7 ms·
The iPhones 7
- grecy 10y agoI find it fascinating that a review of an extremely complex piece of technology devotes 1,500 words to the color of the back of the thing. What a world.
- Malic 10y agoAgreed. The over-fascination with a feature of a product that is only apparent when you aren't actually using the product is optimizing for an edge-case.
- cwyers 10y agoWhat percentage of these phones are going in a case as soon as they're bought?
- Unklejoe 10y agoA large percentage. However, a surprisingly high number of my friends are rocking their phones without a case lately. It makes me nervous considering how fragile they are, but I think there's some appeal to going caseless, though I'm not sure what it is. Perhaps it's easier to slide into your pocket? Or maybe it's more about letting everyone know that you have the latest phone? Who knows.
- OberstKrueger 10y agoFor myself, I go caseless because, 1) I like the feel of a solid metal device in my hand over plastic or rubber, and 2) it's thinner without a case, and easier to handle. I have a leather wallet case that the phone slides into easily for when its in my pocket, as I wouldn't want it to get damaged being jostled around, but it's quick to take out when I want to use it.
- Udo_Schmitz 10y agoDo you have a link for your case?
- OberstKrueger 10y agohttp://kavaj.com/iphone-6-plus-cases-black/ http://kavaj.com/iphone-6-plus-cases-black/ I use the Miami that's at the top of that page. It was 20-someodd US dollars on Amazon, and has held up well for the year I've had it.
- danneu 10y agoI tried to go caseless, but thin metal smartphones are way too slippery. Every time I set my phone down on something, it always seemed to have some velocity towards the floor, just a matter of time. Also, it feels wrong setting the iPhone down on a bar table or whatever. Either the touchscreen lays against the table or it's seesawing on its protruding camera lens. Putting it in a minimal rubber case took an $800 load off my mind for $15.
- talmand 10y agoMy $99 Android phone (out-of-pocket, no contract) that looks nice (to me at least), has 6.0.1, and serves all my phone needs quite nicely has no case. If I drop it, it'll probably be cheaper at this point to replace it. Actually, I have dropped it a few times with no damage. I could care less about the thing at this point, even though it is easily the best phone I've ever owned. It's actually quite liberating.
- skywhopper 10y agoDunno but Gruber doesn't use a case and he's not writing this review for the average iPhone buyer. He's writing for people like him who are obsessive about these details.
- sutterbomb 10y agoReally disagree. My phone spends as much time face-down on tables, desks etc as it does in my hand. True, it's not "in use" but it's an object in my environment and I care how that looks. 1500 words... yea that was a bit boring to read. But in practice, for myself and for many people, the industrial design is actually a very important part of the value.
- jgruber 10y agoExactly. And if it's in your hand frequently, what it feels like in your hand, what it feels like coming out of your pocket, matters.
- rayiner 10y agoDisagree. I notice the finish on the phone infinite times more often than I've wanted a removal battery, SD card, or IR blaster on my phone.
- skywhopper 10y agoActually you interact with the finish every time you touch the phone.
- allwein 10y agoI'm actually kind of glad he did. Because what I'm most excited about right now is the possibility of either the black or jet black color coming to the new MacBook Pro's whenever they get updated.
- WildUtah 10y agoIF they ever get updated. The recent history of Mac and Macbook Pro updates leaves some doubt as to whether there will ever be an update ever again. On the positive side, even with a three year extended warranty, you can now—whenever your macbook wears out—go to an Apple store and buy the same model with the same tech inside for the same price that you paid years ago for the original model. It creates more stability and reliability of expectation than any computer buyer has ever had before.
- skywhopper 10y agoIt's not just the "color". The technology to create those finishes is itself extremely complex and difficult to accomplish. One of the things many people like about Apple products is the company's (or Jony Ive's) obsession with producing hardware that looks and also feels good, solid, pleasing. Some people find those details silly and pointless but lots of people appreciate meticulously crafted objects. Gruber is definitely that sort of person, and he writes for that sort of person. You may judge the relative value of other aspects of the device differently but I think it's reasonable that many phone buyers would be deeply concerned about the look and feel of a device they carry with them everywhere they go and use and touch more than literally any other object in their life.
- ksk 10y ago>The technology to create those finishes is itself extremely complex and difficult to accomplish. What about it is extremely complex?
- talmand 10y agoI don't know, I think Apple makes good hardware but I doubt they needed such complex technology to create shiny metal. The video describing the process made it seem more about marketing checkboxes than actual improvements.
- TheOtherHobbes 10y agoThe writing is self-indulgently long-winded. It would be trivial to cut it down to a quarter of the length without losing anything useful. I stopped reading about a third of the way down because my attention span timer expired. It gets reset for dense and interesting content, but 1500 words about a metal finish is... counterproductive.
- simonh 10y agoHe's a designer, so he's writing about the design. The big/little thing is embarrassing, but he doesn't pretend to be Anandtech.
- dabeeeenster 10y agoHe's a blogger, not a designer.
- redial 10y agohttps://youtu.be/NuCYHrSig94?t=5318 https://youtu.be/NuCYHrSig94?t=5318 We think one of the most important questions now, when you buy a computer is gonna be what’s your favourite color. And this is more important in our surveys, in our consumer surveys this is far more important than most of the mumbo jumbo associated with buying a consumer computer…megabytes, megahertz, gigabytes…people don't care about that stuff, they wanna trust us to give ’em a really great computer, what they care about is ‘I wanna express myself and pick the color I want’. - Steve Jobs, 1999.
- bryanlarsen 10y agoThe Note 7 recall resulted in a $20B market cap drop for Samsung, about 15%. I'd bet good money at poor odds that 'scuffgate' will not have anywhere close to the same impact.
- Steko 10y agoHe's specifically talking about pundit hot takes though. Would you take that bet?
- ClassyJacket 10y ago>I think the real performance story with the A10 Fusion is not what it scores on benchmarks, nor how fast it feels in use, but what it does for battery life with its truly innovative dual two-core design. When high performance is called for, the A10 Fusion uses two performance optimized cores. When it’s not, is uses two energy-efficiency-optimized cores. To my knowledge there has never been a system like this in a phone. Well, that's just wrong. Android phones had this years ago. The near ubiquitous Snapdragon 810 uses a Big.Little architecture.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- JustSomeNobody 10y agoCome on, he's a huge Apple fanboy, so of course he's going to get some facts wrong.
- khattam 10y agoI know a few Apple people. They are so impressed by Apple because they REALLY think that whatever Apple has on their devices every year is something that no other company has done EVER.
- sdsykes 10y agoThere's a handy list of phones with this architecture here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_big.LITTLE https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_big.LITTLE
- CoolGuySteve 10y agoThe Nintendo DS did it over 10 years ago.
- masklinn 10y agoThe NDS case is a completely situation, the second core is a coprocessor with its own specific duties, it's not a low-power "step down" core. And that system (CPU + coprocessor(s)) has a long history — though you could argue that historically coprocessors were more DSPs than general-purpose.
- scandox 10y agoWhy am I incapable of either discerning or caring about any of this? I can't help but be impressed by his incredible attention to detail and his understanding of the design choices and their ramifications ... but I still feel like I'm reading about the mating habits of some alien species. Interesting yes. But also bizarre and faintly ridiculous.
- scholia 10y agoDitto. I think we're a class of people known as "normal". EDIT: Downvoted by abnormals ;-)
- lallysingh 10y agoSome years ago Gruber became the community PR person for Apple. The phone isn't interesting in any good way; the only major changes are all things taken away.
- skywhopper 10y agoPeople have different tastes and obsessions. I enjoy Gruber's writing about Apple products, but his extreme obsession on other topics baffles me. YMMV. I think it's a good thing that there are lots of different types of people on the world. There's extreme value in that diversity.
- scandox 10y agoThe thing is I totally agree with you. Intellectually speaking I try to respect the diversity. But viscerally I react with complete bafflement.
- janvdberg 10y agoI sort of feel the same way. But then again people have different interests. And he happens to spend a lot of words on black vs. jet black, but still in the end concludes: "But what matters is what happens when you turn them on and use them."
- dionidium 10y agoSome people spend all of their free time doing needlepoint; others are experts in dog grooming. Some people, bafflingly, collect postage stamps.
- mulletbum 10y agoThis reminds me of people who I dealt with in retail. People would buy beautiful laptops, with glossy finishes, interesting detail. Yet, people would never pull the original plastic off the surrounding covers or back cover. They would bring in their computers to be worked on and have this hideous, dirt crusted, half pulled up, sheet of plastic flapping in the breeze on their computer. I would ask them why they did this and they always said the same thing: "Because I don't want to scratch the laptop." I would then go through my speal about how, if their entire purpose for keeping the plastic on was to keep it looking pristine, why did they put up with it looking like shit for years. By the time they get sick of dealing with said plastic, they will pull it off only to realize that the dirt and grime that has accumulated under that plastic causes tiny scratches in the surface of their laptop. In summary: Laptops with plastic on them looked like shit to begin with, once removed the laptop still looked like shit from leaving the original plastic on. Take the plastic off, enjoy how beautiful your laptop is and try to take care of it to the best of your ability. Nothing lasts forever.
- gumby 10y agoLaptops are still in the "big investment" category. (I put that in quotes because many, even the majority, of non-apple laptops cost less than a phone). When my wife replaced her 1st gen macbook air she brought it to the shop to have the data transferred. She's a painter and it was covered with drips and smears of paint and had various nicks and other blemishes -- it was plainly a working tool. All the staff at the Palo Alto Apple store came to take a look at it because they were not used to seeing a machine not treated with kid gloves.
- bane 10y ago> Second, both black finishes exemplify Apple’s obsession and mastery with materials engineering. But first, the Jet Black one is going to scuff and nick like hell. But because of feelings Gruber thinks it's both better and a demonstration of materials mastery and engineering. Thanks Gruber, 12 paragraphs defining why a poor materials choice that requires a case (which counters the thinness of the phone which was the justification for why the headphone jack is gone) is a demonstration of mastery. Here's the tl;dr of any Gruber review of an Apple product, he loves it. All the issues are examples of courage, and all the real problems don't get talked about ("where the whatchamacallit jack used to go"). He'll point out a token "problem" but, just like in this example, he then goes on at length about why it's actually some bold solution to a problem that's not actually a problem but is really about how dumb some users are (so dumb that the thing they're doing wrong even gets an entire paragraph of a footnote about how Apple is even helping them through the hopeless superstitious morass of their lives). Even points that might be interesting to read about (the camera) can't be trusted because he's such a compromised reviewer. A much better, and still favorable, review is the other one on the front page today by the Verge. There's issues with that review as well, but at least the information in the review is well balanced and considered and not thousands of words of apologia and user blaming.
- schappim 10y agoIt's to be expected. If you ran a hardware company, wouldn't you give the free/early access units to those who give the warmest of reviews?
- bane 10y agoApple may as well issue a press release, written by Ive, that "reviews" their devices, and just link to those from HN. They'd be shorter reading at least.
- aljones 10y agoWhy does it require a case? Its a matter of taste, which obviously makes it not required.
- janvdberg 10y agoI love the part about AssistiveTouch. I was just in China last week and also noticed this and couldn't explain it. I thought it had something to do with Chinese writing/characters. But this makes more sense: "why don’t they click the home button? Because of a widespread misconception that the home button will wear out, thus reducing the resale value of the iPhone."
- digi_owl 10y ago> reducing the resale value It is downright weird how everyone frets about the resale value of Apple products. Almost like they treat them more like art or similar than a device to use to get their life done.
- justinhj 10y agoIt's not weird at all if you live somewhere where an iPhone is important for status and very expensive. You want every penny back you can get when buying the next one
- jbmorgado 10y ago> widespread misconception that the home button will wear out I don't know if Apple finally fixed that in the iPhone 6, but it was everything but a misconception, I had the problem in my iPhone 3G and iPhone 4s my girlfriend in her 5s. Many friends in different versions of the iPhone. The home button did break after some use.
- Macha 10y agoHappened to my younger brother on two generations of iPod touch also.
- gumby 10y agoThe irony is that if nobody uses the home button, the buyer of the used phone shouldn't care if it works or not either. Of course psychology and human nature doesn't work that way (I too feel weird buying something when a feature I don't need is broken), but it's still funny.
- pg_is_a_butt 10y agofanbois gonna fanboi
- izietto 10y agotl;dr please?? It's too much to read for me!
- redial 10y agoFirst, I am not Gruber. Second, the hate he gets on every comments thread is very fun and entertaining to read, but I think it is often misplaced, and always ad-hominem. Yes, one third of the 'review' is about the finish, and yes one third of the review is about home button usage patterns from Asia, but personally, that is why I read them, that is why they are unique, because they are not cultural reviews from The Verge, or technical reviews from Ars Technica, or node process reviews from Anandtech, which I also read. That is also why I don't read Engadget's review, or Gizmodo's one (are they still online?); their reviews are a subset of the others. This is clearly a case of niche focus, he writes stuff others won't. And I'm glad I get to read his writing because, and this is the important part, I get to make my own mind, I don't have to agree with him.
- jgruber 10y agoThanks man. That's exactly what I try to do.
- saturdaysaint 10y agoSay what you want about Gruber's breathless/obsessive style, but as an upgrading iOS user, I found two bits very useful that weren't in the other 2 reviews I read: -Jet black is the grippiest iPhone finish ever -no OIS on the telephoto lens, making it much less useful than the default lens for night photos and video
- thatswrong0 10y ago> -Jet black is the grippiest iPhone finish ever The only reason I use a case on my iPhone is because without one, when I'm holding it, I feel like I am constantly on the verge of a rapid unplanned jettison. The thing is so slick and thin that I can't grip it very well. I'm a-ok with micro-abrasions and treat my phone well, so maybe I'll spring for the jet black version.
- apiguy 10y agoI think it's really strange that the headphone jack wasn't mentioned at all in the review. In the one instance he refers to it he says "where the whatchamacalit jack used to be".
- jgruber 10y agoNot even mentioning it says what I think about it more than anything I could write about it.
- dionidium 10y agoIt's a well-covered topic. What new thing could he possibly say?
- anexprogrammer 10y agoHe made an entire blog post 110% or more on side about the courage to remove the headphone socket, and how it would make the world a markedly better place and cure world hunger. Of course it's hardly the first time he's had a ridiculously pro-Apple position. Came up on HN the day of the event I think.
- draw_down 10y ago> I wouldn’t be surprised if the news stories and pundit hot takes about jet black iPhone scratches and scuffs outnumber those about the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 literally exploding and hurting people. Haha, probably so.
- xiaoma 10y agoThe jet black ones look fantastic to me as well and I had worried a bit about durability since I've dropped, scraped and generally abused every phone I've had and I don't like cases. I may be a bit unusual in this, but I actually want a smaller screen. Like everyone else, I want the phone to be thinner and lighter too, but I miss the days of being able to take my phone with my in my pocket when I go out running. a 4" screen at current iPhone thicknesses would be amazing. I'm not going to watch movies or write long HN comments on a phone. I just need something small that works for checking email, texting and playing me music. Also on the topic of size, as my screen resolution keeps increasing over the years it feels like John is writing in smaller and smaller text! By changing literally nothing, he's been offering a worse and worse UX.
- jandrese 10y agoIf you want a smaller screen take a gander at the iPhone SE. My biggest disappointment with the keynote is that they didn't update the SE's internals with the new A10, expanded memory, and storage. It's kind of annoying that the company assumes if you want a smaller screen you must be on a tight budget and willing to accept compromises. This holds true for most Android phones too, smaller screen == poverty option.
- xiaoma 10y agoI'm also hoping for an Apple Watch that doesn't require a phone. That would be great, especially if it could do VOIP with AirPods.
- MrJagil 10y agoI think it might update on another schedule. It was introduced in March: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPhone_SE https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPhone_SE
- davidf18 10y agoI iPhone 6s+ owner here with iPhone 7+ on order. I wish some of the reviewers would cover the voice quality when using the iPhone as a phone. The iPhone 6s(+) added another microphone for noise cancellation and also it uses H.265 for FaceTime Video compression over cell networks (2x H.264 compression) and one is able to use VoLTE (I'm on Verizon). But I'm always looking for better cell phone quality. I actually received a phone call while just to about to get on a NYC subway, 1 story below ground and the person couldn't wait until I took my subway trip, so we chatted for awhile while several subways passed both uptown and downtown (they come every 3 - 5 minutes in each direction). She claimed she could here me speaking just fine even when the subway is arriving :-) But sometimes, people have trouble hearing me on the iPhone and on the Apple $80 in-hear microphone. I'm curious if there are any upgrade to the iPhone 7 that improves the voice quality and I wish at least one reviewer would test this out. Also, as an aside, I'm disappointed that the iPhone 7 doesn't cover band 66 (AWS-3) spectrum. I guess there aren't any modem chips out yet (at least not from Qualcomm which is what the Verizon and Sprint CDMA phones use). Still in dense markets like NYC, even though Verizon has far more spectrum than AT&T, I expect that in the next year or two the existing spectrum will be filling up. I've been using the iPhone leather case since the 5s (when it first came out) and I've only had one screen break.
- sarvinc 10y agoSounds like you should be doing this. I'd read it :)