Cool new iphone feature: USBC!
Cool new movie: It has Ironman and Spiderman in it!
Also, trillion dollar company lol, arguably the most powerful R&D force on earth and in history. Also... they did pull it off so...
Do you think the and thing when you buy a new dishwasher, a couch, a chair? That it’s mediocre?
Smartphones are not the future anymore, there’s people starting university soon that always had one, and never lived in a world without the iPhone.
Also, besides arguably the first few iPhones, Apple never distinguished itself from the competition with the technology it uses, but by the quality of its offering, which is why bending phones or poorly designed antennas are more important for them than having the newest tech available half a second after being commercially viable - that’s what Android OEMs do to differentiate.
I know that for me, personally, having a new iPhone with USB-C is a must have feature, which is why I have my iPhone 11 still chumming along.
Satellite communications.
A 48 megapixel camera with ever improving computational photography.
I didn’t check recent sensors, but 24MP ones would be 96MP with binning. Sony makes multi-mode sensors which can produce different sized outputs to optimize details and image quality for a given light amount.
Computational photography is like artificial flavoring. It looks fine, but lacks the finesse of a big sensor. Also, “dreaming” things in photography is a no go in some contexts.
Also, I think some iPhone models have emergency satellite communications already, no?
Yes, Emergency SOS. This was the feature that allowed a family to be located and rescued recently during the Hawaii fires.
https://www.macworld.com/article/2027967/iphone-14-emergency...
The ability for it to replace a macbook air if you add a keyboard/mouse/screen for one. How about a 3d camera for integration with vision pro? There's still so much they can do.
Even the previous iPhone had lots of great actual new features. Always-on OLED display. Action Camera mode. Auto focus capable front-facing camera. Dynamic island. 2000 nit brightness capable screen. Satellite SoS. Car crash detection.
https://www.theverge.com/2023/9/12/23870546/iphone-15-pro-ma...
I don’t believe software can bridge that gap so I suspect it’ll look very strange when viewed in 3D…
Others have said there are algorithms allowing all the objects in a scene to be distorted/rerendered in such a way that this can be corrected for but I am extremely skeptical of this without evidence.
The iPhone has had a tick tock cadence forever.
Just becauae you cant get it to work well, does not mean you can blame the consumer.
If I could just plug in my phone to their USB C monitor that is already connected to a mouse and keyboard that'd be amazing for quickly using YOUR device.
Why would anyone need this? Because I could have my ssh keys and some software on it - sure I could have a bootable USB drive and try to boot their desktop (or laptop?!) from it... but that seems more involved than being able to converge your phone.
It's just that nobody nailed the software side of it. Apple could but they just don't care. Linux tried and they will keep trying
For emergency use, it is ok. For a prolonged one, a separate laptop is vastly better experience.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/continuum
This is pretty much exactly what you're looking for. A phone OS on the phone, plug it in, get a desktop OS on a desktop. It worked pretty well, even for the limited hardware at the time.
If a device supports Displayport Alternate Mode on USB-C, there are docks that work like how you're imagining. But I do agree, for a lot of devices the mobile OS just doesn't really have a great desktop experience.
Whats the point? It wont be cheaper if you want usable input and screens. It will Take more space than a laptop wherever you decide to use it.
How do you use even an iPad + keyboard Combo if all you have is a chair?
I fail to see how this is in any way an improvement over just buying a MacBook Air and having the screen, mouse and keyboard built in. Thew laptop is way more portable.
I see what you did there
Those are things that you replace every 5 to 10 years. People do see innovation with those products because they only look at new ones occasionally.
If people have the same expectations of their iPhone, and they get off the upgrade treadmill of a new phone every 2 years and start buying every 5 years that would mean Apple's iPhone sales would drop by roughly a half among the core group who buy every new model. That would have a very significant impact on their share price.
Coming from Xr to 12 is mindblowing for me for someone who has a poor eyesight.
Got a friend who upgraded from a 6s to a 13.
I dont know who upgrades every year…
Havent seen anything really enticing lately.
Do you remember the time when a new phone model was noticeably faster than last year’s? I do. Vaguely. Barely. Those times are gone.
A battery that lasts longer than a day.
Apple though has enough customers that they can separate and target segments individually.
I realised a few years ago that I'd stopped watching the Apple keynotes or checking their website.
Back when Jobs did them I watched all Apple keynotes but at some point I just stopped. I think this is because the keynotes are refocused on segments that respond to them best.
I still buy Apple products but sporadically but I'm not going to rush out for the latest phone. I treat iPhones like dishwashers and only only replace them when they break.
However, there are people that will respond to fashion and that's who the keynote marketing is for.
Apple is big enough to treat each segment differently. Hence no pictures of middle aged, white blokes on the website, even though we're a sizeable part of the population in my country. We don't just respond to that type of marketing so it's safe to ignore us. I'll just read 3d party reviews when my phone finally needs replacing.
If there was a fashion market for dishwashers you probably would see the CEO of GE announcing their new products.
YYYYEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
How about an OS that's not walled-garden shite? One that any competent programmer could write an app for -- in any language they chose -- and offer for download to all comers without getting Apple's permission and without paying Apple a dime?
How about a development system built in to the phone so you could add a keyboard and a mouse and write an app, compile it, and install it without ever leaving the phone?
How about a 1/8" jack so I can listen privately on $15 wired buds from one of 1000 different suppliers without paying $300 for buds that are going to become e-waste as soon as their batteries refuse to charge?
How about being able to replace the main battery myself, in my home, without trashing the entire fu*king phone?
How about selling the phone with a decent protective case that still allows the Qi charger to work?
How about using formal methods to ensure some Israeli spyware group cannot constantly find zero-days in my phone and put my life in danger without constant after-the-fact patch-and-pray security upgrades?
I've been building chips, computers, and operating systems for decades. I know the subject like I know my own name. There is no technical reason Apple couldn't do all these things. They choose not to because not doing them makes Apple more money.
Apple is not refusing to do any of these things for cybersecurity or privacy reasons either. I eat, sleep, and breathe cybersecurity and I get paid for it. Apple could do everything on this list with zero security risk. They know this but they choose to lie and say otherwise.
Fuck apple and their horse. They are everything that is wrong with engineering under the control of rapacious capitalist greed.
You can already do this, either getting the parts/tools thru Apple or on your own [0]
> How about using formal methods to ensure some Israeli spyware group cannot constantly find zero-days in my phone and put my life in danger without constant after-the-fact patch-and-pray security upgrades?
> How about a 1/8" jack so I can listen privately on $15 wired buds from one of 1000 different suppliers without paying $300 for buds that are going to become e-waste as soon as their batteries refuse to charge?
Those are fair, altho personally I've been using bluetooth headphones for 5+ years, only going wired when cycling or gaming, and I'm pretty happy with it.
The rest, approximately 0.01% (uneducated guess) of the consumers in the smartphone market will want or care about those things. The regular consumer doesn't want their phone to do everything and be everything, they want it to work for their use-case when they're expected to work, and be relatively easy to use.
Anyway, you seem to be a niche consumer, why aren't you looking for a niche product to match instead of complaining about a mass-market product that never has and probably never will fit your needs?
Genuine question, btw.
The issue that's hard for many to admit is that in many case Apple makes the best devices from a hardware and quality standpoint (I also like iOS better than Android, but that's more subjective). If there were other players in the market making devices at Apple's level that also had some niche features we probably wouldn't see so many complaints.
There are enough cross compile frameworks available. Sideloading is comming in the EU, i think till 2025.
> How about a development system built in to the phone so you could add a keyboard and a mouse and write an app, compile it, and install it without ever leaving the phone?
Will officially be possible with sideloading.
> How about a 1/8" jack so I can listen privately on $15 wired buds from one of 1000 different suppliers without paying $300 for buds that are going to become e-waste as soon as their batteries refuse to charge?
Use 15$ Bluetooth Buds from the 1000 different suppliers? Or use the dongle.
> How about being able to replace the main battery myself, in my home, without trashing the entire fu*king phone?
Is already officially possible.
> How about selling the phone with a decent protective case that still allows the Qi charger to work?
The Leather Case for example is working perfectly fine with Qi Charging.
> How about using formal methods to ensure some Israeli spyware group cannot constantly find zero-days in my phone and put my life in danger without constant after-the-fact patch-and-pray security upgrades?
All software will be exploited. Did you see how suffisticated the last exploit was? They build and own software cpu to execute their payload.
Even without fresh innovations if the competition can't produce a product of equal quality it will still hold its value in the market place.
Apple's profits clearly vindicate this as a business strategy.
Certainly one that other phone manufacturers have had in their phones for the past 8 years? I jest, because I haven't cared that my phones have had USB-C for even longer than that because I've been wireless charging instead. I do believe iPhones do that these days though.
We care about phone charging cables because smartphones are no longer the toys we got wowed by 15 years ago. They're now an indispensable and highly functional tools we use every day to do actual work. And guess what? We charge them every day.
If you want to experience child-like wonder and be wowed by big movements, move into a field that's developing. Smartphones are a developed field, and there's nothing wrong with that.
Also, iPhone & iPhone Pro are offering some really decent upgrades. 48MP camera (that actually works, and not just says "48MP" like many others) prism optical zoom-in 5x and so on. Lightweight titanium is also a good improvement in day to day usability and comfort.
And this "charging cable" for iPhone Pro also offers 10x faster data transfer which matters to many of us.
I’n sure the blame for this belongs more on the app makers than the device manufacturers, but I think it’s still an answer to what your asking.
Apple's target-group for the Watch is every iPhone user, they know that with patience they can sell an Apple Watch to every iPhone user out there.
So there's little incentive for Apple to create a Watch that doesn't require an iPhone, and little reason for app-developers to assume you own a Watch but NO iPhone...
The backlash from the public as well as pushback from accessory manufacturers had Apple quietly remove the warning and drop their plans.
The problem is that USB-C has nothing useful to offer over Lightning. Apple could've updated Lightning to support faster data if they wanted, and even then most people rarely use their cables for data anymore because of iCloud and AirDrop.
So this time around, it really is nothing to get excited over. I will even say it's a downgrade, because I have yet to experience a USB-C port that feels as strong and satisfying to plug in/out as Lightning.
I suspect not much… this generation seems like “fine, EU, we’ll swap the connector.” It’ll take another product design cycle to take advantage of the new possibilities it offers (beyond continuing to sell iPhones in the EU)
I guess they have to spin it. Good on the EU pushing the issue.
Definitely not in phones, because Apple is the laggard in this case. Many Android phones were already USB.
Also, there was that whole thing where the EU wanted to cut own on e-waste and mandate USB-C as a common charging standard, and Apple fought it tooth and nail.
You must live in quite an interesting world then.
The fact that people are running to a megacorp's aid because a bad EU forced them to quit being anti-consumer is staggering.
So staggering in fact, that these commentators might not even comment in good faith and in fact be PR pawns.
I'd really want to believe the latter because someone that gets so intimate with their phone brings out a sadness in me.
What’s valueless to one can be valuable to another.
> And this, this is the best that one of the most innovative companies in a generation, (…) can do.
Looks like yes.
Note that when they launched iphone, they kept upgrading ipod.
Plus, they’ve already announced a new and innovative product; are you saying they should stop upgrading older ones?
They are way more useful (portable, always present) and do lots of cool processing to get usable images in low light etc., but image quality is not competitive with a good lens on even an ancient DSLR. Shallow depth of field in particular - phones generally do it with software, and it's always jarring how fake it looks.
I also remember when the WWDC crowd and the buying public got excited for mundane evolutionary shit, like incremental iPod updates, like the introduction of an rudimentary color screen...
What else do you really want from this technology ?
Having to get a phone to an Apple store, let alone mail it in for a 'battery service' and have no phone for a few days, is a surprisingly big obstacle to just replacing the battery and keeping an older phone running for another few years.
(Not a hardware problem, older OS versions had been OK, and I eventually got it working with LineageOS for a while)
I'd say tech is on a roll just now, but the action is in AI not in smartphones.
I mean phones are good but I was checking out the iphones 12, 13 and 14 the other day and it's a job telling which is which - they are all good.
With that said, the smart phone of today is a solved problem. The industry has converged on a slab of glass form factor, and while it plays at the edges with foldable or flip phone styles they really aren't that popular. Most technology advances are evolutionary, to expect something else is unrealistic.
IMO, the most interesting thing from Apples presentation was the focus on gestures for the watch. When will the Vision Pro get small enough or the watch gain capability to project a screen is the question, because then we will have moved beyond the phone form factor.
Maybe it’s the fact that Apple has these giant events every year, that people think they’re going to get something revolutionary every year. Or maybe we were just spoiled that we lived through the 90s and 00s, but this is crazy talk. If revolutionary tech was released every year, what makes it revolutionary?
> We’ve gone so far down the hole that you are like fuck it I’m gonna buy it because of the god damn charging cable
Your comment is emblematic of everything that is wrong with this generation of Apple, its fanboys, and tech fanboys more generally.
People are not wrong to want what they want. People are not wrong to appreciate features they find useful because these features simplify their lives. The charging cable matters. It's a fucking phone. The convenience surrounding use of the charging cable will matter more to people than some fiddly little improvement to the camera or bandwidth or some thing that's not central to being a phone.
You sound spoiled. How often would you like a technical revolution? I could honestly use a break. We just got off of the crypto train(supposed finance revolution) and are now jumping on to the AI train with LLMs threatening the future of work (correctness be damned). You actually do not need to upgrade the iPhone today. Usually you have about 7 or so years of software support.
there's never been a phone camera better than a DSLR/ILC
today's phone cameras are not better than 10 year old DSLRs
7.5 x 5.7mm sensor vs 24mm x 36mm
Tech is such an shitty abyss right now, ten years ago people got excited because of truly revolutionary features , like cameras that were better than $1000 digital cameras, 4G that made the internet not just usable but fast biometrics that actually worked, on a phone, in your pocket, like holy fuck that was mind blowing.
We’ve gone so far down the hole that you are like fuck it I’m gonna buy it because of the god damn charging cable, and it’s not even something like the charging cable is crazy awesome and charges your phone instantly, it’s that it’s now just the generic port that everything from moms vibrator to your laptop to every other god damn phone on the planet uses.
And this absurdly mundane and completely valueless “update” has moved you to take a perfectly good $1000 plus phone and junk it to buy a brand new $1000+ phone, just so it can share a charging cord with a used vibrator?!?!
And this, this is the best that one of the most innovative companies in a generation, which generated profits that make the rockefellers and gettys look poor, can do.
No wonder everyone’s so in love with chat GPT, we are awed by our absolutely stunning mediocrity.