Sad to say, but there's not a lot of desire right now by Apple Desire. Sure the stock price is down 43% from September highs, but I'm not focused on the financials. I'm purely looking at Apple as the visionary leader we looked to for creating new and exciting products. Where have they been over the last year? Gone are the days of looking in awe at the original Macbook Air and asking "how did they do that?" And gone are the days of looking at the multitude of other different devices, even those that were incarnations of similar devices, and just thinking "how cool is that!". In the past year, I've barely visited the Apple store because there's been no reason to go. There's nothing new to see.
It's not exactly clear what's happening at Apple, but leadership must have something to do with it. When Steve Jobs starting pulling back from daily responsibilities I wasn't really concerned. I would talk with my peers and friends about how "deep" Apple was. The company is more than just one man after all. But behind the scenes there was more going on than I originally thought. It wasn't until the Scott Forstall firing did I realize that things at Apple may not be going as well as I thought. iOS 5 brought forth a now infamous Maps and Siri didn't deliver as promised. Even my kids will joke around about how slow Siri is to respond and that her favorite expression is the "I don't know what you mean by" response for sentences and instructions that are clear and easy for Google's Search app to understand. iOS, while simple and easy to use, is behind the times these days. Apple has long played catch up in the mobile space (remember how long it took for copy, cut and paste), but it feels like they are even further behind at this point. On the application side, we're seeing some amazing things from vendors, but the OS itself is a bit stale.
Apple promises to show off updates to iOS and Mac OS in June at the World Wide Developers Conference and the expectations will be high. Little has been released, but I will be very disappointed if we don't see some significant changes. Outside of iOS, Apple seems to struggle with their own applications. The Podcast application has long received poor reviews. At last look it had a two star rating in the Apple store. Game Center is flat out ugly and Find Friends app has a "stitching" design that leaves a lot to be desired. How can one of the most innovative companies in the world produce such average product?
That being said, I'm a huge fan of the existing Apple hardware product lineup. The iMac is great and the laptop lineup is stellar. The iPad products, all of them, meet the needs of various consumers and work great with iTunes. However, that enthusiasm is tempered by the lack of any exciting product announcements over the past year. Sure we'll see an iPhone 5s this Fall and some new incarnation of the iPad, but what will the next big thing from Apple be and how soon will it arrive? All Apple fans can hope for is a company that can develop a core group of leaders who can focus on the next generation of Apple products.
Friday, April 26, 2013
Monday, January 07, 2013
iPhone 5 Thoughts
Many months late, I'd like to provide some of my thoughts on the iPhone 5. Sure there are plenty of reviews out there, but what do you really need to know! I'll make it short and sweet. Here we go.
The number one benefit of the iPhone 5 is LTE. Until you've experienced LTE speeds you can't begin to appreciate them. The experience is most similar going from EDGE to 3G, but in the case of LTE your speeds are even faster. In a recent trip to San Diego I had speeds up 30 Megs per second down. Now I can't say that I've had that in all locations, but the capabilities of LTE are awesome and of course that only comes with an iPhone 5 vs other iPhones. Specific to AT&T there were many areas where my 4G signal was weak or non existent. I've found that since going on LTE, many of those slow and weak spots with 4G actually work with LTE. I had heard rumors that AT&T wasn't investing in their 3G/4G infrastructure and I'm here to say that I believe that to be true.
The larger screen size may not seem like much, but it's amazing what a little bit more space means. As applications have started to take advantage of the extra real estate, they've become even richer. Sure movies look better, but what's even more important is that you can put four more extra icons on a screen! The Camera program also benefits from having a larger on screen button that makes it much easier to find and press. The old one was OK, but the iPhone 5 button is bigger and in this case, bigger is better!
The next item to mention is the phone's speed. It's a speedster. The best example of testing the phone's capabilities is with the Camera. With prior iPhone's, taking photos one after another was ho hum - nothing special. With the iPhone 5 you can take picture after picture after picture without missing a heartbeat. When I take pictures of my family, and I have younger kids who like to look in various directions, I take multiple pictures, one after another and usually end up with a great shot. Not having a delay is great. Overall, the general speed and performance is better.
Well that's my list. My intent here was to focus on the hardware and not the operating system. I was also not trying to compare the iPhone to other non iPhone phones. Are there better phones out there? Maybe, and you can debate that with any comments, but as far as the iPhone 5 goes, it's a great upgrade and a great first time purchase.
The number one benefit of the iPhone 5 is LTE. Until you've experienced LTE speeds you can't begin to appreciate them. The experience is most similar going from EDGE to 3G, but in the case of LTE your speeds are even faster. In a recent trip to San Diego I had speeds up 30 Megs per second down. Now I can't say that I've had that in all locations, but the capabilities of LTE are awesome and of course that only comes with an iPhone 5 vs other iPhones. Specific to AT&T there were many areas where my 4G signal was weak or non existent. I've found that since going on LTE, many of those slow and weak spots with 4G actually work with LTE. I had heard rumors that AT&T wasn't investing in their 3G/4G infrastructure and I'm here to say that I believe that to be true.
The larger screen size may not seem like much, but it's amazing what a little bit more space means. As applications have started to take advantage of the extra real estate, they've become even richer. Sure movies look better, but what's even more important is that you can put four more extra icons on a screen! The Camera program also benefits from having a larger on screen button that makes it much easier to find and press. The old one was OK, but the iPhone 5 button is bigger and in this case, bigger is better!
The next item to mention is the phone's speed. It's a speedster. The best example of testing the phone's capabilities is with the Camera. With prior iPhone's, taking photos one after another was ho hum - nothing special. With the iPhone 5 you can take picture after picture after picture without missing a heartbeat. When I take pictures of my family, and I have younger kids who like to look in various directions, I take multiple pictures, one after another and usually end up with a great shot. Not having a delay is great. Overall, the general speed and performance is better.
Well that's my list. My intent here was to focus on the hardware and not the operating system. I was also not trying to compare the iPhone to other non iPhone phones. Are there better phones out there? Maybe, and you can debate that with any comments, but as far as the iPhone 5 goes, it's a great upgrade and a great first time purchase.
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