
IPhone 6 - mh_
http://www.marco.org/2013/04/09/iphone-6
======
beaumartinez
> When Apple did release a model named “iPhone 5” that was far better than the
> 4S [...] it was a huge update that gave them everything they asked for, plus
> more.

Whoa, hold the hyperbole train their Marco. I wouldn't exactly call a slightly
bigger screen, slightly improved camera, slightly snappier performance (all
expected in a yearly update), a new custom connector that invalidated all your
previous peripherals and cables, and a new scratchable, slippery exterior "far
better" or "a huge update that gave them everything they asked for, plus
more".

Factor in how woeful Apple Maps was (and is), and how much steam the
competition had picked up, and yes, the iPhone 5 was simply disappointing.

~~~
unalone
> Factor in how woeful Apple Maps was (and is), _and how much steam the
> competition had picked up_ , and yes, the iPhone 5 was simply disappointing.
> [emphasis mine]

I like my iPhone 5 and think it's the best phone I've ever used. Apple Maps is
a mixed bag (though I still use it as my default; it does some things very
well), but I don't see "the competition's stopped sucking" as something that
makes me like my phone any less.

On the contrary, Android and Windows Phone are getting good enough that I can
be certain I like iOS's design philosophy for what it is, not only because
it's the only design that isn't half-baked.

~~~
beaumartinez
Before, "good enough" for the iPhone was good enough, as nothing else came
close. But with how polished Android has become of late, the bar is much
higher, and Apple's "good enough" is no longer at the same level of other
players.

Siri woes in comparison with Google Now (look at the comparisons during
hurricane Sandy—Siri confused it with a sports team). Maps can be synced
offline on both Android and Windows Phone. Want to share a photo to Instagram
as soon as you take it with the stock camera app (the only one that has a
"shortcut" from the lock screen)? With Android, one tap. With iOS, you have to
load Instagram, and share it from there.

There are many little things that were okay when iPhone was still young but
they appear to be resting on their laurels.

------
tnorthcutt
_No matter what they release and no matter how well it sells, they won’t win
over the press, the pundits, the stock market, or the rhetoric. Not this year.
They could release a revolutionary 60-inch 4K TV for $99 with built-in
nanobots to assemble and dispense free smartwatches, and people would complain
that it should cost $49 and the nanobots aren’t open enough._

Speaking of rhetoric...

------
kmfrk
I think this post is the main problem Apple could face; their PR essentially
falls into the Android ditch of promoting specs instead of ideas and features.
It's the kind of thinking that results in gadget sites using side-by-side
comparison tables, which helps no one buy their next phone. Buying an Android
phone must be hell, since that's how most people have come to explain why one
model is preferable to another.

Marco's description of the improvements is basically incrementalism: it's
"harder, better, faster, stronger" - X% more Y.

The 4S was a bit of a disappointment, because Cook - and Apple's engineers -
did a pretty measly job of touting Siri as something profoundly new. But
otherwise incremental changes to hardware are just an opportunity to focus on
the software instead in terms of iOS (which won't run on all devices, which
directly makes the new phones that more attractive).

There's a reason we shouldn't see keynotes talking about how dashboard
navigation is now 13% faster, and Spotlight search is 8% better at indexing
and uses 7% fewer system resources.

In the Android world of PR, Retina was just a DPI number, whereas Steve Jobs
sold it as a level of detail that met the limit of visual perception by the
user. That made it a genuinely interesting feature instead of just another
case of numbers wank.

I think in some sense the expectations game has been lowered ever since iPhone
4, and that it's suddenly O.K. to just judge an iPhone by its spec changes -
and as a result, Apple apologists like Marco are just moving the goal posts as
a subtle concession to the disappointed critics.

This also means that people missed how much better the iPhone 5 camera is in
low-light environments, for one, which could just as well have been touted as
a great feature instead of an incremental increase to the camera, or in
whichever vacuous incrementalist ways people like Marco choose to put it these
days.

------
frou_dh
Writer sounds like he will either burst in to tears or go on a violent rampage
if the next Apple phone is received badly.

~~~
jrockway
This probably makes him a lot more revenue than being "fair and balanced",
however.

------
b0sk
\-- snip --

Now, Apple pessimism is even stronger. No matter what they release and no
matter how well it sells, they won’t win over the press, the pundits, the
stock market, or the rhetoric. Not this year. They could release a
revolutionary 60-inch 4K TV for $99 with built-in nanobots to assemble and
dispense free smartwatches, and people would complain that it should cost $49
and the nanobots aren’t open enough.

\-- snip --

<https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/strawman>

"You misrepresented someone's argument to make it easier to attack. By
exaggerating, misrepresenting, or just completely fabricating someone's
argument, it's much easier to present your own position as being reasonable,
but this kind of dishonesty serves to undermine honest rational debate."

------
saturdaysaint
Author vastly overstates the importance of the tech press: do I really need to
point out that the iPhone 4S and 5 both sold (and continue to sell) like
crazy, mostly limited by their availability?

~~~
cma
Kind of circular if e.g. their availability itself was in-turn limited by
accurate sales projections.

------
onemorepassword
Looking around me I get the feeling I'm not the only Apple-fan that didn't get
particularly excited about any iPhone after the 4.

I really couldn't be bothered with the 4S or the 5, still using the old 4.
Android phones have never excited me because of their boring derivative
design. Except as a useful tool, I'm pretty much over smartphones as objects
of desire.

Unless Apple manages to rekindle that by making the next phone something more
exciting than an upgrade on the iPhone 5, I might as well upgrade to something
like the HTC One, just to see what that's like.

I won't _love_ it though. Not in the way I loved my first iPhones.

------
SeanA208
The point he makes about the iPhone 5 not being received well seems to
contradict the entire point of the article. If the iPhone 5 wasn't received
well by name alone (after all, it doesn't have an "S"), why should the iPhone
6 be?

~~~
jack_trades
To give them the finger, because he knows that no matter what Apple delivers
for their updated flagship, it will be 100% better than anything else out
there in all respects. Anyone disappointed? THE FINGER!!!

Samsung... 4?! That's 2 BEHIND LOSERS! i-f-ing-Phone-6.

Apoplectic at the first blogger that says, "They should called it 5S. Me
disappointer."

~~~
ricardobeat
Calm down there, buddy.

------
taopao
Quite a persecution complex on display. Reminds me of the evangelical
conservatives in the U.S. who are always crying out about being oppressed.

~~~
panzagl
Well, way to give them more ammunition.

------
programminggeek
They should call it the iPhone 13.

It would leapfrog the Galaxy S 4 by 9, and it would be a number that they coud
increase every year.

It worked for the Xbox 360. That was a mix of the PS3 and the Nintendo
Revolution. Of course, now the next Xbox will need to be something absurd like
the Xbox 720 or 9 or Blue or some silly name.

OR...

Apple could just call it... "iPhone" and drop all the numbers business. Worked
for the iMac and the iPad and iPod.

------
hadem
I'm not sure it is just a naming issue. I think people are starting to get
bored with the iPhone, myself included.

~~~
freehunter
When the iPhone came out, it was huge. It really was a big deal, and it's only
gotten better since then. But the lack of a new huge advancement is playing
against Apple. It's not that the competitors have advanced leaps and bounds
beyond Apple, it's not that the competitors are necessarily _better_ , but
they're _different_. Even these small differences can be enough to excite a
consumer who is growing bored with the minor changes they've seen as they've
grown with a platform. It's not that the competition is stronger or something
new, it's that the competition is different.

I don't want to be the guy telling Apple what they need to do or not do, the
point is that the iPhone is still, at its core, the same as it's been since it
was released. Occasionally I get bored with Windows, having used it for two
decades and see that it's still the same at the core, and switch to Linux for
a few months. It's not that I find Linux better or worse, it's that it's
different enough to inspire me out of a slump I might be in.

A change out of a routine can be a very refreshing experience. Apple may
realize this, but they may also realize that a lot of their non-technical
consumers won't share this viewpoint. For them, routine might be the only
comfort they have in the electronic world.

------
lalos
Another option would be calling it the new iPhone, like they do now with the
iPad.

~~~
beaumartinez
I was actually shocked when they didn't call the iPhone 5 "the new iPhone",
since it was after they'd done so with the iPad.

~~~
dkrich
I think the main reason for this is that (to my knowledge) you can only buy
the newest model of the iPad at any given time whereas the market for phones
is far more segmented. Thinking of my friends, I know simultaneously people
who have the 4, 4S, and 5, and you can purchase pretty much three models at
any given time. Differentiating them would be far more difficult if you only
had one name across the board.

~~~
0x0
They are still selling the iPad 2 and the iPad 4 side by side:

<http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/shop_ipad/compare>

~~~
frou_dh
It's fortunate for "launch" iPad 2 owners that it's still sold in 2013,
because that suggests that it will continue receiving iOS updates and not be
left behind any time soon.

------
spinchange
It's uncharacteristic of Apple to compete on individual specs, but I think
they've got to put something special into this release. Maybe this new
sapphire glass for the display, or NFC, or an even beefier chip / battery
life. Something. Or all of the above.

I totally get what Marco is saying: it's not just the tech press, it's Wall
Street, it's the public. There's a general feeling out there that Apple is
done pulling rabbits out of the hat and it's not just from the echo chamber. I
don't think this portends their decline, but Android, Samsung, et al., have
really been pushing the envelope. The fact that a 4S is still like $100 under
subsidized contract feels almost criminal when you compare it on specs to
other Android phones that are available for the same deal.

~~~
mikeevans
Would NFC really be special at this point? Most (at least high end) Android
phones have had it for years at this point.

~~~
Cthulhu_
And yet, as far as I know, it never really broke through; I think that if
Apple had come with NFC for the iPhone 5, it would've. A lot of app builders
and companies aren't doing anything with NFC yet because the iPhone doesn't
have it, disregarding the 70% market share Android has nowadays (although only
a small percentage of those have NFC).

------
tomkin

      The iPhone 4S was a huge improvement over the iPhone 4, but 
      the press and fans shat all over it because it had the same 
      case design and therefore wasn’t “an iPhone 5”.
    

Are we talking about "actual specs" or "perceived difference"? Because I have
a 4 and a 4S and while the specs may be better, the average person cannot tell
a whole lot of difference outside of Siri. Sorry, but it's truth. "Reaching"
is the only word I can think of to describe OP's rant.

------
jack_trades
So, the disappointment is merely a naming problem that Apple baked for itself
by starting/sticking to a numbering scheme when most device makers have an
"internal" code and then there's the name that each carrier tacks on. The only
time you get iterations is when a device "hits" (Razor, Galaxy, One, etc.)

The disappointments surely aren't because, spec-by-spec and material ounce-
per-ounce, bloggers and the public look at the value proposition and shrug
about the AAPL premium. The former certainly would also never try to clickbait
fanboys to their ad-laden pages to profusely pound the Book of Jobs upon
heretics.

------
nailer
"A year later, when Apple did release a model named “iPhone 5” that was far
better than the 4S and had an external redesign"

Huh? I thought the iPhone 5 had the same external design as iPhone 4.

~~~
xentronium
Backplate is not glass and dimensions changed.

See for thickness comparison: [http://cdn.thenextweb.com/wp-
content/blogs.dir/1/files/2012/...](http://cdn.thenextweb.com/wp-
content/blogs.dir/1/files/2012/09/Screen-Shot-2012-09-12-at-11.58.30-AM.jpg)

Bottom side of the phone changed slightly too.

~~~
unalone
Build quality also got drastically better. The hardware buttons are
impressively responsive. The phone also got considerably lighter and denser,
which I definitely notice in my daily usage.

------
Lightning
I think he means iPhone 7. So far we have iPhone, iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS,
iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, and iPhone 5.

~~~
jaredsohn
It was good pointing out that the iPhone numbering scheme is screwed up, but
realistically from a marketing standpoint Apple's choices are "iPhone 5S",
"iPhone 6", "new iPhone" or some other alternative name.

