communication gap here between you and the people responding to you that might be helped by you explaining your motivations in asking the question.
Why won't you accept Flickr as an indicative proxy as to the accuracy of the statement? Surely you realise it's impossible to provide a perfect measurement of all camera use for all photos published and unpublished in the world? I see no reason and you've provided none to not use proxies to give us some kind of answer.
What is an immensly popular device? "The iPhone"? Because they come out with new devices called that pretty regularly. And if you consider them all to be the same device you don't get to compare them to just one model of an android phone.
That flickr link helps because it shows specifically the iPhone 6 to be the device most people us to upload pictures to the service. But that's hardly a perfect metric.
So how do you "actually" ask for reference? What I've written is the most direct one can be (without caring about sugar coating my sentence). People wouldn't have minded had I written:
"I'm a long time fan of Apple and still love their products above any other company's, but I think some of their statements would get much more value if they support them with a third party reference like other companies do with asterisks and all, like a statement like their camera is most popular in the world could have been supported with some reference. "
I bet, that would look like a neutral and balanced statement to all and most people would be happy with it, but as you can see, it's easy to fake it. The truth is I'm tired of Apple's hyperbole and people should question them. If you make a claim, support it with facts, otherwise don't write it.
Even on Wikipedia it's disliked. Editors don't like cleanup tags because it signals that you care about some issue, but not enough to resolve it yourself and most tags languish on pages for years. (also people feel it clutters up the page and makes it look unsightly, especially since not everything needs a citation, only challenged statements) OP could have done a simple search to verify these claims or just thought if such a statement made sense. Sometimes you just have to take some things as givens or just decide how much you are willing to believe in them, not interrogate a press release, which lays its bias quite apparently from the start. Of course we should be skeptical about things that matter, especially outlandish or controversial claims, but imagine having a conversation in real-life where you couldn't rely on recollection, personal experience, and hearsay, and instead your friend said "citation needed" after every statement.
>> OP could have done a simple search to verify these claims
- OP (me) actually did do a simple (rather a little elaborated) search before writing that here. Yes, sometimes we do need to take things as 'given' and all, but it's also true that sometimes you do need to confront people when it becomes their habit of making hyperbolic claims.
The truth is, it's the general tendency of people to dislike someone asking for citations against the things they 'believe' are true, be it HN or wikipedia (but facts generally win on Wikipedia). This works similarly in religion.
Okay sorry for assuming otherwise, you can't really tell from such a succinct phrase. (btw, I ran a search query "is iphone the most popular camera" and the page is full of articles noting that it's the most popular on Flickr) I think the important question to ask is what the motive is for requesting a citation. Is it because you distrust the person making the statement? The statement itself? Does it have ramifications? (hence my point about it just being a press release) Or is it just because of curiosity? Sometimes it's fine to let some things go.
I mean, they don't even put an asterisk or something when they write that (e.g. "according to photos uploaded on Flickr"). In contrast, when Google writes Pixel's camera is the best, at least they put a star over there and write "according to DxOMark" somewhere at the bottom.
It's that brazenness that I don't like about Apple.
One thing I really like here (and not meaning it as a joke) is that when you look at the original iPhone and the iPhone 7 side by side they look very similar. Apple has stuck to their guns and kept on iterating, rather than chasing a new cool design for every release.
I think the double-glass sided 'jewel case' design introduced with the iPhone 4 is still the best aesthetic design for any consumer product ever. I know it's just not practical for the bigger phones though, hence they went back to a more conventional design. However yes, from the front not much has changed. The sheer iron-willed discipline it took to reduce the front face design down to one physical button from the start is still impressive.
My first month with the 4S was painful due to the sharp edges digging into my palm (insert relevant Tufte quote). I dislike the machined holes on the bottom of my 6 for similar reasons, good riddance headphone jack.
iPhone 4 was my first iPhone and indeed it is the best looking. However, from the fear of breaking it it was also my only iPhone that I have kept in the case all of the time.
They were surprisingly sturdy. I dropped my 4S plenty of times over almost a half decade, and the only thing that ever even chipped the glass was a bounce off the plastic faceplate of my 30-year-old Technics amplifier.
I had the same experience you had. Some reasons for this: the glass was thicker, more shatter-proof but less scratch resistant, and smaller in area (large sheets of glass at the same thickness break more easily) compared to the latest phones.
What really annoys me is the switch from steel to aluminum, because the latter metal's sole palpable virtue in this context is its lightness. I've already had to take a file to my SE to smooth out a lip created by a drop from waist height onto bathroom tile, and I've only had the bloody thing for ten months! My 4S would've laughed off a drop like that - and did, two or three times.
The greater scratch resistance of the new glass is nice, but I'd be willing to pay the cost in added weight for a more resilient body and frame. Alas, Apple does what Apple does, and has unaccountably failed to consult me.
After a few iPhones my iPhone 7 is actually the first one i got a case for - I found it more difficult to hold and it always felt like I was at more risk of dropping it.
> The sheer iron-willed discipline it took to reduce the front face design down to one physical button from the start is still impressive.
Impressive, sure, but not ideal. As a result of this commitment, you can, variously, click, double click, double tap (not actually click, just touch like on a capacitive screen), long press the button. Furthermore, many of these actions have context-sensitive responses, like opening the camera from the lock screen or bringing up music controls if that's playing. And other common functions, like "back" are relegated to various icons and locations on the touchscreen depending on the app.
On other phones, the common "back", "home", and "switch app" functions are on separate buttons rather than being different interactions with a single button.
The Apple single-button phone, like the single-button mouse, is less discoverable and less easy to use, while being better looking and easier for some common use cases. Unlike the single-button mouse, though, I think it's likely to stick around for a long time.
I am curious about the context you mention. The button itself, as far as I know has only one case when the context is specific. That is if you are on the homescreen, but not on the first page, a single click will bring you to the home page. Otherwise it will bring you to the last page you have been on.
The camera/music controls are linked with the control center but that is operated differently. Double tapping is definitely a weird choice for accessibility.
Also, you can also triple click the home button as an accessibility shortcut. But it has to be enabled.
Yes but software on other phones is inconsistent about the meaning of the extra buttons.
The Back button for instance can be infuriatingly unpredictable to the point where you just revert to the touch screen. It just isn’t productive to have to wonder how many screens back you will go, or if you will end up in another application, or if the button will be ignored completely.
What apps do you see this with? There are arguments against the android button model but your point seems like an odd one. In all of the apps I use the back button (the only button they get control over) acts very predictably.
Has the behavior changed recently? Back when I used android the back button moved to the "previous screen", but sometimes it skipped some pages (for example in a three step checkout it would go all the way to the beginning). But the worst was that it could actually go all the way back to the home screen or even switch to a different application.
I can't recall an app ever skipping pages on me. As for back to the home screen I think that is intended behavior, if you open and app and hit back you should end up back at the home screen. And switching apps is intended too, if you came from another app it should take you back there. It works much like the back button on your web browser, it doesn't navigate a particular site per-say, it just takes you back in the history of "activities" from which you came.
That's also true of the software. As a former hobbyist Windows Phone developer I saw two major reboots or overhauls of the platform in a few years (if we count the previous Windows Mobile system it is then 4 different OS in a small slice of time). This lead to functional regressions and Microsoft not able to came up with functional parity of concurrent platforms.
On the other hand I'm amazed at how long Apple is keeping and evolving iOS and its API.
Similar? I still have my original iPhone. I'm staring at it now, and it's beautiful. The Leica-inspired iPhone 4 was different, but it was also beautiful.
The iPhone 6 and 7, on the other hand: there's something weird about the proportions (eg: the Touch id ridge, button isnt flush, weird two-tone plastic ridge on the back). The thinness of the phone makes the curved aluminum seem cheap and fragile. That Camera lens bump isn't attractive. They look no better than your average Android phone to me.
No doubt they are doing a great job and have achieved some remarkable milestones, but still calling it a "revolution" a decade down the track is stretching things a little IMO...
EDIT: To allay the seeming confusion - I am saying it WAS definitely a revolution when it first came out. It is just that I don't think you can still chant and wave the "Viva La Revolution!" banners 3650 days later when it has just been a series of iterative changes during that time.
I'm not sure what you would classify as a revolution - in Apple's case, they pretty much set the standard for what smartphone design would be after the release of the first, were the subject of countless imitations, and IIRC, Google pretty much restarted the Android project once they saw the original iPhone [1].
I'd say they made some pretty major strides and set the standard for what a smartphone would look like for the years to come, and by and large all phones still follow the iPhones original path. Sure, different phones and different Android releases now do stuff different and sometimes better than iOS, but for the most part, it's all just following the iPhone.
I would never argue that is wasn't a revolution when it first came out a decade ago. There is little doubt that it changed the landscape for smartphones and spurred plenty of competitive efforts etc.
Its just that now it has had about 7 major iterations (not counting 'S' models etc.), it is really in the 'consolidation' stage of the battle. The storming of the castle is done, now the army is battening down for the long siege and the door to door skirmishing, slowly moving the front forward.
The only way Apple (or any manufacturer) can claim another 'revolutionary' step is if they come out with a foldable display screen, or a 30 day battery life or similar.
A better metaphor might be that of the battle, and the war, long since won, and the victorious army having spent most of the last ten years getting lazy and soft as it forgets why it won in the first place, still reveling in the fading glow of glories past - while, somewhere, an upstart as yet unknown to the world makes ready to dethrone it in its turn.
It's a shame. The only smartphones I've ever had have been iPhones, and I don't want that to change. But I'm not seeing much reason lately to believe that Apple can continue going from strength to strength.
Ah, okay, I understand your point and see my misunderstanding. I would still suggest they have more sway in feature pushing than any other manufacturer, insomuch that when Apple sets something in stone, even the very unpopular removal of the headphone jack, others follow suit (not widely copied, but a few manufacturers followed suit with flagship devices)
I would agree that their newest changes aren't revolutionary in my mind and are more iterative, just spec bumps and features added, but everyone is still taking their cues from Apple when it comes to functionality.
> it has had about 7 major iterations (not counting 'S' models etc.)
I would argue that some of the S models are more significant iterations than the main numbered ones. Siri shipped with the 4s, the Appstore shipped with the 3G (IMO it's fair to call the 3G and 3GS "S models" of the original).
You don't remember the crappy screens, overall build quality, user interfaces, apps (mobile java lol), performance of phones in the pre-iPhone era? All those problems went away when the iPhone set the bar in these fields.
The point made in the comment you are responding to is that we will also still remember those phones 40 years from now: when do you decide the revolution is over?
Exactly. A revolution places a new king on the throne. Once the king is installed, it is no longer a revolution, but simply a reigning monarchy... until the next revolution comes along.
As an aside - I wonder what the average time span of a revolutionary war is? I tried Googling, but there doesn't seem to be a definitive answer to this - possibly because a 'revolution' isn't measured as a span in time, but rather as a momentary event (usually marked by the start date of the revolution). Anything after that seems to be considered a 'war' or a 'rebellion'.
The only ones I can relate to Nokia was internal wars between Symbian and Maemo units, and the fact that Symbian C++ tooling and C++ dialect were a pain to use.
Virtually every new phone released today looks like the iPhone. That's your revolution right there. There are many technological advantages the iPhone brought. First and foremost the capacitative touchscreen. Nokia didn't go with the times and that was there end. Wether it was caused by internal wars or a stubborn leadership is irrelevant.
The entire phone market is unrecognizable. Blackberry, Nokia and Palm are gone. Microsoft is irrelevant. Multi-touch is everywhere. Pens and styluses are relegated to art accessory status. Finally, the modern Apple inspired smartphone has become the dominant computing platform on the planet. It's the primary way most people interact with computers and networks.
By value the Apple computing ecosystem is utterly and completely dominant. Their annual revenue is $215 Bn. That's about the same as Microsoft, Intel and Google put together. By a recent estimate they make 104% of the profits in the mobile industry (taking into account other company's losses) and for along time made more profit in the PC market than all the Windows OEMs put together (edited - not sure if that's still true).
I worked in telecoms back in 2006. Nobody knew what a smartphone should look like. There were all kinds of crazy ideas that the mobile handset form factor could come in various different shapes with curved screens, circular screens, voice interfaces with no screen. Apple showed us what the future would look like and why. They figured it all out and got it right first time not just in terms of physical design but multi-touch interface, app store, open internet connectivity (remember WAP?). It was a slow-burn revolution though. It took time for them to scale up production and perfect the product, and for the market itself to catch up to what was happening so a lot of people just didn't realize what was happening or why.
edit - ok, sorry if I misunderstood your point. Fortunately I didn't down vote you, but I usually don't when I reply to people. I think the above stands on it's own though.
I expect that either Apple or Samsung will soon bring the trend of naming things without a number, and having the year be an implicit addition. Other companies have done it (Amazon and Motorola) but neither has anywhere near the market share, and definitely not the contingent of customers who buy each year's model, of those two.
It's not a hugely popular opinion, but I'm still happier with the iPhone than any other phone currently on the market.
Not only do I find it nicer to use (which is somewhat subjective), but I still feel that Apple are standing up for user rights (e.g. FBI/government requests to make phones less secure) more than any other mobile manufacturer.
The nice thing about the iPhone series is that you can use an older model and not feel left out. I am one of the every other version upgrade types and while with my plan I could replace the phone each time there is an upgrade for no real cost it just never has seemed necessary.
I did swap out of the version 4 simply because my lack of grace meant I had to replace the back glass more than once.
My 4S got unusably slow (with even keystrokes taking ~75ms to register) after the iOS 8 update. How have you avoided such mishaps, which I gather are pretty common when putting newer iOS on older devices?
(Yes, I turned off the fancy stuff like Springboard background parallax. It helped but not enough.)
Do you live in the Rainforest without internet access ? I mean.. even the simple action of switching on the light of your living room , triggers data that later on will be sold and use by third party companies... please.
> Standing up for your right to not use your device as you please?
What right? Most people (but not enough) have some sense that privacy is an actual right. The number of people who think that it's a right that every device you own with an MCU or CPU should be a completely open general programming platform is a fraction of a percent.
> Standing up for your right to lock-in your data with a single vendor?
What lock-in? You can have all your iPhone data (contacts, notes, etc.) on Gmail if you want, you can have all your photos synchronized to Dropbox. Which data are you referring to?
I have to be honest and say that this comment comes off as a knee-jerk reaction. I mean, you probably have some valid criticism in there if you worded it better. It would definitely be much better for us geeks if iPhone was more open. But a right? Get real.
> What right? Most people (but not enough) have some sense that privacy is an actual right. The number of people who think that it's a right that every device you own with an MCU or CPU should be a completely open general programming platform is a fraction of a percent.
Ultimately, those are the same thing. There is no privacy if you can't inspect it and verify that it's upholding its promises.
> What lock-in? You can have all your iPhone data (contacts, notes, etc.) on Gmail if you want, you can have all your photos synchronized to Dropbox. Which data are you referring to?
If you've used one word processor, how do you open them in another without using any external service?
> There is no privacy if you can't inspect it and verify that it's upholding its promises.
But unless you're a top-end OS developer AND a top-end embedded systems designer at the same time, how are you going to analyse something as complex as the iPhone and verify that?
Sure, you can see the code / source / raw binary. But actually analysing and verifying every part for security or privacy concerns - bearing in mind you have to consider all the possible interactions this code can generate - and that's before you even get to the hardware interactions - is still beyond 99% of developers, never mind normal people.
I was speaking to "There is no privacy if you can't inspect it and verify that it's upholding its promises" actually, and I probably agree with you, as your point applies just as much to open source.
> Ultimately, those are the same thing. There is no privacy if you can't inspect it and verify that it's upholding its promises.
If you want to go down that road the software you need to inspect includes all the software with access to your data.
In android's case this includes all sorts of proprietary code running in google's infrastructure that you'll never see. If you enable all the features of a modern android phone the amount of data google tracks about you is staggering. All that data is available to any government that asks for it directly from google. Google is actively incentivised to data mine, use and sell my data. I don't think they sell it - but thats the direction the incentive arrows point.
If you want to roll your own, or use one of the non-google android forks then I respect that decision from a privacy standpoint. (Although my security engineer voice is much more nervous.) But stock android is a privacy disaster (at least if you worry about google / the US govt). The ability to root your device is nice, but in google's ecosystem the computers that really matter are the servers.
> Funny that, does Apple allow push notifications without telling APNS about the notification message yet?
Yes, of course they do. That's what remote-notification UIBackgroundMode is for. How did you think encrypted messaging apps like WhatsApp and Signal showed message previews?
I don't really feel my data is locked in to any great degree.
I don't use iCloud for backup. I use my own mail provider. What lock-in are you referring to? I think it would be pretty painless for me to move to Android if I wanted.
I agree the AppStore is more limiting than some alternatives, but overall I think Apple have more interest in user rights than Google.
Android development is not paid for through licensing fees (to any great degree) it's paid for by advertising via Google being the default service/search provider on the platform. This puts you in the position of the advertiser being the customer and the phone user being more like the product.
I personally prefer the Apple model where the phone user is the customer. However I do realize it's not entirely ideal. It just feels like the best option currently available to me.
I know a guy who thinks it's great that, when a process pegs his phone's CPU, he can drop into a root shell and kill -9 it from top.
I think it's great that in five years of iPhone ownership that's not a problem I've ever had, or even had to think about. And the only Apple service I use is the app store.
Horses for courses. If you want total control and software freedom, you won't prefer an iPhone. If you want the closest available approximation to appliance-level reliability, you won't prefer anything else.
The other issue for me actually is that while I might like to drop into a shell sometimes I don't really feel Android phones offer me much in that regard either.
Android is far for a standard Linux/UNIX system. And it's hard to build one on top of Android because of their use of BIONIC rather than glibc.
So, I feel that Android has taken Linux and crippled it to suit their ends. To me jailbroken iPhones felt much more like standard UNIX phones than Android phones.
My ideal phone doesn't exist. But he iPhone is still the nearest match right now.
I use macOS every day, and I love it. And it is me who owns the hardware, and who is root on the device (I can't say I own the software). If I want to kill a process on macOS, I am free to do this. I don't have this freedom on iOS. On my Android phone I have the freedom to root the device (which is sort of supported by Fairphone), and if ever the OS isn't supported anymore I can just run CM or LineageOS or stock Android on it myself. You don't have that liberty on iOS devices. Jailbreaking on iOS isn't very feasible because you end up having to run code to exploit iOS. Which means your phone has a known vulnerability which you want to get fixed. But you can't without the source.
Right. But, to my earlier point, you never really need to, either, because the OS does a good enough job of managing resources that such intervention is not required. I'm sure there exist corner cases, but having never hit one in half a decade of extensive use, I am prepared to argue they are vanishingly rare.
That's the tradeoff: a lower granularity of control over the system, in exchange for a system well enough designed that such granularity is not required for stable and performant operation. There's an argument to be made that the tradeoff shouldn't exist, but that's theoretical unless Craig Federighi is actually on the panel. Here in the world of things that are, it's worth keeping in mind that the compromise is exactly that: yes, we give something up, but we get something in exchange for it, too.
> Right. But, to my earlier point, you never really need to, either, because the OS does a good enough job of managing resources that such intervention is not required.
What do you mean? I'm not aware of any SSH which fulfils my needs on iOS. Or Android for that matter. On Jolla (and MeeGo/Maemo) you had a CLI at your command. The conundrum is you don't know what you're missing unless you had it before to begin with. Case in point: there's an entire generation of children raising up with touchscreens. That exposure has a price.
What do you consider the best browser on macOS? I don't consider Safari the best one. YMMV. At least you and I got the freedom to run another browser on macOS (those versions of Firefox and Chrome on iOS are not the real deal). I got the freedom to run Tmux, Vim. I got the freedom to compile my own version of OpenSSH which includes a patch for additional functionality. I get to decide which browser extensions I get to run (without having to rely on Apple to decide which extensions are allowed for Safari). I get to configure ssh and sshd. I'd like to take the risk myself of taking it for granted when/if it breaks.
I am actually OK with all of this as long as I don't have to rely overly on my phone. However, smartphones have become so important now, and I end up having and needing a MBP to make up for it. There's going to be a time where the computers (smartphones, tablets, etc) running iOS are so powerful that you can easily run a lot more on them. And, with that progress, they become less of an embedded device and therefore the freedom to decide what you run is increased.
Finally, there's Apple who decides who's in and who's out. Americans are totally cool with violence of all sorts and kinds, but as soon as the first thing a baby sucks on is shown its suddenly drama. I find that bollocks, and I don't want to be scrutinised to such a culture deciding on what I am and am not allowed to run on my device. The device I (not an American) worked hard for to afford, the device I bought, and the device I own (not rent). No, Google isn't perfect either; Google earns money via advertising, Google just blocked an anti adware extension in Chrome called Ad Nauseam, and they also don't allow certain software in GCM.
I'm talking about having to sysadmin one's phone. You seem to be roving all over the map, from cultural standards of sex vs. violence to an advertising provider's choices in walled garden curation. I'm confused.
Blink is good if you need Mosh support; Prompt 2 is arguably better if you don't. But I get the impression GP has more on his mind than the choice of terminal emulator/SSH client app, although I remain rather puzzled exactly what point he's trying to make.
You say crippled, one might say made it useful for the cause. One huge feature of Android was and is the application packaging, which is a PITA on desktop Linux to this date.
> I think it's great that in five years of iPhone ownership that's not a problem I've ever had
I wonder what it is that your acquaintance and I do differently than you? I've been an iPhone user for a bit less than two years, and I am frustrated with it almost every day. Of course, the same was true of my HTC and Samsung Android phones previously, and even to some degree of the Nokia N900 (still the best phone I ever had).
It is not a common occurrence, but every now and then I do have some issue where my iPhone freezes and I have to reboot it to get it to come back. More commonly, miscellaneous things go wrong, like text in some areas becoming invisible, or opening an application showing me a blank screen for twenty seconds before the application either comes up or silently quits for no apparent reason. Most frustratingly, the sequence of touches I need to go through to do something requires me to react to each individual screen that results, rather than being something that I can do all at once, or even just being fast enough that I'm not paused, waiting, while some application screen takes its time loading.
If the delays were consistent, I wouldn't be very upset about it, because I would expect a certain time in between each action. If the phone could keep up the UI interactions, then that would be even better.
And typing lag... don't get me started. :(
I feel like expectations for hardware that is unrelated to the function of my phone has gone way, way up (thinness, smooth edges, tiny bezels) and the attention to the actual functioning of the phone in a consistent and timely manner is now much worse than it used to be, all around.
Well, I'm running 9.3.5 on an SE, so there's that.
In general I tend to agree with those who argue that Apple's peaked and is going downhill, and I accordingly expect that, whatever the new bells and whistles, iOS 10 will work less well for things I actually do every day (like typing!) than iOS 9 does, which in turn has been a regression from iOS 8. The hardware's not improving, either, and I don't think Apple has correctly understood occurrences like the difference between expected and actual demand for the SE versus the 7 and 7+.
But, as best I can judge from the experience of Android-owning acquaintances and colleagues, for all iOS' and the iPhone's flaws, it's still by far the most solidly reliable smartphone platform on the market, and that's what counts the most for me. Others who feel differently will make different choices, and that's fine. I don't see why people seem to want to make such a big fight about it.
>Standing up for your right to lock-in your data with a single vendor?
Apple didn't lock me in, I gladly locked myself in, because Apple's ecosystem is cohesive in a way that nobody else even comes close to.
I love being able to make and receive calls and texts from my MacBook, I love having my documents in the cloud waiting for me wherever I am, I love being able to start browsing a site on my laptop and transfer it seamlessly to my phone on my way out the door, I love being able to take photos while I'm out and have them sitting on my PC before I even get home, and most of all I love that all of these things just happen without me even having to think about it.
There are a million different options for me, I could very easily switch to Android and use a dozen different services like Dropbox and Flickr and whatever the messaging app du jour is on Android these days to achieve the same results, but why on earth would I want to?
Google docs, drive and photos do those things and way better than apple imo. If the cohesiveness of the ecosystem is your most important measure, google is second to none.
Great, so that's one small part of the ecosystem covered, how about handoff between apps on my phone and apps on my laptop? How about a unified messaging system that lets me send SMS messages and make phone calls from my laptop?
Google is fine if all you need is the sliver Google offers, and if you're okay with Google doing their level best to violate your privacy, but there's so much more to Apple's ecosystem that nobody has replicated right now.
Sending SMS from the laptop can be nice for the same reasons I sometimes use the web versions of WhatsApp, Messenger and Telegram (days of long conversations), but making calls... Do they hand over to the phone if you want to walk to another room without bringing the laptop with you? I start only business calls on my laptop with Skype or Hangout, because I know I'll be at the keyboard working while speaking. Calls with friends, those start on the phone almost always.
App integration between phone and laptop looks nice but in fact for most people all it matters is email and files, mostly pictures and musing. Those are covered by Google and possibly by Dropbox, plus some streaming service.
Anyway, yes, even a slight edge over the competitors is better than no edge.
Yes... FaceTime handles both audio and video calls so that you can unlock your phone and the call transfers to the handset. It's really, really convenient. Throw in an iPad and the Handoff/Coherence features are really, really awesome.
Totally agree with you. And when you use the apple watch, if you pay attention to details, it's an incredible and fascinating miniaturisation of a computer. It just amazing how well crafted is the user interface ( people can say and shoot critics all day the long , but , I take my hat out when I see the apple watch user interface)
Indeed, the watch is great. I'm not such a fan of the iPhone for various reasons, primarily that I find the interface a bit clunky and very much dislike the locked bootloader, App Store and so on.
But, to use Android Wear on an Android phone would involve activating various Google account settings I don't want to turn on.
> It just amazing how well crafted is the user interface ( people can say and shoot critics all day the long , but , I take my hat out when I see the apple watch user interface)
huh? The Apple Watch user interface is the worst of the smartwatches on the market. Even Apple themselves were practically apologizing for how slow and crappy the Applewatch UI was during the last WWDC event. Apple had to completely remove what they had previously touted as core features (side button for friends/heartbeat, Glances) in previous watchOS versions. Yet it's still a clusterfuck without an always-on display. AndroidWear is more simpler/intuitive and Samsung Gear is more elegant with the rotating bezel
I've tried both Android Wear (Moto 360, mainly) and the Apple Watch. Both of these devices were horribly slow when I first had them but with OS updates both have improved and, whilst not incredibly quick, are usable.
I also tried a Pebble Time; the display being always on and the longer battery life didn't really make any difference and the non-touchscreen UI seemed much more fiddly to me.
Have you tried iOS3? Everything you were saying was totally true on the original Watch, but I t got a major UX overhaul right down to the fundamental interaction paradigm and, in my mind, improved a lot. Between that and the dual-core chips in the new watches it's considerably better than it was.
The UI was slow, but it wasn't crappy. The UI was excellent on watchOS1 and I think, now that they've removed most of the delay and added the Dock in, watchOS3 is amazing.
I'm not sure about it. I think most people are concerned about their privacy 'from' google, not Google's ability to protect their data from rest of the world. If it's the latter, I trust Google. For example, Google was the first one to start voluntarily publishing government's requests as transparency reports, which others had to follow. Even technically, they have done great deal of work (if you regularly read their blogs) to protect my data from unintended parties.
If it's the former, however, then it's arguable and a little subjective so I won't go into that.
> Google has a terrible track record when it comes to protecting their user's privacy (and security to a second degree)
Security to a second degree? One of the (valid) criticism to Android is that OEMs don't provide firmware updates or at least security and reliability fixes. This is a fair claim; you need to be careful about this if you decide to buy an Android phone (although there's the option to root a phone and install CM or LineageOS).
Google however in this case rules correctly by example. They've been updating Android firmware for their devices regularly, up till 2 years after purchase of device. If you want a secure Android phone, software-wise a recent Google device is one of your safest bets. Motorola's track record pre Lenovo was also good. Ever since Lenovo bought Motorola, not so much.
Of course, the privacy issue stands (insofar to profiling and internally in Google as they profit from knowing as much of you so they can advertise effectively) but that is the price of any Google product. That is where Google and Apple differ (at this time of writing; it can change, just look at Microsoft).
Yeah I meant the OEM situation. If google cared for Android user's security there would've been a certificate a long time ago. Where Apple might be overprotective (certs for charging cables), Google is absolutely negligent.
Eh? On the contrary; the iPhone appears to be the most popular phone on the market. Although there is not 'one' iPhone. There is the iPhone 6, 6S, 7, 7 plus, and the small SE.
For me, I'd like a small phone which I can easily hold in one hand. One I can remain using various years. Of which I can replace the battery myself. And, where it is I who decides which software I run (ie. not a review time ran by an American corporation). Of those 4 factors, sadly only the SE covers two (since iOS will run for say 3-4 years on SE). I'm also a proponent of longevity and reducing e-waste and while I cannot replace the battery of an iPhone myself the iPhones have a relatively large resale value, which is a plus compared to a lot of Android devices.
> I still feel that Apple are standing up for user rights (e.g. FBI/government requests to make phones less secure) more than any other mobile manufacturer.
Its easier to just buy a phone from a company who can't comply with such ridiculous claims from the US government. Imagine Apple was based in Ireland. Suddenly, the claim to insert a backdoor for the FBI in every iPhone is more ridiculous.
That was one of the reasons why I bought a phone from a company based in the same country as where I live.
> Its easier to just buy a phone from a company who can't comply with such ridiculous claims from the US government.
I think there's value in challenging the US government on these issues. It also helps set the tone in general.
Also, which non-US phone would you suggest? The only real alternative is Android. While there are various vendors, the software is almost completely written by Google. And therefore open to the possibility of a backdoor (or other) requests by the US government.
> I think there's value in challenging the US government on these issues. It also helps set the tone in general.
Sure, but a lot was and is also being decided behind the screens.
> The only real alternative is Android.
Depends on use cases. Also, there are Android derivative works.
> Also, which non-US phone would you suggest?
The Fairphone 2 allows one to run a completely open source version of Android which doesn't rely on Google [1]. But there are other alternatives as well. Jolla, for example.
> And therefore open to the possibility of a backdoor (or other) requests by the US government.
Is the software compiled deterministically?
Also, the hardware of nearly every phone is assembled in China. The chips nearly all come from China (Fairphone tried to work around it; couldn't). And therefore open to the possibility of a backdoor (or other) requests by the Chinese government.
> And therefore open to the possibility of a backdoor (or other) requests by the US government.
Almost all the recent features on android phones require uploading crazy amounts of personal information to google's servers. While I had an android phone every new feature felt like a faustian bargain - "Let us store a bit more information about you and we'll make your phone better! C'mon it'll be fiiiine"
Governments don't need to touch your device when its uploading copies of everything to google's servers anyway. They can just ask google for the data directly.
And to be clear about what we're talking about, if you say yes to all the prompts (which I bet 90+% of people do) then google stores location history, audio recordings of all 'ok google' requests, email, contacts, call history, search history and a list of installed applications (so they know which 3rd parties to go after for more data). I don't know if they store SMSes, and I'm not sure what the update frequency of the location data is. But if you use google services, there's not much else for a device level backdoor to do.
For practical purposes, does the difference really matter? Most consumer phones come with Google services on them. Building a usable ROM without Google services on them is not an easy task.
Not only is it an extremely easy task for someone who wants such a thing, it's already been done and is widely available pre-build for a plethora of devices with projects like LineageOS (risen from CyanogenMod), AOSP, CopperheadOS etc...
And if you choose non-Google Android, you don't get a lot of the features that make Android, Android. Google has been close sourcing huge chunks of Android over the years.
Their iphone is certainly the "least bullshit" smartphone , with few gimmicks, reliability and more productive choices (lately they 're trying hard to ruin that however). I dislike their desktop and laptop OSs stronlgy, but i think they achieve the best balance with the iPhone.
But i could never believe the "user rights" thing. They may stand up in a few cases, but ultimately this kind of thing lies beyond their reach. I don't trust any phone maker with data.
It possibly lies beyond their reach, and ultimately we may be fighting a losing battle.
But there are two point really:
1. I think it's worth fighting (and they have had some success).
2. May telecoms vendors have volunteered more information than required in the past, I think it's unlikely Apple would.
Moveover, just having a large company challenge these issues changes the political environment.
They don't have any success, the phone in question was unlocked and Apple tried to help. And Apple was/is part of PRISM, they already have/are volunteering more info then required.
Apple might not be perfect, but they are ahead of the alternatives in terms of privacy and security.
Apple builds iOS to sell hardware. Google builds Android to vacuum up more data to sell.
Have you had a look at the iOS Security white paper [1]?
"Spotlight Suggestions never sends exact location, instead blurring the location on the client before sending."
"iOS also uses a randomized MAC address [...] so it can’t be used to persistently track a device by passive observers of Wi-Fi traffic."
Spotlight: "Unlike most search engines, however, Apple’s search service does not use a persistent personal identifier across a user’s search history to tie queries to a user or device; instead, Apple devices use a temporary anonymous session ID for at most a 15-minute period before discarding that ID."
Apple Pay: "Full card numbers are not stored on the device or on Apple servers. Instead, a unique Device Account Number is created, encrypted, and then stored in the Secure Element. This unique Device Account Number is encrypted in such a way that Apple can’t access it."
iMessage: "Apple does not log messages or attachments, and their contents are protected by end-to-end encryption so no one but the sender and receiver can access them. Apple cannot decrypt the data."
FaceTime: "The audio/video contents of FaceTime calls are protected by end-to-end encryption, so no one but the sender and receiver can access them. Apple cannot decrypt the data."
"Location Services can be turned off using a single switch in Settings, or users can approve access for each app that uses the service. [...] Additionally, users are given fine-grained control over system services’ use of location information."
Plus you have fine-grained controls for access to microphone, camera, pictures, etc. per app. Has Android caught up with that, or is it still all or don't use the app?
Even if Google is worse, that doesn't make Apple good, it's not a two player market. I can't speak for stock android, but the fine grained controls are available in CyanogenMod, and apps are available that have most of the features you mention. Additionally, those apps are free software, so I don't have to blindly trust a member of PRISM that they are secure.
All of those features don't matter if there's a backdoor, and from what I read of the FBI case there is one they just foolishly closed it.
It possibly lies beyond their reach, and ultimately we may be fighting a losing battle.
But there are two point really:
1. I think it's worth fighting (and they have had some success).
2. May telecoms vendors have volunteered more information than required in the past, I think it's unlikely Apple would.
Moveover, just having a large company challenge these issues changes the political environment.
I used to have this opinion but I find the iphone increasingly frustrating.
First the constant nagging for apple services (iCloud, Apple Pay, Apple Music, etc). I have to opt out to each of them every time they push any minor (but mandatory) update to iOS.
Then the removal of the audio jack. I just have no appetite for dongles or additional batteries to manage and I need to be able to charge my iphone when I listen to my music.
Then the UI that used to be quite natural now has hundred of hidden gestures, that either make the UI non intuitive, or trigger when trying to do something else.
I'd like them to improve it. I have very appetite to switch to android, which I find a lot more problematic from a privacy point of view. But that doesn't look like the direction of the world.
> Then the removal of the audio jack. I just have no appetite for dongles or additional batteries to manage and I need to be able to charge my iphone when I listen to my music.
How about bluetooth headphones? AirPods or otherwise? I highly recommend them. I happened to receive a pair of powerbeats wireless2 headphones a while back and while they're not perfect, using regular wired headphones feels incredibly archaic these days.
However, I'm far less happy with the iPhone than the smartphone that I was expecting in the early 00s. I mean, why are we still stuck with this thing that we hold? It's like the Jetsons' version of a Bell handset. I was expecting on-body networking, heads-up display, virtual keyboard and pointer, etc. OK, so we have decent a decent speech-to-text interface. But it's not usable for actual work. /rant
Heads-up display: Google Glass was weird. The focus was on "gargoyle" stuff, not on AR. The display needs to integrate with and enhance reality. Not a small area in a corner.
Speech-to-text interface: That works very well for me. For short messages, anyway. Proofreading and editing is essential, however. To avoid embarrassment and confusion.
On body networking and heads up display seem like they'll never take off. Apple prices things way too high for the Watch and anything like Glasses to go mainstream. Not many people can invest what I'm guessing is at least 2k in personal use hardware. Plus I envision a lot of people calling it dorky, in general. I day dreamed the same though. I'm wondering when my everything machine will be my phone though. I.e. Dock it into a laptop shell or desktop dock for such orientations.
I would switch to a Google Phone as soon as an Airdrop-esque solution emerges.
There is nothing more pitiful than being offline on vacation and someone with an amazing flagship android phone can't share the videos with everyone. And then their phone predictably gets lost or explodes.
15 years in and bluetooth file sending is still horrible and basically nonexistent, Apple's airdrop is pretty amazing. That'll keep me in the Apple ecosystem for now.
I've been an android user forever and my frustrations with the latest Android version has finally pushed me to try an iPhone.
It's amazing. Especially Apple Pay. I could never get my Android to work with mobile payments for any of my banks in Canada... Apple Pay just works beautifully.
The slightly weaker phone is worth it for the really top notch user experience. And it seems like iPhone is better programmed or optimized, because the performance feels waaaaay better than my latest gen "powerful" Android.
Google Wallet definitely had problems, but it is worth noting that it was also launched years ahead of Apple Pay when NFC payment systems in most countries was more limited. Android Pay, launched after Apple Pay, works similarly well in my experience so at least we finally have decent smartphone adoption of NFC payments.
And maybe that's exactly where Apple shines... they wait until they can get the tech to a place where it's usable and accessible. Android Pay and Google Wallet were both ahead of their time but, unfortunately, to their detriment.
I have and Android phone with my bank's app that supports mobile payments. I have my default card set for NFC payments, so it is simple as touching the finger print scanner while I tap and it works...not sure how Apple Pay differs that much.
There's 23 years between the Macintosh in 1984 and the iPhone in 2007. Real paradigm shifts in computing are rare. People who think the iPhone is going to be supplanted by whatever en vogue technology is being hyped in the media today should keep that in mind. Especially considering that Apple still sells PCs 40 years into its life (how many computer companies have gone the way of the dinosaur in that time?) and has a virtual lock on the high end of that market.
That's a good point, but if you believe that the rate of technological advancement is still increasing as it has been throughout modern history, you would expect each successive paradigm shift to come more quickly than the last (aside from some noise, obviously). Of course, the shift may not come in a field we currently think of as being involved with personal computing. (Much like we wouldn't have thought of cellphones as such in the 90s.)
I don't think the pace of technological advancement is increasing. I think it probably peaked some time before the year 2000, possibly around 1990. It's still pretty fast, but gradually decelerating.
Individual technologies each follow their own advancement curve. Jet and rocket engine advancement flattened out in the 60s and 70s. Moore's Law is history. Rising life expectancy are now mainly about expanding long life to more people, not extending how long the longest lived survive.
New technologies generally have a slow start, then a sharp rise in performance/drop in cost, then those advances level off. But where are the new technologies that will provide further rapid advances? Our aircraft still have jet engines, our rockets still burn the same fuels, our chips are still made of silicon. Electric cars are great, but battery technology is reaching it's limits, as is solar tech which is finally coming into it's own after a very long development history. Finally, on AI research I recently posted the following on a different thread:
1960s Herbert Simmons predicts "Machines will be capable, within 20 years, of doing any work a man can do."
1993 - Vernor Vinge predicts super-intelligent AIs 'within 30 years'.
2011 ray Kurzweil predicts the singularity (enabled by super-intelligent AIs) will occur by 2045, 34 years after the prediction was made.
So the distance into the future before we achieve strong AI and hence the singularity is, according to it's most optimistic proponents, receding by more than 1 year per year.
> if you believe that the rate of technological advancement is still increasing
It made sense for Robert Heinlein to believe this in the 1950s, when he wrote an article prefiguring the "technological singularity" concept by a good forty years.
It may make less sense for someone to continue to believe the same thing in 2017.
It may, although I'm not ready to discount the possibility yet. Another thing that has been seen throughout history is people claiming progress is at an end. I can't remember the source, but there's a famous quote from the early 1900s that everything important in physics had already been discovered. People also theorized progress would slow after peak coal was reached. There are many more examples. I would suggest that whatever time one is living in, it feels like all the major advancement is behind us, and things will slow from here. It may indeed be true now, or it could just be that we're feeling the tail end of a couple S-curves (Moore's law especially) and can't fully appreciate what the next paradigm will be.
Back in the day, and before becoming the local product manager for the iPhone 3G at one of my previous employers, I kept a timeline[0] covering articles, reviews, and other interesting bits. It hasn't aged very well, but some of the links are still active:
Unfortunately its success has warped Apple. Cook has ignored the Mac and promoted iOS as the 'everyday computing' platform. His bet hasn't paid off though. iPad sales have been declining since 2014. Even iPhone sales have peaked because of Apple's anti-customer policies (how do you plug your lightning headphones into your Mac?). Reliance on one product is very dangerous.
Hasn't it? They still sell nearly twice as many iPads as all Macs combined. Relative to units sold I think Apple invests heavily in the Mac platform you may (dis)like the new MacBooks and MBPs but clearly a lot of time and effort has been invested into their design.
And I wonder if many people crying here have actually tried it. I am a coder so remap esc -> caps which is actually better. It is a very good laptop; not sure how people can even compare the hardware to the Surface book. So the gripe must be about the touch bar which you get used to in a less than an hour. If you read my history you'll see I am desperate to leave Apple but not for the hardware quality ; only for openness.
Steve Jobs reshaped Apple into an organization that would focus on a select few products at a time. This worked very well in the beginning and allowed them to rapidly innovate.
Now they're a victim of their own success. All their product lines are relatively successful. There's not a significant product that they can kill (they killed the routers now, but that probably doesn't free up too much focus anyway). I think even Steve would've struggled with this conundrum.
Internally, they've tried to merged Mac and iOS, ala Windows 8/10, to allow them to keep a single focus.. but their conclusion was that it compromises both Mac OS and iOS in a way that they don't want to do. And if they made the merged OS closer to iOS, it would alienate a lot of Mac users and developers.
So how should Apple refocus? Who knows. I think it's a flaw to think that Steve Jobs would have magically solved the problem already. He was smart, but not a god.
> how do you plug your lightning headphones into your Mac?
You don't buy lightning headphones.
Apple will kill the lightning on iPhone too. Either replacing it with USB-C or removing it altogether. This is all part of a transition which is unavoidably awkward.
Apple is betting heavily on wireless, and lightning headphones is just a stop-gap solution while wireless headphones improve. A way for people to be able to buy some cheap, simple headphones to replace the bundled ones if they need to. If you buy an expensive lightning-only headphone you're a fool.
The moment that wireless charging is fast enough to completely replace wired charging, they will kill the lightning port and perhaps bundle a case which bridges lightning or USB-C to wireless charging+bluetooth 5. Third parties will deliver cases with bundled battery, USB-C and 3.5mm jack, and since the phone will be even thinner without any ports, the phone+case will still be plenty thin enough for daily use, and sturdier too. Everyone will be happy (hah, as if..)
> Apple is betting heavily on wireless, and lightning headphones is just a stop-gap solution while wireless headphones improve. A way for people to be able to buy some cheap, simple headphones to replace the bundled ones if they need to. If you buy an expensive lightning-only headphone you're a fool.
They could have made the transition much better if they just included Airpods with iphone 7 onward..
The airpods weren't ready in time for the iphone 7 launch.
They could have delayed the iphone 7 launch by a few months but (especially given what happened in their other product lines) that would probably have been a mistake.
Except that a pair of lightning headphones comes with iPhone 7. (And before "nobody uses the supplied Apple headphones".. actually yes a lot of people do.)
Buy a 2015 MacBook Pro and iPhone 6S. You get headphones that plug into both devices, and a USB-lightning cable that links the two.
Buy a 2016 MacBook Pro and iPhone 7. You get lightning headphones that won't plug into the computer, and a USB-lightning cable that won't plug into the computer.
I know there are "reasons" but isn't this just... silly?
The impression i have is that Jobs basically used himself as a product filter. If he wanted to use something, it went up on the shelves. If not, then it was canned or tweaked until he wanted it.
The iPhone 7 and 7 Plus:
- Better camera
- Better processor
- Better speakers
- Better screen
- Almost waterproof this time
I see nothing groundbreaking or life changing here. Something that might actually BE life-changing is a molecular sensor and better health monitoring / diagnostics tools.
You can start to see that Apple is positioning themselves for a more innovative redesign.
If you look at their recent iteration (removing the headphone-jack) and rumors from internal development (fast wireless charging, edge-to-edge display tech).. it's moving towards a phone that's more like a thin slate of glass where everything is wireless. Think the tablets from Westworld.
Either Apple will bundle a case with extra battery and USB-C (bridged to wireless charging+bluetooth 5), or third parties will do so. Given that this approach will allow Apple to push the thinness even further, using a case when you're out and about will probably be more or less essential.. but it won't be so bad since the combined thickness will be on-par with iPhone 3-4.. and you get the flexibility to choose between different designs, battery sizes, ports, etc.
It's not super groundbreaking ala iPhone 1, and it's where everyone will end up eventually anyway, but Apple is positioning themselves to go there before anyone else. Hence the awkward timing surrounding 3.5mm jacks, lightning and USB-C.
Products used to offer exciting user benefits, with a significant new user benefit in each update. But going completely wireless is an engineering fantasy, not a user benefit.
Let's say iPhone 10 arrives as a shiny slab of ceramic. So what? Even if it looks glisteningly pristine and cool, users care more about functionality and ease of use.
The first few iterations were all about the latter.
The last few iterations have been about engineering and design for the sake of it. Delighting users seems to have slipped down the list.
If there is anything I would beg of phone manufacturers it would be to quit trying to make the speakers more powerful. Anybody who lived through the '70s and '80s will remember the days of getting on public transportation or trying to hang out in public places only to be treated to somebody else's idea of music at high volume.
It was such a relief when the Walkman and later mp3 players/ipods had everybody using headphones again. I'm not anxious to go back.
If anything it's capitalist propaganda but this site is small enough and full of enough educated people that we can read things like this subjectively and then bitch about it in the comments.
Sure, but it's interesting that now that the communist (in the mainstream meaning) counterpart does not exist anymore (except small enclaves like Cuba or North Korea) - that big capitalist corporates - or their propaganda, pardon, public relations department - take over the very same language.
Also a bit of Orwell's Newspeak in here as well. In the end it's funny of course :)
The iPhone itself is marketed with "communist" propaganda - one true smartphone for everyone and customization being hindered down that all the desktops on it are basically the same. Which is hilarious based on the "think different" mantra.
I've owned almost every model of the iPhone, and they stopped innovating a long time ago.
Until they catch up with things like wireless charging - or introduce something 'revolutionary' like a shatter-proof screen or a graphene rapid charge battery - I won't be buying another iPhone. They've stagnated over the past few years while Android overtakes them.
Every release they always say "this is the biggest release ever!" The superlatives, hyperbole, and hagiography are wearing kind of thin at this point.
I'm not saying anything bad about the iPhone, but I can really do without the constant "magical! amazing! beautiful! best ever!" stuff. At this point, can't they just rest on having a great product without the need to amp up the marketing so over the top?
Quite. I gotta say i love the people at Google is willing to fail on stage, and pull comedy antics (like donning stripper pants in preparation for demoing a exercise bike dock).
It is hyperbole though, and while no sane company would say its not the second best they wouldn't wear thin saying its the best every time either. It loses meaning each time the change is barely impressive.
How is it hyperbole, though? If the CPU is faster and the graphics processor is faster and the camera is better, etc. then isn't it really the best phone they've made every year? Isn't that the beauty of a statement like that? That you can re-use it simply by making small improvements and suddenly you have the best thing ever. Do you go around complaining about athletes that beat records because they say they're the fastest/strongest/best ever?
Not an iPhone user, but Apple entering the smartphone market was a great thing for consumers I believe. Even if the first iPhone was just a very polished iteration of all the other smartphones on the market, it brought Apple's relentless focus on polish as well as business savvy to the market, it also catalyzed Google and a bunch of other companies to jump into the fray once Apple cleared the way with telecom providers.
Before the iPhone, carriers billed on individual metrics like bytes transferred or connections to servers, the first few months of iPhone bills were sometimes hundreds of pages long. The real revolution that Apple brought was in forcing carriers to become one step closer to being dumb pipes. It's an agreement that even today no other maker of Smartphone has really quite gotten to with the same companies. Google phones still ship with crapware on them.
At the same time, Apple showed structural weaknesses in competitors and exploited them, Microsoft, Nokia, Blackberry, Palm, etc. all couldn't build offerings as good as the iPhone and if it weren't for Google we'd very much be using a monoculture of devices these days.
At the same time Android devices took a "try it first, try it every which way" approach that has also forced the iPhone to come along kicking and screaming, then putting Apple in a position to integrate some new innovative feature that Android devices don't have, putting them both into a state of perpetual innovation.
Consumers win in this and I find it remarkable how many things the little device in my pocket has simply and entirely replaced.
Note, these usually aren't "Google phones", they just happen to have Google's OS on it. Eg, i haven't dealt with crapware on my phone in ~7years, as i don't buy phones from 3rd parties who have incentives to put crapware on the phone.
If Apple allowed anyone else to use their OS, i'm sure iPhone would have crapware on it too. Well, unless Apple had a contract that required a clean OS, which i would honestly hope they would - i'm annoyed Google doesn't.
My phone a couple phones ago was a Nexus on Verizon, it was pretty much stock Android except for a couple pieces of Verizon garbage that ended up on the phone and I couldn't remove without rooting.
The next phone, a Samsung Note 3 had Samsung's adoring additions, but less what I'd consider "crapware".
My current phone, a Nexus 6p, on Google Fi is pure Android, and finally doesn't have any extra nonsense on it.
(I also had a couple other Android phones before these that also had various carrier garbage on them).
Apple hasn't allowed this nonsense on their phones ever AFAIK and it's amazing that you can still buy an Android device, or at least a flagship one, that has anything but the stock OS on it. Considering that Android devices are by far more often sold than iOS devices, it's frankly inexcusable at this point.
After 10 years, I still find it hard to say what exactly Apple did back then. It was not about the app store for example, because that came one year later.
* They saw the premium niche. Ballmer ridiculed them for the price of the iPhone, but now we know, people are fine with paying 800$ for a smartphone. It is still a niche if you compare the sheer number of Android phones, but a very profitable one.
* They removed the pen from the PDAs and had an innovative touch interface. More intuitive user interfaces is something Apple was known for before and they went further with it.
* They got the carriers to cooperate and give up some control. While the story is not as strong, we could compare that to IBMs decision to licence an operating system for the PC.
* At that point in time, it was (finally?) very useful to have Internet access on the go.
Ballmer mocked iPhone as a luxury item at unrealistically high prices because he looked at it as just another smartphone.
If you look at iPhone as a low-price disruptor to computers (and I think that's fair when you consider how many people use iPhone as their primary or only computing device), its pricing makes perfect sense.
I think the iPhone started taking off only after the app store, so it should be counted as a factor.
Also - a lot of the story is about marketing, creating a huge status symbol and convincing people to pay so much for it, and that money fueled to reach faster and further than it might have reached otherwise.
> Even if the first iPhone was just a very polished iteration of all the other smartphones on the market [...]
It was more than that, though. It really pays to watch Steve's introduction of the iPhone in detail, and recall how utter crap "smartphones" were back then, and how innovative the iPhone was.
For example:
* Multitouch/Scrolling. Yes, other phones had touch screens, but they often relied on pen, and mimicked traditional desktop OSes. To scroll, you had to press the little triangle on the bottom or top of the scrollbar. In the presentation, Steve has to explain how to scroll through the contact list by, well, just flicking through it - that was a new gesture back then. Similarly, pinch to zoom in/out was a new thing.
* Fully featured web browser. You basically couldn't browse the web on a smartphone back then, period. There was this protocol for mobile web, WAP, but it was crap and not widely available anyways.
* Syncing. There were decent PDAs, but integration with the desktop (contacts, calendar) was mediocre. When someone had a phone lost or stolen, you'd get these emails "Please text me your phone numbers again". And, as with the iPod before, you could trivially sync your music/photos/etc. via iTunes.
The bigger leap was from resistive to capacitive screens which ultimately allowed for multitouch and great scrolling feel. Many credit card machines still use resistive screens which is why it is so unnatural and awkward to sign
> Fully featured web browser
Probably the biggest innovation
> Syncing
It could sync but many things required iTunes which sucked
Also, the original iPhone lacked things like MMS and, for some unknown reason, a proper call history screen.
iTunes on Windows sucked. iTunes on the Mac was really stable and really well organized. I don't know how they let iTunes for Windows out in that state, but holy crap was it a mess compared to what everyone on the Mac was used to.
If you completely buy in to apples ecosystem it is really quite nice. I just got the Apple Watch and use it to unlock my MacBook. I know there are phone apps for this and it's not unique to apple but the Apple Watch implementation works perfectly. It waits until you wake up the screen and gives you feedback on the watch in case you're in range but not at the computer. After purchasing the iPhone in 2007 I switched to Mac. I now use Mac windows and Linux but all on Mac hardware. I guess the iPhone was the gateway drug for me.
As an app creator, I have bought almost every new iPhone model since the original. Having used the iPhone 7+ now for a few months I can honestly say that every time I want to use my existing headphones, I get super frustrated at the dongles I need to connect/disconnect. And no, I don't want to buy a pair of headphones I need to charge all the time or that I will lose when they fall out of my ears.
I think this is my last iPhone purchase for personal use.
I agree. It's an infuriating decision. And a pointless one.
If the 7 had a headphone jack, buying it would be a no-brainer. As it is I've held off upgrading because to get the same basic functionality I'm going to have to spend $$$$ on dongles or an external Bluetooth DAC or wireless headphones or something to replace a connector that costs maybe $0.10 in bulk.
Instead of buying and using the damn phone I'm having to engineer a solution around it to get it to do something that previous versions did effortlessly.
It's a decision that adds cost and complications, but provides absolutely no user benefit.
There's always SE. Sturdy, proven design, headphone jack and sane (one-handable, pocketable) size. As much as I'd want to like Android, there's nothing of this size left there. I hope Apple will continue this line into the future.
There is the Sony Xperia X Compact from September 2016. It's slightly larger and much thicker (9.5 mm) and it weights more. Still the closest one. It came with Android 6 and got an OTA update to 7 in mid December.
It's fast and the battery always lasts 2.x days to me, I charge it again at around 20%. It lasted 3 days 18 hours last time over a long weekend, down to 9%. I checked and I made 8 hours of screen activity so it wasn't in my pocket all the time.
Given how long it lasts I wish they traded some battery to make the phone thinner and lighter, exactly as the SE.
A graph of cumulative iPhone sales shows that about half the total were sold in the last two years (1). In November 2013, Horace Dedieu of Asymco fit the sales trend to a logistics curve (2), but in August 2016 showed even faster adoption (3) Tim Cook's enthusiasm seems warranted.
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[ 5.2 ms ] story [ 287 ms ] threadCitation needed.
Apple likely has much deeper market research than you or I do, and so do their competitors.
We've been able to verify it from third party sources like Flickr for those 5 years as well.
People are annoyed at you because your original post was rudely curt and demanding for a throwaway marketing line that as I said above, we have no reason to doubt.
As much as you'd like them to, no company is ever going to thoroughly reference their press releases. If you want sources, the media contact details for Apple are readily available on their site.
Then you went on to say the same thing that it's been popular on Flickr. I'm done here.
I'm honestly very confused about you. There seems to be a great communication gap here between you and the people responding to you that might be helped by you explaining your motivations in asking the question.
Why won't you accept Flickr as an indicative proxy as to the accuracy of the statement? Surely you realise it's impossible to provide a perfect measurement of all camera use for all photos published and unpublished in the world? I see no reason and you've provided none to not use proxies to give us some kind of answer.
That flickr link helps because it shows specifically the iPhone 6 to be the device most people us to upload pictures to the service. But that's hardly a perfect metric.
I bet, that would look like a neutral and balanced statement to all and most people would be happy with it, but as you can see, it's easy to fake it. The truth is I'm tired of Apple's hyperbole and people should question them. If you make a claim, support it with facts, otherwise don't write it.
[citation needed] is just snark.
That's how you look at it. People can look at your (barely) rephrased question as a snarky comment too.
- OP (me) actually did do a simple (rather a little elaborated) search before writing that here. Yes, sometimes we do need to take things as 'given' and all, but it's also true that sometimes you do need to confront people when it becomes their habit of making hyperbolic claims.
The truth is, it's the general tendency of people to dislike someone asking for citations against the things they 'believe' are true, be it HN or wikipedia (but facts generally win on Wikipedia). This works similarly in religion.
It's that brazenness that I don't like about Apple.
2) Google paid DxOMark some good money for that, they better get some usage out of it
3) The iPhone 7 Plus is going to reviewed by DxOMark "really soon"
Congratulations Sony!
The greater scratch resistance of the new glass is nice, but I'd be willing to pay the cost in added weight for a more resilient body and frame. Alas, Apple does what Apple does, and has unaccountably failed to consult me.
Impressive, sure, but not ideal. As a result of this commitment, you can, variously, click, double click, double tap (not actually click, just touch like on a capacitive screen), long press the button. Furthermore, many of these actions have context-sensitive responses, like opening the camera from the lock screen or bringing up music controls if that's playing. And other common functions, like "back" are relegated to various icons and locations on the touchscreen depending on the app.
On other phones, the common "back", "home", and "switch app" functions are on separate buttons rather than being different interactions with a single button.
The Apple single-button phone, like the single-button mouse, is less discoverable and less easy to use, while being better looking and easier for some common use cases. Unlike the single-button mouse, though, I think it's likely to stick around for a long time.
The camera/music controls are linked with the control center but that is operated differently. Double tapping is definitely a weird choice for accessibility.
Also, you can also triple click the home button as an accessibility shortcut. But it has to be enabled.
The Back button for instance can be infuriatingly unpredictable to the point where you just revert to the touch screen. It just isn’t productive to have to wonder how many screens back you will go, or if you will end up in another application, or if the button will be ignored completely.
On the other hand I'm amazed at how long Apple is keeping and evolving iOS and its API.
The iPhone 6 and 7, on the other hand: there's something weird about the proportions (eg: the Touch id ridge, button isnt flush, weird two-tone plastic ridge on the back). The thinness of the phone makes the curved aluminum seem cheap and fragile. That Camera lens bump isn't attractive. They look no better than your average Android phone to me.
EDIT: To allay the seeming confusion - I am saying it WAS definitely a revolution when it first came out. It is just that I don't think you can still chant and wave the "Viva La Revolution!" banners 3650 days later when it has just been a series of iterative changes during that time.
I'd say they made some pretty major strides and set the standard for what a smartphone would look like for the years to come, and by and large all phones still follow the iPhones original path. Sure, different phones and different Android releases now do stuff different and sometimes better than iOS, but for the most part, it's all just following the iPhone.
[1] http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/12/the-da...
Its just that now it has had about 7 major iterations (not counting 'S' models etc.), it is really in the 'consolidation' stage of the battle. The storming of the castle is done, now the army is battening down for the long siege and the door to door skirmishing, slowly moving the front forward.
The only way Apple (or any manufacturer) can claim another 'revolutionary' step is if they come out with a foldable display screen, or a 30 day battery life or similar.
It's a shame. The only smartphones I've ever had have been iPhones, and I don't want that to change. But I'm not seeing much reason lately to believe that Apple can continue going from strength to strength.
I would agree that their newest changes aren't revolutionary in my mind and are more iterative, just spec bumps and features added, but everyone is still taking their cues from Apple when it comes to functionality.
I would argue that some of the S models are more significant iterations than the main numbered ones. Siri shipped with the 4s, the Appstore shipped with the 3G (IMO it's fair to call the 3G and 3GS "S models" of the original).
As an aside - I wonder what the average time span of a revolutionary war is? I tried Googling, but there doesn't seem to be a definitive answer to this - possibly because a 'revolution' isn't measured as a span in time, but rather as a momentary event (usually marked by the start date of the revolution). Anything after that seems to be considered a 'war' or a 'rebellion'.
So no, not really a revolution.
Nothing to do with the device itself.
By value the Apple computing ecosystem is utterly and completely dominant. Their annual revenue is $215 Bn. That's about the same as Microsoft, Intel and Google put together. By a recent estimate they make 104% of the profits in the mobile industry (taking into account other company's losses) and for along time made more profit in the PC market than all the Windows OEMs put together (edited - not sure if that's still true).
I worked in telecoms back in 2006. Nobody knew what a smartphone should look like. There were all kinds of crazy ideas that the mobile handset form factor could come in various different shapes with curved screens, circular screens, voice interfaces with no screen. Apple showed us what the future would look like and why. They figured it all out and got it right first time not just in terms of physical design but multi-touch interface, app store, open internet connectivity (remember WAP?). It was a slow-burn revolution though. It took time for them to scale up production and perfect the product, and for the market itself to catch up to what was happening so a lot of people just didn't realize what was happening or why.
edit - ok, sorry if I misunderstood your point. Fortunately I didn't down vote you, but I usually don't when I reply to people. I think the above stands on it's own though.
Not only do I find it nicer to use (which is somewhat subjective), but I still feel that Apple are standing up for user rights (e.g. FBI/government requests to make phones less secure) more than any other mobile manufacturer.
I did swap out of the version 4 simply because my lack of grace meant I had to replace the back glass more than once.
(Yes, I turned off the fancy stuff like Springboard background parallax. It helped but not enough.)
What right? Most people (but not enough) have some sense that privacy is an actual right. The number of people who think that it's a right that every device you own with an MCU or CPU should be a completely open general programming platform is a fraction of a percent.
> Standing up for your right to lock-in your data with a single vendor?
What lock-in? You can have all your iPhone data (contacts, notes, etc.) on Gmail if you want, you can have all your photos synchronized to Dropbox. Which data are you referring to?
I have to be honest and say that this comment comes off as a knee-jerk reaction. I mean, you probably have some valid criticism in there if you worded it better. It would definitely be much better for us geeks if iPhone was more open. But a right? Get real.
Ultimately, those are the same thing. There is no privacy if you can't inspect it and verify that it's upholding its promises.
> What lock-in? You can have all your iPhone data (contacts, notes, etc.) on Gmail if you want, you can have all your photos synchronized to Dropbox. Which data are you referring to?
If you've used one word processor, how do you open them in another without using any external service?
But unless you're a top-end OS developer AND a top-end embedded systems designer at the same time, how are you going to analyse something as complex as the iPhone and verify that?
By using a share sheet to send it to the other word processor, surely.
If you want to go down that road the software you need to inspect includes all the software with access to your data.
In android's case this includes all sorts of proprietary code running in google's infrastructure that you'll never see. If you enable all the features of a modern android phone the amount of data google tracks about you is staggering. All that data is available to any government that asks for it directly from google. Google is actively incentivised to data mine, use and sell my data. I don't think they sell it - but thats the direction the incentive arrows point.
If you want to roll your own, or use one of the non-google android forks then I respect that decision from a privacy standpoint. (Although my security engineer voice is much more nervous.) But stock android is a privacy disaster (at least if you worry about google / the US govt). The ability to root your device is nice, but in google's ecosystem the computers that really matter are the servers.
> The ability to root your device is nice, but in google's ecosystem the computers that really matter are the servers.
Funny that, does Apple allow push notifications without telling APNS about the notification message yet?
Yes, of course they do. That's what remote-notification UIBackgroundMode is for. How did you think encrypted messaging apps like WhatsApp and Signal showed message previews?
I don't use iCloud for backup. I use my own mail provider. What lock-in are you referring to? I think it would be pretty painless for me to move to Android if I wanted.
I agree the AppStore is more limiting than some alternatives, but overall I think Apple have more interest in user rights than Google.
Android development is not paid for through licensing fees (to any great degree) it's paid for by advertising via Google being the default service/search provider on the platform. This puts you in the position of the advertiser being the customer and the phone user being more like the product.
I personally prefer the Apple model where the phone user is the customer. However I do realize it's not entirely ideal. It just feels like the best option currently available to me.
I think it's great that in five years of iPhone ownership that's not a problem I've ever had, or even had to think about. And the only Apple service I use is the app store.
Horses for courses. If you want total control and software freedom, you won't prefer an iPhone. If you want the closest available approximation to appliance-level reliability, you won't prefer anything else.
Android is far for a standard Linux/UNIX system. And it's hard to build one on top of Android because of their use of BIONIC rather than glibc.
So, I feel that Android has taken Linux and crippled it to suit their ends. To me jailbroken iPhones felt much more like standard UNIX phones than Android phones.
My ideal phone doesn't exist. But he iPhone is still the nearest match right now.
Right. But, to my earlier point, you never really need to, either, because the OS does a good enough job of managing resources that such intervention is not required. I'm sure there exist corner cases, but having never hit one in half a decade of extensive use, I am prepared to argue they are vanishingly rare.
That's the tradeoff: a lower granularity of control over the system, in exchange for a system well enough designed that such granularity is not required for stable and performant operation. There's an argument to be made that the tradeoff shouldn't exist, but that's theoretical unless Craig Federighi is actually on the panel. Here in the world of things that are, it's worth keeping in mind that the compromise is exactly that: yes, we give something up, but we get something in exchange for it, too.
What do you mean? I'm not aware of any SSH which fulfils my needs on iOS. Or Android for that matter. On Jolla (and MeeGo/Maemo) you had a CLI at your command. The conundrum is you don't know what you're missing unless you had it before to begin with. Case in point: there's an entire generation of children raising up with touchscreens. That exposure has a price.
What do you consider the best browser on macOS? I don't consider Safari the best one. YMMV. At least you and I got the freedom to run another browser on macOS (those versions of Firefox and Chrome on iOS are not the real deal). I got the freedom to run Tmux, Vim. I got the freedom to compile my own version of OpenSSH which includes a patch for additional functionality. I get to decide which browser extensions I get to run (without having to rely on Apple to decide which extensions are allowed for Safari). I get to configure ssh and sshd. I'd like to take the risk myself of taking it for granted when/if it breaks.
I am actually OK with all of this as long as I don't have to rely overly on my phone. However, smartphones have become so important now, and I end up having and needing a MBP to make up for it. There's going to be a time where the computers (smartphones, tablets, etc) running iOS are so powerful that you can easily run a lot more on them. And, with that progress, they become less of an embedded device and therefore the freedom to decide what you run is increased.
Finally, there's Apple who decides who's in and who's out. Americans are totally cool with violence of all sorts and kinds, but as soon as the first thing a baby sucks on is shown its suddenly drama. I find that bollocks, and I don't want to be scrutinised to such a culture deciding on what I am and am not allowed to run on my device. The device I (not an American) worked hard for to afford, the device I bought, and the device I own (not rent). No, Google isn't perfect either; Google earns money via advertising, Google just blocked an anti adware extension in Chrome called Ad Nauseam, and they also don't allow certain software in GCM.
What's wrong with Mosh?
https://mosh.org/
I wonder what it is that your acquaintance and I do differently than you? I've been an iPhone user for a bit less than two years, and I am frustrated with it almost every day. Of course, the same was true of my HTC and Samsung Android phones previously, and even to some degree of the Nokia N900 (still the best phone I ever had).
It is not a common occurrence, but every now and then I do have some issue where my iPhone freezes and I have to reboot it to get it to come back. More commonly, miscellaneous things go wrong, like text in some areas becoming invisible, or opening an application showing me a blank screen for twenty seconds before the application either comes up or silently quits for no apparent reason. Most frustratingly, the sequence of touches I need to go through to do something requires me to react to each individual screen that results, rather than being something that I can do all at once, or even just being fast enough that I'm not paused, waiting, while some application screen takes its time loading.
If the delays were consistent, I wouldn't be very upset about it, because I would expect a certain time in between each action. If the phone could keep up the UI interactions, then that would be even better.
And typing lag... don't get me started. :(
I feel like expectations for hardware that is unrelated to the function of my phone has gone way, way up (thinness, smooth edges, tiny bezels) and the attention to the actual functioning of the phone in a consistent and timely manner is now much worse than it used to be, all around.
In general I tend to agree with those who argue that Apple's peaked and is going downhill, and I accordingly expect that, whatever the new bells and whistles, iOS 10 will work less well for things I actually do every day (like typing!) than iOS 9 does, which in turn has been a regression from iOS 8. The hardware's not improving, either, and I don't think Apple has correctly understood occurrences like the difference between expected and actual demand for the SE versus the 7 and 7+.
But, as best I can judge from the experience of Android-owning acquaintances and colleagues, for all iOS' and the iPhone's flaws, it's still by far the most solidly reliable smartphone platform on the market, and that's what counts the most for me. Others who feel differently will make different choices, and that's fine. I don't see why people seem to want to make such a big fight about it.
Apple didn't lock me in, I gladly locked myself in, because Apple's ecosystem is cohesive in a way that nobody else even comes close to.
I love being able to make and receive calls and texts from my MacBook, I love having my documents in the cloud waiting for me wherever I am, I love being able to start browsing a site on my laptop and transfer it seamlessly to my phone on my way out the door, I love being able to take photos while I'm out and have them sitting on my PC before I even get home, and most of all I love that all of these things just happen without me even having to think about it.
There are a million different options for me, I could very easily switch to Android and use a dozen different services like Dropbox and Flickr and whatever the messaging app du jour is on Android these days to achieve the same results, but why on earth would I want to?
Google is fine if all you need is the sliver Google offers, and if you're okay with Google doing their level best to violate your privacy, but there's so much more to Apple's ecosystem that nobody has replicated right now.
App integration between phone and laptop looks nice but in fact for most people all it matters is email and files, mostly pictures and musing. Those are covered by Google and possibly by Dropbox, plus some streaming service.
Anyway, yes, even a slight edge over the competitors is better than no edge.
But, to use Android Wear on an Android phone would involve activating various Google account settings I don't want to turn on.
huh? The Apple Watch user interface is the worst of the smartwatches on the market. Even Apple themselves were practically apologizing for how slow and crappy the Applewatch UI was during the last WWDC event. Apple had to completely remove what they had previously touted as core features (side button for friends/heartbeat, Glances) in previous watchOS versions. Yet it's still a clusterfuck without an always-on display. AndroidWear is more simpler/intuitive and Samsung Gear is more elegant with the rotating bezel
I also tried a Pebble Time; the display being always on and the longer battery life didn't really make any difference and the non-touchscreen UI seemed much more fiddly to me.
If it's the former, however, then it's arguable and a little subjective so I won't go into that.
Security to a second degree? One of the (valid) criticism to Android is that OEMs don't provide firmware updates or at least security and reliability fixes. This is a fair claim; you need to be careful about this if you decide to buy an Android phone (although there's the option to root a phone and install CM or LineageOS).
Google however in this case rules correctly by example. They've been updating Android firmware for their devices regularly, up till 2 years after purchase of device. If you want a secure Android phone, software-wise a recent Google device is one of your safest bets. Motorola's track record pre Lenovo was also good. Ever since Lenovo bought Motorola, not so much.
Of course, the privacy issue stands (insofar to profiling and internally in Google as they profit from knowing as much of you so they can advertise effectively) but that is the price of any Google product. That is where Google and Apple differ (at this time of writing; it can change, just look at Microsoft).
Eh? On the contrary; the iPhone appears to be the most popular phone on the market. Although there is not 'one' iPhone. There is the iPhone 6, 6S, 7, 7 plus, and the small SE.
For me, I'd like a small phone which I can easily hold in one hand. One I can remain using various years. Of which I can replace the battery myself. And, where it is I who decides which software I run (ie. not a review time ran by an American corporation). Of those 4 factors, sadly only the SE covers two (since iOS will run for say 3-4 years on SE). I'm also a proponent of longevity and reducing e-waste and while I cannot replace the battery of an iPhone myself the iPhones have a relatively large resale value, which is a plus compared to a lot of Android devices.
> I still feel that Apple are standing up for user rights (e.g. FBI/government requests to make phones less secure) more than any other mobile manufacturer.
Its easier to just buy a phone from a company who can't comply with such ridiculous claims from the US government. Imagine Apple was based in Ireland. Suddenly, the claim to insert a backdoor for the FBI in every iPhone is more ridiculous.
That was one of the reasons why I bought a phone from a company based in the same country as where I live.
I think there's value in challenging the US government on these issues. It also helps set the tone in general.
Also, which non-US phone would you suggest? The only real alternative is Android. While there are various vendors, the software is almost completely written by Google. And therefore open to the possibility of a backdoor (or other) requests by the US government.
Sure, but a lot was and is also being decided behind the screens.
> The only real alternative is Android.
Depends on use cases. Also, there are Android derivative works.
> Also, which non-US phone would you suggest?
The Fairphone 2 allows one to run a completely open source version of Android which doesn't rely on Google [1]. But there are other alternatives as well. Jolla, for example.
> And therefore open to the possibility of a backdoor (or other) requests by the US government.
Is the software compiled deterministically?
Also, the hardware of nearly every phone is assembled in China. The chips nearly all come from China (Fairphone tried to work around it; couldn't). And therefore open to the possibility of a backdoor (or other) requests by the Chinese government.
[1] https://www.fairphone.com/en/2016/04/28/releasing-the-fairph...
Almost all the recent features on android phones require uploading crazy amounts of personal information to google's servers. While I had an android phone every new feature felt like a faustian bargain - "Let us store a bit more information about you and we'll make your phone better! C'mon it'll be fiiiine"
Governments don't need to touch your device when its uploading copies of everything to google's servers anyway. They can just ask google for the data directly.
And to be clear about what we're talking about, if you say yes to all the prompts (which I bet 90+% of people do) then google stores location history, audio recordings of all 'ok google' requests, email, contacts, call history, search history and a list of installed applications (so they know which 3rd parties to go after for more data). I don't know if they store SMSes, and I'm not sure what the update frequency of the location data is. But if you use google services, there's not much else for a device level backdoor to do.
But i could never believe the "user rights" thing. They may stand up in a few cases, but ultimately this kind of thing lies beyond their reach. I don't trust any phone maker with data.
But there are two point really:
1. I think it's worth fighting (and they have had some success). 2. May telecoms vendors have volunteered more information than required in the past, I think it's unlikely Apple would.
Moveover, just having a large company challenge these issues changes the political environment.
Apple builds iOS to sell hardware. Google builds Android to vacuum up more data to sell.
Have you had a look at the iOS Security white paper [1]?
"Spotlight Suggestions never sends exact location, instead blurring the location on the client before sending."
"iOS also uses a randomized MAC address [...] so it can’t be used to persistently track a device by passive observers of Wi-Fi traffic."
Spotlight: "Unlike most search engines, however, Apple’s search service does not use a persistent personal identifier across a user’s search history to tie queries to a user or device; instead, Apple devices use a temporary anonymous session ID for at most a 15-minute period before discarding that ID."
Apple Pay: "Full card numbers are not stored on the device or on Apple servers. Instead, a unique Device Account Number is created, encrypted, and then stored in the Secure Element. This unique Device Account Number is encrypted in such a way that Apple can’t access it."
iMessage: "Apple does not log messages or attachments, and their contents are protected by end-to-end encryption so no one but the sender and receiver can access them. Apple cannot decrypt the data."
FaceTime: "The audio/video contents of FaceTime calls are protected by end-to-end encryption, so no one but the sender and receiver can access them. Apple cannot decrypt the data."
"Location Services can be turned off using a single switch in Settings, or users can approve access for each app that uses the service. [...] Additionally, users are given fine-grained control over system services’ use of location information."
Plus you have fine-grained controls for access to microphone, camera, pictures, etc. per app. Has Android caught up with that, or is it still all or don't use the app?
[1] https://www.apple.com/business/docs/iOS_Security_Guide.pdf
All of those features don't matter if there's a backdoor, and from what I read of the FBI case there is one they just foolishly closed it.
But there are two point really:
1. I think it's worth fighting (and they have had some success). 2. May telecoms vendors have volunteered more information than required in the past, I think it's unlikely Apple would.
Moveover, just having a large company challenge these issues changes the political environment.
First the constant nagging for apple services (iCloud, Apple Pay, Apple Music, etc). I have to opt out to each of them every time they push any minor (but mandatory) update to iOS.
Then the removal of the audio jack. I just have no appetite for dongles or additional batteries to manage and I need to be able to charge my iphone when I listen to my music.
Then the UI that used to be quite natural now has hundred of hidden gestures, that either make the UI non intuitive, or trigger when trying to do something else.
I'd like them to improve it. I have very appetite to switch to android, which I find a lot more problematic from a privacy point of view. But that doesn't look like the direction of the world.
How about bluetooth headphones? AirPods or otherwise? I highly recommend them. I happened to receive a pair of powerbeats wireless2 headphones a while back and while they're not perfect, using regular wired headphones feels incredibly archaic these days.
I'm sorry but someone had to say it.
However, I'm far less happy with the iPhone than the smartphone that I was expecting in the early 00s. I mean, why are we still stuck with this thing that we hold? It's like the Jetsons' version of a Bell handset. I was expecting on-body networking, heads-up display, virtual keyboard and pointer, etc. OK, so we have decent a decent speech-to-text interface. But it's not usable for actual work. /rant
edit: grammar
Heads-up display: Google Glass is a proof of concept and then there is https://www.magicleap.com
Virtual keyboard and pointer: https://www.myo.com/
Speech-to-text interface: Not that useful for mobile, imho. Seems to work at home (Alexa, etc).
Heads-up display: Google Glass was weird. The focus was on "gargoyle" stuff, not on AR. The display needs to integrate with and enhance reality. Not a small area in a corner.
Speech-to-text interface: That works very well for me. For short messages, anyway. Proofreading and editing is essential, however. To avoid embarrassment and confusion.
There is nothing more pitiful than being offline on vacation and someone with an amazing flagship android phone can't share the videos with everyone. And then their phone predictably gets lost or explodes.
15 years in and bluetooth file sending is still horrible and basically nonexistent, Apple's airdrop is pretty amazing. That'll keep me in the Apple ecosystem for now.
It's amazing. Especially Apple Pay. I could never get my Android to work with mobile payments for any of my banks in Canada... Apple Pay just works beautifully.
The slightly weaker phone is worth it for the really top notch user experience. And it seems like iPhone is better programmed or optimized, because the performance feels waaaaay better than my latest gen "powerful" Android.
http://www.techgrapple.com/apple-a10-sd-821-820/
Individual technologies each follow their own advancement curve. Jet and rocket engine advancement flattened out in the 60s and 70s. Moore's Law is history. Rising life expectancy are now mainly about expanding long life to more people, not extending how long the longest lived survive.
New technologies generally have a slow start, then a sharp rise in performance/drop in cost, then those advances level off. But where are the new technologies that will provide further rapid advances? Our aircraft still have jet engines, our rockets still burn the same fuels, our chips are still made of silicon. Electric cars are great, but battery technology is reaching it's limits, as is solar tech which is finally coming into it's own after a very long development history. Finally, on AI research I recently posted the following on a different thread:
1960s Herbert Simmons predicts "Machines will be capable, within 20 years, of doing any work a man can do." 1993 - Vernor Vinge predicts super-intelligent AIs 'within 30 years'. 2011 ray Kurzweil predicts the singularity (enabled by super-intelligent AIs) will occur by 2045, 34 years after the prediction was made. So the distance into the future before we achieve strong AI and hence the singularity is, according to it's most optimistic proponents, receding by more than 1 year per year.
It made sense for Robert Heinlein to believe this in the 1950s, when he wrote an article prefiguring the "technological singularity" concept by a good forty years.
It may make less sense for someone to continue to believe the same thing in 2017.
That's always seemed like an early symptom of dotage to me.
[0]: http://taoofmac.com/space/com/Apple/iPhone
Hasn't it? They still sell nearly twice as many iPads as all Macs combined. Relative to units sold I think Apple invests heavily in the Mac platform you may (dis)like the new MacBooks and MBPs but clearly a lot of time and effort has been invested into their design.
Now they're a victim of their own success. All their product lines are relatively successful. There's not a significant product that they can kill (they killed the routers now, but that probably doesn't free up too much focus anyway). I think even Steve would've struggled with this conundrum.
Internally, they've tried to merged Mac and iOS, ala Windows 8/10, to allow them to keep a single focus.. but their conclusion was that it compromises both Mac OS and iOS in a way that they don't want to do. And if they made the merged OS closer to iOS, it would alienate a lot of Mac users and developers.
So how should Apple refocus? Who knows. I think it's a flaw to think that Steve Jobs would have magically solved the problem already. He was smart, but not a god.
> how do you plug your lightning headphones into your Mac?
You don't buy lightning headphones.
Apple will kill the lightning on iPhone too. Either replacing it with USB-C or removing it altogether. This is all part of a transition which is unavoidably awkward.
Apple is betting heavily on wireless, and lightning headphones is just a stop-gap solution while wireless headphones improve. A way for people to be able to buy some cheap, simple headphones to replace the bundled ones if they need to. If you buy an expensive lightning-only headphone you're a fool.
The moment that wireless charging is fast enough to completely replace wired charging, they will kill the lightning port and perhaps bundle a case which bridges lightning or USB-C to wireless charging+bluetooth 5. Third parties will deliver cases with bundled battery, USB-C and 3.5mm jack, and since the phone will be even thinner without any ports, the phone+case will still be plenty thin enough for daily use, and sturdier too. Everyone will be happy (hah, as if..)
They could have made the transition much better if they just included Airpods with iphone 7 onward..
They could have delayed the iphone 7 launch by a few months but (especially given what happened in their other product lines) that would probably have been a mistake.
Except that a pair of lightning headphones comes with iPhone 7. (And before "nobody uses the supplied Apple headphones".. actually yes a lot of people do.)
Buy a 2015 MacBook Pro and iPhone 6S. You get headphones that plug into both devices, and a USB-lightning cable that links the two.
Buy a 2016 MacBook Pro and iPhone 7. You get lightning headphones that won't plug into the computer, and a USB-lightning cable that won't plug into the computer.
I know there are "reasons" but isn't this just... silly?
The iPhone 7 and 7 Plus: - Better camera - Better processor - Better speakers - Better screen - Almost waterproof this time
I see nothing groundbreaking or life changing here. Something that might actually BE life-changing is a molecular sensor and better health monitoring / diagnostics tools.
If you look at their recent iteration (removing the headphone-jack) and rumors from internal development (fast wireless charging, edge-to-edge display tech).. it's moving towards a phone that's more like a thin slate of glass where everything is wireless. Think the tablets from Westworld.
Either Apple will bundle a case with extra battery and USB-C (bridged to wireless charging+bluetooth 5), or third parties will do so. Given that this approach will allow Apple to push the thinness even further, using a case when you're out and about will probably be more or less essential.. but it won't be so bad since the combined thickness will be on-par with iPhone 3-4.. and you get the flexibility to choose between different designs, battery sizes, ports, etc.
It's not super groundbreaking ala iPhone 1, and it's where everyone will end up eventually anyway, but Apple is positioning themselves to go there before anyone else. Hence the awkward timing surrounding 3.5mm jacks, lightning and USB-C.
Products used to offer exciting user benefits, with a significant new user benefit in each update. But going completely wireless is an engineering fantasy, not a user benefit.
Let's say iPhone 10 arrives as a shiny slab of ceramic. So what? Even if it looks glisteningly pristine and cool, users care more about functionality and ease of use.
The first few iterations were all about the latter.
The last few iterations have been about engineering and design for the sake of it. Delighting users seems to have slipped down the list.
It was such a relief when the Walkman and later mp3 players/ipods had everybody using headphones again. I'm not anxious to go back.
Also a bit of Orwell's Newspeak in here as well. In the end it's funny of course :)
Until they catch up with things like wireless charging - or introduce something 'revolutionary' like a shatter-proof screen or a graphene rapid charge battery - I won't be buying another iPhone. They've stagnated over the past few years while Android overtakes them.
I'm not saying anything bad about the iPhone, but I can really do without the constant "magical! amazing! beautiful! best ever!" stuff. At this point, can't they just rest on having a great product without the need to amp up the marketing so over the top?
There have been versions of IOS I'd call significant large releases. The issue with Apple is they act like every release is a revolutionary upgrade.
IMHO, build great products， be proud of them, and people will come. The superlative stuff just sounds inauthentic these days.
No sane company is going to say "it's the second best <product> ever, the last one was the best and we decided to make the new one worse".
Before the iPhone, carriers billed on individual metrics like bytes transferred or connections to servers, the first few months of iPhone bills were sometimes hundreds of pages long. The real revolution that Apple brought was in forcing carriers to become one step closer to being dumb pipes. It's an agreement that even today no other maker of Smartphone has really quite gotten to with the same companies. Google phones still ship with crapware on them.
At the same time, Apple showed structural weaknesses in competitors and exploited them, Microsoft, Nokia, Blackberry, Palm, etc. all couldn't build offerings as good as the iPhone and if it weren't for Google we'd very much be using a monoculture of devices these days.
At the same time Android devices took a "try it first, try it every which way" approach that has also forced the iPhone to come along kicking and screaming, then putting Apple in a position to integrate some new innovative feature that Android devices don't have, putting them both into a state of perpetual innovation.
Consumers win in this and I find it remarkable how many things the little device in my pocket has simply and entirely replaced.
Note, these usually aren't "Google phones", they just happen to have Google's OS on it. Eg, i haven't dealt with crapware on my phone in ~7years, as i don't buy phones from 3rd parties who have incentives to put crapware on the phone.
If Apple allowed anyone else to use their OS, i'm sure iPhone would have crapware on it too. Well, unless Apple had a contract that required a clean OS, which i would honestly hope they would - i'm annoyed Google doesn't.
The next phone, a Samsung Note 3 had Samsung's adoring additions, but less what I'd consider "crapware".
My current phone, a Nexus 6p, on Google Fi is pure Android, and finally doesn't have any extra nonsense on it.
(I also had a couple other Android phones before these that also had various carrier garbage on them).
Apple hasn't allowed this nonsense on their phones ever AFAIK and it's amazing that you can still buy an Android device, or at least a flagship one, that has anything but the stock OS on it. Considering that Android devices are by far more often sold than iOS devices, it's frankly inexcusable at this point.
* They saw the premium niche. Ballmer ridiculed them for the price of the iPhone, but now we know, people are fine with paying 800$ for a smartphone. It is still a niche if you compare the sheer number of Android phones, but a very profitable one.
* They removed the pen from the PDAs and had an innovative touch interface. More intuitive user interfaces is something Apple was known for before and they went further with it.
* They got the carriers to cooperate and give up some control. While the story is not as strong, we could compare that to IBMs decision to licence an operating system for the PC.
* At that point in time, it was (finally?) very useful to have Internet access on the go.
If you look at iPhone as a low-price disruptor to computers (and I think that's fair when you consider how many people use iPhone as their primary or only computing device), its pricing makes perfect sense.
Also - a lot of the story is about marketing, creating a huge status symbol and convincing people to pay so much for it, and that money fueled to reach faster and further than it might have reached otherwise.
It was more than that, though. It really pays to watch Steve's introduction of the iPhone in detail, and recall how utter crap "smartphones" were back then, and how innovative the iPhone was.
For example:
* Multitouch/Scrolling. Yes, other phones had touch screens, but they often relied on pen, and mimicked traditional desktop OSes. To scroll, you had to press the little triangle on the bottom or top of the scrollbar. In the presentation, Steve has to explain how to scroll through the contact list by, well, just flicking through it - that was a new gesture back then. Similarly, pinch to zoom in/out was a new thing.
* Fully featured web browser. You basically couldn't browse the web on a smartphone back then, period. There was this protocol for mobile web, WAP, but it was crap and not widely available anyways.
* Syncing. There were decent PDAs, but integration with the desktop (contacts, calendar) was mediocre. When someone had a phone lost or stolen, you'd get these emails "Please text me your phone numbers again". And, as with the iPod before, you could trivially sync your music/photos/etc. via iTunes.
The bigger leap was from resistive to capacitive screens which ultimately allowed for multitouch and great scrolling feel. Many credit card machines still use resistive screens which is why it is so unnatural and awkward to sign
> Fully featured web browser
Probably the biggest innovation
> Syncing
It could sync but many things required iTunes which sucked
Also, the original iPhone lacked things like MMS and, for some unknown reason, a proper call history screen.
I think this is my last iPhone purchase for personal use.
If the 7 had a headphone jack, buying it would be a no-brainer. As it is I've held off upgrading because to get the same basic functionality I'm going to have to spend $$$$ on dongles or an external Bluetooth DAC or wireless headphones or something to replace a connector that costs maybe $0.10 in bulk.
Instead of buying and using the damn phone I'm having to engineer a solution around it to get it to do something that previous versions did effortlessly.
It's a decision that adds cost and complications, but provides absolutely no user benefit.
It's fast and the battery always lasts 2.x days to me, I charge it again at around 20%. It lasted 3 days 18 hours last time over a long weekend, down to 9%. I checked and I made 8 hours of screen activity so it wasn't in my pocket all the time.
Given how long it lasts I wish they traded some battery to make the phone thinner and lighter, exactly as the SE.
http://www.gsmarena.com/sony_xperia_x_compact-8292.php
(1)https://infographic.statista.com/normal/chartoftheday_5390_c...
(2)http://www.asymco.com/2013/11/25/one-billion-ios-devices/
(3)http://www.asymco.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Screen-Shot...