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IPhone 4

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Re: IPhone 4

#151

Post by jrockway »

chrisbolt wrote: post #146
jrockway wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The OpenMoko phone also had a higher number of pixels-per-inch than the iPhone 4. And this was years ago, by a no-name hardware company. The reason other phones don't have a "retina display" is because it's expensive, and the other phones are trying to win market share by being cheap. Sadly, this works better than making a quality product.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_displays_by_pixel_densi... Openmoko: 282ppi iPhone 4: 326ppi

Those numbers seem to change every time I reload the page...

Re: IPhone 4

#152

Post by commandar »

bmalicoat wrote: post #99
ergo98 wrote: post #76

Even though this is the Haus of Gruber (why, exactly, does everything he post get FPd here? Confirmation bias, perhaps?), I'll take my downvote suffering- >In fact, Apple seems very confident regarding everything it decided for the original 2007 iPhone Except multitasking in apps. Actually, scratch that, except apps altogether. Two major shifts in direction. Of course Gruber led into that talking about hardware. Ther…

I agree with some of what you say but I don't think you can say Apple changed on including apps. They didn't include apps from the first gen due to the huge engineering effort required to successfully support 3rd parties and have the mechanisms in place to distribute apps. Launching a v1 product and including a ton of 3rd party support for an unproven phone would have been a big gamble. Coming out with it a year late…

Except that when iPhone launched, they didn't say "we're still working on supporting 3rd party apps"; instead the official line from Apple was "if you want to develop for iPhone, write web apps." Even Gruber called it ludicrous at the time.

Re: IPhone 4

#153

Post by ergo98 »

jacobolus wrote: post #107
ergo98 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A less serious accusation is that Gruber now knows that his core readership consists of, essentially, the Apple faithful. He knows to pander to that crowd and that is how he gets paid. It's iPhone fans who feel that every Gruber observation about the iPhone is so critically important that it needs to be voted up on HN.

His readership, from the frequency with which his posts make it to the front page here, seems to include the hacker news community. Do you consider yourself, or the rest of us, “essentially the Apple faithful”? As far as I can tell the subject of his blog could be summarized as something like “high signal-to-noise and semi-technical discussion of Apple, the web, and graphic design, with occasional sports and politics…

>Do you consider yourself, or the rest of us, “essentially the Apple faithful”?

HN does have a strong Apple lean, although it has subsided quite dramatically over the past year (for reasons that PG has documented).

Re: IPhone 4

#154

Post by nooneelse »

jrockway wrote: post #151
chrisbolt wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_displays_by_pixel_densi... Openmoko: 282ppi iPhone 4: 326ppi

Those numbers seem to change every time I reload the page...

Given the retinal indifference threshold of 287ppi@12inches, which was given in a recent HN-linked and praised article, 282ppi only needs to be a 1/4 inch further out for the pixels to fall into retinal indifference. Pretty nice for a 2008 phone.

Re: IPhone 4

#155

Post by samaparicio »

pohl wrote: post #116
samaparicio wrote: post #93

I for one am getting tired of all this undeserved attention to things that don't make a difference in anybody's lives. This iphone doesn't make anybody more productive, more empowered, more effective, less frustrated. It doesn't free up time for anybody and doesn't do anything new. In fact, I just wrote the complete opposite of Gruber article: a comparison of the GREAT things that are unique to iPhone and to Android…

Blogging about the hype only constitutes more hype. Your actions are at odds with your intent.

Pohl... I didn't blog about the hype. I wrote about real differences that make a user's life better.

For example: I said that Android's turn-by-turn navigation will lower the chances of you getting lost on the way to the airport.

Or that the pictures and videos you take on an iPhone will look better.

What I'm trying to get at is that a lot of these reviews (like Gruber's) focus on irrelevant or marginally relevant issues for real users.

It's great that the iPhone 4 has a hi-res display, but what is the impact?

Re: IPhone 4

#156

Post by ary »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #149
ary wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Say what you will about the volume and lock buttons, but the new silence toggle is great. About once a day I would accidentally switch my phone from ring to silent (or vice versa) with my 3GS.

Does anyone else notice this pattern and find it strange: Feature X on my new Apple product is great . It's much better than the flawed version on my earlier Apple device. The retina screen and camera are two big areas where Apple might have previously been considered behind the curve, yet they get strongly praised for being better than their earlier efforts rather than benchmarked against current rivals. Compare the…

Was I supposed to bemoan the fact that they've improved it? I'm sure if you grepped the web you'd find that people have been praising the improvement of products they like since... since at least the early 1990's.

The Retina display is nice, but I find myself appreciating it for how it's used, not for its resolution (apps that don't accommodate for it look terrible). There is probably a lot of better technology out there, but soldering and gluing parts together does not a product make. People like it because of the whole package, and see it as greater than the sum of its parts.

Re: IPhone 4

#157

Post by ZeroGravitas »

ary wrote: post #156
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does anyone else notice this pattern and find it strange: Feature X on my new Apple product is great . It's much better than the flawed version on my earlier Apple device. The retina screen and camera are two big areas where Apple might have previously been considered behind the curve, yet they get strongly praised for being better than their earlier efforts rather than benchmarked against current rivals. Compare the…

Was I supposed to bemoan the fact that they've improved it? I'm sure if you grepped the web you'd find that people have been praising the improvement of products they like since... since at least the early 1990's. The Retina display is nice, but I find myself appreciating it for how it's used, not for its resolution (apps that don't accommodate for it look terrible). There is probably a lot of better technology out t…

Well logically you should complain about faulty buttons and be unimpressed by working ones. But people don't work logically so it's the same effect as wearing too tight shoes or the childrens' story "A squash and a squeeze", the relief you feel from something bad returning to a normal level is palpable and can actually feel better than just having things work in the first place.

Like you, I think it shows that if you get the important stuff right, then people will be very forgiving of your faults, while still being harsh about similar level faults in competing products (which perhaps get a different set of important stuff right for other folks). People are funny that way and while I find it interesting, I don't think people should celebrate it any more than placebo effects should be attributed to new medicines.

Re: IPhone 4

#158

Post by pohl »

samaparicio wrote: post #155
pohl wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blogging about the hype only constitutes more hype. Your actions are at odds with your intent.

Pohl... I didn't blog about the hype. I wrote about real differences that make a user's life better. For example: I said that Android's turn-by-turn navigation will lower the chances of you getting lost on the way to the airport. Or that the pictures and videos you take on an iPhone will look better. What I'm trying to get at is that a lot of these reviews (like Gruber's) focus on irrelevant or marginally relevant is…

Odd choice for a headline, then.

As it happens, nobody that I know personally cares about turn-by-turn navigation at all. I probably use that capability twice a year just for shits and giggles. A marginally better turn-by-turn implementation would have no impact for me or anyone I know, but that's because there's nothing terribly complex about navigating around my region.

It also happens that the display resolution on the latest iPhone was a major selling point for me, as I end up doing a lot of reading on my phone for the simple fact that I read a lot and it's always with me when I have those random, spare minutes throughout the day where I have nothing else to do but kill time. I just want the internet in my pocket, and not to strain my eyes.

I suspect I'm not alone in my priorities. Did you really not suspect that there are people out there who are dissimilar from you?

Re: IPhone 4

#159

Post by samaparicio »

pohl wrote: post #158
samaparicio wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pohl... I didn't blog about the hype. I wrote about real differences that make a user's life better. For example: I said that Android's turn-by-turn navigation will lower the chances of you getting lost on the way to the airport. Or that the pictures and videos you take on an iPhone will look better. What I'm trying to get at is that a lot of these reviews (like Gruber's) focus on irrelevant or marginally relevant is…

Odd choice for a headline, then. As it happens, nobody that I know personally cares about turn-by-turn navigation at all. I probably use that capability twice a year just for shits and giggles. A marginally better turn-by-turn implementation would have no impact for me or anyone I know, but that's because there's nothing terribly complex about navigating around my region. It also happens that the display resolution o…

I guess you're saying that the article suffers from selection bias? Maybe.

But then you go on to state that "nobodody that I know" ... which is just the same kind of selection filter.

There are well over 50 million Garmin style GPS units in the market offering turn-by-turn navigation. While you may not have a need for them, they are providing widely adopted functionality, and since Android is the first mobile platform doing this, it is potentially disruptive.

Is the higher resolution display of the iPhone 4 disruptive, or an enhancement?

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