Saturday, October 15

In bullet form, my thoughts on the iPhone 4S announcement

  • It's so weird watching this knowing that Steve Jobs is dead, especially because he was alive when it happened. 
  • Tim Cook's gay, if you didn't know, and his twang becomes quite obvious the more he speaks. Isn't it wonderful how that does not bother us at all? 
  • Oh, I'm sorry. Grid lines? Autofocus and autoexposure? Cropping? Are those new features of your Camera app? I thought you were just showing off Camera+. (Even the volume-up button as a physical shutter button was their idea, until you told them to get rid of it and took their app off the Store until they did.)
  • I'm finding it really hard to believe in some of their figures, such as "26% sharper." How do you measure that?
  • Pretty photos, yes, but they were all taken in favorable light conditions. 
  • Such shrewd marketers, these Apple people. Phil Schiller called Voice Control a "letdown" just before he unveiled Siri; when it was announced together with the 3GS a couple of years ago, they used such terms as "great," "the simplest thing," and "easy to use." 
  • Schiller prefaced the Siri demo with a "this is just a beta" disclaimer. How unlike Apple is it to be less than 200% confident about a feature. Is this a sign of the post-Jobs era?
  • I'm disappointed at the supposedly reputable tech journalists in the audience who applaud the Siri demo. Guys, please—it was a free app.
  • Notice how Scott's talking to Siri slowly and deliberately? Yeah, that's probably not how you would talk to your phone if you were jogging or running late for work. 
  • So basically, if it weren't for Siri this phone would tank. I'm not even confident it's going to do so well in sales.
  • I have to admit, Siri does look nice, and I would love to have it on my phone. Let's be honest here, Apple. The iPhone 4 totally has the capacity to run that thing. It's only exclusive to the 4S because they wouldn't make any money otherwise.
  • Siri is loads useful, but it's not worth a purchase. I'll wait 'til next year, when more major upgrades are sure to come.
  • The iPhone 4S is probably the last iPhone whose development Steve Jobs was able to oversee extensively. The iPhone 5 is probably stewing in a laboratory somewhere, but it's not fully formed yet. How will Apple's first post-Jobs phone look? Will it meet our expectations? I'm scared. 

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