Apple’s iPhone 6 event – The Good, The Bad, and the Meh
Well, Apple’s iPhone 6 even turned out to be all that was rumored and more, and honestly, at the risk of spoiling this article, they really pulled it off. However, I’m not one to shy away from nit-picking, so let’s see what I can find to complain about. Here’s what was Good, Bad, and Meh about the iPhone 6 event.
The Good
iPhone 6/iPhone 6 Plus What could be bad? (At least until we get them and find some tragic flaw). Bigger screen, crazy thin, much better display (Retina HD) with new landscape formatting. As rumored, available in 2 sizes– a 4.7 inch screen and a 5.5 inch screen. The A8 processor with the standard “up to” 50% faster and “up to” 25% faster CPU than the previous model. Longer battery life (so perhaps it will get close to achieving the claimed battery life of the iPhone 4S). This is by far the best iPhone update ever.
New WiFi calling – Better phone quality and reception anywhere you have WiFi even if you have spotty cellular service, with seamless switching between WiFi and LTE. I have two brothers who live in two different boonies who would benefit from this. Personally, my WiFi is much worse than my LTE reception and speed, so hopefully this is optional.
Crazy Slo-Mo Video 240 fps video! Now if only they would make it so it would upload correctly in slo mo for other people to see… Prepare for videos of my wet dog VERY slowly shaking water off!
Price: OMG these are so reasonably priced! The top of the line phone is only $499 with the newly announced 128 GB model… speaking of which…
STORAGE!!! 128 GB! Only 4 years late! God I want this so bad…
Apple Pay Apple’s new take on the digital wallet. Well, I got to give Apple credit for having the balls to even TRY to get into digital payments, given that every hacker in the world will be trying to take them down. It SEEMS like Apple thought about this as much as they could, and it looks super easy, but I will not be surprised if there is a marked increase in people’s fingers being cut off to make TouchID purchases…
One More Thing: This was nice to see. Been too long.
Apple Watch. Starting at $349, and available “early next year”. This looks like one of the coolest products I have seen in a long time and one that I have ZERO interest in getting. Apple seems to have done as good a job as possible in delivering a digital watch that feels familiar and fits into your life and the Apple ecosystem, but just not mine. I see no real benefit to having this given that I will have an iPhone 6 in my pocket very soon, so aside from perhaps more accurate Fitbit info (and let’s face it, I’m not exactly a mission critical performance athlete) I think it will just be a distracting toy. And it still looks a bit thicker on people’s arms that when it flies around in the Apple ads. Still, kudos for pulling this off, and not calling it the iWatch. Looks like Apple has about 5-6 months to convince me I want this before it actually comes out. Let’s see if battery life becomes this device’s “antennae gate”.
The Meh
Apple seems to be dropping the “i” from things. Not sure if that’s a good thing, bad thing, or just a thing. I’ll put it in “meh” just because. I guess too many nefarious companies were trademarking things in other countries with “i” in front, hoping to shake Apple down, so this move makes sense. Substituting “Apple” for “i” is a little annoying, but I’m sure we’ll get used to it.
iPhone 6 Plus name I don’t know what it should be called, and maybe we’ll all just say “I got the Plus”, but for now it sounds sort of stupid, like they couldn’t think of anything better. Odds are the rumored giant iPad Apple is supposedly working on will now be called the iPad plus, so I guess we need to get used to it.
Why do they keep comparing the performance of each new iPhone to the original iPhone? I guess they just want to be able to throw out the 84x faster stat at some point…
New iSight Camera. I know they did improve the circuitry, added optical stabilization (which is awesome) and allegedly the photos themselves will look even nicer, but c’mon Apple, throw us a couple more megapixels. I know Megapixels ain’t everything, but this iPhone is Apple’s chance to check off just about EVERY knock the Android and Windows phones have lobbed against the iPhone over the years, and from purely a marketing point of view adding a couple megapixels would have helped. So expect to see even MORE commercials touting competitor’s megapixels in the months to come now that there’s not much left to complain about.
The Bad –
My entire stream of this presentation had Japanese/Chinese/Korean (?) translation bleeding through the audio, and it froze every 40 seconds.. I guess this hopefully means too many people were trying to watch this feed, (and an increased interest in Asia) which would mean an unprecedented amount of interest in the iPhone 6. Understandable.
The way everyone clapped when Whole Foods was mentioned as an Apple Pay member. C’Mon guys, let’s try not to fall into too many stereotypes here… I’m surprised they even COULD clap, given they were all likely holding giant Starbucks coffees…
No Sapphire displays on the iPhone 6 This is something I didn’t know I needed until the media told me we were probably getting it, and now I feel just a tad let down. I like the idea of a tougher-to-scratch screen, and I’m sure we’ll get it eventually, but still, I wanted this iPhone to be PERFECT.
Jonny Ive’s cadence He’s really starting to sound like the insane roadie from Wayne’s World 2.
Conclusion
So there you go. I loved pretty much everything, even the stuff I don’t want. What did you think? Feel free to tell me how right I am in the comments.
Same problem with the stream, hard to start, then asian sound, then glitches, seen from iPad or MBP.
Where does the U2 freebie fall? Meh?
you know it.
– the Doc
I have a feeling there’s a reason behind the “Apple” Moniker. The Apple Watch may not have a yearly cycle like the iDevices. it may wind up only updating as needed like the Apple TV.
They didn’t mention specs like an iPhone or iPad. They only discussed what it can do.
I wish the iPhone 6 (maybe the ApplePhone one day?) had a zoom lens. We have the technology for tiny zoom lenses and it’s about time Apple implemented it in an iPhone. Aside from that, it’s an excellent upgrade. Because of iTunes Match, the 64 GB version will be perfect for me.
They got the aesthetics of the AppleWatch right. I don’t know how useful it will be, yet. How often would I get directions on an AppleWatch when I can just pull an iPhone out of my pocket? No one wears a watch to the gym to workout, but that might change. If I can change from a leather band to a sport band when I go running, that could be very cool.
Overall, it was a great presentation.
+1 on the zoom lens! Of course, there’s the clip-on lens, but they’re not the same. Or carry a cheapo binocular/ monocular and put that in front of the lens.
I wish I can swim with the Watch. 🙂
Seems like a typical recent iPhone announcement: a lot of things Android has had for a while (size, wallet, storage, camera options) and a few cool things some Android vendor will copy ASAP.
My question is – is the watch an attempt to put an iPhone on your wrist (a bad idea: who needs it?) or an attempt to give the iPhone in your pocket a screen on your wrist (a great idea; Love my Pebble!). Can’t really tell from your description.
Apple just about had to get away from calling everything the iThis or iThat. What would have been the logical name for Apple Pay?
Pay Apple would be the logical name.
Ipay!!!! Lmfao
Very disappointed with the iPhone 6 specs (to be fair to Apple, I haven’t seen the real thing yet). I am now considering getting a Galaxy S5 with (1) faster processor; (2) display with better resolution and pixel density; (3) camera with twice the megapixels; (4) expandable memory; (5) replaceable battery; (6) water-resistant case; and (7) lower price. Way to underwhelm the customer, Apple !
You’re excited over a new Iphone which is almost 2 years behind Android in terms of specs…the processor, the camera, the memory…everything is outdated and done better on other platforms, I was so excited…waiting for Apple to innovate, move the market and start a new generation…but this was a disaster. I’m not shifting towards Android and the Z3 or Motorola. Even HTC are lightyears ahead of Apple at this point.
And also look at the LG G3 specs, it turns down the iPhone 6 and plus by miles in my honest opinion. Its nothing great, android done these things in 2012, nothing innovating, Apple just wanted to catch up, without success.
If the apple fan boys will go out what will happen to Apple? There are just cheaper and sometimes better alternatives to get. I just dont see any innovation.
Also the watch, on Android side as I can speak there are better and personally think nicer watches that will come out. As it stands I think iPhone owners will buy these watches while non Iphone users will buy android watches or alternatives, so Apple will not dominate in this market either.
Very disappointed about the no innovation thing.
Maybe when Apple SUPERSIZES the iPhone 6+ They’ll call it an iPhone ++
” OMG these are so reasonably priced! The top of the line phone is only $499 with the newly announced 128 GB model”
What the hell is reasonable about $500, and requiring a two year contract? That is absolutely ridiculous. There are better spec’ed Windows Phone and Android devices that can be had for cheaper. $500 with a 2 year contract is absolutely ridiculous.
Sure, we’re all excited about the new iPhones, Galaxies, Notes, etc. Really? I mean, 2014 cars can detect incoming or side traffic, read road sings and project them on the dash, break automatically to avoid front collisions, even parallel park by themselves, while continuously improving their performance / fuel consumption ratio significally. IMHO these are awesome features that weren’t available 3-4 years ago. And we’re talking reasonably priced consumer cars, not prototypes and no “Mercedes S-Class price range cars”. Why would we all be impressed when a phone has a bigger resolution of more megapixels? Does it do anything new? Nope. Apple, Samsung, Google etc aren’t supposed to be among the best tech companies in the world? Now where’s the “tech” part guys?
Didn’t you say the (4.8″) Galaxy SIII had a “clownishly-large screen”? Why is the new bigger iPhone screen suddenly a good thing?