I'd suggest this is due to the necessity to "converse" with Siri. I don't want to pretend I'm talking to a human when talking to a phone because if I'm on a train/plane I'd look like an idiot.
Instead, if it could understand something along the lines of: "alarm, 5.30, tomorrow" that'd be much better, quicker and simpler than: "Siri, set my alarm for 5.30am tomorrow morning". I don't want to have a conversation with my phone. Get in, get it done, get out. Speed always wins. But then I hate the new dumbed down Google too so what do I know eh.
Siri will flop, the speed is a non-issue for the majority of iPhone owners and the camera just about brings the phone up to spec with it's competitor cameras. If they went for a an iPhone 5 and iPad3 they would have made an absolute killing this christmas.
Well, they may have allegedly pre-sold one million within 24 hours, but they certainly won't get my $1,000+, which still sits by my desk waiting for the iPad3 and iPhone 5. I know two others who won't be upgrading on either product too, so thats another $2,000. Small sample, yes, yet representative of the population I'd say if you exclude end of contract "forced" sales.
Well, you'll find business is not that simple. Consider this, In that time I may see an Android phone I like and jump ship. That's then a 2 year lock out during which I won't return to iPhone. Further, having finished my contract by the end of this month, that means they're not taking a cut of contract revenues from me until I get back on, if I ever do. They've effectively lost a customer, along with the cost endured to acquire said customer.
It's the carrier that's been paying back the subsidy from your subscription fees under contract. Apple got their money up-front from you two years ago. Any extra revenue they earned from you was from iTunes/App Store sales, which I'm guessing will probably continue after the contract is over.
You also said you're waiting with your cash in-hand for iPhone5, so looking at competing Android phones isn't even on your radar. Tim Cook loves customers like you.
certainly won't get my $1,000+, which still sits by my desk waiting for the iPad3 and iPhone 5
Not sure how smart it is keeping cash lying around to either depreciate or get stolen, but if you're going to wait for the iPad 3 and iPhone 5, you're only going to regret it, because the iPad 4 and iPhone 6 are going to be even better.
Some will transfer to the Android camp. Some will wait it out. I suggest if the iPhone 5 had been shown many more would have taken an upgrade rather than waiting or jumping ship to Android. Hence, it's not that releasing the iPhone 4S was "bad" as such, just that iPhone 5 would have been much much better.
I'm getting the most profound headache trying to create a small instance of the magical thinking necessary to generate the comments you've made here.
I don't even know where to start.
Like, how do you think this works? They have a magical golden goose shitting out new, feature complete design verification test models and they just decided not to "show" you the next one behind the curtain?
Apple is successful because they take their time creating their hits. The 3GS didn't imperil the company and neither will this.
I actually don't mind the (I assume) 2 year cycle they've got going now, with a new phone 1 year with a follow up "S" model the next.
That way, when people are on their 2 year contract cycles, you either sit on the "new shiny" or the "advanced shiny" cycle, so consumers rarely lose out depending which cycle their contract ends in, since there are pros and cons for both.
What's worrisome is that we're probably at the end of a long stretch where the industrial design drove the sales. From here on in, at least for a while, the innovations are turning inwards. Siri. Better camera. Better power consumption.
It's not like we're launching new networks every year or two, or individual ARM cores are going to make huge leaps in performance.
Have we trained everyone to worship the new/shiny when we're probably hitting a short-term asymptote?
Isn't that a risk Apple has taken ever since the first iPhones went off-contract in 2009? People have always had the choice to be disappointed in the latest model and jump to whatever they wanted, Android or not.
It looks like Apple has done pretty well in spite of itself. You're always going to disappoint a certain % of people (like yourself).
I had visions of people screaming demands into their phones in public, too. But it turns out you can use Siri by bringing it up to your head, ala a regular phone call, too.
I don't think anyone has suggested that you can't be as terse as you like with it. Somehow I doubt Siri is going to get offended and respond with "Whats the magic word?"
> the speed is a non-issue for the majority of iPhone owners
Emm, the speed enables better apps, especially better games. It's always good to have. Smartphones have a long way to go yet.
> and the camera just about brings the phone up to spec with it's competitor cameras. If they went for a an iPhone 5 and iPad3 they would have made an absolute killing this christmas.
All the specs people wanted from an iPhone 5 are present, except a new chassis some pundits idiotically predicted. So what exactly do you miss, an increased NUMBER???
Oh, and they already started making an absolute killing.
Most people use their phone as...surprise surprise, a phone. Speed is irrelevant to the majority of users I know (non-tech), it's something Steve would not have done, it's an engineers mindset and I suggest it's the future of Apple under Tim. Apple isn't succesful because it has the fastest chips, but that's all it has to offer now?
Further, I'd challenge you to name one non-game app that would be massively improved by a faster chipset over what is currently available on iPhone 4 devices. Just ONE. That should tell you how unneeded a chip upgrade really is.
> Most people use their phone as...surprise surprise, a phone.
Yeah. Back in the day. Or in rural Nebraska.
Nowadays, smartphones are used for tons of things besides calling. I'd even go as far as to say that actual call time is far less than other-use time. Else we wouldn't have TONS of web traffic originating from mobile phones and 300,000 apps in the App Store.
> Speed is irrelevant to the majority of users I know
Are those the same "most users" that use their smartphone "as a phone"?
For those people even a smartphone is irrelevant. They can get by with some dumb device.
Now, speed is irrelevant as a goal in itself. But a faster CPU enables more powerful apps. Without that irrelevant "speed", we wouldn't have the ability to handle 8 megapixel images properly, or edit movies in iMovie mobile to name a few examples. And for 3D games, more speed is better.
> Further, I'd challenge you to name one non-game app that would be massively improved by a faster chipset over what is currently available on iPhone 4 devices. Just ONE.
Just one?
1) Any music app (like Fruity Loops, Beatmaker, Massive, etc) would be able to either play more samples / synthesize more voices = improved polyphony, or synthesize better voices = better sound quality.
2) Any video encoding/editing app, such as iMovie mobile will be massively improved in what it can do.
3) Any drawing app, like Brushes. Most use complicated code to render realistic brush responses and lag when live-painting.
4) Any app written with an "interpreted" layer, from Adobe's flash transcompiled apps to Mono Touch will feel more native. Also, MacRuby will be eligible for iOS apps soon, as the GC problem is solved, and it will greatly benefit from a faster CPU.
Oh, and a faster CPU also does stuff in less time, so if the power requirements per instruction are the same as the previous CPU (which often happens with next generation CPUs), a faster CPU means better battery life.
Basically what you're saying is: "640K should be enough for everybody".
> MacRuby will be eligible for iOS apps soon, as the GC problem is solved
If I didn't miss any recent developments, that was a misunderstanding from when ARC was leaked as iOS5 having "GC", then it turned out that it was actually compiler-supported reference counting. Which means that MacRuby is still stuck on iOS and doomed on OS X, with some people expecting the GC to be deprecated sooner or later.
With the current App Store rules, I don't see why Matz' C Ruby with 'dl' disabled wouldn't be eligible.
uhm.... I'm in rural ND and most people under 30 don't use their phone to talk. Text and Facebook seem to be the main phone uses. It is my understanding that due to the cost of voice, most people in Africa use SMS and not voice.
Instead, if it could understand something along the lines of: "alarm, 5.30, tomorrow" that'd be much better, quicker and simpler than: "Siri, set my alarm for 5.30am tomorrow morning". I don't want to have a conversation with my phone. Get in, get it done, get out. Speed always wins. But then I hate the new dumbed down Google too so what do I know eh.
Siri will flop, the speed is a non-issue for the majority of iPhone owners and the camera just about brings the phone up to spec with it's competitor cameras. If they went for a an iPhone 5 and iPad3 they would have made an absolute killing this christmas.