7 ms·
IPhone 4
- solutionyogi 16y agoI am sure he wouldn't have downplayed the 'signal' issue if it was an issue with an Android phone.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- ugh 16y agoDownplayed? In what respect?
- Chump 16y agoHe tries to emphasize that it happens in only "marginal strength areas" (see also this other post: http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/06/29/gaywood-signal-issue http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/06/29/gaywood-signal-i... ) but iPhone 4s displaying 'full bars' have been shown to suffer the problem (e.g. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNmXrVNeGzs http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNmXrVNeGzs )
- gojomo 16y agoOn the iPhone, signal-strength bars are not a reliable indicator of your local usability. My iPhone 3gs regularly shows 4 or 5 bars -- at the same instant it can't initiate a call or send an SMS. It's either showing some abstract measure of signal strength, unrelated to whether traffic can actually be sent, or it's been programmed to lie.
- Chump 16y agoDo speed tests count as a measure local usability? http://www.cultofmac.com/the-iphone-4-death-grip-is-real-but-does-it-matter/48335 http://www.cultofmac.com/the-iphone-4-death-grip-is-real-but... versus http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYmVpoccPnc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYmVpoccPnc
- gojomo 16y agoI would trust an unaffiliated speed test app or website server-side analysis much, much more than any count of signal-bars. My point is that people are putting a lot of stock in signal-bars, assuming if there are 4-5 bars local service is good (and conversely that drops in signal-bar count mean bad service). That's not my experience in SF at all; the correlation used to exist, but in the last year, it broke. I can have usable calls at 0-2 bars; I can be unable to initiate or hold a call at 4-5 bars. It's some other capacity issue that's not measured with signal-bars that's AT&Ts giant problem.
- Encosia 16y agoI can completely, 100% pause the progress of the "Xtreme Speedtest" app with very light pressure applied by two fingers. A little over 2,200kbs untouched. 0kbs when lightly holding it with two fingers. I'm starting with 5 bars reception here in my office too, not a weak signal.
- jsz0 16y agoWithout knowing more concrete information either way it's irresponsible to go too far in either direction.
- ugh 16y agoAnd Gruber doesn’t, does he?
- naner 16y agoI think the OPs point is that if this had been an issue with an Android phone Gruber would have jumped all over it as an example of how the phone manufacturer doesn't pay attention to detail and gets the simple things wrong. I tend to agree on that criticism of Gruber but it isn't really worth pointing out. Everyone here already knows he is very biased and it is reflected in his writing.
- ubernostrum 16y agoI am sure he wouldn't have downplayed the 'signal' issue if it was an issue with an Android phone. Considering that similar issues were reported with the Nexus One, why don't you go find the 10,000-word "LOL DROID SUXORS" rant that Gruber -- as just another Apple fanboy, aiming to make the competition look bad whenever possible -- undoubtedly wrote about it? Then you can link it here and use it as justification for your post.
- awa 16y agoIs it only me who finds the flat sides and glass back "aesthetically" unpleasing... The 3GS looks a tad better to me than the 4 (ofcourse they aren't deal breakers, but wanted to know since Gruber seem to like them)
- ugh 16y agoHave you seen one in person? I think the new iPhone doesn’t look so good in photos (at least not Apple’s) but it looks quite great in person. No contest with the old plastic thing.
- treblig 16y agoCompletely agreed. The plastic felt cheap. This feels like a Rolex.
- mrshoe 16y agoI think the iPhone 4 gives the original iPhone a serious run for its money in the industrial design department. The 3G and 3Gs weren't even close, in my opinion. A rounded blob of plastic isn't very exciting.
- apu 16y agoExcept this is exactly what was said about the iPhone when it came out -- that it was amazingly designed. If good design is supposed to be timeless, how can once-beautiful pieces of design now be considered as "rounded blob[s] of plastic" that "isn't very exciting"? This is the kind of fanboyism that really turns off a lot of us. Thought experiment: if Apple came out with a new phone with the exact design of some previously maligned older phone, I'd be willing to bet that most Apple fans would immediately claim that this "new" design is amazing and perfect and all the other superlatives that are pitched about...
- bbatsell 16y agoHe's contrasting the "rounded blob of plastic" (the design of the 3G and 3GS) with the original iPhone design, which had a mostly-metal flat back, and, as you acknowledged, was heralded at its release.
- antidaily 16y agoThe 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.
- czhiddy 16y agoI've only played with them at the Apple Store, but the iPhone4 silence switch seemed a lot better than the ones on my original 2G and current 3GS. My 2G switch was so flimsy that it would toggle on and off in my pocket from idle friction, while the 3GS one was stiff to the point where I needed both hands to reliably move it.
- antidaily 16y agoThe new one is thin and seems to almost stick at times.
- maxjg 16y agoI do like the feel and design of the 3G model better (much easier to tell if it's silenced in your pocket), but on multiple occasions, the switch on my 3GS has switched from silenced to not. The new one seems a lot less prone to that.
- russell_h 16y agoI'm not sure about the 3G(S) but the iPhone 2G switch actually had a tendency to break a lot. The problem was prevalent enough that people came up with software solutions to override it: http://www.iclarified.com/entry/comments.php?enid=1468#commentsanchor http://www.iclarified.com/entry/comments.php?enid=1468#comme...
- ary 16y agoSay what you will about the volume and lock buttons, but the new silence toggle is great. About once a day I would accidentally switch my phone from ring to silent (or vice versa) with my 3GS.
- Arron 16y agoNot sure why ppl continue reading his completely biased crap.
- elbrodeur 16y agoIt'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?
- rglullis 16y agoWhat has Gruber developed for Apple, exactly? His "projects" page shows nothing Apple-related: http://daringfireball.net/projects/ http://daringfireball.net/projects/
- chc 16y agoBBColors, 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.
- blasdel 16y agoWhat? Every single one of those is Apple-related -- one is a low-level review of differences in 10.4, and all the rest were originally written as itch-scratching extensions for BBEdit, which is an ancient Mac-only commercial text editor, and his last day job was for the company that produced it as some sort of tech-support / help-writer.
- rglullis 16y agoI would say that they are BBEdit-specific, except for the review of differences on Tiger. That's only tangentially related to Apple. It's not like he wrote something for the iPhone and/or Mac.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- btmorex 16y ago>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.
- hristov 16y agoI don't feel bad for him because I am sure he is getting paid.
- treblig 16y agoPaid? By Apple? Or just his feed sponsorships and Deck ads?
- hristov 16y agoBy Apple of course.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- ugh 16y agoThat’s a rather serious accusation. Do you have any evidence which would point you that way?
- ergo98 16y agoA less serious accusation is that Gruber now knows that his core readership consists of, essentially, the Apple faithful. He knows to pander to that crowd and that is how he gets paid. It's iPhone fans who feel that every Gruber observation about the iPhone is so critically important that it needs to be voted up on HN.
- kenjackson 16y agoI haven't read the story yet... but I'm going to guess: he likes it!
- Garbage 16y agoNo prize for guessing that. Everybody "guessed" it correctly. :P
- jherdman 16y ago"... but I’ve had fun trying out FaceTime with a few iPhone 4-enabled friends" This sentence is absolutely delicious to my mind, specifically the use of the word "enabled". It's as if to own a device was to somehow be an upgrade for one's person. Is this how we've really all come to think of devices now? Are they extensions of our bodies? A whole raft of questions has drifted to the shores of my mind.
- dieterrams 16y agohttp://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000R3PJ74/ http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000R3PJ74/ http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/clark/clark_index.html http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/clark/clark_index.html
- saint-loup 16y agoDavid Chalmers, in his preface of Clark's Supersizing the Mind : "A month ago, I bought an iPhone. The iPhone has already taken over some of the central functions of my brain. It has replaced part of my memory, storing phone numbers and addresses that I once would have taxed my brain with. It harbors my desires: I call up a memo with the names of my favorite dishes when I need to order at a local restaurant. I use it to calculate, when I need to figure out bills and tips. It is a tre- mendous resource in an argument, with Google ever present to help settle disputes. I make plans with it, using its calendar to help deter- mine what I can and can’t do in the coming months. I even daydream on the iPhone, idly calling up words and images when my concentra- tion slips. Friends joke that I should get the iPhone implanted into my brain. But if Andy Clark is right, all this would do is speed up the processing and free up my hands. The iPhone is part of my mind already."
- stratospark 16y agoEvery tool is an extension of the human mind. Play an instrument, drive a car, swing a bat... Sure you're using your fingers, legs, and arms, but once your mind adapts, you're thinking and reacting more directly about the new inputs and outputs the tool gives you. There are some neurological studies on musicians and their brain maps that demonstrate this. Think of other types of tools like hearing aids and artificial limbs. Over time, the brain adapts to use them much like the real thing. Some tools are just "upgrades" far removed from what the human body is naturally capable of. The tools we use definitely shape the way we think. Marshall McLuhan: "We shape our tools, and thereafter our tools shape us."
- rglullis 16y agoThat Apple pays so much attention to the details as to pick a different version of Helvetica for different classes of displays is emblematic of what makes the iPhone the iPhone — software and hardware that are designed in tandem as parts of a single whole. Really? On the next paragraph... There is, however, one problem with Helvetica Neue in iOS 4.0: it doesn’t include italics.(...)I can only assume this is an oversight on Apple’s part. Yes, it is a small thing. I really don't care whether the phone comes with the Heuvetica Neue bold, or not. But I can't stop thinking about how Apple's marketing (or Gruber's writing) is eerily similar to hypnosis: you provide a baseless assertion that "sort of" makes sense intertwined with contradictions, making the target's brain take everything as valid.
- elbrodeur 16y agoAs a designer, Helvetica Neue (even without italics) is a huge step in the right aesthetic direction. His original point was not so much about the font, but about the platform. He lays the groundwork, showing that the platform was higher resolution and therefore it made more sense for a font that displayed better at higher resolutions to be used. I think it's a valid point and a great critique -- how is it contradictory to praise what is praiseworthy and point out what is wrong?
- axod 16y agoSurely it's like saying "Ford pay so much detail to every part of their cars, it's amazing the level of care put into each and every model" and later saying "Of course Ford did forget to include wheels on this particular model"
- elbrodeur 16y ago"Ford's new engine is incredibly powerful and well designed, but it's missing a low gear setting on the shifter." Might be more apt. Again, Neue is leaps and bounds ahead of regular old Helvetica. It's a total bonehead move to leave out italics even though most people won't notice it's absence.
- 16y ago
- treblig 16y agoI'm a little upset that this is called "IPhone 4". It is part of the story, in fact, a very telling part of his narrative that he merely titled it "4".
- blehn 16y agoApple is so good at making buttons, it’s almost enough to make one wish they made button-laden devices. Oh come on...Pro mouse, Mighty Mouse, Magic Mouse, current and previous gen macbook trackpad buttons, the previous gen desktop keyboards, iPod click-wheels, Apple Remote...these are some of the worst buttons I've used. Apple has made some decent buttons (I think the current and previous gen MBP keyboards are well made), but they're way too inconsistent to make a claim like that.
- spicyj 16y agoWhat's wrong with the current trackpad?
- blehn 16y ago- incredibly noisy - requires too much force to depress - the travel distance is too far - the hinged design means that the necessary pressure varies at different locations I've noticed there is a bit of variation between machines, but most seem to exhibit these behaviors in my experience
- jacobolus 16y agoIt is designed to be used by touch by people used to Apple trackpads. If you keep your thumb on the bottom part of the trackpad and use that part as if it were a button, it works pretty much identically to prior models. But then, it has an additional big advantage that when when you want to use that bottom part for gestures, you can. I think it requires the perfect amount of force to depress – I don’t press it accidentally, but it presses easily when I want it to – and just the right travel distance. The noise is a nice confirmation that I just pressed it (then again, I use a Model M when possible so YMMV). It’s a matter of personal preference, but I would be surprised if most people share your opinions about it.
- squidsoup 16y agoI'd agree with your assessment of the past Apple mouse lineup (undeniably shocking), but the Magic Mouse gets a lot of things right. I find myself wishing I had a multitouch surface at my work PC instead of the somewhat clunky but serviceable MS mouse.
- guyzero 16y agoOMG Gruber loved the new iPhone! Who would have guessed?
- gloob 16y agoWhile I sympathize with your feelings on the matter, there's no need to be snarky about it.
- phreeza 16y agoHe 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?
- tcdent 16y agoHe's speaking of the call quality compared to a standard voice call.
- adbge 16y agoHaven't you heard? If it's Apple branded, it's obviously better. It's like the placebo effect, but instead it's the Apple effect (which, if you've been paying attention, makes it even better!) In all seriousness though, I don't understand why Gruber posts this garbage and feels compelled to defend Apple at every turn. We don't need Apple's every action fucking analyzed to death by someone who is obviously too invested in the company to be objective. If I want to read this type of inane pandering, I'll ask the hipsters at Starbucks for the URL to their blog.
- pkulak 16y ago"This is the result of a new manufacturing process Apple has pioneered. No other company gives a shit about things like this." Samsung is doing this for their new displays. And they were out before the iPhone 4 was even announced. But, to Gruber, if it's not Apple, it's automatically crap. No sense acknowledging its existence.
- danudey 16y agoI might be mistaken, but I believe he's referring specifically to bonding the LCD display to a capacitive piece of glass, rather than just regular protective plastic. (Does Samsung use glass in their displays? They all look plastic to me.)
- ZeroGravitas 16y agoNo, it's not glass vs. plastic he's talking about (and yes Samsung Super-AMOLED screens are glass anyway). The original poster is correct, Gruber believes this reduction in layers above the screen was pioneered by Apple because they made it seem like they did in their introductory videos and thinks it unique because he neither knows nor cares about things happening outside the sphere of Apple. He doesn't even just say that it doesn't exist (which is of course not true), he says it couldn't exist outside Apple because no-one else cares.
- jrockway 16y agoThe OpenMoko phone also had a higher number of pixels-per-inch than the iPhone 4. And this was years ago, by a no-name hardware company. The reason other phones don't have a "retina display" is because it's expensive, and the other phones are trying to win market share by being cheap. Sadly, this works better than making a quality product.
- chrisbolt 16y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_displays_by_pixel_density http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_displays_by_pixel_densi... Openmoko: 282ppi iPhone 4: 326ppi
- sabj 16y agoI find the hardware to be very delightful, in most respects, and I appreciate the thought and efforts that Apple puts into creating a unified software/hardware 'product solution' even if I disagree violently with some of the philosophical assumptions baked into that in both physical form (hold it differently, buy a case!) and software (you'll like the software we offer you, and we know best what you might want!). All that aside... I can't say I really enjoy reading daring fireball, for many of the same reasons eloquently described in this thread. Substance (of a sort), but without soul.
- jasonlbaptiste 16y agomy 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."
- hop 16y agoA 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
- doron 16y agoThe screen is stunning. I found it annoying that Apple released the Ipad but a month before without it. It seems they could have pulled that one easy, but i guess we will see this in Ipad2, its fair business, but still kind of a dick move in my mind, I am glad i didn't get the ipad yet. I can wait for the retina enabled one. I am not an Iphone user, but I held friends 3gs and the 4 to compare, and found the smooth block disconcerting, it was harder to cup the phone, and introduced a mild strain on the fingers, it felt slippery, prone to fall out of my hands if i am not too careful, which is often the case when i pick my cell. I suspect that I would have got used to it had I handled one for a longer period of time , but I have to ask, why should I? The design strikes me as beautiful (the most elegant mobile phone design i have seen to date) But I also think that the design choices Apple imposes, exclude a good number of people physically,(minor discomfort for me, due to a hand injury) some people prefer physical keyboards because of the physical capabilities of their hands,why not make a version for them? Not to mention the great benefit IOS4 and apps can give people working in more physically hazardous environments that are missed by not having a little more variance in industrial design choices. Its pretty much agreed by both people who dislike and people who love apple, that Apple is not looking to fulfill every niche of the market, it is a source of contention or pride, depending on where your sentiments are. I am too much of a tinkerer to use an Iphone, i feel it restricts me. Indeed, Apple products, restrictions and other idiosyncrasies drive me mad, and so i don't use them. I do recognize that these are issues of personal preference, and by most measures i am not the hypothetical "normal person" that always appears in most Apple reviews. So I fully recognize the genius behind the design, it is elegant and beautiful, without peer in the industry (for shame) and it is also true that the "just works" cannot be overstated. It is simply of no personal concern to me, because i take pride in making things work on my own, and rather enjoy it, as i mentioned... tinkerer But I would have bought my mom one without thinking twice about it, ware it not for the limited physical options, she cant handle it in her age with her hands, this exclusivity by Apple is a pity, and in that sense it is a bad design choice, I suspect elderly people, factory workers, or people that need to work with gloves would love to have a phone that indeed "just works". this exclusion is something I always found to be the chink in apples design ethos, imagine an apple designed product specifically tailored to the elderly, or an Apple designed tough industrial strength laptop or Ipad.
- 16y ago
- teebes 16y agoTo a lot of you criticizing how in love with Apple he is... well it's not like Gruber hides being pro Apple, or that him taking sides on a personally owned blogged makes him a bad source of information and observations. How biased he is can certainly be borderline infuriating at times but I don't know any other blogger right now that writes about Apple and consistently makes observations that weren't obvious to make. He also has a compelling talent for seeing the big picture and making pieces of the puzzle fit.
- ergo98 16y agoEven though this is the Haus of Gruber (why, exactly, does everything he post get FPd here? Confirmation bias, perhaps?), I'll take my downvote suffering- >In fact, Apple seems very confident regarding everything it decided for the original 2007 iPhone Except multitasking in apps. Actually, scratch that, except apps altogether. Two major shifts in direction. Of course Gruber led into that talking about hardware. There you can look at the fact that the iPhone pre-4 had a worst-in-class DPI, but now with the 4 it's all about the Retina display. DPI is suddenly where everything is. The original iPhones were about feminine curves. The new iPhone is about kick-you-in-the-face masculine squares. And then the front-facing camera (a common complaint on the original iPhone). The volume buttons. And on and on. Original perfection indeed. The iPhone 4 is a brilliant phone. I'm morally against Apple's dominance of mobile, yet it's hard to gather the strength to argue when a friend talks about possibly getting an iPhone 4: It's a hard choice to argue with. Yet Gruber's salacious, disturbing love of all things Apple; his automatic justification of everything Apple does; is very tough to stomach. As a somewhat unrelated aside, one thing that really strikes me about the iPhone is the large amount of wasted space. It's interesting seeing it near >=4" phones and they barely eclipse the iPhone in size, the huge bezel (esp. on the bottom) of the iPhone making a small screen in a large phone.
- bmalicoat 16y agoI agree with some of what you say but I don't think you can say Apple changed on including apps. They didn't include apps from the first gen due to the huge engineering effort required to successfully support 3rd parties and have the mechanisms in place to distribute apps. Launching a v1 product and including a ton of 3rd party support for an unproven phone would have been a big gamble. Coming out with it a year later isn't waffling, it's a smart business move.
- commandar 16y agoExcept that when iPhone launched, they didn't say "we're still working on supporting 3rd party apps"; instead the official line from Apple was "if you want to develop for iPhone, write web apps." Even Gruber called it ludicrous at the time.
- 16y ago
- jasongullickson 16y agoMy favorite line: "No other company gives a shit about things like this." ...pretty much sums up the major difference between Apple and every other electronics company, perhaps with the exception of litl.
- samaparicio 16y agoI for one am getting tired of all this undeserved attention to things that don't make a difference in anybody's lives. This iphone doesn't make anybody more productive, more empowered, more effective, less frustrated. It doesn't free up time for anybody and doesn't do anything new. In fact, I just wrote the complete opposite of Gruber article: a comparison of the GREAT things that are unique to iPhone and to Android for startups trying to get something done. http://www.ringio.com/2010/06/29/iphone-vs-android-getting-over-the-hype/ http://www.ringio.com/2010/06/29/iphone-vs-android-getting-o...
- pohl 16y agoBlogging about the hype only constitutes more hype. Your actions are at odds with your intent.
- samaparicio 16y agoPohl... I didn't blog about the hype. I wrote about real differences that make a user's life better. For example: I said that Android's turn-by-turn navigation will lower the chances of you getting lost on the way to the airport. Or that the pictures and videos you take on an iPhone will look better. What I'm trying to get at is that a lot of these reviews (like Gruber's) focus on irrelevant or marginally relevant issues for real users. It's great that the iPhone 4 has a hi-res display, but what is the impact?
- pohl 16y agoOdd choice for a headline, then. As it happens, nobody that I know personally cares about turn-by-turn navigation at all. I probably use that capability twice a year just for shits and giggles. A marginally better turn-by-turn implementation would have no impact for me or anyone I know, but that's because there's nothing terribly complex about navigating around my region. It also happens that the display resolution on the latest iPhone was a major selling point for me, as I end up doing a lot of reading on my phone for the simple fact that I read a lot and it's always with me when I have those random, spare minutes throughout the day where I have nothing else to do but kill time. I just want the internet in my pocket, and not to strain my eyes. I suspect I'm not alone in my priorities. Did you really not suspect that there are people out there who are dissimilar from you?
- 10ren 16y agoRe: the speed test video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGu4h1vP3qM http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGu4h1vP3qM I count it as 7, 14, 28 seconds for 4, 3GS, 3G - seems like x2 per generation to me.
- martythemaniak 16y agoOne has to read Gruber's review and Ars Technica's review of the iPhone 4 to see the difference between a fan boy and a level-headed writer. Before I clicked the link I bet myself I would not see a single criticism and Gruber was predictable in his praise. The iPhone 4 is perfect, like every other piece of anything Apple puts out. yawn
- ubernostrum 16y agoBefore I clicked the link I bet myself I would not see a single criticism and Gruber was predictable in his praise. So you just skipped the parts where he brought up criticisms and pointed out things he thinks are missing and speculated on ways Apple could resolve them?
- tfh 16y ago> No other company gives a shit about things like this. There was a time where I really liked John's articles. Now he's sounding like just another fanboy...
- Hari_Seldon 16y agoBut he's right, can you name another tech firm that cares as much about these things? I remember reading something a while back about how much time Apple spent on getting the angle (directon) of the mouse pointer right on the original Mac.
- tfh 16y agoIt's not about _what_ he says but more about _how_ he says it. I'd rather read something like "Other companies don't take these things seriously" than "No other company gives a shit about things like this.".
- MichaelApproved 16y agoEnough