4 ms·

A few quick thoughts: >What the F is an iPhone XR? Is the XS "better" than the X or not? Somewhat agree about the XR, though I guess the idea is it's one less

by adpirz 8y ago

A few quick thoughts: >What the F is an iPhone XR? Is the XS "better" than the X or not? Somewhat agree about the XR, though I guess the idea is it's one less than an S, but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and say their "S" naming scheme has been consistent since it was introduced after the iPhone 4. > Why are there 2 iPad Pros? Steve once said netbooks were dead, then released a laptop in exactly that form factor (11 in MBA). Clearly there was market demand for it, and I assume their must be demand for both sizes here as well. > Is an iPad 4 better than an iPad? Agree here, they've changed this particular convention a lot, but looks like we're settling on Pro and base. > Not to mention the dongles, USB-C mess, etc Very much agree here. I really, really hope dongle hell will be a short lived phenomenon and USB-C adoption in peripherals and the rest of the industry picks up. Apple has been right about big bets like this before, so hopefully here too, but right now, it is definitely a mess.

saghm 8y ago
> Somewhat agree about the XR, though I guess the idea is it's one less than an S I certainly don't find it obvious that XR means "less" than XS. I could just as easily see it meaning "greater", in the way that the 18th rank is greater" than the 19th rank (in this case the ranked things being letters). Until I actually learned the difference, I actually had thought that the XR was the more expensive one.
elsonrodriguez 8y ago
> Steve once said netbooks were dead, then released a laptop in exactly that form factor (11 in MBA). Clearly there was market demand for it, and I assume their must be demand for both sizes here as well. Just a point of clarification on netbooks. Netbooks were a flop because they were bulky, slow, hard to type on, had terrible screens, and came with minuscule trackpads. The air was none of those things, and was the progenitor of a new class of laptop that would be known as "Ultrabooks".
- sangnoir 8y ago
  Another example was when Steve said 7-inch tablets were "too small" and you'd need to file-down your fingers to use them (not sure what you'd need to operate 3.5-inch iPhones then). He said this while Apple had the 8-inch iPad mini in development. SJ was a salesman - he'd say untrue things to make his product look good, like trash-talking 5.5-inch phones(!) and saying "no-one wants 'Hummer' phones" while - you guessed it - Apple had larger phones in the pipeline, because the demand was there.
  - eisa01 8y ago
    The iPad Mini has 4:3 screen ratio, so quite a bit larger and more useful screen than the 7" 16:9 Android tablets Same with the netbooks, weren't those often 9" 16:9 with terrible Atom CPU and slow HD?
    - philwelch 8y ago
      It's kind of shitty and deceptive to measure screen size by the diagonal. You could have literally a single row of pixels 15 inches wide; does that mean you have a 15 inch display?
      - Wowfunhappy 8y ago
        How would you recommend we measure screen size? Length x Width I assume is the obvious one, but that’s harder to compare. I suppose you could argue comparing diagonals isn’t a good benchmark either, but it works well enough when screens tend to have similar aspect ratios, as they mostly do.
        int_19h 8y ago
        HxW would be easier to compare if anything. Today you have to look at the aspect ratio to even figure out what the diagonal really means (and the difference between, say, 2:3 and 16:9 is huge).
        philwelch 8y ago
        Square inches is also a single dimension.
hinkley 8y ago
I used to think the whole “X sucks we’ll never make one” was a feint to catch competitors off balances but lately I’ve wondered if it wasn’t a goad. He says something, his engineers prove him wrong, he changes his mind. An internal message of “I dare you to prove me wrong” could be demoralizing to some but cause others to rise to the occasion.
Reason077 8y ago
If Apple were to drop lightning and switch all their phones to USB-C, the rest of the industry would move to USB-C much more rapidly. We may never be fully rid of USB-A since it's embedded everywhere into things like homes and cars, but it makes a lot of sense for USB-C to replace all the other permutations (B, mini, micro, lightning, etc) found on devices.
- philwelch 8y ago
  (A) problem with USB-C is that devices can selectively support different subsets of its functionality. So instead of having one port to rule them all, you have just as many different ports as before, except they all look the same and take some of the same cables.
  - Reason077 8y ago
    True, there is some potential for confusion. But it would be totally cost-prohibitive for every device to support Thunderbolt 3 or for every cable to support 100W power delivery. What is lacking, perhaps, is a standard way to visually identify these capabilities.

by adpirz 8y ago

saghm 8y ago

> Somewhat agree about the XR, though I guess the idea is it's one less than an S I certainly don't find it obvious that XR means "less" than XS. I could just as easily see it meaning "greater", in the way that the 18th rank is greater" than the 19th rank (in this case the ranked things being letters). Until I actually learned the difference, I actually had thought that the XR was the more expensive one.

elsonrodriguez 8y ago

> Steve once said netbooks were dead, then released a laptop in exactly that form factor (11 in MBA). Clearly there was market demand for it, and I assume their must be demand for both sizes here as well. Just a point of clarification on netbooks. Netbooks were a flop because they were bulky, slow, hard to type on, had terrible screens, and came with minuscule trackpads. The air was none of those things, and was the progenitor of a new class of laptop that would be known as "Ultrabooks".

sangnoir 8y ago
Another example was when Steve said 7-inch tablets were "too small" and you'd need to file-down your fingers to use them (not sure what you'd need to operate 3.5-inch iPhones then). He said this while Apple had the 8-inch iPad mini in development. SJ was a salesman - he'd say untrue things to make his product look good, like trash-talking 5.5-inch phones(!) and saying "no-one wants 'Hummer' phones" while - you guessed it - Apple had larger phones in the pipeline, because the demand was there.
- eisa01 8y ago
  The iPad Mini has 4:3 screen ratio, so quite a bit larger and more useful screen than the 7" 16:9 Android tablets Same with the netbooks, weren't those often 9" 16:9 with terrible Atom CPU and slow HD?
  - philwelch 8y ago
    It's kind of shitty and deceptive to measure screen size by the diagonal. You could have literally a single row of pixels 15 inches wide; does that mean you have a 15 inch display?
    - Wowfunhappy 8y ago
      How would you recommend we measure screen size? Length x Width I assume is the obvious one, but that’s harder to compare. I suppose you could argue comparing diagonals isn’t a good benchmark either, but it works well enough when screens tend to have similar aspect ratios, as they mostly do.
      - int_19h 8y ago
        HxW would be easier to compare if anything. Today you have to look at the aspect ratio to even figure out what the diagonal really means (and the difference between, say, 2:3 and 16:9 is huge).
      - philwelch 8y ago
        Square inches is also a single dimension.

hinkley 8y ago

I used to think the whole “X sucks we’ll never make one” was a feint to catch competitors off balances but lately I’ve wondered if it wasn’t a goad. He says something, his engineers prove him wrong, he changes his mind. An internal message of “I dare you to prove me wrong” could be demoralizing to some but cause others to rise to the occasion.

Reason077 8y ago

If Apple were to drop lightning and switch all their phones to USB-C, the rest of the industry would move to USB-C much more rapidly. We may never be fully rid of USB-A since it's embedded everywhere into things like homes and cars, but it makes a lot of sense for USB-C to replace all the other permutations (B, mini, micro, lightning, etc) found on devices.

philwelch 8y ago
(A) problem with USB-C is that devices can selectively support different subsets of its functionality. So instead of having one port to rule them all, you have just as many different ports as before, except they all look the same and take some of the same cables.
- Reason077 8y ago
  True, there is some potential for confusion. But it would be totally cost-prohibitive for every device to support Thunderbolt 3 or for every cable to support 100W power delivery. What is lacking, perhaps, is a standard way to visually identify these capabilities.