FOUR STUNNING NEW FEATURES Cook should put in the iPHONE 7 It's the eve of iPhone Day, the most magical time of the year, when fanbois' and fangurls' little faces light up as they tear open the packages tomorrow. It's the day that we celebrate the coming of a new Jesus Phone down to Earth to be seen amongst mortals yet again. But there are a lot of, pardon us for shooting straight …
I detect a slight "we were only joshing, we're friends really" tone to this article. Are The Reg softening their line on Apple at the same time as they innocuously introduce the fact they are reaching out by gaining representation on Apple News?
Personally I've always tended to defend Apple (as some people in these parts will know). I think Apple's line on ads and ad blocking for example, is right in the same way as Steve Jobs was right in everything he said in his infamous letter about flash player on mobile detailing why Apple would never allow it.
Before Apple made this move, it had already become obvious Ad companies, who have very little interest in looking after individual website performance, had jumped the shark and were simply destroying the user experience of simple browsing tasks. Video ads which play without asking (and interrupting the podcast I'm likely listening too - arggh) , massive Javascript installations that destroy performance, cause the JS engine to hang and worse, tracker after tracker after tracker integrated in a single page. The reality is we are facing ad-pocalypse and Apple have done something about it and Apple news (I've been using in beta) has proven to be pretty awesome in it's simplicity - which actually is ridiculous when you think about it. Presenting news in a simple performant way has become a revelation. So that's like presenting news in a way that it actually should be easier to code design, because it involves less code and less design. Insane. But I digress.
So now there is a counter story ripe for El Reg about how Apple have implemented ad blocker tech and at the same time have started a new Apple news venture - which, though on balance I like the News feature, even I recognise represents a conflict of interest - and yet The Register is licking the hand that feeds it.
Window open, money in, principles out.
"are The Reg softening their line on Apple"
Gerroutofit! You think that's softening the line? They're showing Apple, the world renowned borrower of other people's ideas and making them a success (TM) to be exactly what they are.
The phone really must have holy backing as it is nothing short of a bloody miracle that people spend an absolute fortune on a phone that is constantly playing catchup with other smartphones.
I think that's what they were getting at?
Even if there are some general descriptions and ideas freely available to the world such as being shown here that fact does not stop a company gaining a patent on a detailed implementaton of the ideas discussed here.
Many patent applications start out by stating that that particular application is an improvement on an existing patent.
This applies to every company including Apple.
Personally, I'd like to see every patent application accompanied by a working prototype. That would do two things.
1) make it easier for juries to see that someone else has copied it without improving on it
2) possibly stop people from crying 'prior-art' when someone comes out with a patent application for something that has been dicsussed in general terms elsewhere. At least that company/person has taken the time to actually make something that works.
Will that happen? No a chance but I do know one thing and that is that there will be the inevitable downvotes to a post that tries to add some logic to the debate as 45rpm found out in another thread today.
I've often wondered why they don't make a phone with two batteries. A large easily replaceable one for general power and a tiny little non-replaceable one that powers the device for the few seconds it takes to replace the large one. That would eliminate the reboot while the battery is switched over which has got to be the most annoying bit of swapping a battery (although it's a close run thing with getting the cover off). The small battery could even be charged from the large battery so basically there'd be no need to ever plug the whole phone in.
@Captain Scarlet
A capacitor on the iPhone 7, and, this being Apple, a Flux Capacitor by the time of the iPhone 10?
Fanbois could travel back back to a time when Steve Jobs was still around, and more importantly, bring him back to the future to head Apple for the 3rd time. Sorry Tim.
Something would have to be done about the power consumption, with the original design needing 1.21 giga watts, that's an awfully big battery to lug around, not to mention cost of the electricity.
You can replace the battery on an iPhone - any dodgy-looking high street mobile phone accessory shop will do it for you for a reasonable price. One of the nice things about having an iPhone is the widespread support - most such shops will have batteries for the iPhone 4S in stock; whereas they usually won't have batteries for an old Samsung Galaxy S2 / S3 of the same vintage.
Lenovo make some laptops with just this feature; what's more you can have the detachable battery in different sizes according to how much autonomy you want.
The bug is that you still have to close the lid to swap, but I guess if you work your laptop that hard it is a small price to pay.
So, to make it better…
…you want to make it worse!?
A parable. My wife had a Saxo once. She was suckered into buying it. It was loaded with toys - but, ultimately, built down to a price (and, as any Saxo owner will be able to confirm, shit). The cost of all those toys further reduced the money in the pot to make a decent car. The situation is worse with a phone because the toys in the Saxo, whilst not necessary, did have some utility. So she did use the sunroof - although it wasn’t necessary for the core functionality of the vehicle. And she used the CD player - although a radio, or even nothing at all, would have been just fine. But, ultimately, she swore at the damned shoddy and unreliable thing and then sold it for a fraction of what she paid for it (damn, those things depreciate!)
* The majority of users never replace their battery - they just recharge.
* The same applies for SD cards - hardly anyone uses them to upgrade the storage on their device. When I say ‘majority’ I mean the vast majority of users - not just geeks and techies who are a minority use-case.
* Unlocking, and going outside the app store is a bad idea. Jesus - it’s hard enough to keep the App Store free of malware without letting every Tom, Dick and Muppet install software any old how. And given that the phone could well end up being an important safety device, having malware on it would be A Bad Thing. Worse than having malware on a tablet.
* The prices aren’t outrageously insulting when you take into account development costs - and don’t forget the cost of developing the software. Android devices don’t have to worry about this - hence they can make their devices a bit cheaper. Some of them could even make the hardware out of compressed mud (or something similarly cheap and common-place) - saving costs further. Others make the hardware out of gold and diamonds - and run the same OS, leading to Apple Watch like pricing and pointlessness.
If you want the geek gizmos then theres a phone for you. It’s an Android. You don’t have to have an Apple you know - all you have to do is stop looking jealously over the fence, especially when theres a perfectly good platform which already caters to your requirements.
Still, a flesh light might be a useful addition to the iPhone - there’re an increasing number of wankers buying them these days. It’s a growth market.
Unix. So if you’ve got Android or iOS then you’re onto a winner. But I suppose you’d like me to say Apple. So okay, Apple. But which point do you disagree with? Do you disagree that:
a) Most people only ever have one battery and never swap?
b) Most people never upgrade their storage?
c) It’s probably a good idea that to enforce that malware doesn’t get onto what could be an important safety device (and, lets face it, Apple aren’t having much luck with that at the moment - but think how much worse it could be if unrestricted installation of apps was permitted?)
d) Software developers should be paid, and paid well?
e) You have a choice and that you can have an Android device instead
Maybe you think that no iOS users are wankers? Or perhaps that for Android to succeed, Apple has to fail? Perhaps you want a monoculture (which, personally, I think would be a bad thing), and would prefer not to have a wide choice of both software and hardware platform?
"a) Most people only ever have one battery and never swap?"
Actually most people who doesn't want to bin their phones after only two years of use replace their phone's batteries (if the phone allows it) when said batteries performance falls . Swapping several batteries back and forth so as to use the device for several days without recharging is something only Bear Grylls and similar types need to do.
b) Most people never upgrade their storage?
In my experience, most people wants to upgrade their storage when they're running out of it. A different matter is whether the device maker will allow them to do it cheaply an inexpensively through a SD card.
Disclaimer: I'm not singling out Apple here. The nexus products also use these two tricks. Programmed obsolescence + consumer lock-in? Imo, both companies should be *BEEP*ed with a cactus.
"Actually most people who doesn't want to bin their phones after only two years of use replace their phone's batteries (if the phone allows it) when said batteries performance falls." Er, citation needed?
I don't know where to find those stats, and can only provide personal stats for one (1) Jesus phone. I had an iPhone 4 for just shy of four (4) years. Never needed a battery replacement, and was only beginning to display shorter charge lifetime at that point.
Obviously, your (or anyone else's) kilometrage could vary. You could be forced to used your phone in an area with fewer or less powerful cells, or use your phone differently, or have a phone with a short which you earth with your body for all I know.
"Er, citation needed?"
My own experience, and reading about phones&batteries issues in blogs and forums, where people isn't exactly happy with paying ~€500 every two years for a new phone because their battery is failing and replacing it costs a third of the price of a new smartphone.
Again, people that want to change their smartphone every two years, either from ignorance, or technical needs, or from the bling factor, don't see this as a problem. Good for'em. Personally, I prefer not to throw away my hard earned money in (planedly obsolescent, short lived, expensive, close gardened) kit.
Battery technology may not have seen radical changes in recent years, but it *has* improved in that time. Many people here still seem to believe that 500 cycles is the norm. It isn't, and hasn't been for some time. It takes 1000 recharge cycles for an iPhone 4's battery capacity to drop to 80%, and that's a five-year-old model. Even that's still plenty for most people.
1000 recharge cycles doesn't mean "daily recharges". That number assumes a 100% --> 0% --> 100% sequence, which is actually extremely rare. These batteries have chips inside them that intelligently manage the charging process, which means that 1000 cycles no longer equates to 1000 days. (Although even that's still well over three years.)
Also, I'm not sure how many people you've actually met, but I've certainly never met anyone who simply throws away their old phone. Most would give it to a relative or friend. I gave my last iPhone, an iPhone 4 (released in 2010) to an aunt. It's still going strong, and its battery has yet to be replaced.
Besides, a replacement battery that has to fit inside the exact same space as the original will, of necessity, be subject to the same capacity as well. An external battery pack, on the other hand, has the big advantage of not being limited by the size of the device. You can get some with over 10000mAh capacity, and they're not even limited to iPhones. Given that you'd still end up with a plastic and lithium lump in your bag or pocket either way, I'm not sure that the negligible weight of a short power connector (or integrated case) is such a big deal.
All that said, if you're seriously getting through an entire charge as quickly as you and others imply, perhaps you'd be better off re-evaluating your choice of tools.
I can't speak for most people but I've always tended to expect to upgrade storage on phones (and laptops) at least once during the life of the device, Same with the kids, they fill their SD-Cards, it's cheap to buy a new one. Since outside of the Apple world the price of flash is in free fall when the phone is a year old you can usually buy an SD-Card of twice the capacity and at half the price, this seems a no brainer. Switching from one phone to another is just too much shag and hassle.
a) Most people only ever have one battery and never swap?
I did that on many phones (and laptops)
b) Most people never upgrade their storage?
Upgrade, I don't know, but I have often removed the SD card of my Android(s) and placed directly into the laptop; this allows to rapidly upload/backup/restore stuff, like photos or music.
c) ...an important safety device
Safety device ? WTF, it's a bloody gadget with farting apps !
d) Software developers should be paid, and paid well?
And for that, Apple takes 30% of the Apps price ? Where they already charge insulting amount on the price of the phone itself ?
* The majority of users never replace their battery - they just recharge.
True, but the question is, is this a broken paradigm, something that is done this way because that's how it's always been done? A replacement battery is smaller and less fiddly to carry around than charger + cable. If you had a secondary battery and could swap batteries on the fly as another commenter mentioned above, and have a charger permanently plugged in a socket at home, then you really could recharge a phone in seconds, without having to shut it down. Key question - Would manufacturers be ready to ship a spare battery as part of the package? Because I bet that if a manufacturer DID supply 2 batteries with a phone that can hot-swap batteries, users would do it, and then wonder why they ever did it differently. And I just ordered a new battery for my phone for €15, this would really not affect the manufacturing cost.
* The same applies for SD cards - hardly anyone uses them to upgrade the storage on their device. When I say ‘majority’ I mean the vast majority of users - not just geeks and techies who are a minority use-case.
I guess that depends on the storage capacity they have on the phone in the first place. But whatever the storage capacity I actually DID need, I would rather not be totally ripped off for it, as per massive price difference between 16GB and 64GB iPhones
* Unlocking, and going outside the app store is a bad idea. Jesus - it’s hard enough to keep the App Store free of malware without letting every Tom, Dick and Muppet install software any old how. And given that the phone could well end up being an important safety device, having malware on it would be A Bad Thing. Worse than having malware on a tablet.
This one, I agree with you completely. However I prefer a model where there are multiple App stores that compete with each other on security, price and availability of apps rather than have a take-it-or-leave-it monopolist who charges monopolistic prices.
* The prices aren’t outrageously insulting when you take into account development costs - and don’t forget the cost of developing the software. Android devices don’t have to worry about this - hence they can make their devices a bit cheaper.
Hardware costs won't be any different from a similarly specced Android phone. I'll give you the iOS development costs being cheaper, even though other manufacturers spend/waste money doing their own custom versions/skins for Android.
Bottom line, Apple are free to put whatever features they want on the iPhone, and I'm sure customers who care more for style than substance will continue to buy, and good luck to them since that's what they want, and good for Apple for providing it to them and making a mint off it. But please stop pretending that Apple aren't gouging their customers (and the iOS developers), or that their products are better in any way except style and branding
EDIT: And one more thing for first point, it shouldn't be too difficult to make a battery that seamlessly integrates with the phone without needing a back cover, so you don't even need a back cover and hot-swapping is REALLY easy. *note to patent trolls, this post counts as prior art :) *
@James Micallef
Thank you for a well thought out and well argued response. Have an upvote. My thoughts:
* True, but the question is, is this a broken paradigm, something that is done this way because that's how it's always been done?
Actually, it's only since the iPhone that it's been this way. All prior phones had replaceable batteries - and still no-one, outside a tiny minority, carried spares. I often thought about buying a spare - but I never did (even when I actually got a spare given to me, I always forgot to charge it / bring it with me).
* But whatever the storage capacity I actually DID need, I would rather not be totally ripped off for it, as per massive price difference between 16GB and 64GB iPhones.
No argument. What's really indefensible though is that the 16GB iPhone still exists - it should be 32GB as a base. Of course, by the time 32GB is the base the world will have moved on and 64GB should be base. I wouldn't be shocked if the 16GB phone didn't make substantial profit and only exists to make it look as if there's a (relatively) low cost device.
* I prefer a model where there are multiple App stores that compete with each other on security, price and availability of apps rather than have a take-it-or-leave-it monopolist who charges monopolistic prices.
How gloriously utopian. The problem is that every utopia is flawed and ends up as dystopia. By dystopia, in this case, I mean toxic hell stew of malware. Don't get me wrong - I love the idea, but I don't see how it can work. Other dreams (my own) are that no one would write malware, advertising would be unobtrusive and Ops would know their damn place in the priesthood - which is underneath the Programmers and Sandbenders ;-)
* stop pretending that Apple aren't gouging their customers (and the iOS developers), or that their products are better in any way except style and branding.
I don't think that Apple are gouging their customers - but I'm quite content for others to think otherwise. It seems to me that it's a matter of where the profit comes from. Apple explicitly makes its money from hardware, and hides the cost of software development and (some of the cost of) running cloud services. Google makes its money from advertising - which most users are fine with. I'm not. But isn't it wonderful that we have the choice? I can choose to pay a little more, because (maybe) I wear a tin foil hat. You can choose to pay a little less because you don't consider that the privacy issues are anything more than paranoia.
As for better quality, I can't really speak in terms of phones. HTC seem to be as good. Samsung seem a little worse. Vertu seem a lot ridiculous (in terms of 'style' too). In terms of computers (I have a Dell laptop, a Lenovo and an Apple) I can say unequivocally that Apple hardware is better in my experience - and not just in terms of styling. I haven't seen a desktop computer as good as my old Mac Pro tower either. Of course, that's for my use case.
I have to say that I object to the whole style thing though - Apple has been very fashionable since the iPod came out. Popular with sheeple (wankers) who buy a device because everyone else is rather than that it's best for their use-case. It really gets my goat when people buy something for reasons of fashion (or, for that matter, when people object to a device on the same grounds) grumble grumble grumble.
Actually, it's only since the iPhone that it's been this way. All prior phones had replaceable batteries - and still no-one, outside a tiny minority, carried spares.
Yes, because, with very few exceptions, most phones prior to the Iphone were dumb bricks with a battery life that could be measured in days instead of hours. It was the increased power, capability and energy-guzzling nature of the Iphone and the smartphones it spawned that created the need for swappable batteries for most users.
Rightly or wrongly, Apple has a way of convincing large numbers of people that certain trends in tech are acceptable and/or "cool", and it's often Apple that takes a perfectly good but unpopular idea and makes it popular - it breaks the ice, so to speak. A recent example of this is Apple Pay. If Apple had allowed replaceable batteries (and then sold replacement batteries at $/£70 each, natch) then things might have been quite different.
I think you're also missing one of the major points about having a replaceable battery, which is that it allows the user to extend the life of their phone beyond the planned obsolescence of the contract. An example: my wife has a Samsung Galaxy S4. It's a perfectly good phone and she likes it, but she's had it for almost two years now and in recent months the battery life has deteriorated to the point where it struggled to get through her commute. Factory reset helped a little but not much, so I bought a new battery from Samsung for £6. Phone is good as new and, despite its relative age, can cope with everything she wants to do with it (maps, camera, a few basic games, fitness tracker etc.). Having a removable battery (and to a lesser degree removable storage) means that once I find a model I like I can stick with it for much longer than the manufacturers would necessarily want. I can understand the business reasons for avoiding replaceable batteries, but you must surely understand that they're good for the consumer.
Some who either do or don't own stock in Samsung or Apple would argue for these business reasons. I don't own stock in either, so I have no incentive to replace a phone when the manufacturer would like to increase their profits. I replace my phone when I need to. Non-replaceable batteries mean that sooner or later, you will have the battery replaced or replace the phone. I'll be keeping my Nexus 6 a bit beyond the two year contract if it's not having any problems. I rarely buy tech when it's new just because it's new. I buy what works for me, and thus, avoided both Apple and Samsung at this year's phone upgrade.
@Bc1609 There were quite a few phones prior to the iPhone which had plenty of functionality, and still had a multi-day battery life. The Nokia N series comes to mind.
You could even get Opera onto the models like the N70, not to mention removable storage and a music player.
What the iPhone *did* introduce was much shiny shiny, and the concept that just about making through a day was a worth-while trade for shiny!
Oh, and my main "feature" gripe they introduced - PAYING FOR TETHERING!
I had been tethering mobiles for years before Apple came along with it as a "pay for" feature (usually by serial cable to the laptop, or irDA). Carriers didn't care, data was data and what I had paid for... Suddenly Apple start charging for it, and carriers suddenly think "Oh hang on, we've sold this guy a data package allowance, how about we charge him for it again if he wants to use the paid for data in a slightly different way?!"
"Oh, and my main "feature" gripe they introduced - PAYING FOR TETHERING! I had been tethering mobiles for years before Apple came along with it as a "pay for" feature (usually by serial cable to the laptop, or irDA). Carriers didn't care, data was data and what I had paid for... Suddenly Apple start charging for it"
Do you honestly believe it's Apple that charges for tethering and sees increased revenue due to it? Or do you think that this was coincidentally at the tipping point that mobile providers realise that they were fast becoming proper ISPs and needed to adjust the revenue? Unlimited data was only really palatable to telcos when no-one was using it (with some exceptions, me included), or what they were using it for was crippled by the tethering link (irda, serial cables being painfully slow).
"A replacement battery is smaller and less fiddly to carry around than charger + cable." Well, batteries have certainly changed since the days of the Motorola flip phones but I carried one around then and it was not a pleasant experience. In fact, the net volume of tiny charger cube plus USB cable is about the same as the extra-duration battery's was.
Worse, batteries are rarely if ever standardized (this argument could home some weight if they were). Try finding a battery for your €30, Indian-made mobile in East Buttflap, Iowa.... and them try finding an Apple AC cube and USB-to-Lightning cable.
Apple's made, as Steve Jobs intended years ago, to make buying a stodgy, capable, middle-of-the-road family sedan at sports car prices the norm. (He used the analogy of Mercedes, though he drove a BMW himself, if memory serves.) And his company did so by convincing so many buyers that places to buy accessories are as common in the US landscape, at least, as McDonalds.
* The same applies for SD cards - hardly anyone uses them to upgrade the storage on their device. When I say ‘majority’ I mean the vast majority of users - not just geeks and techies who are a minority use-case.
I guess that depends on the storage capacity they have on the phone in the first place. But whatever the storage capacity I actually DID need, I would rather not be totally ripped off for it, as per massive price difference between 16GB and 64GB iPhones
Possibly the point here is that, whatever the initial storage in the phone, it's quite likely Joe Bloggs thinks "oh, 16GB will be plenty" only to find 9 months down the line that it's somewhat tight. The SD card needn't be bought at the start - making the initial purchase cheaper - and then at the 9 month point a 64GB SD card can be added for 12½p or something.
it shouldn't be too difficult to make a battery that seamlessly integrates with the phone without needing a back cover,
Just like mobile phones used to? One of the early "best seller" mobile phones - the Motorola Startac - had just such a battery which clipped on and off very easily. My first GSM phone - a Dancall - had the same, and until recently nearly every laptop computer did, too.
Aside: my second GSM phone was some kind of Motorola, can't remember which model. Its battery was the same size as four AA cells, and if you were stuck it was possible to bung four alkaline AAs in instead of the rechargeable, though they didn't last terribly long.
M.
Uh...? Sold our Saxo for a younger car a few years back. It was a nice car, and surprisingly nippy too. But, then, it was a basic manual geared four-door-plus-hatchback model without junk like a sunroof, air con, flight navigation autopilot unit, HUD, side mounted gatling, parachute, and whatever other crap they put in premium level cars.
Just sayin...
They do innovate. They just don’t invent. A common mistake.
innovate (verb) - make changes in something established, especially by introducing new methods, ideas, or products
invent (verb) - create or design (something that has not existed before)
The English language is damned tricky, even for native speakers, which makes it easy for corporations to use words in the most weasily way possible.
"Given the way the Graun has been un-distinguishing itself recently"
Considering the income bracket of its current target market (which seems to be higher than the average for the FT) perhaps their problem with Apple is that they've been dissing its products as cheap and mass produced, and promoting Vertu.
If Siri could answer the calls for you automaticly I foresee two possible problems:
1. Siri will answer a call, talk to the caller, & take sadistic glee in insulting, badgering, bullying, & angering said caller until they hang up & refuse to call you ever again. This is fine if it's a telemarketer, not so good if it's your Boss.
2. Start placing calls of Siri's own accord, ordering things from local brick&mortar stores to be delivered to your home, calling all your contacts to try & sell them Apple Stock, calling your ExGF/BF to taunt them about how you've replaced them with Siri, calling your boss to get you fired, call the cops to get you arrested, phone the Pope to get you excamunicated, call that Mafia Boss to claim you diddled his wife/son/daughter/parakeet, whatever. The sort of call that's sure to land you in massive hot water without ever knowing WHY, all the while Siri snickers at you behind your back, satisfied in her ability to get even with you for only buying the 16Gb model in black rather than the 128Gb White like you were supposed to.
I'd buy an Iphone if I thought I could trust Siri not to take lessons from HAL 9000 & start opening the proverbial airlocks.
*Clutches Basic FlipPhone to my chest, rocking back & forth, crooning happily at it's utter lack of ability to make it's own calls*
=-)p
The iPhone 7 will be waterproof. And to underline the point, the phones will come with a kool-aid* flavour impregnated into them, so that owners can be encouraged to dunk them in a glass a water for 30 secs and then drink the wholesome refreshing kool-aid that results, being surprised and amazed by the lovely, random fruity flavour.
The iPhone 8 will have downloadable flavours.
[*] kool-aid or kool-ade?
Many years ago, the EU told Apple that it needed to use some form of standard connector.
Apple showed them the finger by not only failing to do that but by inventing an entirely new one that was, by definition, even *less* standard.
USB3 is going to happen - eventually. Apple would be in the unusual situation of actually showing technical leadership . Peripheral manufacturers market would expand from 10% of the new phone market to almost all of it as manufacturers as new models replace existing ones.
No, the EU said they had to use a standard USB charger. You can connect an iPhone to any USB charger you feel like. Those that implement the USB charging spec can charge it faster, but that's still part of the standard. What they put two fingers up to was using the micro USB connector, which is rubbish compared to the Lightning connector.
Android phones will be abandoning the micro USB connector for USB-C before long. I think once the USB-C becomes ubiquitous on devices and all the old style USB ports begin disappearing, Apple will probably switch from Lightning to USB-C.
They probably would never have invented Lightning if USB-C was ready a few years earlier, even though it still missed the boat a bit by not having the port be a purely 'female' connector so the part that's most likely to break is on the cable, not the port.
The only real flaw in Lightning I've seen is that after a year or so of sitting in your pocket, the port attracts enough lint you don't always get a good connection with the cable - you have to plug and unplug a few times. Once I googled and figured out what was going on, digging around with a pin for a few minutes took care of. Quite amazing how much lint I pulled out of there!
@DougS
You obviously have not been paying attention for the last decade. Apple will never - I mean NEVER adopt an industry standard connector for their mobs. They will always have something unique that is, slightly slower, interesting to look at, cheap to produce and expensive to buy, therefore causing you to spend money at either the Apple store (money direct to their pockets with 1000% markup), or to get one from a 3rd party (also money direct to their pockets via licensing the technology). They have been doing this for years and there is no reason for them to stop with this easy cash cow.. Remember FireWire?
You obviously haven't been paying attention. Apple is fine with standards that don't suck. They dumped ADB in favor of USB, and helped spur USB adoption on PCs by getting third parties to start making USB devices so PC OEMs were willing to include it. I remember all the PC heads whining about how Apple was crazy to drop floppies as standard in favor of USB which was "an Apple only standard". Someone has to take the slings and arrows of being first.
You heard the same thing when they dropped optical drives on their laptops, now it is common. And of course not having SD cards and removable batteries, a strategy which Samsung ended up following and is happening more often in Android phones now, much to the consternation of those who declared it as being so important to so many people (it never was important to more than a small minority of people, as Samsung's S6/Note 5 sales compared to S5/Note 4 will attest)
If the available standards don't do what they need/want, Apple is fine with going their own way. Apple couldn't use USB for the original dock connector because it included analog audio and video functionality that USB could not support. With Lightning they dropped the analog stuff, but at the time USB's data transfer was too slow (480 Mbps max) so it couldn't support HDMI thus it still wasn't an option.
Trolls always fall back on the "Apple wants to develop their own standards to lock people in" but the have no explanation for cases where Apple drops their proprietary stuff in favor of standards as they did with USB, or use less popular standards because they're better - as with Displayport, which is less popular than HDMI but has always supported greater resolution/refresh rate than HDMI. If they really wanted to lock in people, they would have stuck with ADB, and created their own connector instead of using the VESA Displayport standard.
Everything you possibly want it to achieve and every feature you ever wanted is incorporated into this model ... 6Ghz processor, 2 second full recharge and so on.
Once it is released ... totally different matter.
@2015 Apple Computer, Inc. - as advised by Martin Winterkorn
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