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Comment by 8f2ab37a-ed6c | Hacker News Reader

Is anybody else somewhat underwhelmed by the innovation here? Faster CPU, different colors, new case, better camera, better battery, thinner bezels etc. Same thing we see every.. single.. year..

I'm glad they're taking risks with the Vision Pro, but it feels like the phone has become a highly conservative platform.

Maybe this is just the reality of having a product that sells as many units as the iPhone does every single year.

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Apple has ran out of design gas. But to be honest even in the late Jobs/Ive years they were running on fumes with 'thin' being the last hill to climb.

I really wish Apple would try a different design aesthetic, such as a move to something warmer and friendlier than the last 20+ years.

No kidding. Like a circular puck style.

Phones generally are "done." There's no more unidentified use case. Calling, texting, music, camera, internet - those had been around since before the smartphones. "New", as in the last 20 years, are location-based apps (Tinder, Uber), video, and payments (NFC or biometrics + online)

There are other phone vendors, but their innovation within the last 5 years also peaks at "higher screen refresh rate" or "in-screen fingerprint reader" (which didn't solve any use case that a backside fingerprint reader couldn't also manage.)

That phones are "done" has come to be my belief as well. And I think that's a good thing. We'll have small improvements in performance and battery life and cameras - and that's all that I expect at this point. That could change if new sensors are added - artificial nose? spectrometer?

Where new innovation will occur is with watches and VR headsets.

This rhetoric is strange to see. It's a smartphone. What kind of innovation do you expect?

Large jumps in design language don't happen out of nowhere. Design is an iterative process that more often than not is limited by what technology can offer. Not to mention cultural acceptance.

Phones will remain phones until technological progress makes it economical to explore the more esoteric design spaces you're thinking of.

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