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The 2020 iPhone SE

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Re: The 2020 iPhone SE

#301
post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just the very idea of installing firmware updates on a set of headphones is completely bizarre.

It doesn't seem that bizarre to me. If something can be improved ex post facto, it seems more bizarre to me that this wasn't a thing sooner.

Headphones are purely electromechanical devices. They don't need software, except for silly contrived reasons.

Re: The 2020 iPhone SE

#302
post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's got the lastest iOS and I fully expect the lack of iOS 14 support will be the reason I have to swap it for a new model once software support falls away. For what it’s worth, Apple last updated iOS 12 on March 24th, so they seem to be supporting not only the most recent major version of iOS: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201222

I didn't know this, this is excellent news. Thank you! I was worried that my work policy might block my phone without the latest firmware.

Note that Apple, as far as I’m aware, doesn’t officialy support any other iOS version than the latest. So your employer might still block your phone.

Re: The 2020 iPhone SE

#303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The slightly bigger body I could accommodate, the rounded edges are f* ugly but can handle that too if I must, even the dumb protruding camera may not repel me if I meditate enough but not having audio connection without some kind of adapter or adapters - considering the various use cases - is just incomprehensibly idiotic. I will never ever go for such. I rather have a granny-phone and paper+pen address book, relear…

So, just don't buy it? I dunno what to tell you -- it sounds like a lot of your identity and mental health is wrapped up in what Apple's product people want to develop. Personally, I would never want to go back to the crappy headphone connectors. The connector always wore out on me. So while I understand why you might want a headphone port (and some people likely want an in-built parallel or ADB2 port), it's hyperbol…

That was the point exactly, you do not need to analyze and put so many uninvited speculation into a simple fact that I see tings differently and doesn't like certain things. Yes, the point was not to buy the device, exactly!

I stand by the phrasing of 'utter madness and gross incompetence' when usability is degraded and things get unnecessarily complicated in an essential functionality. All of this for questionable changes (I wouldn't dare calling it improvement, I feel improper just to mention this word in this context, the whole thing is very far from improvement).

What I also need to add how strange is that certain groups of people get offended on strong and grounded opinion about some consumer product like if it was a central element of their life not a utility of an auxiliary topic.

Re: The 2020 iPhone SE

#304
post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just the very idea of installing firmware updates on a set of headphones is completely bizarre.

We live in an age where cars reboot while driving (Tesla). It's bizarre because we never experienced it before. But the additional flexibility offered via software updates is the core power of software. Where we are able to replace hardware with software functionality, there's additional flexibility for improvement and iteration. That's a valuable add.

The bizarre here is squeezing in matters into things just because we can. Using techniques just for the sake of using those techniques or approaches elsewhere is not a good enough argument.

It is bad putting software into anything and everything, just because we do it frequently to other things. It should have much better reason for that. Complicating unnecessarily and many times introducing risks and troubles is a no good.

“A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”

Sadly, we forget this simple fact.

Re: The 2020 iPhone SE

#305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best camera is the one you have with you at all times, at the exact moment you need it.

Yes, but no reason then to upgrade your phone to get a better camera at premium prices. How about using the camera phone if you are strolling down the street and want to make a Pulitzer photo and getting a better camera for those times you know you will be making photos like an anniversary, etc.

Sigh, this keeps getting downvoted...

The thing is: look how much we love convenience! Instead of having two devices (a decent phone and a much better separate camera, both rarely updated) we prefer to constantly upgrade the phone to have a better camera.

But a lot of the times you know you will be making photos in advance. If you go on holiday or you have an anniversary, etc. there's not that much planning required or bother to bring the proper separate (compact) camera.

It's really amazing.

Re: The 2020 iPhone SE

#306
post #31

Those benchmarks are impressive. iPhone SE beating the 2019 MBP in single core performance? That's fantastic! I wish I could comment on or know what he was talking about with the iPhone X vs "old iPhone" interaction paradigm. I personally thought the "single button" hardware interface was an incredible innovation that changed everything. Even Android relies on it. My Galaxy S9+ has a "software home button" (like most…

Something has got to be screwy. The iPhone has a TDP of 6W and a clock speed of 2.5GHz. The MBP has boost clocks of 5GHz and a 45W TDP.

I think, Geekbench favors bursty performance because it gives very close scores to new MacBook Air with the Y-series Intel chip (7 watt TDP) and newest Dell XPS 13 with U-series chip with TDP of 25 watts.

Re: The 2020 iPhone SE

#307
post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i'm not disagreeing with you but, replace "this phone" with "any iPhone" or "any Mac" over the course of post-OS X Apple history.

I disagree with you, I'm personally not a fan of apple but I admit that majority apple products can really compete even in non-apple countries. It's a bit extra but you get some premium features like stronger frame or higher resolution screen. With iPhone SE you get absolutely nothing extra other than "apple ecosystem".

oh yeah. i'm just saying, Apple's audience doesn't necessarily care about tech specs.

Re: The 2020 iPhone SE

#308
post #64
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no disputing preferences. I still feel weird about face ID, and would rather have buttons.

Sure, nothing is stopping you from preferring inferior options. The button is objectively worse. It is more complicated mechanically, it is slower for all of its functions, and it wastes almost an inch of screen space to nothing. The redeeming aspect of it is Touch ID if the pros outweigh the cons for your preferred use case vs. Face ID.

"Objectively" is not the right word here. There's a reason I used the word taste, rather than looking at specs or technology or performance: it might be that a $0.99 McDonald's hamburger is "objectively" inferior to a $20 organic grass-fed medium-rare burger from a fancy restaurant; but if I prefer the McDonald's one, it's useless to tell me that my tastes are wrong.

Maybe I like the ritual of thumb-to-unlock, since it feels more under my control. Maybe there's instances in which I want to look at the phone without unlocking the device. Maybe I hate the stupid notch, and I want my screen to be a rectangle and not a rounded rectangle. Just because you don't value these things doesn't make your preference "objectively" correct.

> wastes almost an inch of screen space to nothing

It's a feature, not a bug: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_space

(I also have a huge pet peeve with the bezels shrinking on recent iPads. However good the fancy touch-canceling algorithms get, they'll never compete with "I'm not touching the screen at all, so I'm 1000% sure this grip won't invoke an action.")

Re: The 2020 iPhone SE

#309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, just don't buy it? I dunno what to tell you -- it sounds like a lot of your identity and mental health is wrapped up in what Apple's product people want to develop. Personally, I would never want to go back to the crappy headphone connectors. The connector always wore out on me. So while I understand why you might want a headphone port (and some people likely want an in-built parallel or ADB2 port), it's hyperbol…

That was the point exactly, you do not need to analyze and put so many uninvited speculation into a simple fact that I see tings differently and doesn't like certain things. Yes, the point was not to buy the device, exactly! I stand by the phrasing of 'utter madness and gross incompetence' when usability is degraded and things get unnecessarily complicated in an essential functionality. All of this for questionable c…

You can stand by the phrasing, which I think most reasonable people would deem hyberbolic. It is a misuse of language to make such a strong emotional statement about a design decision where you have zero knowledge of the considerations involved, and what tradeoffs were considered.

There must be some sort of an internet rule one party intends a statement to be about the other, but it really applies to the author.

Re: The 2020 iPhone SE

#310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The slightly bigger body I could accommodate, the rounded edges are f* ugly but can handle that too if I must, even the dumb protruding camera may not repel me if I meditate enough but not having audio connection without some kind of adapter or adapters - considering the various use cases - is just incomprehensibly idiotic. I will never ever go for such. I rather have a granny-phone and paper+pen address book, relear…

Let's say Apple comes out with a phone with a perfect folding screen, a battery that holds a charge for a month, perfect offline speech recognition, and it costs $100. I still wouldn't buy it if it didn't have a headphone jack, because I'd consider it a bad design. Does that make me stupid? Perhaps. But as an engineer I'd find such a phone insulting: There's no valid engineering reason not to include a headphone jack…

Agree!
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