Apple’s event is going on right now – and most of the new stuff already leaked weeks and months ahead of time. So, we’re getting an iPhone 5S, an iPhone 5C, and iOS7 will be available later this month. I like the design of the 5C more than of the 5S; it’s more playful, colourful – harking back to the coloured iMacs and PowerMac G3s. Too bad it doesn’t come in red.
The fingerprint sensor in the 5S is interesting, but I wonder how accurate it will be in the real world; on top of that, with all the NSA news, I’m not particularly keen on Apple reading my fingerprint all the time. Supposedly, applications don’t have access to it and it’s not stored in the cloud, but I have little to no trust for companies.
The biggest news for me is the fact that the iPhone 5S has a new chip – the A7 – which has the honour of being the first 64bit chip inside a smartphone. iOS7 and first party Apple applications are all 64bit, and Xcode obviously supports it. While this obviously future-proofs the platform for more RAM, I wonder what other motives are involved here. ARM desktops and laptops, perhaps?
I doubt 64bit will provide much benefit today, but you have to hand it to Apple: at least they’re done with the transition before it’s even needed.
motorola atrix was equiped with a fingerpring sensor
somebody know how much ram have 5S ?
Usually when they stuff twice the RAM into a new Iphone they say “2x RAM” or something, they didn’t this time so my guess is 1GB like the Iphone5.
Which brings up the another topic: HOW IS THIS NOT A MID-RANGE PHONE???
Everybody was complaining about the Moto X, but is has a higher resolution screen and likely more RAM. So the Iphone5S also has to be mid-range too PERIOD
In a world of Full HD, quadcore, 2 GB RAM phones the Iphone can’t compare anymore.
The point of the iPhone has not been to keep up with competitors throwing loads of components into a device just to get Android to work smoothly.
Stop looking at components for what makes a good experience. Start looking at the experience for what it is… The iPhone is high end in this regard.
And, no, I don’t own an iPhone. I have used them though and will likely be picking one up as my next device after failing to be too impressed over time with WebOS, Android, and most recently Windows Phone.
Yeah, a 640 Pixel wide tiny 4 inch screen is a great experience, sure.
AND nobody complained about the Moto X “experience”, they looked at the specs and said “mid-range!”. Same should be true for the Iphone S, but all the Apple-loving sites like TheVerge et al won’t do that.
Double standard PERIOD.
The idea that a 4 inch screen is “tiny” is purely down to opinion. My opinion is that I prefer a phone around that size and certainly not bigger than my 4.3 inch Lumia. Again, that is opinion, so you are just as right about it as I am.
Here is a fact for you though. Once you reach a certain pixel density (around 300 ppi) most people can’t tell if it gets any higher rez. So the screen on of this resolution on a display of this size is factually pretty good.
Ultimately though, the experience I was most referring to is that of use. iOS is, and always has been, very smooth to use. And although there are some things that I enjoy more on other systems, it is very hard to argue with how well optimized iOS is and the fact that older generations of iPhones still get the updates promptly (which is something I wish I could say for any other platform I have used on a smart phone).
Also, please note that I didn’t once make mention of the MOTO-X in my last comment. I do however think that it is also a high end device since it comes with a good design, a great screen, and seems to be pretty smooth running. If only it were to receive updates straight from Google with the Nexus devices.
The iPhone is NOT a high-end experience compared to Android. The dependency on iTunes is a major PITA. The non customizable home screen sucks — I want a calendar widget, a facebook widget, an email widget, a music player widget, you know, MY custom screen. I find email on Android much better than on iOS, and maps WITH NAVIGATION work perfectly on ANY edition of Android, unlike iOS, where Google itself had to come to the rescue. I find Android apps tend to be far more consistent in the use of menus and options, and there are less restrictions in the use of multitasking. And as for aesthetics, it looks to me like the much vaunted Jony Yves (or whatever) has tastefully photocopied the design book for Android’s Holo look; good for us, anyway, to wave goodbye to fake vinyl.
With Android you can choose your phone cheap or expensive, large or small, plastic or glass, silver or blue, you can in general swap your battery when it is discharged or old, or pop in inexpensive memory cards if space runs out. With Apple, you have to go for their one-size-fits-all attitude and act as if Apple size is all you ever wanted and as is you dearly enjoy being herded down Apple’s path.
Now, iOS is by no means a POS, and there is some extremely nice software for it that is sorely lacking for Android: iMovies and GarageBand, for example, are eye-poppingly good, maybe even reason enough to pinch your nose and dive into the Apple’s ecosystem; I cannot understand how come Google does not invest in bringing out something vaguely competitive with that for phone and tablet use.
It is also good in iOS how you always know the price of apps in the store. With Android, they all claim to be free, but are invariably limited versions with unstated limits and unstated price to unlimit.
This used to be the case with Android and was a significant advantage for the platform compared to Apple products. But unfortunately, this is no longer the case. Most new Android devices have non-removable batteries, and many of them no longer have external storage slots. Android hardware developers need to stop copying Apple as the premium standard and design devices that are good by their own rights.
SD-cards are quite irrelevant to the Average Joe as they just don’t use such stuff — I, at least, only know of one, single non-geek person who has an SD-card in their phones — and part of the reason for that is how cumbersome they are to use with Android; they are treated as a separate entity in the storage system, you can’t install apps or stuff on there unless you’ve got a rooted system and so on. This stuff should be fixed properly, maybe SD-cards would become more attractive then.
Possibly, but you still do have to maintain a certain level of separation between internal and external storage, else the user won’t know where their media has actually been stored. It’s not a problem if you only have one additional sd card and leave it in, but when you start to swap them out you do at least want to have some idea which files are on which card so as to not remove it at the wrong time and be able to find them again when you want them. Some Android apps are more intelligent than others in handling sd cards, e.g. many media players will index the card along with the internal flash and present a unified view.
Well that’s partly true. They are treated as a separate entity, but you can install apps on them without rooting on stock android as of 2.2 I think. Some manufacturers might disable this, but Android is capable.
I doubt they will “fix” this though. You can’t mount the SD card to two different OS’s at the same time and make it work like a normal SD card. IMO SD card is nice, but the inherent downsides outweigh the benefits.
That only matters to people who swap the cards in and out. I don’t know anyone who does that, so I don’t know how important that is to the Average Joes — the geeks and the one Average Joe that I know who use SD-cards only plop a card in there to increase the available amount of space, but once the card is in there it doesn’t come out unless it breaks. As such an easy fix would be to ask how to treat the card when it’s plopped in there: one that can be used on multiple devices, ie. FAT32 and so on, or as an integral part of the device and therefore integrated into the filesystem.
So why does the best selling Android phone support an SD card, if there is such non-demand for it?
That’s a non-sequitur: you’re making the association that the SD-card support is the reason for its popularity and you’re ignoring everything else. Marketing, brand-recognition, all the various deals that got them in that place in the first hand — nooo, obviously they don’t mean nothing, it’s all thanks to the SD-card support.
My assumption is as non sequitur in nature, as you using personal perception to imply a possible correlation with low demand.
In fact, I’d say my speculation may be slightly less nonsensical; if there is no demand for SD-cards why would Samsung bother including support for them, given how that would drive cost up thus reducing their profit margin?
Because people are used to expecting SD-cards from Samsung nowadays and it would bite Samsung horribly in the ass if they removed that? Also, I have no idea how much it actually costs to include the SD-card adapter there, the controller is built-in in the SoC anyways, so it’s not like it needs anything other than the adapter and the wires.
As for how people originally got used to the idea of Samsung’s devices having SD-card slots? I don’t know, I’m not familiar with the company’s history and am therefore in no position to make any assumptions on that.
Even if it’s just the adapter and the wiring, that involves a slight increase in manufacturing costs. A few cents may seem insignificant for a few phones, but on millions and millions of devices they add up quickly.
So there are two possibilities, perhaps Samsung still includes the SD functionality because they want to grab as much market share as possible, so they are willing to bite the bullet by including SD-cards, even though the demand may not be high enough. Just to keep their appeal as broad as possible and satisfy the need of more and more diverse types of users.
Or perhaps Samsung have conducted market research that indicate the demand for SD-card support is large enough to justify their inclusion even if doing so increases the price of the bill of materials (BoM).
But neither of us know, so perhaps the both of us are reaching the opposite conclusion. But we’re basically speculating, so either of us could be as correct or wrong. I’m personally at a crossroads; I like having an SD. But Samsung’s products have no appeal whatsoever to me.
I’m pretty sure that the cost of providing SD card support in a phone is nonzero, since you have to buy a patent license from Microsoft for that mandatory exFAT filesystem that mysteriously became part of the SD spec at some point.
There is a place ready in hardware engineering hell for the people at the SD Card Association who approved of this ridiculous standard requirement, right alongside whoever let Microsoft do whatever they want with the UEFI standard.
Edited 2013-09-12 18:37 UTC
Yeah, funny how that happened, isn’t it? Even without ExFAT though I suspect the cost would not be zero, as there’s some gray area patent issues surrounding FAT32 as well. Of course Android itself has no need whatsoever to use these two inferior filesystems, but users would get annoyed real fast when they take that sd card out of their camera and wonder why it won’t work in their phone. It still amazes me to this day that we don’t have a high-quality filesystem that is 100% cross-platform.
I’m pretty sure that FAT32 is safe to use as long as one doesn’t implement support for short file names, which regular consumers have stopped using for decades anyway. For a more modern FS that has decent cross-platform support, one can look at NTFS through NTFS-3G. Main problems being that there probably is some grey patent area here too, and that the performance of the open-source driver is remarkably bad.
I suspect that the latter is due to the fact that Tuxera, who develop NTFS-3G, also separately sell better-performing drivers for a hefty price and want to protect their bottom line. So I don’t expect it to change anytime soon, unless someone in the open source community decides to fork the open-source NTFS-3G and apply some serious optimizations to it. Still, even with those two issues in mind, there’s at least something when one has to share data with Apple and Microsoft operating systems.
Edited 2013-09-13 07:38 UTC
I’m not sure why you think sd cards in cell phones (which has been around for years & years) are irrelevant. I know a lot of Average Joe people who care if there’s support for sd cards when they’re shopping for a new cell phone. Practically none of them have ever mentioned installing things to it and practically all of them have made mention to using sd for extra storage (for pictures, music, video clips, etc). The use of sd cards is certainly not reserved for geeks unless the Average Joe is now considered to be a geek as well.
the SIII mini has a storage slot for microSD, not external but it is useful for storing camera photos and movies. Tomtom use it for card data.
And it’s only ~ 10 euro for 16GB extra (Apple asks 100 euro)
But the extra RAM will hurt battery life, and that’s more important to a lot of folks than the specs.
Edited 2013-09-11 02:52 UTC
The extra RAM will not have any noticeable effect on battery life.
I take you didn’t study electrical engineering?
RAM is hardly the most power intensive component and it may save a lot of CPU cycles because there’s less need for swapping, so in fact, depending on your usage you may end up with a better battery life.
Actually … ram is quite power intensive. It needs to be refreshed at each cycle. Granted, it’s not going to measure up against the CPU,GPU and backlight enough to matter, but i wouldn’t dismiss it. It uses about as much as the radio in some cases.
Years ago it was true that RAM used as much power as the CPU in a server. I don’t know if that still applies, but it should give you an idea of how power hungry RAM is.
It’s still a factor when calculating the power requirements of a server. Most wattage calculators include RAM in their calculations.
I’m sure it is a big factor. What I don’t know is if CPU and RAM take up the same amount of power in current servers.
Yeah, but relatively speaking it wouldn’t make much of a difference. For a regular user, RAM uses about 4% of the total power compared to CPU (14%), GPU (14%) and GSM (44%) [1]. So if doubling the RAM can reduce CPU/GPU usage by 1/7th then that would be an improvement for battery life.
[1] http://www.nicta.com.au/pub?doc=3587
See http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12906083/correlation-between-mem… where someone made a much better and more complete post.
Doubling the ram would double the draw …
When you run out of ram, you don’t “use” that much more CPU. When the cpu is waiting for things to page in and out of memory, it just sits there in wait state. It will scale down it’s clock.
I think apple knows what they are doing, and they probably gave this a lot of thought.
Edited 2013-09-11 19:36 UTC
Not quite, Just because it’s not the dominant power consumption component, it’s still relevant to conserve as much power as possible or to have a low as possible power budget for the design, which is crucial for battery constrained devices like cell phones.
The larger the number of ram cells, at the same feature size, the larger the power dissipation. And that’s assuming a design with the same number of RAM chips. If the memory is doubled by using 2x the number of memory chips things get worse,especially given the possibility of having to precharge and turn on and off (as quickly as possible) the data/address traces/lines in parallel.
Your falling for the marketing bullshit… I know Apple does the same thing, but Im just saying – having a slightly higher value for a particular spec does not in and of itself indicate an actual improvement.
Here are some specific arguments for the points you bring up.
1. Screen size being bigger only matters if you WANT a bigger screen – some people don’t. If screen size matters to you then you are simply are not going to want an iphone, regardless of resolution. Having a smaller screen does not make a phone “lower-end” – it makes it smaller…
2. At 4″, full HD resolution as a line item on the spec list means virtually nothing. “1080p” is nothing more than a pointless buzz word outside of the world of video, and on a 4″ screen, in a full motion video, I doubt you could discern any difference even if they did increase the resolution to 1080p. Also, to my knowledge there is no phone on the market with a 1080p display at 4″ – they are almost all closer to 5″ (I think the HTC One is probably the smallest at 4.7″). Anyway, what matters is how the screen looks, and the screen on an iphone looks pretty damn good.
3. There is a reason that iphones have a specific resolution – its because of the resolution of the original iphone and the desire to allow UI elements to scale in powers of 2. If they made the phone 1080p, video might look ever-so-slightly-better (doubtful…) but apps targeting the original iphone would have looked like shit . It was a design decision, made for good reasons at the time. That said, in hindsight I think they boxed themselves into a corner with this as it will make it a challenge to go much bigger with the screen size if they ever decide they need to.
4. If your OS cannot extract any benefit from additional cores why add them? There is no way to know for certain how much better (if at all) a quad core A7 would perform until the A7X is shipped with the new iPads (which is rumored to be a quad core) so a comparison can be made. Regardless, the point is a quad-core is not automatically better than a dual core – its depends on the design and how effectively the OS and software can use it. There was plenty of outrage about the US version of the HTC One X having a dual core instead of the quad core of the international version – but by most accounts in real world usage they are basically identical. The quad core does win out in some synthetic benchmarks, but as far as actually using the device goes you generally can’t tell any difference at all.
5. RAM. This one is a pet peeve of mine. What difference does it make? If Apple can build a platform that allows applications to run comfortably with 1GB of ram, more power to them. That said, I don’t know that this is in fact the case. 1GB seemed to be plenty on the 5 as performance under most conditions was just fine, but without a way to determine how a 2GB iphone would perform its kind of a moot point. There is the fact that since the chip is now 64-bit memory pressure may increase (pointers are bigger), but they could have done some things to mitigate that. All in all I don’t know if bumping up to 2GB would have made a difference or not – but I do know that comparisons to Android devices, as far as total RAM goes, is completely without merit. A phone only needs as much memory as it requires to run the apps users want, and it doesn’t appear that having “only” 1GB is hindering developers thus far.
Apple of course does plenty of this pointless “look at my specs” crap too – ooohhh, its 64-bit! Who cares when you only have 1GB of RAM? It doesn’t mean anything currently and probably won’t for a while.
Im just saying, if you are making your purchase based on the spec list your doing yourself an injustice. Wait for some actual reviews and buy based on your needs, not on pointless “who has the best specs” comparisons – they simply don’t mean anything.
1. Screen size
Well, you can increase the screen size without increasing the phone size, some Android phones did that and it is a win-win IMO
2. At 4″, full HD
Not my point, my point was that based on specs the Moto X was called mid-range and nobody seems to say that about the Iphone now.
3. There is a reason that iphones have a specific resolution
see above
4. If your OS cannot extract any benefit from additional cores why add them?
see above
5. RAM.
Maybe we are at a point where more RAM is pointless, but history shows that at some point RAM is a very limiting factor. First two iphones had only 128mb, like that HTC G1. That was not enough really fast and you didn’t get any more OS updates. So having enough RAM or cores can future-proof your phone.
Oh, well we totally agree then… I was looking at your comment from the other direction. I see no reason at all to call the Moto X a “mid-range” phone either – by all accounts I have seen it is a damned nice device that is easily competitive with what others call “high-end” Android devices (quad-core, 2GB Ram, big honking screen, etc.)
I agree here too, but then again it may have no tangible impact at all. I was just pointing out it is hard to tell with the iphone because there is nothing to really compare it to since there are no 2GB iOS devices in existence yet.
I think you may be defining lo,mid, and high-range based on the price of the device, whereas other people define them based on specs.
I’m on the second group. Spec-wise, the iPhone ever since the 4s (or perhaps even earlier) has been a mid-range specs wise, with a high-range price.
Apple’s devices tend to carry half the internal storage, half the RAM, half the Cores, smaller screen with lower resolution, and sometimes they adopt the latest connection/radio technologies behind the competition. Perhaps the camera technology is the one of the few specs Apple can compete with in the high-end. A lot of people seem to love the design of Apple’s products and the ecosystem under which the iPhone operates.
Of note that whenever Apple has the edge in specs their marketing revolves around them. E.g. when “retina” was introduced, Apple the point was made over and over about the importance of higher DPI, larger screen size, and higher resolution. But once other devices not only caught up with, and Apple’s screen technology. Suddenly specs don’t matter, in fact the higher the DPI resolution and scree size the worse it is. When just a few quarters before they made the exact opposite argument.
IMO it’s interesting how most of Apple’s marketing revolves about a subjective qualitative argument like “experience.” Because they know they should not highlight the poorer specs of their devices.
There are a number of reasons to go 64 bit ARM, and being able to use more memory is only one of them.
Also it is a bad idea to go 64 bit at the last possible moment. Better switch early, gain experience and get the kinks worked out, so that everything goes smooth when 64 bit becomes a necessity.
I didn’t say there was no reason to do it, I just said it is a meaningless distinction for the end user purchasing a phone at this time. There are currently no 64-bit applications, even when they come with only 1GB of RAM there will be no tangible benefit to using 64-bit pointers, and all other things being equal, code using 64-bit pointers will be slower than 32-bit code. Why should I, as a user, care?
And yes, I know they have more registers in the A7 so it should perform better, but that has nothing at all to do with using a 64-bit word size. If you ask me (and a lot of other people have come to the same conclusion), I don’t even think going 64-bit is about mobile devices – I think Apple has plans for their swift beyond mobile. I would almost bet money that ARM64 will start popping up as an available target for OSX fat binaries in xcode in the next release or two…
Of course a user does not care whether his device is 32 or 64 bit. He wants it to work smoothly and have all the great features, that’s it.
No, ARM is not register starved so performance will probably not be better. If anything it will be worse, as memory bandwidth is an issue in mobile devices and 64 bit applications use more memory bandwidth.
Short and mid term goals for going 64 bit are security, more RAM and GPGPU. These equally apply to mobile as to all other forms of personal computing.
Actually, 64 bit code requires more space due to larger data structures so unless you plan to need more than 3.5 g during the device live cycle this should be treated as a downside as it makes onboard 1G RAM even more crowded.
This idea of putting a low-power Mx ARM processor alongside an Ax “main” processor, so as to save battery in periods of low activity, sounds quite a bit familiar. Can’t tell where I have seen it before though… Perhaps it was an ARM reference design or something like that.
Edited 2013-09-10 18:42 UTC
Erm….Galaxy S4
Dual quad core running at different speeds (1.8 and 1.2Ghz I think)
same here
it took me some time but then it dawned on me:
Nintendo DS!
ARM9 67 MHz and ARM7 33 MHz
Though DS has that ARM7 for entirely different kind of reason – compatibility with Game Boy Advance games.
Tegra 3 had four main cores and one low power core.
M7 is a different chip, not a just another core inside “main” chip. Every big enough chip like radio-module / wifi has its own dedicated processor.
If that is the case, then that means Apple’s ASIC design team is really really behind the times.
Why did you come to this conclusion?
If they wanted this one integrated, they would do.
M7 is always ON low power core, probably made on different process node.
Apple do not care about die sizes.
Keep in mind, A7 is very big by mobile standards, A7x would be huge. They’re near the size of Ivy Bridge (and with higher transistor density assuming 28nm node), except Intel selling these for $300.
Not really, if they could have done so they most definitively would have done so. Lower chip count means lower power consumption (longer running phone on same battery), lower overall manufacturing cost and higher margins. Which for a margin “obsessed” company like Apple is everything.
I don’t know if Samsung does support mixed node fabrication.
That a rather ridiculous and uniformed statement. Lower die sizes mean lower costs and larger margins. Higher integration levels lead to fewer chips required, and as such lower prices. Even if the die ends up slightly larger, the savings on packaging alone are significant. That also leads to reduced production and design costs for the motherboard. Which is the whole point of Systems On Chip (SOCs) to begin with.
The A7 and the Ivy Bridge are two very different types of processors. The Ivy Bride M-2 is actually slightly smaller 94 mm^2 vs 102 mm^2 for the A7. With far higher performance, the price is probably higher for the intel part vs the apple one, but no where near the $300 mark.
Not really, if they could have done so they most definitively would have done so.
So you’re insist that a company who did first commercially available 64bit ARM processor a year before anyone, could not add one more block to the SoC?
Yes, 64 bit at this point on mobile devices is irrelevant (it will be until there are a significant number of apps that can use it or require it). Level of integration on a SOC is not.
If apple could have added that block(s), they most definitively would have done so. As I already told you: higher integration, leads to lower production costs (less chips, less packaging, less components on the motherboard, lower overall power consumption) which leads to increased profit margins, which are a integral component in Apple’s main strategy.
Some of you don’t seem to understand the economic factors that drive the semiconductor industry. If you have the ability and capacity to integrate as much functionality as possible on a SOC design, you most definitively do that. No design team ever has gone “We could totally implement this on a single chip, but instead we will just put this functionality on an external separated chip, just for the hell of it.”
We could totally implement this on a single chip, but instead we will just put this functionality on an external separated chip, just for the hell of it.
That was their choice. Like it or not. And they obviously have the reason to go this way. I believe M7 die shot will reveal the truth soon.
The M7 is not a low-power general purpose core – it is an ASIC that performs only a few specific functions. Similar to the 2 “extra” cores in the X8 on the Moto X (although on that device the ASIC is for different stuff, specifically for voice recognition in that example). In either case, the additional cores are processors, but they are not general purpose processors, and they are generally managed in completely difference power domains (they are kept on almost all the time).
I see, thanks for the clarification ! I did think this was just a low-performance, power-efficient “extra core”, as in Tegra 3, rather than special-purpose silicon.
Edited 2013-09-11 20:33 UTC
Biometric login is convenient (…when it works…) but has a fatal flaw: contrary to passwords, you can’t change it once it’s compromised.
The 5S will have a lot of success at the next Defcon conference. The Chaos Computer Club has already been able to copy and replicate the German minister of defense’s fingerprints; this new gadget will just feed the hackers’ and crackers’interest in biometry.
Edited 2013-09-10 18:56 UTC
Hard reset on the device wipes out the biometrics.The sensor on the Atrix was pretty reliable.
I think his point was that there seems to be little security in something that we can’t change without relatively painful surgery and tend to leave on everything we touch… including a fingerprint-secured phone’s touchscreen.
Fingerprint readers sound like a really bad case of security by obscurity : there is really no secret data securing it, so the only thing preventing it from being widely broken at this point is that tools capable of fooling fingerprint readers are not available to the general public… yet.
EDIT : And looking at that Mythbusters video that lelutin linked, I’m not even sure about this last point anymore.
Edited 2013-09-11 04:45 UTC
Biometric passwords are bad. They give people a false sense of security.
Fingerprint passwords were broken not to long after they started appearing in production uses.
If you’re curious, search for “mythbusters fingerprints busted” on youtube and you’ll see that anyone that’s inventive enough can make the sensors give you access with a finger print that you replicate from an object.
apple really is just trying to spin the current discussion of broken democracy into a sales pitch.
Well, they are being marketed by Apple as a more convenient and secure replacement for 4 digit pass codes, which is quite true.
But this is a minimum security system, just to replace a 4-digit numeric PIN. It cannot be used to log in to the bank. It’s just to prevent my coworkers from reading my personal emails when I leave my phone on the desk.
Even credit cards are not secure, anyone could write down the numbers and purchase something online. Just by adding fingerprint you could make them considerably more secure in the real life.
Of course no one implies that fingerprint alone is a substitute for a strong password.
What’s the price of the iPhone5C?
$550
$550 still seems pretty expensive . The rumors said that the “cheap” iphone was mainly for China where the iphone is greatly more expensive than other smartphones. This puts it basically at the price of the previous-gen phone. That doesn’t seem to address this problem.
So in reality they are just lowering the price of making the iphone5 and charging the same price.(based on previous pricing models)
Apple doesn’t make cheap hardware. When are people going to understand that? Their profit margins are still off the charts and they make more money than Microsoft.
That doesn’t mean that they won’t make cheap hardware in the future, but as long as they’re reasonable successful at making money – the prices will stay.
Apple is very much like like Bang & Olufsen. They both sell mid-range generic hardware inserted into a stylish package and sold at grossly inflated prices.
A technicality: Apple sells their hardware far above margin. The quality or “cheapness” of their hardware is always up for debate, although Apple doesn’t sell seem to sell “junk”.
The 5c is just the 5 with a color shell; so just as before the previous generation is on sale
And the hideous theme on iOS7 is still there….
Hopefully by iOS 8 they’ll define what “flat” means and subsequently abide by it.
I was a little disappointed in the announcement. I have an iPhone. Except for the fact that I am getting older and I find the screen size difficult to read these days, I do like my Apple phone. So, I was hoping that Apple would at least release a bigger screen. I guess I’m not surprised that they didn’t make iTunes suck less (at least no word on that).
For a variety of reasons, I’m still reluctant to jump ship to Android. But, that seems to be my best option.
Evidently Apple investors are underwhelmed, too. Apples stock is sinking.
This almost feels like the beginning of the end of Apple.
It’s certainly the end of the blaze-ahead-and-dazzle-everyone style of Apple that we got accustomed to under Jobs. It’s not even really clear what their long term vision is, beyond updating their existing line of products.
AAPL and most other tech stocks usually plummet on the news since investors buy on the rumour and sell on the news.
That is true. It just seems to me that the 5S is not going to do enough to attract new customers and may not even be enough to retain existing Apple customers.
The 5S won’t retain me, as I use devices until they break if I’m happy with them. I’ve a 4S now, and a 3GS before that which I used from 2009 until the microphone finally shorted out last year. What will retain me for the forseeable future is Apple’s app ecosystem and accessories. My iPad and iPhone both are not just media devices, I use them for productivity especially quick music recordings on the go and the like. I’ve found nothing on Android to even come close to the music editing and production apps on iOS, nor does Android currently have the realtime audio frameworks to make this possible (though Google are slowly working on that part). iOS accepts both USB audio interfaces and midi interfaces of various types. Android as of yet is far less versatile and, until that changes, I must stick with the platform that has the apps I require.
Actually it’s rather amusing, as it’s a repeat of the audio scene on PCs with Apple dominating and Android taking Windows’ place. As eventually happened on Windows, I’ve no doubt we’ll get there on Android and when that happens I will re-evaluate my decision. Until then, no matter how much it irritates me sometimes, iOS it must be.
That’s a common misconception. E.g. in their heyday, Apple’s stock would jump significantly after some of Job’s dog and pony show routines. And suddenly when that’s not the case, the talking point is that”a stock always goes down when a company presents a new product(s).” IMO people fall for that because either they don’t grasp stocks are priced by perception (based on future expectations mainly) or are emotionally vested on a specific company as to accept any narrative without diligence, regardless of how dissonant it may be.
I think it’s just that the market is losing confidence in the performance of Apple’s current CEO. And with good reason: the main share of Apple’s revenue source (the iPhone division) now depends entirely on devices that are underwhelming. The 5 got the benefit of the doubt because it was thought of as an exception, but now it’s clear it’s a trend.
They’re stuck with overpriced, stale designs, using technology which is behind the curve, and that have little to no value proposition to capture new consumers in significant numbers. When you’re reduced to hope just to maintain your current user base, that’s when you know a corporation has ran out of steam.
It’s also clear Ive and pals have run out of brAun product pamphlets to copy from, in my own biased opinion obviously.
Edited 2013-09-11 00:45 UTC
Isn’t it funny how history repeats itself and in such short cycles?
Everything is cyclical; Apple captured the market initially because they were hungry and took it from Microsoft, Nokia, and BlackBerry, who had all become complacent.
Now google is complacent, and the android clusterfuck is the ones who are hungry and gunning for Apple’s market and profit share.
And perhaps once Android becomes dominant, there will be another hungry player gunning for them. Or maybe a new device category eclipses smartphones, just like smartphones eclipsed feature phones.
And the world keeps on turning round and round…
I believe iOS7 will be an opportunity for long time iPhone users to move away from Apple.
The average customer doesn’t like being forced into such a radical change (in the polished and boring iOS world, flashy colors IS a radical change), especially when nothing really backs it up.
He’d rather set up for a real change all by himself (so that HE gets to choose, and he’s able to switch back in case the new product is not up to par with his expectations).
Jobs knew this, and that’s why little aesthetical changes went to iOS over the years, and always in a subtle and almost imperceptible way.
Going after Samsung’s Nature UX as “the new Apple” did was a really bad idea…
They failed to attract new customers over the last 1-2 years, and now they’re going to start losing loyal ones.
Luckily for them, now that RIM is sinking and MS/Nokia failed miserably, they have a broad way to dominance in the corporate market, where Android is (still) too “open” to really succeed.
Well, some people like the new design, and some people don’t. I really don’t give a shit either way… they both look fine to me. For me, I am more concerned with a little something called functionality. I know the ‘sex appeal’ of a device is much more important than how it functions these days, but I can remember a time when that wasn’t the case.
At any rate, any time you make a change, some people will love it and some will hate it. You’re never going to please everyone. If the iPhone 5s had been completely redesigned like the software, some would say it was gorgeous, and others would insist it was butt-ugly.
When was that mythical age exactly?
Edited 2013-09-11 02:48 UTC
Before the first iMac came out.
Somewhere in between “In the old days” and “When I was younger”.
That’s my point.
During the Jobs era, Apple made minimal and incremental changes to the design of its products, and still managed to appear as an innovative and design-focused company, and serve its revolution myth to fanatics.
This strategy served them well so far. Departing from it is a big mistake.
I don’t know, new fonts and icons do not a new interface make. If you want to see the kind of transition that most users do not like, look at the ribbon in Office and metro in Windows 8. In both cases, damn near everything about the interface was changed from the looks to actual operation (metro especially so). Only a few interface changes have really occurred in iOS 7: the new app switcher and the addition of the control center. The rest are mostly cosmetic in the sense that the design and look has changed, but the operation of your device will remain the same. You don’t have to learn new scrolling gestures. Touching an item will still activate it, and most items even though they look different will remain placed where they were before. Opinions will differ on the actual look of course and the flat appearance, but from an interface design perspective this is a small evolution, not a revolution.
Besides being able to use more memory, increasing the address space to 64 bit also benefits certain exploit mitigation techniques, as it makes randomized addresses harder to guess.
So, harder jailbreaking, more time before the jailbreak for each new version?
ASLR techniques work with the width of the address bits, in this case is 48 bits for ARM v8, not on the width of the virtual 64 bits address space.
64 bit brings very little, as of now, to the mobile market. Specially given how Apple tends to be very stingy with the memory size of their iPad/iPhone systems (gotta keep those margins as high as possible) I think the improved GPU is what will affect the user’s experience the most. If anything, I think Apple is testing the waters to go with ARM for some of their desktops or laptops.
Userspace applications see only the virtual address space, never the physical one. But you are correct that 48 bits is the current virtual address space limit.
You mean like Ubuntu with their dual mobile/desktop concept? That could indeed be a possibility.
Edited 2013-09-11 08:32 UTC
More likely on the short term ARM Mac, at least that is what Thom has mentioned before.
ARM is going to trying to push into the datacenter, so high(er)-end CPU for server exist. So maybe also for workstations.
BTW ASLR is not done at the application level, or at least it’s not done so most implementation/techniques I have read about in the literature.
But yeah, I think apple gunning to be the first ARM v8 device vendor, to me at least, indicates they’re going for their custom ARM-based parts being used on spectrum of products as broad as possible; from phones, tables, to even low end desktops and laptops. That would cut their ASIC production costs significantly, and reduce their dependence on Intel parts for the OSX devices.
This is speculation obviously.
Question among he same lines:
Would they force developer to recompile iphone apps with 32/64bits variants (unlikely).
Or Keep 64bits features for the OS only while leaving the apps in 32bits while also having 32bits & 64bits library.
Or just have 32bits processors with 64bits floating points unit ?
Seems to me that Apple is getting themselves into some fragmentation trap (unless they obsolete all 32bits devices at one point )
Apple appears determined to bring all Apple software on iPhones to 64 bit. It seems plausible that Xcode will output both 32 bit and 64 bit ARM universal binaries by default in the future.
I expect that it will go like PPC and 32 bit x86 Macs, they will be supported along for some time and then stop receiving updates.
I had a look through the page for the new iOS and there is no mention of the word “keypad” anywhere (do Ctrl+F and try it yourself). The Apple keypad hasn’t changed since 2008, and it’s the weakest of all the keypads I’ve seen on smartphones; the simplest of those available on Android is better than it. No Swype or equivalent, no long-press for numbers or punctuation, no predictive text. It’s the biggest weakness of iOS and I wouldn’t even consider a phone that had no keypad of the quality of Swype or SwiftKey.
The only thing I can say to that is, remember who uses the iPhone most often. Input methods like swipe and swiftkey are cool for us techies who wish to take the time to learn them, but most people don’t wish their keypad to be so complex. Touch the letter, type the letter. That’s what they want. Most non-techie android users are the same; they never look past the default input method and when you show them things like Swipe they give you the confused face and say something along the lines of, “Why would I want that? That’s annoying.” I think we sometimes lose sight of which platform targets which users, since I hear a lot of techies lament the way iOS can’t be tweaked the way Android can be. Oh well, choice can be a wonderful thing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1sIWez9HAbA&hd=1
Unrelated:
The letter ‘m’ looks very similar to ‘rn’ (that’s an ‘r’ and an ‘n’ together) on my screen. Combined with your typo, you know what I thought I saw in your comment title.
Doh:… worst typo every 😉
(Too late, but …)
Don’t admit that!
Pomo could be construed as the root of the French word for apple. 😉
Anyway I thought it was pretty funny but now you have to get your +1 this way since I can’t vote after commenting.
Apple’s “new” phone offerings continue to be inferior in specifications as well as seem extremely overpriced when compared to Android phones from the likes of Samsung, HTC or LG. I can’t imagine why, other than shear ignorance or stupidity, anyone would want one. Not trolling, just wondering. It seems to me that in Steve Jobs absence, Apple is degenerating into the same sort of bad business it engaged in during the early nineties when it nearly went bankrupt before Steve Jobs returned to save it. Unfortunately, that isn’t going to happen this time…
Well I have an iPhone 4 from work and will be getting the new 5S, so I can reply to why I’m upgrading to a 5S rather than an Android phone (I can choose what I want).
1. Apps. The apps are just better on iOS. At least the apps I use (a few dozen). Faster, better designed, and less likely to have ads than on Android. Also still some apps that just plain don’t exist on Android.
2. Just works out of the box. I have no interest in customizing my phone beyond setting the wallpaper. I used to love this stuff but these days I need it to work without hassle. iCloud, shared photostreams, iTunes, the built in apps, etc. It all just works great. Even such basic features as an alarm I had to find an alternative app for my wife’s Nexus 4 because the default one is so shitty on android.
3. Better support for MS Exchange for work stuff.
4. I prefer the looks and the phones give a much better impression on quality than the android phones I’ve used. Maybe the HTC One is just as good but I haven’t used it. My wife’s nexus 4 is ok but has a amazingly stupidly placed “on” button.
5. Fingerprint sensor on the 5S is cool. Hope it works as advertised.
6. UI much smoother than on Android. Scrolling on a webpage, scrolling on the map, and zooming in the PDF viewer amongst other tasks is smoother on my iPhone 4 (once the page is loaded) than on the Nexus 4, and the iPhone hardware is ancient history at this point.
7. Screen size is a non-issue for me. I wouldn’t say no to a bigger screen but it also doesn’t offer any advantages for me. Movies on a phone are shitty on 5″ or 4″, and most apps do nothing with the extra space on android devices with bigger screens. Would rather have the smaller form factor to fit the pocket.
Edited 2013-09-11 02:43 UTC
All that said if I had to buy an off-contract phone with my own money, I’d probably get the Nexus 4. I prefer the iPhone, but I’m not so rich that I couldn’t compromise in order to save the $400.
But I get the phone for free through work, so iPhone it is
So, basically, you are comparing a 200€ phone to a 600€ one?
Yes, and the reason why is because I believe the Nexus is about the best Android experience you can get right now. I haven’t tried the nexus edition of the S4 yet, but without that I have zero interest in anything that isn’t plain Android. The Galaxy line software is a hideous mess.
I was able to compare Siri on my brother’s iPhone 5 to Google Now on my (fire sale!) Nexus 4 this weekend, and Siri won hands down – clever and uncannily accurate.
That said, I prefer the Nexus to my iPad. I love the customizable screens, FAR more useful than iOS folders, and I really enjoyed shopping through dozens of radically different phones before settling on Nexus, but more than anything else, I’m more invested in Google’s infrastructure than Apple’s.
If I bought into Apple’s world, perhaps my preferences would follow.
1. Apps. The apps are just better on iOS. At least the apps I use (a few dozen). Faster, better designed, and less likely to have ads than on Android. Also still some apps that just plain don’t exist on Android.
Apps better? Matter of opinion. All of the Android apps I use are well designed and work as advertised. Google is an ad company. I am willing to put up with ads for freedom of choice and full control over my device.
2. Just works out of the box. I have no interest in customizing my phone beyond setting the wallpaper. I used to love this stuff but these days I need it to work without hassle. iCloud, shared photostreams, iTunes, the built in apps, etc. It all just works great. Even such basic features as an alarm I had to find an alternative app for my wife’s Nexus 4 because the default one is so shitty on android.
So you’re willing to put up with Apple’s draconian control over what you can and cannot do with your iPhone because you don’t care? Sorry, but I DO care. I absolutely love the fact that I can customize every square inch of my Adroid from the wallpaper to the icon set, the default launcher and yes, even the wallpaper. Sorry but because you yourself don’t want or need such customaization is not an argument for iOS being superior because it doesn’t ALLOW such customization.
3. Better support for MS Exchange for work stuff.
Android’s support for MS Exchange and “work stuff” is just fine thank you. In addition to that, there are several high quality open source office suites available for Android that are fully compatible with Microsoft Office and work just fine.
4. I prefer the looks and the phones give a much better impression on quality than the android phones I’ve used. Maybe the HTC One is just as good but I haven’t used it. My wife’s nexus 4 is ok but has a amazingly stupidly placed “on” button.
You’re speaking of a few phones and then using your experience and biased opinion with those to generalize about the huge pool of available Android phones that come in myriad prices and specifications. At least with such phones you have choice. With iPhone, you have a choice of color and a high price and little else.
5. Fingerprint sensor on the 5S is cool. Hope it works as advertised.
I give it mere months and fingerprint sensors will appear on Android phones too. By the way, how long did it take Apple to finally get NFC? Oh let me guess, you would never dream of using such a feature so it’s stupid and unnecessary.
6. UI much smoother than on Android. Scrolling on a webpage, scrolling on the map, and zooming in the PDF viewer amongst other tasks is smoother on my iPhone 4 (once the page is loaded) than on the Nexus 4, and the iPhone hardware is ancient history at this point.
Evidently you’ve not used an Android device equipped with Android 4.3. Smooth as butter, openGL 3+, etc. has been available on Android for months and only just now debuting on Apple iPhone 5S
7. Screen size is a non-issue for me. I wouldn’t say no to a bigger screen but it also doesn’t offer any advantages for me. Movies on a phone are shitty on 5″ or 4″, and most apps do nothing with the extra space on android devices with bigger screens. Would rather have the smaller form factor to fit the pocket.
So just because you don’t see the advantage of bigger screens they’re irrelevant? Sorry no. Market research indicates that users want phones with bigger screens. So called “phablets” are flying off the shelves at Samsung and LG.
You don’t seem to understand that choice is good. Variability is good. Phones that come equipped with SD card slots, HDMI output, large screens, fast multi-core processors and myriad other features is a good thing. All at a much lower cost than iPhone. Sorry my friend, but Apple’s day i the sun is over.
Haha. Defensive much? Someone asked about why people chose iOS and I explained why I prefer it, having evaluated both. Then you go on a crazy defensive rant.
I use all sorts of devices every day professionally and still believe iOS is better for me. I know that breaks your brain, but eventually you too will learn that all this stuff really doesn’t matter.
Edited 2013-09-12 05:09 UTC
It’s made better.
It’s made better.
It’s made better.
Reliability is underrated. Not just the shell — the buttons, the screen, the ports, the whole thing. Higher quality craftsmanship. Is this something you ignore in other products?
I also find iOS on the iPhones much easier to use with my thumb. I usually operate my phone 1-handed and keep it in my pants pocket (no I don’t operate it in my pants pocket!). The size, shape, and design of the iPhone is highly refined.
My household has probably owned 5-6 iPhones since 2007. Total hardware failures not related to the headphone jack wearing out after living in pockets: zero. Number of times I’ve lost data: zero. Number of times I’ve had to re-install or re-enter contact & cal data: zero.
You are really delusional if you believe that the only reason to buy Apple is delusion. What is more important than quality, reliability, and support with something as mission critical as a smart phone?
Not trolling — what is more important than that?
Non-iPhone users call it “upgrading” every 6 months when it’s really “getting something that appears better than what I had”. Yet iPhones bought with real money keep running day after day, year after year, with happy users.
Yep. Got this iPhone 4 when it came out in summer of 2010 so it’s now over 3 years old. It’s been everywhere and dropped dozens of times, and exposed to significant moisture and heat and it works fine. Running the latest iOS7 to boot so it’s still being upgraded with new features and security updates, etc. It’s getting the the point now where I want something faster, but otherwise, no complaints.
For god’s sake! How many of you know the true reason behind the hardware they put into Android devices? How many of you can truly say they have the latest and greatest from both Apple and Android worlds? Have any of you tested in real life these products? Why not optimise the friggin’ software to run as it should, rather than pumping up the hardware to compensate for the lack of performance? But that’s just my pov.
Actually many of the journalists that write the articles about it do have that hardware, but yes, they are the exception.
You don’t buy things that appear terrible by its own spec, especially pricey things.
It appears that the Job’s premium industrial design is starting to take a back seat to the more cheaply made plastic-centric Android phones.
You mean the Jobs-centric ridiculously thin design that means we can’t have a bigger battery? The design that no one except Jobs and maybe Ive ever gave a shit about? I hope we do see the end of it. I don’t want the iPhone to drop in build quality, but I think everyone including Apple users are fed up with phone designs that make the damn thing uncomfortable to use as, well, a phone. The 5C may be the first iPhone since the 3GS that doesn’t feel like it absolutely needs an armored shell (ahem, case) around it just to fit in our hand.
I understand that the 5c is supposed to add a “low-cost” option for the masses but Apple just keeps missing the point, and the sales. It is fairly well documented that Apple was paying Foxcon around $200 for an iPhone 5 so the starting price point of a 5c still seems exorbitantly high. Apple is clueless when it comes to offering value.
I can walk into any Walmart in the US and purchase a Nokia Lumia 521 for $129 out the door. I would challenge Apple to offer anything even remotely close to that. You want market saturation, that’s how you get it.
Apple is trying to avoid the inevitable commoditization of markets. For some reason they seem to be just fine with losing their domination of markets when can’t control those market. Apple has historically never done well in head to head competition.
They either fade away like the did in the mid 90’s or Steve Jobs would find a new market to exploit while they let everyone else tear each other apart in the old market. And Steve is now gone…
Edited 2013-09-11 19:08 UTC
I don’t think Apple care about market saturation, and I don’t understand why the tech community is obsessed with the topic. If Apple wanted saturation, they’d have already gotten there and they obviously do have the business sense to accomplish it if they wished. I think they’re happy with their image of a premium brand/high-end experience and, hey, it works for them. The 5C is supposed to be that entry-level high-end experience that doesn’t tell people outright that they’re getting a previous generation device. It’s a way to sell mostly previous gen hardware as current hardware and retain their profit margins. That’s all it is, and Apple have more than enough revenue streams coming in from other iDevices, Mac sales, and the iTunes content ecosystem to be pretty damn secure in their position for a while. Why, then, would they bother to lower their profit margin to try and achieve something they know is impossible now? It wouldn’t make any sense.
And never forget that while you may be able to buy a Lumia for cheap, few people want Windows Phone at this stage in the game. You’d have done better using a cheap Android phone as your example, at least people like and want the apps on Android.
I’m actually kinda surprised that it hasn’t been mentioned upthread, but 64-bit arm doubles the amount of general purpose registers, and doubles the amount of floating point registers available to the architecture, so 64-bit software will get a performance boost just from that.
It won’t be a huge boost, though, since Arm isn’t really starved for registers in the first place.
Apple’s release pattern has been to introduce a new iPhone, then a new iPad with an improved version of the processor and graphics with the iPad.
If Apple is going to have the iPad Mini go with a Retina display, then why not have an iPad Pro with a 4K display and A7X processor with a 12″-14″ screen?
You’d ideally want to put more than 4GB RAM, probably 8GB into it to be able to handle huge amounts of video and data.
This looks like Apple preparing for the future, and it may be sooner than we think.
That would be a very good thing for APPL since a lot of their product lines are rather stagnant.
Of course they have to get those new products running ARM v8, before Qualcomm, NVIDIA, and other ARM vendors alike release their own 64bit ARM ASICs. Which may be the incentive apple needs to push those new products and devices out of the door ASAP.
It should be interesting.