And yet despite your criticism they are selling more devices than during Steve Jobs by a large margin. My iphoneX is by far the most usable and comfortable form factor of a smart phone I’ve used in the past decade. I’m just glad Apple has far better ways to decide on their device strategy than internet hot takes to so reliably and predictably miss the boat.

Are you sure Apple is selling more devices because of the new direction OR the mobile market is just larger than it was 7 years ago.

What new direction ?

Apple is following the same path they have done since the original iPhone. They have always had models at different price points.

The new direction they are referring to is clearly the phone size increase.

Which started under Steve Jobs (the 5 was the first bigger screen).

Crucially, though, it had a bigger height but not width.

> And yet despite your criticism they are selling more devices than during Steve Jobs by a large margin.

They seem to be slowly losing market share, though.

Yep. I bought iPhone 8 because I wanted to try force touch and faster CPU. Well, it's a feature I could skip (actually I don't even understand why is it there, long press would work just as well) and iPhone SE size would be more comfortable for me (I came from 4S). I'm using iPhone 8 for a few monthes and it's still very uncomfortable to use for me, it's too huge and I can't reach every screen point with my thumb. Certainly a degraded experience from using a smaller phone. I hope that they'll make something smaller next time I'll change phone.

Once you've become used to positioning the cursor with force touch, you never want to go back.

This could easily be done in software alone. I had cursor positioning on iOS 5 through jailbreak software.

Have you tried tabbing the home button lightly twice?

I know and it's terrible solution. It oftens gets reset when I'm tapping something (but sometimes it's not), so I have to double-tap again (especially when I want to edit URL in Safari). And anyway reaching any screen point with one hand is vastly superior experience than using workarounds. I've found myself using two hands more and more and that's a step backwards.

May be better UX design would solve that. Any controls should be at the bottom part of the screen. But iOS is not there anyway.

I'm not sure what proof there is than phablets are irrational as you've stated.

I got a Note 1 phablet after my iPhone 4 as an experiment. It was an audacious device where Apple had gotten stagnant. While the galaxy note 1 was a premature priduct, the phablet form factor was a constant constant piece, and it nearly ended the use of my iPad. My android phablet remains in my life/because Apple missed the boat on screen sizes and is playing catchup.

The phablet phenomenon is real and a calculated tradeoff.

Phablets have cut into other markets and for most people globally if a movie is the Mir primary computing device, the phablet is more appealing. In the case where summertime doesn't use a phone much, they often have a tablet, laptop, etc.

Not having a headphone jack remains a pain, Bluetooth ear buds need to be at 20 hrs of battery life to get wider adoption.

Agree, but the iPhone X is damn near perfection, without Steve. Which is admittedly surprising.

During Steve: imac, power mac, macbook, macbook pro.

Now... WTF.

More revisionist nonsense. You left out a few models which makes the product lineup almost identical to today:

MacBook Air was released in 2008.

Mac Mini was released in 2010.

Can you please edit the name-calling out of your comments here? ("revisionist nonsense", "this comment makes no sense"). I appreciate that your comments have gotten less uncivil over the years. Please don't relapse.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

The MacBook Air didn’t overlap with MacBook as it does now.

The Mac Pro didn’t overlap wih the iMac Pro as it does now.

The iphone overlapping 7,8,Xs,Xr.

iPad Pro 10.5 overlap with regular iPad.

This comment makes no sense.

Steve Jobs was only alive during the early days of the iPhone where Apple was focused on implementing basic features like 3G. We are in the era where what you call gimmicky features are all that is left.

And customers are asking for bigger phones and more phones at different price points. This myth that Steve Jobs never listened to customers is just that a myth.