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Hacker News: your premier source for Steve Jobs fan fiction. (laughs) Does the author really think that Steve Jobs would have ever said "When I open up a websi

• encoderer 12y ago
  Right. A product is, well, a product of its time. I doubt Apple spent much time worrying how can we go bigger after saying we had the perfect size. Seems a bigger problem is how can we go bigger without people thinking that's the only difference? A 5.7" iPhone would be as out of place in 2006 (not enough power to push those pixels, low power screen tech was non-existent) as a 3.5" phone is today. No mental backflips required.
  • MPSimmons 12y ago
    The web has changed. Agreed.
  • paulojreis 12y ago
    > A 5.7" iPhone would be as out of place in 2006 (not enough power to push those pixels, low power screen tech was non-existent) as a 3.5" phone is today. 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.
    • josefresco 12y ago
      Plenty of articles show that people are buying phablets and bigger screen phones this past year at higher rates. In fact, I would argue it's the only reason Apple made a big ass iPhone as they were losing customers in this growing segment. Purchasing a product is a pretty god measure of intent.
      • paulojreis 12y ago
        "People are buying" and "higher rates" isn't really proper data. Also, phablets are somewhat new, so increasing at higher rates is normal. 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?
        • josefresco 12y ago
          My attempt was not to share the actual data, but to allude that the data is readily available showing that "phablet" as a market segment is growing. 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-phablets-sold-than-tablets-in-2018-2014-7 http://www.businessinsider.com/there-will-be-four-times-more... http://www.canalys.com/newsroom/third-smart-phones-shipped-q1-had-5-plus-displays http://www.canalys.com/newsroom/third-smart-phones-shipped-q...
          • paulojreis 12y ago
            > Consumers have had both "regular" and "large" phones to choose from and they're choosing larger and larger displays. 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.
• catshirt 12y ago
  my experience with the iPhone is that Apple doesn't give a shit about old iPhones.
  • beagle3 12y ago
    First, "old" in this case is "older than 3 years", which is about 3 years older than almost any other phone manufacturer; my almost 3-year old iphone 4S is still getting updates the same day a new phone does. (Yes, my more-than-5-years-old iphone 3G does not, so?) 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.
    • deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
    • catshirt 12y ago
      > "2nd, they don't care about older-than-3 iphones" great, so we agree.
      • sbuk 12y ago
        Please show us an example of another smartphone manufacturer that does better.
        • catshirt 12y ago
          please explain how this is any sort of relevant to my argument. 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.
• gbhn 12y ago
  The adulation is a bit rich. Wasn't 3.5 inches claimed to be "the perfect size" by this same individual? 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.
  • lindig 12y ago
    The design of the iPhone is guided by what is technically possible as much as by ergonomics. As the size of our hands hasn't changed, how can a 4.7 inch phone now be perfect when previously 3.5 inch was deemed perfect? Here is one reason: as the devices become slimmer, your thumb can reach farther than before and hence cover a larger screen. So: it's the combination of thinness and size that makes the iPhone 6 still usable with one hand. I'm not denying that people might not care as much and simply want a bigger screen, too, and this is an additional factor.
    • thaumasiotes 12y ago
      > As the size of our hands hasn't changed, how can a 4.7 inch phone now be perfect when previously 3.5 inch was deemed perfect? Here is one reason: as the devices become slimmer, your thumb can reach farther than before and hence cover a larger screen. 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.
      • Tyrannosaurs 12y ago
        Doesn't perfect also depend on what you're trying to do? 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.
• camillomiller 12y ago
  I agree. Steve Jobs died in 2011. It's like an eon ago in this field. He would have changed his mind so often in this period, over so many things, that we would be here reading tons of bad pieces about that time Steve said so and so and "oh look how the prick's contradicting himself all over again". Get over it people, the Steve's passed, we can't have him back, unfortunately, and the worst thing Cook & co. could do is to follow the footprints of a guy who completely defied even the most common rules of big business. It worked, because he was Steve. It won't work for Tim & Phil & Jony & Craig and all. They're too smart to ignore that. The only one who really thought he could be Steve II, Scott Forstall, has been ousted. And that's fortunate, or he could have steered Apple against the cliffs in a very short time.
• 72deluxe 12y ago
  The audience responses (audience gasps) was like reading a script to The Simpsons. Like a dumb mob audience.
  • azurelogic 12y ago
    Sounds like a good cross section of the tech press. Only half kidding. There have been mentions of this kind of thing (cheering, gasping, feverish typing) in live blogs of these events from The Verge and others.
    • 72deluxe 12y ago
      That's interesting. I know we have some mild interest in the industry, but some people's slavish devotion to it (with associated euphoria/disgust at features) seems really weird to me. How do they keep up the excitement?!
• romanovcode 12y ago
  Heh, how about this gem: >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.
  • sammcgrail 12y ago
    This is satire, or sarcasm. Much like when he makes a quip about Jobs' health. (He was rumoured to have eschewed proper medical treatment.)
• mkhaytman 12y ago
  Seriously, this was a cringe-worthy read.