Apple's big bang: iPhone 6, ANOTHER iPhone 6 Plus and WATCH OUT After an eternity of hype, Apple has finally confirmed at a bash in Cupertino, California, two new iPhones, a smartwatch and a mobile payment system. The 4.7in iPhone 6 with an A8 processor. $199 for 16GB, $299 for 64GB, and $399 for 128GB, with a two-year contract. The 5.5in iPhone 6 Plus. Costs $100 more. Both mobes out on …
I can hear Steve Jobs screaming "That #$%ing Watch is too thick. The interface needs work. It's too damned complex and who the hell picked those bands."
I suppose it's OK if it's a fashion item rather than an electronic device. As the missus would say, "These shoes are really uncomfortable, but they look cute."
Owners who don't care about prices?
Neat trick to omit giving actual prices in keynote, only mentioning promotion deals as part of very expensive carrier contracts. Poor journalism to quote this verbatim without commenting on the $2000+ contracts involved or actual retail prices.
Which range from 16Gb entry level £539 to 128Gb with larger screen £789. Including VAT. According to apple.co.uk.
New bigger phone ....check
New even bigger phone .....check
NFC......how 2010
Watch.......still trying to solve a problem that is not there.
GOLD.......wow I did wonder why these things cost so much.
Case........grab a piece of that market £££££
Well time to all go mad and buy the things.........
Wake me up when September comes.......hang on I might be on to something there.......
NFC......how 2010
Yeah and a lot of people are still waiting for it to take off. I've got it on my Galaxy S4 don't have an app that can use it, so can't make a payment with it. All the implementations of it in the UK and on phones at the minute are so half baked it is unbelievable. At least this will be a kick up the arse to other companies and will be a good thing in the long run as more places will now be willing to install payment scanners
"Watch.......still trying to solve a problem that is not there."
Bullshit. Are you a Jeweller? Tech is getting smaller, the wrist is the obvious place to store it for those who don't want a slab of glass in the pocket to reach for. Just like what happened with pocket watches, altimeters and depth gauge funnily enough.
The watch needs to be allowed to evolve just like the mobile phone was.
Not just ANY gold.
A NEW type of gold, invented by Apple!
From Apple's Watch website:
"The Edition collection features six uniquely elegant expressions of Apple Watch.
Each has a watch case crafted from 18-karat gold that our metallurgists have
developed to be up to twice as hard as standard gold."
Wooooweeee!!!
Although I think the watch is a gimmick I kind of like it for one reason. Unlike the failed Samsung attempts it does not look like someone has just strapped a small phone to your wrist. In the streaming video it actually looks thin and um.... watch-like.
So purely in terms of hardware Apple are ahead of the game. Won't know much about software until it is in active use by the populous for a while.
- SA
...see? Despite looking like 2010 product it's still better looking than Samsung...
Just teasing. This is definitely a "meh" moment. Still, the strength of Apple lies in integration and marketing, not necessarily in the device spec, so at least it may stir the wearables market, which has been comatose lately.
In order to make it more lively you need volume and this is something anyone else failed miserably in. Apple may, but just may, be able to kickstart it. Technical parameters are largely irrelevant to the mass market, marketing is king there.
> Does anyone else take their watch off when they exercise because it's uncomfortable
Yes it can get uncomfortable very quickly. Come to think of it I can't think of having seen anyone at my gym wearing a wristwatch while they're working out. Or playing soccer for that matter.
Hmmm there's a thought. Playing soccer with an Apple Watch on. Things will get messy very quickly.
Without even trying to pretend otherwise, this so far feels horribly laclustre.
Let's see - new features : NFC, Barometer, bigger screen, higher resolution, wearable.
All these are Android features available for sometime now.
What scares me, as an Android user, is that there's nothing here that'll force the Android vendors to innovate further since now the iPhone is basically playing catchup. I really wanted (honestly, I did) to see Apple's new wearable be something that would blow anything away in the Android camp. As it is, it's 'just another wearable'.
And don't get me started on the price - starting at $299 for a phone with less memory than the LG G3.
Good God!
That all said, there's going to be Apple folk who'll happily pay the price simply because it's a new flashy shiny Apple. Good luck to them and well done Apple for creating a business model that is seemingly designed to part fools from their money.
It does seem a bit of an afterthought. Sort of an "oh shit" moment when they realized the touch screen was a tad small. To me it seems the elegant solution totally passed them by because, as Carl W mentioned above, they made the silly thing square. My dive watch has a rotating bezel which they could easily have implemented with a touch sensor around a circular face. It would have been instantly familiar to anyone who has used the click wheel on an iPod and been unobtrusive unlike the largish knob they currently have. What, they couldn't do two sizes with a round dial?
Since we're on the design topic, how the hell does this watch band work? It looks a bear to put on.
So now that Tim has informed the iPublic what size phone screen they want, will there be a rash of official retractions from all of the fanboys ridiculing 'huge' phones from other vendors?
I'm not a fanboi, but I do use iPhones and I can tell you now that I will /not/ buy an iPhone 6 for myself. I still might end up with one because of a project, but I do not WANT a bigger phone - I think the 5 was already getting too big. I use a tablet for stuff that needs a screen. I'm not interested in the watch thing either - it has nothing I want, so I'll stick to my normal Swiss watch :).
What made my jab drop was Apple talking about games. I suggested that as a joke, I wasn't expecting them to actually go into just that. I'm glad it crashed solidly - I had other things to do and there is only so much waffle I can handle. Stuff like "this is the best phone we ever made" makes me puke - as if you're going to tell "actually, the previous one we did was better", duh.
Anyway, I'll check tomorrow what excuses the pundits have come up with to explain how they were completely wrong. The design of the Apple watch is an example, I have seen FAR more beautiful designs like the CK-style bracelet someone did.
Oh, last but not least - Apple, get some people to present that can ACTUALLY get "excited" when they use that oh-so-rusty word again and again. And again. Did I mention that you use it a lot? Camera closeups are great for spotting mismatches between words and facial micro expressions..
Just release iOS8 and Yosemite already, that's all I care about - and that's free :)
Anyway, laterz.
I've been a solid fan of smaller phones, and thought some of the monsters were getting ridiculous. Even though i'm one of the same people, who realises that other people's technology needs can differ from my own. My favourite smartphone case design was the HTC Desire and Wildfire.
But then I persuaded a friend to get a Galaxy Note 2. A stylus happened to suit him as a professional designer. The combination of hugeness but thinness is absolutely amazing. I've been jealous ever since, particularly whenever I try to look something up online on the iPhone.
However I can see very little justification for spending much over £200 on a phone, given the great stuff you can get for that money. Next time I'm in the position that the company isn't picking up the bill. So I'd probably still take smaller over pricier. But then I'm barely ever parted from my tablet. When this iPad dies, I really want something with a stylus.
...till I realised they meant you to pay that *plus* sign a 2 year contract.
I dug out the projected prices off-contract prices including VAT from the independent (link at bottom):
4.7" phone: 16GB=£539, 64GB=£619, 128GB=£699
5.5" phone: 16GB=£619, 64GB=£789, 128GB=£789
No surprises that there's no memory card slot (again!). (A 128GB microSD card is just over £60 right now)
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/iphone-6-and-iphone-6-plus-apple-launches-two-dramatically-thinner-smartphones-9721859.html
Here is an excited article at the BOF (Business Of Fashion) online mag.
http://www.businessoffashion.com/?p=93821&preview_id=93821&utm_source=Subscribers&utm_campaign=bb5d0969e0-&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_d2191372b3-bb5d0969e0-416948765
It seems that the new iWatch is more a lifestyle/fashion item now than simply a communications device and it will be more so once the new head of retail Angela Ahrendts of Burberry fame.
Overall it doesn't have any startlingly new tech but the multi level pricing, lifestyle and health sensors and the fact they are going to push for developers to make the iWatch synonymous with a bevy of apps for the IoT is useful useful for sales in bringing every thing together more. I am sure the notion has already been patented: 'A wrist worn device for linking electronically to other things'.
Oh and it's got rounded corners.
Really, I didn't realise the Nexus 4 now had a separate low power processor which monitors movement even when there are no apps running. Does it have optical image stabilisation in the camera too alongside the white balance flash? And an integrated payment system which uses fingerprints to confirm identity while storing no card details in the phone and allowing configuration of new cards by simply taking a photo?
Maybe I will look at Android alternatives when my contract is up after all...
Not sure the Nexus 4 has those, havent seen the fingerprint bollocks on any phone at all really. Most android flagship phones of last year did already have all of those features though, not sure the camera things are such a big deal, it looks more like marketing speak. If you do enjoy good camera's you can always check the HTC or Nokia phones, they are lovely.
Apart from the issue that Apple is actually solving the wrong problem (I've been in payments for a couple of years), there's also this problem I alluded to before:
try moving country or living in more than one country. Apple's store will only accept a credit card from the country your store is set to (ditto for value vouchers that you would like to give someone) - there is no way AT ALL to give Apple any money from another country than your iTunes account is set to. You are thus forced to choose between risking your investment in Apps (and let's not forget, that includes all you have on OSX which can be quite a large amount) or, at a minimum accepting that they will no longer upgrade, or somehow keeping a credit card alive in the country you just left. It's as if like they've never heard of the fact that quite a lot of people who can afford their gear move around - almost like the MPAA who divided the world into regions so you were forced to choose between sponsoring the child molesting drug peddling terrorists of this world (I'm paraphrasing here slightly) by buying a pirated but otherwise good quality copy of a movie or the original which would only play until you got home.
If they don't fix this pronto they will end up with massive problems, more so if they try to get this into the jet setting fashion world where *everyone* travels around the planet and has multiple residences.
I'm in this boat(but have 2x iTunes accounts). I also have the same fchsking problem with Google and their app store too - even for FREE apps. It makes me want to do illegal things to some commercial manager at Google.
Microsoft is even worse though. For Win7 /Office 2010, we have 8 different versions that are all enterprise - but for different countries. We coukdn't even just use the English plus language packs, because changing the language screws some things up, and even then parts of Excel don't work
However there is only ONE version of OSX - just install and set language (haven't bought anything from the app store - everything direct from Adobe, etc.)
Why all the HYPE about an unbreakable SAPPHIRE screen when there simply is not such an animal? I blame MEDIA for spreading the rumors which now appear to be no more than bullshxt. Indeed the screen isn't even Gorilla glass...it's some kind Apple glass with "ions".
A lot of media were talking about a waterproof model, much improved batteries and so on.
More BS. It's irresponsible reporting if you ask me.
Why not hype the iPhone 7 as having a built-in anti-gravity device? Telekinetic powers? Indestructible by any known means? Bulletproof?
A comment heard across the office "Wow - you can set your thermostat at home from your watch!".
And this encapsulates what Apple is managing to achieve. The person who made this statement a) never had any interest in setting her thermostat when she isn't at home before, and b) is totally unaware that she has been able to do it from the phone that is never more that 12 inches from her person for at least the last 3 years, and that there are "Android Wear" tools to control Nest devices from the like of the Galaxy Gear and LG G watches for about 6 months now, if she really needs the phone form-factor to do this.
I urge you to stop by Engadget and The Verge - they are collectively creaming themselves over Apple's latest announcements. It's absolutely hilarious.
To paraphrase:
"Never in the history of mankind has so much been made of so little that cost so much".
I'm just happy to see everyone slagging Apple off and giving Microsoft a break. I'm sure it'll resume tomorrow once the usual El Reg suspects decide to "comment" on the latest news from Redmond. Oh well, enjoy it while it lasts.
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