iPhone 5 Coming Out: What are Your Thoughts?

Give someone from from the middleages a Model A, and they will love the horseless carriage. Give them a Prius, and they will love it even more (a closed cabin ooooooh...).

Point is, if all they know is the Model A, then it is the best. It is not until they get to play with something better that they realize what they have is not the best. And the problem with the iWhatever, is that billy-bob buys one to replace his Razr phone and it is the best thing since sliced bread. iphone does beat a razr. So he says it is the best phone ever, and others do the same. Now take someone with a T9193 or similar and give them an iphone and it is like saying "you should replace your prius with a model A! It is the best thing ever!". Not going to happen.

 

I've had the chance to play with a ton of different smart phones, running just about every OS out there (and not just play with them in the store... I have friends and coworkers with everything imaginable) and go through the user experience with each one... While there are some nice features on some of them that the iPhone doesn't have, none of them have struck me as being any better overall.

It's easy for you to come in here with a pre-formed opinion that there are all these phones better than the iPhone, and that's fine - go ahead and enjoy your current phone. But just because that's your opinion doesn't make it true, just like my opinion that none of the competitors are better, when compared overall, than the iPhone doesn't make that true.

But just between you and me... selling over 1 million iPhones in the first 24 hours says something. Having the iPhone ranked as the top 2 best selling smartphones in the US says something. Having 1/4 of the smartphone market (by platform, not manufacturer) says something. Having year over year growth of 142% when the market isn't growing nearly that much says something. Hitting 5% marketshare of the entire cell phone industry (not just smart phones) within 5 years of releasing your first phone says something.

If the iPhone is really so bad, why are the numbers surrounding it so great? Trust me, there aren't that many "billy-bobs" out there...

 

I too have played with most of the phones on the market, and can say the iphone is not the best by a long shot. The stock ROMs on many US carrier phones hampers the overall experience. Having had the enjoyment of playing with many non-USDM phones as well, it is clear it ranks near the bottom of the "smartphone" list.

And this is where you are completely wrong. The "billy-bobs" outnumber smart people by an extraordinary amount. And even within smart people, the subset that is technologically savvy is smaller, and the subset that follows smartphones is even smaller still.

And the entire argument of "if it sells well, then it must be good" is just ridiculous. That is sheep-like thinking. It is a classical argumentum ad populum fallacy.

 

I'd say the iPhone 4 (the first iPhone I've owned) is a solid B.

Not an A, and certainly not an A+.

When I began using it, my overall feeling was that it worked well, but I couldn't quite see why it's generated so much attention and so many sales.

I do like Apple industrial design, though. It's the best in the business, in my opinion. And that's actually very important to me. That said, the iPhone 4 is a chunky little thing, especially in an Otter Box. It feels like it's just waiting to be broken without a good bit of protection. My main beef with the thing, actually.

It'd take something really revolutionary to wow me with the iPhone 5, and I doubt that's going to happen.

 

Rumour has it that the iPhone5 was Steve Jobs' last major project at Apple.

I'm willing to bet it won't have a stereo microphone.

 

No stereo microphone...but the same processing power of the IPAD 2.

Just came back from my first Objective-C programming for Apple's mobile devices w/IOS and XCode.

Wow, and I thought Microsoft Dot Net 1.0 was a major step Backwards for programmers, Dot Net 4.0 is "finally" a decent & mature product.

Objective-C and XCode 4.2 (released last week) is still in it's infancy as far as major programming languages like PHP, Java, C#.

However, it's getting there.

Compared to programming for the Blackberry or the Windows Phone, I prefer Apple.

That means, thousands of programmers will become a million in the next few years. Look forward to be able to do everything and anything on an iPad / iPhone combo that any "decent" laptop can do.

 

The iPhone5 (we're only guessing that's what it will be called) will most likely NOT be running the same OS and hardware as the iPad2.

The biggest complaint I have for the iPad2 is lack of stereo speakers. Again, for a device designed for multimedia applications such as video and audio playback, the lack of stereo sound is puzzling (to put it kindly).

But I'm sure in time the light bulb will finally come on. Now that Jobs is dead, it may happen sooner rather than later.

 

Maybe they figure that if you want decent sound, you'll use earphones. Is there really much point in stereo if the built-in speaker(s) is (are) crummy?

 

You're right... the 4S is running the same hardware (the A5 chip) as the iPad2 - likely the iPhone 5 will run on better hardware (A6?), which will probably be the same hardware as the iPad 3.

And for what it's worth... currently you can have the same version (iOS 5) on your iPhone 3GS, 4, and 4S, as well as your iPod Touch 3rd and 4th generation, AND your iPad and iPad 2.

A year from now, it will be iOS 6, and you'll be able to get it on your new iPad 3 and iPhone 5 the day it's released.

Good luck getting that kind of OS distribution on Android devices!

 

An iPad is not a phone. It can be used to watch videos by more than one person at a time, e.g. at the dinner table or a conference table.

 

Any true business will have a projector and a 10" screen is insufficient for a presentation. If you watch tv at dinner instead of conversing, well that's sad. But if you can't see your tv from where you watch dinner, then move. I would rather watch it on a 55" screen with surround sound than a 10" screen with a tinny mono speaker behind the casserole dish.

 

Actually the iPad2 does have stereo speakers. But they're both on the bottom. So if you watch in landscape mode you'll only hear it on one side.

 

My wife likes to watch videos on her iPad when she cooks. Would be kinda hard to wear earphones in that situation.

 

So it is good for all those 9:16 aspect ratio movies that are out there

That's why I have a touchscreen PC in the kitchen. Holds all the recipes, shows the time, weather, news and plays/streams music/videos with a touch of the button. It has 2 large speakers down the side of the monitor and it fills the entire house with sound if I so choose. And it cost less than an iTampon.

 

Several people all crowded around trying to watch a movie on an iPad. Hmmm.

I can see that would be a problem. But you still have those tinny little speakers. My suggestion: Plug the speaker jack into a decent stereo sound system.

Bottom line: I think that stereo is kind of pointless coming from two tiny tinny crummy little speakers on the back of the iPad.

FWIW, I watch movies (occasionally) in the evening on a projector. While cooking (and sometimes while eating, since I live alone) I listen to Teaching Company lecture series or podcast radio shows on my iPod. The iPod goes in my pocket and the earphone cord is no problem. Sometimes I read (on my Kindle DX) while eating.

 

So, to sum up: Technology is useless at best and evil at worst, except the technology you personally approve of.

 

Does anyone think that the iPad 3 will have a native 16x9 aspect ratio?

 

There are tablets with stereo speakers on both sides when held in landscape mode. Can't remember which brand at the moment. Might have been a Samsung. So yes, iy is a useful design for many sotuations, especially for traveling light.

In our household we sometimes let the kids show us stuff they find on Youtube as part of our dinner routine. That was when I began noticing the speaker issue.

 

Don't be silly! What I said was, stereo should be listened to on good speakers. Stereo accomplishes little if anything on crappy tiny tinny speakers.

 

Are you sure they're stereo? It's unclear... the first iPad had dual mono speakers.