iPhone 6 was announced today. New size. New shape. And it incorporates several features that Android has had for a while. Oh, and you can get a Dick Tracy watch. People already pay several hundred dollars or more for watches, but they usually expect them to last for the rest of their lives. Apple expects you to rush out to get the new model next year, and it will stop supporting this one.
This has continued a trend I've noticed with Apple. There are updates every year, and none of them seem to make anything work exceptionally better. They just keep changing how things look, but they insist it's a revolution that makes the old device obsolete. iPhone 5 got a little longer. iPad mini was a little smaller. iOS 6 or 7 (I can't keep track) made the "revolutionary" move to flat icons and apps that no longer looked like real things. iPhone 5 moved the headphone jack to the bottom and made the plug a little smaller. Screen resolution improves a bit, battery life improves a bit, and fun little gizmos like Siri and fingerprint sensors get promoted like crazy, but none of these things makes the phones noticeably better at doing anything I need them to do.
Don't get me wrong, I like my iPhone 4S. I have no immediate desire to replace it. Personally, I see no reason why it shouldn't be able to last for years. It's my first and only smart phone. My decision to buy it was purely practical, as it was the only Verizon smartphone at the time that could be used on my travels abroad. This phone is easy to use (my Dad even had no problem with it, which is saying something), logically organized, and amazingly useful. But in my years of owning it, I've noticed a couple trends. The first is that Apple fixes nothing. Their one solution is to buy the new phone. Of course, they prefer to say "upgrade" than "buy." The power button doesn't work. It broke about 12 months and a day after I bought it, which means the warranty was up. No replacement for me, even though this is clearly a recall item (a simple Google search led me to a huge number of people complaining about the same problem). The phone was made with a clear defect to a single moving part, and there is literally no way to fix it, according to the folks at every Apple store I've visited. It hasn't been anything more than an annoyance, but it's a persistent one. The other trend I've noticed is that as Apple obsesses over form, Google's focus on function makes their products more useful all the time. Maps started with driving directions, then added walking, biking, and public transit directions. Google Drive started as a basic cloud drive, now it's a robust one with a built in office suite (only recently done well in phone app form). Google+ is not a great social network (nor do I really care), but even it has proven to be a useful place to back up all my photos. I am slow to adopt technologies, as I really just want things to work well and add convenience to my life. Slowly, I've noticed myself embracing more and more of Google and less of Apple. First I embraced Gmail, then Chrome, then Google Sites for school web sites, then Google Docs for shared documents on the sites, then Google Drive when the allotted space increased to be comparable to my USB drive, then Blogger to start this blog. Maps has always been there, and as a traveler I love everything it does. Everything Google does seems centered on functionality, and then it just gets easier and more convenient to use as the bugs are worked out. My favorite thing is that there's no sales pitch involved. I've never bought one thing from Google. Maybe that's why I have no real emotional investment in them. I just use their products because they're better for me.
I've been very happy with my iPhone. Apart from that button, I'm thrilled with it. But when I eventually get a new phone, it may very well be running Android and cost half the price. Google keeps getting better. Apple just keeps changing for change's sake, or actually now to catch up with what other folks are doing. They focus on keeping everyone excited for their products, but they've stopped doing anything new or better with them. I see nothing wrong with making a great product and then just keeping it basically the same while making it better than anything else around. The Heinz ketchup philosophy. Apple did that with the iPod, and while it gets no press anymore, it's pretty much the only digital music player anyone has, if they have a dedicated one at all. I still do, as nothing comes close to its capacity. That philosophy seems to not be applied to their phones. Google does everything app-wise great. If Apple can't give me a reason to pay twice as much for their phone as anyone else's, I'll happily move along. Give me a battery that lasts a week. Give me a screen that never cracks. Give me capacity and convenience that no one else can match. Otherwise, don't expect people to accept 500% markup forever.
Last week, I was riding the tube home from volleyball with a young fellow player that happened to be working for Google in London. I mentioned my thoughts, and he thanked me, like I was complimenting his work personally. I casually mentioned that one feature that would be nice in Maps is to visually show bus routes the same way it shows all the underground lines. He said that there are far more bus lines than underground lines, which makes it difficult, but then he stared off into his thoughts like he was considering just how one might accomplish this. If these are the minds Google recruits, it explains a lot.
Last week, I was riding the tube home from volleyball with a young fellow player that happened to be working for Google in London. I mentioned my thoughts, and he thanked me, like I was complimenting his work personally. I casually mentioned that one feature that would be nice in Maps is to visually show bus routes the same way it shows all the underground lines. He said that there are far more bus lines than underground lines, which makes it difficult, but then he stared off into his thoughts like he was considering just how one might accomplish this. If these are the minds Google recruits, it explains a lot.
