my favorite point:
"I think Apple is going to be able to get the price on such an iPod Touch below $200 before Cisco is going to create iMovie-like editing software for the Flip."
IPhone 4
61–70 of 159 posts
Re: IPhone 4
#62>The overall build quality seems impossibly good. The iPhone 4 is beautiful to behold and feels like a valuable artifact. It’s like a love letter to Dieter Rams. Do other people actually like reading stuff like this? I mean, regardless of what you think of the iphone 4, that level of praise almost makes me feel bad for him. It's like romantic love for an object.
I skimmed through the article looking for anything negative. Acknowledging its flaws is more productive than studying its perfection.
There is plenty of discussion of the signal issue, the proximity sensor issue, and the potential fragility. It doesn't gloss over them or overplay them.
Is that sufficient? This seems at least as balanced and credible as the Ars Technical review.
Re: IPhone 4
#63>The overall build quality seems impossibly good. The iPhone 4 is beautiful to behold and feels like a valuable artifact. It’s like a love letter to Dieter Rams. Do other people actually like reading stuff like this? I mean, regardless of what you think of the iphone 4, that level of praise almost makes me feel bad for him. It's like romantic love for an object.
It doesn't make me feel bad for him, but it doesn't make him sound like an objective source of information. Which is 100% okay.
Writers don't have to be objective, so long as they point out their biases clearly. Gruber does. More and more I don't want to read blatantly pro-Apple stuff, but that doesn't mean Gruber's wrong to write it.
Re: IPhone 4
#64He talks about how awesome audio and video quality on Facetime is. Yet, these are supposedly just SIP and H.264/AAC, or am I missing something there? Does Apple add some magic juice to these open protocols/codecs?
He's speaking of the call quality compared to a standard voice call.
Re: IPhone 4
#65Re: IPhone 4
#66>The overall build quality seems impossibly good. The iPhone 4 is beautiful to behold and feels like a valuable artifact. It’s like a love letter to Dieter Rams. Do other people actually like reading stuff like this? I mean, regardless of what you think of the iphone 4, that level of praise almost makes me feel bad for him. It's like romantic love for an object.
I feel that way a lot when reading Gruber. He has the same kind of unwavering fawning praise for Apple that Rush Limbaugh has for the Republican party.
Re: IPhone 4
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's a positive, thorough review by someone who develops on the Apple platform. Do you comment on Silverlight developers glowing posts as well? Or do you just dislike it when Apple developers do it?
What has Gruber developed for Apple, exactly? His "projects" page shows nothing Apple-related: http://daringfireball.net/projects/
BBColors, CSS Syntax Checker for BBEdit and TextWrangler, Apache Configuration Language Module for BBEdit, bbdiff and the Tiger (i.e. Mac OS X 10.4) Details Report are all Mac-specific.
Re: IPhone 4
#68The new volume buttons, silence toggle, and power button all have a better feel than ever before. No way. The buttons feel cheap compared to the 3GS. The silence toggle is a piece of shit. And I preferred the volume up/down as one button.
The silence toggle on both the 3G and the 3GS gave out on me. It was the most inferior part of that model.
I know a lot of people who have problems with super-flickering vibrate mode.
Re: IPhone 4
#69A love letter to Dieter Rams
Except its less durable and the unsymmetrical breaks in the steel band take away from its clean, minimal aesthetic. The band's function as an antenna is compromised by conductive fingers.
I normally would not be so critical, and I do not know I have designed it better... but when you gush like this for Ram's style of functional industrial design, the criticism is a comin'. The 27" iMac I'm writing this on however, may be the truest object to Ram's style that exists.
FYI Dieter Ram's 10 principles of good design:
Good design is innovative
Good design makes a product useful
Good design is aesthetic
Good design makes a product understandable
Good design is unobtrusive
Good design is honest
Good design is long-lasting
Good design is thorough down to the last detail
Good design is environmentally friendly
Good design is as little design as possible
Re: IPhone 4
#70The new volume buttons, silence toggle, and power button all have a better feel than ever before. No way. The buttons feel cheap compared to the 3GS. The silence toggle is a piece of shit. And I preferred the volume up/down as one button.
And this is exactly the crux of my problem with reviews like this:
maybe how a button feels to an individual is a bit subjective?