by Raid » Wed Sep 13, 2017 2:09 pm
I watched maybe half of the presentation last night, for reasons that still escape me. It's a long time since I've been interested in Apple stuff, and they'd basically have to completely change their phone OS before I'd take another look.
I can't tell whether it's just my changing attitudes towards new tech products or whether Apple have just gotten worse under Tim Cook, but watching it made me cringe so badly I had to close the window halfway through the iPhone X unveil. They seem to be outright fetishising features that other tech companies have been selling for years now, that they'd have you believe had never been done before. The Apple TV 4k had the worst of them, which had someone I assume was the project lead inviting the audience to ogle the detail in a still 4k image. Yes, thankyou, 4k broadcasts have been around since 2013 so clearly your product is my first opportunity to see it.
And the regard they hold Steve Jobs in is downright embarrassing. I'd love to know how much influence Jobs had during the development of the iPhone, because I'm pretty sure a lot of very talented engineers designed that thing, not the company president.
Anyway, the iPhone X. Looks nice. Looks a bit like the Galaxy S7 Edge that I've owned for a year actually. I'm sure it's a lovely screen, but removing a bezel is not the creation of a whole new concept in mobile devices. Don't get me wrong, some of the stuff it can do is fairly impressive; the AR stuff was quite cool, as is the photo mode that seemingly can light someone's face by creating a 3D map of their head and adjusting exposure accordingly in under-lit areas to replicate a studio look (can't wait to see how well this actually works). At the end of the day however, it's a £1000 incremental update, nothing more.
Best joke I've heard so far is that they couldn't call it the iPhone 9 because all of the 9s went into the pricetag.