
IPhone 5: Apple’s 16:9 compromise - ukdm
http://www.extremetech.com/computing/136164-iphone-5-apples-169-compromise
======
Bud
A silly, trivial article with major errors or questionable fudges in basically
every paragraph.

The writer says the phone can be summed up by an extra row of home icons;
there are in fact improvements to many hardware and software facets of the
device. One may not think the improvements are _major_ , but denying their
existence temporarily to make an argument is silliness.

He then gripes for two paragraphs about his own personal impressions about how
Apple presents products, including one paragraph griping about a guy who is
now dead, and thus presumably not responsible for the presentation in
question, i.e., the iPhone 5 presentation.

In the next paragraph, more whining about presentation, plus a blatant lie,
saying "Apple tried to convince us that it had stolen a 16:9 display from the
gods". Apple did no such thing. I watched the entire 2-hour event. There is
not a single boast about Apple magically creating 16:9, originating 16:9, or
any other such nonsense. In fact, 16:9 was barely mentioned. At all. The
writer is simply making it up.

Then griping about a Jony Ive video.

Then silliness about how "Thin and light smartphones were an exciting concept
a couple of years ago"; perhaps the writer hasn't noticed, but thin and light
has ALWAYS been a driving concept in smartphones and basically every other
kind of portable (and even non-portable) tech design. It has always been an
issue and will always be an issue. So when someone makes something circa 20%
thinner and lighter, yes, that is noteworthy. It will not change the course of
planetary history single-handedly, but it is notable.

He then lies about the hardware, saying that "you would be hard stretched to
find any new features except for the single-chip GSM/CDMA/LTE radio". But
that's not true either. The CPU is reported to use A15 cores, which would make
Apple first to market, but all the writer can do about that is boast of some
vaporware product using the A15. The writer ignores the camera upgrades, the
speaker upgrade, addition of an extra mic, etc., etc.

Later in the article, he gets the software wrong too, talking about how iOS
will use the additional screen space: "Rather than do something interesting
with this space, though, Apple will simply letterbox all 3:2 apps". That's
already untrue; Apple has already redesigned the OS and its own apps to do
interesting things with that space, and third parties who make major apps will
of course do full redesigns in most cases too.

The author then makes a hilariously bad statement about why Apple made the
phone thinner: "It seems like Apple felt compelled to increase the iPhone’s
screen size, but at the same time it couldn’t summon up the marketing cojones
to introduce a phone that was both larger and heavier than the iPhone 4S."

Yeah, that's right. The author is actually saying that the phone is lighter
and thinner because of Apple's lack of "marketing cojones".

It's just hilariously bad writing and control of the facts, all the way
through.

~~~
stanleydrew
It's an opinion piece. I don't think there's any reason to get too upset. We
may not agree with it, but I wouldn't say it's bad writing just because I
don't agree.

People are allowed to gripe. Some people don't think this iPhone is a
significant improvement over the last. That's fine. You probably can't
convince those people otherwise.

~~~
mikeash
The author is allowed to have his own opinions, but not his own facts. The
post you're replying to seems to be complaining about incorrect facts, not
just different opinions.

~~~
stanleydrew
It's a stretch to say that the author made up facts. I'll respond to OP's
complaints one by one.

> ...a blatant lie, saying "Apple tried to convince us that it had stolen a
> 16:9 display from the gods".

This is clearly an opinion. It's weird to call an opinion a lie.

> He then lies about the hardware, saying that "you would be hard stretched to
> find any new features except for the single-chip GSM/CDMA/LTE radio".

Again I wouldn't call this a lie. It's the author's opinion that the most
significant new feature is the radio. You could (and OP does) make the
argument that the author is willfully ignoring the other feature updates. I
still wouldn't call it a lie.

> Later in the article, he gets the software wrong too, talking about how iOS
> will use the additional screen space: "Rather than do something interesting
> with this space, though, Apple will simply letterbox all 3:2 apps". That's
> already untrue;

I think OP is stretching here. It is true that iOS will letterbox 3:2 apps
right? Just because Apple and some developers will update their apps before
launch doesn't make it untrue.

To my reading those are the only places where OP complains about incorrect
facts. As outlined above I don't find the complaints very compelling.

~~~
mikeash
It's an opinion that Apple tried to convince us that it had stolen a 16:9
display from the gods? I grant that there's some subjectivity there, but it's
not an _opinion_. Either Apple tried to convince us of that, or they didn't.

As for the new features, the author didn't say the single-chip radio was the
most significant new feature. The author said it would be hard to find any
other new features. Now, I _think_ he's trying to say that you'd have a hard
time finding iPhone 5 features that don't already exist on other smartphones,
in which case I believe that's accurate. But it's very easy to read it as
saying you'd have a hard time finding new features on the 5 that weren't in
the 4S, which is obviously wrong.

The letterboxing is misleading and I think I can make the case that it's
outright false. First, it says that all 700,000 apps in the App Store will be
letterboxed. This is simply false, as at least some third-party apps will be
available in 16:9 on launch day. It goes on to say that Apple has been "very
quiet" on the question of what happens if you try to use a 16:9 app on a 3:2
device, and whether developers will have to maintain multiple versions. that's
simply wrong: the natural way of developing apps will be to use a flexible
layout that supports both aspect ratios, developers won't need multiple
versions, and it's not difficult to discover this information.

------
bane
"The end result, though, despite Apple’s best efforts to convince us
otherwise, is a phone that is _reactionary_ rather than revolutionary, or even
evolutionary."

I've been struggling with the right word to describe this update and
"reactionary" hits the nail on the head. Almost everything this phone has, the
competition has had for quite some time. It doesn't _quite_ feel like catchup,
with typical panache Apple has built a best-in-class phone design. But it just
doesn't feel like something anybody wants to be chasing any more.

Bigger picture, I'm not sure what this means for the smartphone ecosystem as a
whole w.r.t. innovation. The heat of competition feels like it's finally let
off.

~~~
bradleyland
Even the very first iPhone was "reactionary". It wasn't a class leader if
you're looking at it from a bulleted-list perspective. The first iPhone was
EDGE only at a time when everyone was clammmoring for 3G phones, and it
wouldn't run third-party apps. Many _feature phones_ can run third-party apps;
albeit crappy ones. The iPhone couldn't run third-party apps for a full year
after its release. Talk about reactionary!

The tech press does the same thing every time a new iPhone is released. They
look at it on paper and say dumb things like:

> Don’t get me wrong: the iPhone 5 is a beautiful phone, and in true Apple
> fashion its design and construction are probably second to none… but is that
> really enough?

So, there is no other phone that can beat its design and construction, but "is
it enough"? Is being the best enough?

That has to go down as one of the dumbest, most contradictory rhetorical
questions in history.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Consumers don't care about
implementation details. They care about the experience, and year after year,
Apple delivers the best experience (proved by JD Power's smartphone
satisfaction results).

~~~
cooldeal
>So, there is no other phone that can beat its design and construction, but
"is it enough"? Is being the best enough?

The Nokia N9, Lumia 800, 900 and 920 are pretty well built and designed too.
If you haven't, try going to a store and playing with one.

Coming to the design itself, it's tied in with fashion and at this point the
design has not changed(except for the new back) since the iPhone 4 over 2
years ago. Design and fashion do age. The iPhone 4's design was a leap over
the 3GS and combined with other features warranted a new version number, while
this iteration feels that it should've been named iPhone 4X, X for extra long.
Why get a new iPhone 5 when you already have an iPhone 4 or 4S and can add a
Galaxy or Lumia and keep the old phone around as a iPod Touch music player?

Also, even if the design is superlative and timeless, for many consumers it is
just one factor. The other factors are raw power, technical specs, camera
quality and features(which the Lumia 920 is going to have a head start on). If
the iPhone 5 cannot compete on specs with this years phones, what chance does
it have with the Android phones of the next year?

However, there's another bigger factor that I previously commented on:

I think their problem right now is that users' choice is overwhelming them and
the one-size-fits-all approach of the iPhone has diminishing returns after a
point. The variety, choice of screen sizes and price ranges of the competition
is only getting better by the day.

A new iPhone is released only once a year, so it better be very good with a
lot of new technologies, features, new designs etc. for sales to last all
through the next year. iPhone 4S sales started lagging in the 3Q itself this
year, compared to the 4th quarter for the iPhone 4. This is because people
start waiting for the next version or switch to the competition because they
have better specced devices with more features. I think Samsung timed their
Galaxy S3 launch perfectly to coincide with the iPhone 4S getting old enough
to beat, and they beat it in monthly sales for the first time, which is a
noteworthy thing in itself.

The whole situation is reminding me of the PC wars in the 80s, where Apple had
a seemingly unassailable innovation lead, and then squandered it away by
offering limited choice and higher prices, while Microsoft very smartly
licensed DOS to Compaq and others like Dell and HP, and the rest is history.
Apple's marketshare is now 17% vs. Android's 67% which is about 4 times more.
No wonder Apple is going crazy with the patent war against Android. That's
probably their only weapon against the equivalent of the attack of the hordes
of beige boxes' that previously took them down.

The iPhone 5 is good enough to get great sales and beat all sales records
ever, but the key is how well it does starting about 6 months from now.

~~~
ceejayoz
> That's probably their only weapon against the equivalent of the attack of
> the hordes of beige boxes' that previously took them down.

This totally ignores the fact that Apple later took on those beige boxes, with
the same general strategy they're using in the phone market, and carved out a
perfectly nice, massively profitable niche in it that I imagine they're quite
happy with.

~~~
fauigerzigerk
That niche became dangerously small in the 90s. So small that many doubted
Apple's survival.

------
myko
> Will developers have to maintain multiple versions of each app, just like on
> Android? Apple has been very quiet on this matter.

What? I've been an Android developer for years and never had to do this. I'm
pretty sure it will be the same way on iOS as it is on Android - provide
another layout (a different xib in this case) for the larger and smaller
screens. Done.

~~~
CookWithMe
I chuckled at this too. But a lot of iOS devs have been complaining that
Android development is comparably hard because of the different screen
sizes... well, there you go.

~~~
gte910h
iOS has always had different screen sizes: When someone tethered or in a call,
the app dropped several pixels of vertical real estate.

Now, many apps didn't handle this, but this is really "more of stuff you
should have been doing", not really "tons more work for iOS devs.

------
cs702
The entire iOS app ecosystem has been built upon the idea of 'pixel
perfection,' and now this historical focus on perfection has ironically put
many, and perhaps most, iOS developers in the position of having to _modify
their apps to support a growing variety of specific-to-the-pixel screen
resolutions_.

In the interim, users have to put up with ugly artifacts like black bars and
up-sampled graphics.

\--

PS. The Android team's decision to provide from early on a resolution-
independent GUI framework that automatically uses all screen real estate,
regardless of resolution or aspect ratio, is looking smarter by the day.

~~~
adsr
How is that working exactly? If you are using custom graphics it needs to be
stretched to fit a larger screen, or letter boxed to keep it's original ratio.
If you are using nothing by standard UI elements it will adapt to the screen.

~~~
baconner
First there's a good set of flexible layout controls to build ui that'll
position / size elements to the available screen real estate. So you can build
screens that position elements fairly well on different resolutions.

Second you can make multiple versions of these layouts that'll swap in given
some device parameters. So if the flexible layouts didn't suit your need you
could make (for example) one for tablets, one for phones. You can do the same
for bitmaps so you can have different versions of each for different DPIs.

For bitmap aspect ratio issues there are also 9patch bitmaps which specify
which portions of the image can be stretched and which can't. That works
pretty well for small adjustments and background images.

------
bornhuetter
The whole idea of there being one single perfect phone size is nonsense. I'm
6'3", with large hands, so I can quite comfortably use a 4.5"+ screen. My
Asian wife has much smaller hands, so would struggle with anything bigger than
4"-4.5" (that's what she said).

Different people are going to prefer different phone sizes.

~~~
markmm
Lucky she's married to you then eh?

Sorry couldn't resist

------
digitalengineer
"...These fixed ratios/resolutions are one of the main reasons for Apple’s
strong app ecosystem."

Oh right. Silly me thought is was the SDK, the link with iTunes, paid Apps,
the link with Credit Cards, the high quality designs and what not.

~~~
indiecore
>one of the

~~~
albemuth
>one of the main

~~~
bornhuetter
iOS developers frequently cite differing screen sizes/resolutions as a problem
with Android app development (an issue of fragmentation).

~~~
huxley
The term fragmentation gets thrown around but its worth unpacking the
rationale, because it becomes too simplistic as a epithet.

When iOS developers talk about fragmentation they generally mean that it is
hard to predict the target size (buttons and other UI elements), the layout of
the screen, and the PPI in terms of generating screen elements.

The iPhone 5's new screen does add another row to the matrix of iOS
combinations, but Apple worked to minimize the impact on developers since they
only added vertical pixels without changing the PPI or the target size
relative to the iPhone 4/4s.

So if you target the iPhone 5, the cell for screen size and number of pixels
is different, but the PPI is the same as the iPhone 4/4s (and double the older
iPhones) and target size is the exact same as all iPhones before it.

If you want to build a Universal App (for both iPad and iPhones) you now need
to think of 2 target sizes (for iPads and iPhones), 4 PPI (2x iPhone and 2x
iPad), and 5 screen resolutions (iPhone 5, iPhone 4/4s, older iPhones,
iPad1/2, new iPad). Before the iPhone 5, it was 2 target sizes, 4 PPI, and 4
screen resolutions. Before the Retina iPad, it was 2 target sizes, 3 PPI, and
3 screen resolutions. Before the iPhone 4/4s, it was 2 target sizes, 2 PPI,
and 2 screen resolutions. And so on.

Effectively developers who want to add iPhone 5 support only need to consider
the extra vertical space without worrying that buttons are suddenly going to
get too small or the balance of items on the layout will get stretched or
squashed or oddly distributed (if you do some sort of auto-layout).

If the iPad Mini comes along, it's widely believed that the resolution will
likely match the iPad 2 but the target sizes will be the size matching the
iPhone and PPI matching older iPhones. Again, keeping things relatively
predictable by only changing some factors.

The matrix of combinations is still manageable even when adding two different
devices, whereas if you tried to create a similar matrix of combinations for
Android, it would be gigantic.

An Android developer might reply, well once the combinations get complicated
enough, you just accept that nothing will stay consistent and just target some
commonalities. And that may be perfectly fine.

Is the Apple approach worth it? Not worrying about the combination matrix
gives Android phone makers far more flexibility in form factors than Apple
has.

Apple has effectively entered into a contract with iOS developers that changes
will be limited and Android developers are already used to having little
control over target size, screen ratio, or resolution.

When you think about it, the whole thing is a fascinating controlled
experiment in different approaches to hardware and software development
philosophies.

~~~
bornhuetter
> When you think about it, the whole thing is a fascinating controlled
> experiment in different approaches to hardware and software development
> philosophies.

Indeed. I'm really curious to see how this pans out. The iOS approach is
clearly easier for everyone in the short term, but it remains to be seen
whether the Android's approach will give them a significant longer-term
advantage.

Pixel perfect fitting vs. Wide range of options, and ability for manufacturers
to "mess with the formula"

------
saturdaysaint
The article doesn't mention the updates to iOS 6, in dev hands for months,
that allow for flexible layouts. I'd be surprised if any major 3rd party apps
(Facebook Netflix Kindle Dropbox Spotify) weren't ready at launch. We'll see
for games.

But, really, iOS has survived far bigger transitions.

I owned the first retina iPhone (4) at launch and apps were upgraded so
quickly that I can barely remember using non-retina apps on it.

Many early iPad adopters ran at least some upscaled iPhone apps on it for
months while developers caught up to a vastly different medium - a hideous
compromise compared to letterboxing. Was that even a speedbump on the iPad's
rise to blockbuster status?

So this strikes me as completely academic.

~~~
fmkamchatka
The problem with the autolayout is that it only works on iOS6 devices, so
developers still need to use the old way until they can drop ioS5 support.

That being said it is very easy to support the new iPhone the old way.

------
huxley
I know there are pressures to get an article --any article-- out there, but
the linkbaiting and trolling (on both pro- and con) is going off-the-charts
with the iPhone 5.

I really should have stuck to my guns and ignored all the articles until 2 or
3 weeks pass by and we're dealing more with hard facts, less with tea-leaves
and parsing every sentence that Apple staff said (or failed to say).

------
jeffehobbs
My understanding is that if the dev is using standard Interface Builder
UITableView elements, it's a pretty easy transition. If your whole UI is non-
standard, like a game UI for example, yeah, there's going to be some slight
pain if you want to allot for the additional screen space.

But come on, it's not that bad, this article is hyperbolic.

~~~
RMacy
Totally concur. It's gotten to the point where there isn't an obvious amount
of features/changes to be done.

------
andrethegiant
"Rather than do something interesting with this space, though, Apple will
simply letterbox all 3:2 apps — all 700,000 of them in the App Store. If you
can believe it, you will actually get black bars at the top and bottom of the
screen."

Please. What else would you do besides letterboxing? Stretch the content in
the y direction? That would look terrible. Implement some cool new feature
that lives inside the new screen real estate? Then devs wouldn't want to
upgrade their apps to support the iPhone 5 ratio. Letterboxing is for
backwards-compatibility, but the author makes it sound like Apple can't think
of anything creative to fill that space. And because the screen dimension
change is only in one direction, developers will have an easier time modifying
their app layouts.

~~~
Someone
_"What else would you do besides letterboxing?"_

Show ads :-)

The only slightly useful thing I can think of is that they could permanently
show the app switcher, but I am not even sure that is a good idea. It probably
would make it too easy to jump out of an app.

------
s00pcan
I really don't consider this a compromise; everyone else is pointlessly making
screens larger in both directions that can't be used comfortably with one
hand. The marketers just want to have that 4"+ screen on the feature list.
Making the screen taller but keeping the same width was the best way of
increasing the size but still keeping it usable.

~~~
LaGrange
Actually, I doubt the additional row of icons makes a huge difference (though,
maybe it does help videos), but I bet the additional space inside the phone is
useful.

~~~
evoxed
I just want to be able to read more text at a time... seems like every time I
open an email or webpage, at any comfortable size I get less text than I can
read in a few blinks. I won't know until it's in my hand, but the extra height
and fullscreen Safari sound pretty great to me (also, more room for my hands
to make those damn pinching motions– the tall and large communities will
appreciate it).

------
mbell
"...under delivers on the hardware specification"

What was under delivered on? Are people really this upset about NFC?

~~~
bane
I agree, the hardware specs are fine. Nothing to get excited about, but that's
rarely been the thrust of iPhone's appeal anyway (outside of perhaps the
retina display).

I think the phoned in industrial design is the problem. "Let's make it a bit
taller and take the glass off the back" is simply not the improvement in
industrial design from one generation to the next that might be expected:

bezel-less - [http://static.droidblog.net/dgstorm/df/bezel-free-folded-
sam...](http://static.droidblog.net/dgstorm/df/bezel-free-folded-samsung-
smartphone-mockup.png)

flexible screens - [http://homeklondike.com/wp-
content/uploads/2011/12/1-concept...](http://homeklondike.com/wp-
content/uploads/2011/12/1-concept-smartphone-fluid-by-philips.jpg)

pixel-qi style display

1ms touchscreen response

full color touch sensitive display projector -
[http://gadgetsin.com/uploads/2012/03/ufo_smartphone_concept_...](http://gadgetsin.com/uploads/2012/03/ufo_smartphone_concept_design_1.jpg)

any one of these things (done in the typically well designed Apple way) would
have been worth a full number update on the phone.

Here's an entire gallery of ideas
[https://www.google.com/search?q=smart+phone+design+concepts&...](https://www.google.com/search?q=smart+phone+design+concepts&hl=en&safe=off&prmd=imvns&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=T2VTUN-3Asbi0QHnwoCAAw&ved=0CAoQ_AUoAQ&biw=1120&bih=642)

but what was launched just feels like refinement and not imagination

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
Yep. The iPhone 5 looks like an iPhone 4S, but longer. It should have been the
iPhone 4SS, not the iPhone 5. It's not a big enough change.

------
adsr
I've got the impression that most of the phone internals has been updated. I
prefer that to cosmetic design changes for it's own sake and gimmick features
that isn't yet established and/or used by many. I like what Apple bring with
it's media expertise and the added hardware image processing and panorama
photo.

