Does the author really think that Steve Jobs would have ever said "When I open up a website on Safari, I don't have to strain my eyes anymore"? They're still selling 5S and 5C! Not even Asus would disparage their previous products like that.
The rest of the piece is just as bad and devoid of substance. (Steve rolls in his grave)
Why would a 3.5'' phone be out of place, today? I see people everywhere assuming this is right, that increasing the screen size was truly needed (and demanded), but I'm yet to see the evidence.
I mean, I'm sure that there's evidence that people wanted bigger screens (if Apple did it...), but I can't seem to find it, except for interweb-people who blog about... stuff. :) Real people - do they want bigger screens? For them, is the 3.5'' phone really out of place?
Anyway: I guess I can be considered a interweb-person, tech savvy, heavy user*, and all that jazz. Still, I'm proudly driving my 4s. Even the 5/5s/5c is too big for me; I can't comfortably reach the top corners of the screens. I do believe that habits may have changed, but our anthropometry certainly didn't - the average human thumb is still the same length.
What I wanted to know is roughly how much are the bigger smartphones being sold, against the regular-sized ones. The most recent Apple smartphones are big, both, while the "regular-sized" ones are from last year or before. Does the data supports this decision - "forgetting" about the "regular-size" and launching only bigger ones?
Can't put my hands on the exact article and corresponding chart, but from memory the segment has grown from around 4-5% area to closer to 10%. Again not exact numbers, but until I find the post that's all I got.
Consumers have had both "regular" and "large" phones to choose from and they're choosing larger and larger displays.
These are not the posts I'm specifically remembering, but do have helpful insight:
http://www.businessinsider.com/there-will-be-four-times-more...
http://www.canalys.com/newsroom/third-smart-phones-shipped-q...
I'm sorry, but I can't read that from the data you shared. "They"'re not choosing larger and larger displays - it was an untapped market, so people willing to buy bigger smartphones are doing it, as they become available. We can't assume that everyone/most/many will follow this trend and we also don't know when it will stop growing. Also it seems natural that buying trends will, up to a point, follow marketing trends - if almost all automakers start selling only big cars, then people would choose "larger and larger" cars.
The reason you're looking for is that these aren't phones any longer. Pulling numbers out of my ass here, but I bet the vast majority of smart phone users spend less of a hundredth of total smart phone usage actually talking on the thing. They're media consumption devices, just like your TV. And just like TVs, people like having larger screens so they can see more content, easier. Obviously, there is an equilibrium of size to convenience that will eventually be reached.
Part of being Steve Jobs is knowing when you have a breakthrough and knowing when you've got an incremental improvement. He did plenty of the latter as well as the former.
Well, I'd say most of the problem here is trying to identify a two-dimensional screen by a single number, the length of its diagonal. It must make more sense to give the actual dimensions of screens.
I remember pained discussion of the Nexus 5 saying the 4 was wide enough. The 5 is only wider by a couple millimeters, but is significantly enough taller that they bumped the single number identifying its size. That's no way to communicate.
It's all trade offs but as we increase what we do with our phones, a bigger screen potentially becomes more valuable.
I know a lot of people saying they have no interest in more than 3.5" or 4". Generally those people are fairly casual users. I also know "power users" (horrible term) who have been crying out for bigger screens.
I'm less worried about thumb size and more worried about how it feels in my pocket.
>Half a billion original thoughts safely stored on iCloud.
Yea, very good idea to say something like this just couple of weeks after data has been leaked from iCloud.
2nd, they don't care about older-than-3 iphones. But they care about getting old iphone owners to feel good about themselves and to upgrade to a newer one. And disparaging older products goes against that.
The author of this piece has got it completely confused: Talking sh*t about your old products is in the Microsoft playbook. Whenever they have a new Windows coming out, they tell you how bad the old one was so you should upgrade. Apple has never done that.
great, so we agree.
..
> my almost 3-year old iphone 4S is still getting updates the same day a new phone does
..
>great, so we agree
No. I don't think you do.
A study by Harvard University shows online complaints rise every time a new version is released. Researchers discovered that Google searches for phrases such as ‘iPhone slow’ spike whenever a more expensive type of the device goes on sale.
In contrast, they found there were no such patterns for rival products such as the Samsung Galaxy.
Professor Sendhil Mullainathan said: The results are, to say the least, striking’. However, he warned that the perception of a phone ‘slowing down’ may be purely psychological.
The study bases itself solely on results of Google searches. (also, that's the kind of research some professors are spending their time on these days? wow.)
i never compared Apple to anyone. i never suggested it would be in character for Apple to vocally disparage their old products. i never put a limit on "old" nor did I ever suggest the original author was correct (or incorrect). lot of people hearing what they want to around here.
feel free to downvote without explanation- that seems to be the trend in Apple threads.
I wish I could just install whatever version of iOS it originally came with and use it as an mp3 player. Don't know why iTunes let me update to a version of iOS that my hardware can't handle, but oh well.
I honestly don't understand why apple fanboys get so worked up over this stuff, as if Apple is infallible. I just try to keep my opinions about apple to my self for the most part, at least on HN, because that's the environment the user base here has fostered.
Can't even read relevant tech news on HN if it shows Apple in a bad light, but hey, I can always go to reddit if I want to get a dose of reality relating to Apple.
the tone in my original post would have been very different if I could install an old version of iOS on my iPhone. strange you can't, no?
If you're going to state facts like "hardware gets deprecated" simply just to state it, then you're not adding anything to the conversation and that's why you're getting downvoted.
If you're mad at Apple for not supporting outdated hardware when no one else in the industry is supporting outdated hardware, then you're being unreasonable and that's why you're getting downvoted.
my point is that just because Apple doesn't vocally disparage their old products doesn't mean they think their old products are perfect.
my point is that some light disparaging of their old products may be a refreshing dose of honesty. (inb4 "but that could be bad for business!". I don't care.)
Without qualifying your original statement, it just sounded angry and purposeless. I agree with you now, though.