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Apple’s boring hardware updates

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Re: Apple’s boring hardware updates

#51

Post by efields »

daimyoyo wrote: post #37

I was really surprised that Apple chose to unveil thunderbolt in a press release rather than at an event. They'd been working with Intel for years and at the end all it garnered was "oh by the way the new MB pros will have lightpeak I/O ports built in and we're calling it thunderbolt." Couldn't they have waited the few weeks until the iPad announcement and unveiled it then? Apple missed a huge opportunity for free pr…

Lightpeak is impressive, but there's barely any hardware out there for it. What could they do to show it off? Show it transfering gigs of movies between some $500 lacie drive in seconds? It might be impressive to us, but until lightpeak hardware drops to a consumer-friendly pricepoint, its really nothing that will help sell products to the average consumer.

Re: Apple’s boring hardware updates

#52

Post by gnok »

daimyoyo wrote: post #37

I was really surprised that Apple chose to unveil thunderbolt in a press release rather than at an event. They'd been working with Intel for years and at the end all it garnered was "oh by the way the new MB pros will have lightpeak I/O ports built in and we're calling it thunderbolt." Couldn't they have waited the few weeks until the iPad announcement and unveiled it then? Apple missed a huge opportunity for free pr…

Not really. It would look extremely awkward to announce a new port standard and then announce a brand new device that does not have that port, nor comes with a dongle to convert. No ball dropped here.

Re: Apple’s boring hardware updates

#53

Post by tinotopia »

blub wrote: post #43
jrockway wrote: post #28

... LTE chipset (which currently has coverage almost nowhere) Whoa! Marco is beginning to sound more annoying than Gruber. The Apple fanbois make statements like this all the time -- Apple doesn't support something, so therefore it's irrelevant? LTE is available in NYC, LA, and Chicago (and 20 other cities), which are the three biggest markets in the US. That's not "nowhere", that's "a good chunk of the population".…

"The Apple fanbois make statements like this all the time" Yes, I find that to be the case also. While it's true that Apple builds good products, the fans generally try to make them look more innovative and to put the competition in a bad light. This can be explained by cognitive dissonance.

Alternately, it can be explained by the fact that a lot of happy Apple customers — 'fans', I suppose — are fine with farming out some of their technological decision-making to Apple. Seriously: if Apple isn't putting some seeming obvious feature into a phone, or computer, or whatever, I figure that there's probably some good reason for that. I'm not sufficiently interested to need to understand the minute details of every choice they make.

LTE is a perfect example. I don't give a damn whether my next phone has LTE. I have better things to do with my time than figure out whether the coverage — independent of carriers' marketing claims — is decent, make guesses — independent of etc. etc. — as to the extent of the coverage rollout over the next year, read up on the battery-life implications of LTE, and ponder whether the bottleneck on my phone has anything to do with the network speed in the first place.

(Actually, I already have a very strong suspicion about where the bottleneck is on my phone, and that's why I really don't care about LTE right now.)

Overall, I trust Apple to sell me the best all-round phone given the constraints of current technology. So far I've been very happy with that approach. So, yes, if Apple isn't putting some seeming obvious feature in a phone, I figure that there's probably a good reason for it, a reason that I'd understand and possibly even agree with if I invested a lot of time in the question.

The risk is that, should Apple go rogue, they could rip me off for an iteration or two before I wised up. In which case I would just go buy another phone from someone else and be done with it.

It's not like I'm blindly trusting Apple to not, say, saw off my leg and feed it to alligators; I'm trusting them to make decisions about a whole bunch of tradeoffs, decisions that will at best be valid only for a few months anyway, decisions on which hinge the expenditure of a few hundred dollars.

I'm not saying that becoming a micro-expert on your purchases is wrong, just that there's something to be said for not bothering. This is very much not the Nerd Way, but I have to say that I'm much happier since I stopped having to personally establish the perfect correctness of all my techno-purchasing decisions.

Re: Apple’s boring hardware updates

#54

Post by culturestate »

jrockway wrote: post #28

... LTE chipset (which currently has coverage almost nowhere) Whoa! Marco is beginning to sound more annoying than Gruber. The Apple fanbois make statements like this all the time -- Apple doesn't support something, so therefore it's irrelevant? LTE is available in NYC, LA, and Chicago (and 20 other cities), which are the three biggest markets in the US. That's not "nowhere", that's "a good chunk of the population".…

I wonder how much of them leaving it out has to do with their willingness to wait until tech fits into their defined power envelopes? Is LTE significantly more power hungry, or is this a blu-ray style "we just don't want to" thing?

Re: Apple’s boring hardware updates

#55

Post by zdw »

runinit wrote: post #29
zdw wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Integrated CC system sounds much too niche, especially with Square and similar solutions.

In the future, all your cards will be on your "mobile" device.

In the future, all your cards will be public keys that can be revoked.

Re: Apple’s boring hardware updates

#56

Post by kaylarose »

zdw wrote: post #4

My wager for this summer/fall is an "iPhone 4S" with the A5 processor, with almost no other hardware changes. Plus a launch of iOS 5, with a revamped notification system, more developer API's, and possibly some UI reworks (iOS is looking pretty long in the tooth compared to things like Windows Phone 7)

Unfortunately I agree. I hope we are both wrong though, and it really is an iPhone5.

Re: Apple’s boring hardware updates

#57

Post by allwein »

eelco wrote: post #44
vl wrote: post #33

My bet is on a larger screen: resolution is high enough to support larger screen and competition has nice large screens already.

iOS and all the apps are build for a specific _physical_ size. A larger screen would mean apps would need to scale (or run in an awkward smaller size) which would look terrible and be awkward to use (very large buttons). The alternative would be to ask developers to make another, slightly larger version of their apps. Not going to happen ;)

The apps are built for a specific resolution. As long as the screen resolution is 320x480 or 640x960, the actual physical dimensions of the screen are irrelevant.

Re: Apple’s boring hardware updates

#58

Post by bzbarsky »

allwein wrote: post #57
eelco wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

iOS and all the apps are build for a specific _physical_ size. A larger screen would mean apps would need to scale (or run in an awkward smaller size) which would look terrible and be awkward to use (very large buttons). The alternative would be to ask developers to make another, slightly larger version of their apps. Not going to happen ;)

The apps are built for a specific resolution. As long as the screen resolution is 320x480 or 640x960, the actual physical dimensions of the screen are irrelevant.

.. or 960x1440!

Re: Apple’s boring hardware updates

#59

Post by tomkarlo »

Apple isn't a hardware vendor: it isn't building its strategy off continually trying to get people to switch to the "latest and greatest." Instead, it's focusing on making it's money off the app store / itunes platform, and doing that makes it more important to keep their existing customers happy and on the phones they've already bought. That's why you see them being so consistent about upgrades, etc and support for the older units than other manufacturers.

Continual planned obsolescence is great for hardware sales but tends to make your customers feel a little sour about the product they bought from you last year. If you really want them to be loyal, buying apps and staying with the brand, it seems like a better plan to keep them happy through as much of the product cycle as possible by reducing hardware churn and focusing on software upgrades you can use for marketing but also distribute to your existing base.

Re: Apple’s boring hardware updates

#60

Post by oleganza »

eelco wrote: post #44
vl wrote: post #33

My bet is on a larger screen: resolution is high enough to support larger screen and competition has nice large screens already.

iOS and all the apps are build for a specific _physical_ size. A larger screen would mean apps would need to scale (or run in an awkward smaller size) which would look terrible and be awkward to use (very large buttons). The alternative would be to ask developers to make another, slightly larger version of their apps. Not going to happen ;)

If you mean that developers adjust pixels sizes for the finger (like "button should be no less than 40x40 points"), then it's not that strict. iPad has less points per inch than iPhone, but the standard buttons all have the same logical sizes on both devices. If iPhone 5(6,7) has a bigger physical screen, then all the controls will simply become a little bit bigger (but still smaller than on iPad, btw) and retina display resolution will still be high enough to have sharp text and graphics.

The only apps that rely on physical size are some sort of virtual rulers. When pixel size is changed, they need to be modified to adjust to that.

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