Apple’s boring hardware updates • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple’s boring hardware updates

#61

Post by joebadmo » Thu, Mar 31, 2011, 4:15 PM UTC

chrisbolt wrote: post #36

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".…

How good is that LTE coverage though, even within those cities? Granted, I'm on AT&T, but today I was on the sunset strip in Hollywood and my iPhone dropped to EDGE. The sunset strip doesn't even have 3G and I'm supposed to get excited about 4G?

I don't understand your logic or why you are getting upvotes. You're comparing Verizon's LTE (for which the reviews are generally amazing) to ATT's notoriously bad 3G, especially on the iPhone.

Re: Apple’s boring hardware updates

#62

Post by joebadmo » Thu, Mar 31, 2011, 4:20 PM UTC

tinotopia wrote: post #53

blub wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

This is a truly insightful comment, and really clarifies the distinction, I think, between Apple people and non-Apple people. Though, really, I suppose it's more of a point on a spectrum of how much of your tech decisions you're willing to farm out.

As for me, I fall on the other side of that point. Whenever I use an Apple product, I find that I'm often annoyed at the decisions that have been made for me, but more than that, I'm not allowed to change that decision.

It's interesting, though, that people on either side of line regard the other side's feature as a bug.

Re: Apple’s boring hardware updates

#63

Post by dman » Thu, Mar 31, 2011, 5:04 PM UTC

aeontech wrote: post #30

dman wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless you could unfold the phone.

But then it would have again a front and back... Unless... You don't mean they would add another two display on the inside back fold!? My god, quadruple displays!

Moebius strip computing to the rescue!

Re: Apple’s boring hardware updates

#64

Post by tinotopia » Thu, Mar 31, 2011, 6:06 PM UTC

joebadmo wrote: post #62

tinotopia wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This is a truly insightful comment, and really clarifies the distinction, I think, between Apple people and non-Apple people. Though, really, I suppose it's more of a point on a spectrum of how much of your tech decisions you're willing to farm out. As for me, I fall on the other side of that point. Whenever I use an Apple product, I find that I'm often annoyed at the decisions that have been made for me, but more th…

It's not that I see the greater flexibility of, well, nearly all non-Apple product as being a bug, exactly. There are certainly tremendous advantages to being flexible, adaptable, and extensible. It's just that there are also some advantages to being less flexible; these advantages are subtle and often missed.

The big win in an inflexible system like the iPhone — aside from it being inherently more discoverable and predictable — is that it's much easier and more reliable to get an intelligent, thinking, learning human to adapt to an inflexible system than it is to build a system that can deftly adapt to various imagined human desires.

It's this inflexibility, oddly enough, that gives Apple its reputation for ease of use: it's possible to make much more concrete statements about the operation of a Mac or an iPhone or iPad than it is about most competing systems and devices. The system perceived as 'friendly' is, oddly enough, the one that imposes its will upon the user.

Re: Apple’s boring hardware updates

#65

Post by blub » Fri, Apr 01, 2011, 6:44 AM UTC

tinotopia wrote: post #53

blub wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

>"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."

LTE has nothing to do with my message, you're responding to jrockway now.

I was talking about how Apple fans slightly alter history to make Apple look better. Lesser known inventors/persons/products are brushed aside and Apple gets all the credit. Tesla vs. Edison.

How many Apple fans know about LG Prada and how many of them think that Apple invented the touch-screen phone? Apple is very good at POLISHING existing concepts. This is a very important skill in itself, but why not call it for what it is instead of lavishing such praise on them?

Here's another one: most Mac users still have the impression that Macs are inherently more secure than Windows machines when the opposite is in fact true. This has been mentioned by several security people here on HN to the surprise of others.

And here's you doing it: "Overall, I trust Apple to sell me the best all-round phone given the constraints of current technology." A good phone first of all has to be able to make and take calls, but iPhone 4 has a critical hardware flaw that makes it drop calls. There are no technology constraints that prevent Apple from making a phone that doesn't drop calls when touched.

An yet, in spite all of this, do you think that iPhone 4 is a mediocre phone? No, you still think it's the best "all-around" phone.