No, This Is Not the Best iPhone Ever

http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2012/09/iphone_5_dock_connector_the_one_incredibly_irksome_feature_that_will_leave_you_cursing_apple_.single.html

by superchink • 14 years ago

37 30 14 years ago

slate.com

realize• 14 years ago

That headline is serious linkbait. The main point is that the dock connector changing will be a bit inconvenient for existing owners. How does that not make it the best ever? There are so many improvements that it would be stupid to argue that the 4S is better.

yen223• 14 years ago

One thing I really liked about the original 30-pin connector is that you can dangle the phone upside down, without the phone coming out of the connector.

This is the thing that turned me off of micro-USB chargers, and it's a shame if Apple abandoned this feature.

lmm• 14 years ago

You can dangle my HTC phone perfectly well from its microUSB cable. It's something I instinctively wouldn't do, but it doesn't feel like there's any chance of it falling out.

alexchamberlain2• 14 years ago

It's the only way I can find my phone when I'm half asleep in the morning; grab the wire and prod the hanging thing.

gojomo2• 14 years ago

There is a mild bit of self-negation in these iPhone5 gripes: on the one hand, it's knocked for not having enough that's truly new rather than incremental; on the other the one completely novel break-with-the-past, the 'lightning' connector, gets singled out as a negative.

When you go with Apple, you're along for the ride on their obsolescence decisions. There is never a great time for such discontinuities: you have to take the hit sometime, and putting it off would just mean an even larger ecosystem on the original connector.

Yes, Apple has gone their own way here... but matching the commodity/common-denominator practice has never been Apple's emphasis. I know that controlling/taxing the aftermarket is one part of their choice... but the size, durability, and reversibility of the connector will be offsetting benefits. (And an off-brand micro-USB-to-lightning adapter will probably be even smaller and cheaper than the 30-pin-to-lightning adapter.)

lucian1900• 14 years ago

It's still not USB, when it really should have been.

There's no excuse for having a proprietary connector, now not even for Apple.

gojomo2• 14 years ago

Could it have been as thin with USB? Could it have never required fumbling with mismatched-side-rotation in the dark?

You might not like the excuses but they exist beyond "no excuse". And the required micro-USB adapter will likely be tiny and cheap: just affix it to the end of your micro-USB cord.

rys• 14 years ago

USB isn't good enough to carry all of the data signals out of the device, without abusing it completely. At that point you have a good excuse for not using it.

jpxxx3• 14 years ago

Boo, you clickwhore.

USB-PTP is already implemented on iOS. What's the win for going to Micro-USB beyond letting you reuse your Blackberry charger?

USB-MTP is a user experience disaster. USB-MSC is a user experience disaster in the context of a sealed filesystem. And moving to Micro-USB means you can't dynamically reprogram pins to support any of your old 30-pin shit via an adapter.

So we can either have no old shit at all, or have all the old shit via a $30 adapter, or put two ports on a phone, or stick with the old shitty port that's approaching the size of the products it's used in.

ernesth• 14 years ago

> What's the win for going to Micro-USB beyond letting you reuse your Blackberry charger?

Complying with european regulations.

jpxxx3• 14 years ago

True. But they already ship an adapter in every box and all regulators agree this is acceptable.

mojowo11• 14 years ago

> What’s more, this year Apple decided to go all out and aim for the “best iPhone we’ve ever made,” according to the parade of executives who took the stage Wednesday. Yes, the same executive said the same thing about last year’s iPhone 4S, 2010’s iPhone 4, and every other iPhone ever released. This time they said it quite passionately, though, so I think they really meant it.

Yes, I'm sure the creators of the product, which is faster, has a larger screen, a more high-quality screen, a better camera, an updated operating system, which is the thinnest iPhone yet, lighter than previous models...

Yes, I'm sure they were all lying to all of our faces about whether they believe this is the best iteration of the iPhone.

And then to follow that up with this?

> In truth, the iPhone 5 is a very impressive device. If you’re in the market for a new phone, you should certainly consider this one. [...] Despite its bigger screen, the iPhone 5 is the thinnest and lightest iPhone ever made, and the difference is palpable. I played with the device for a few minutes after Apple’s press event, and I was floored by how svelte it was compared to older versions of the iPhone. I also love the back of the new phone, which is made out of aluminum rather than the glass found on the back of the 4S. The iPhone 5 feels more substantial than past versions, and it’s probably less fragile as well. This, maybe, is a phone that you might not need to stuff into a case in order to use—if that’s true, then thin and light might really mean thin and light. [...] I’ve got only one major problem with the new iPhone.

So yes, basically, your point is that the phone is better.

But apparently all of this is invalidated by the fucking plug. The plug makes Apple executives liars. It makes iPhone enthusiasts chumps. It ruins the entire device, and certainly undoes the innovation/not-innovation (?) the author is so passionate about.

This whole article is, frankly, fucking garbage. The first few paragraphs are basically trolling, and the rest of it is overdramatic. I'm an iPhone user, and yes, if I decide to upgrade, the change in plugs is probably going to be annoying. Then again, I mostly use one plug for my current phone. So maybe not that annoying after all.

This is the best iPhone ever, with an annoying plug. That's essentially what this article says, but it's awful, worthless linkbait, so that's not what the article actually SAYS.

Truly terrible.

bunderbunder2• 14 years ago

Truly terrible.

Naw, just truly obligatory. Remember when we were all reading a whole bunch of similarly insipid diatribes about how yes admittedly this new iPhone has X, Y, Z new things that are really pretty cool but it's still a total disappointment and doomed to be a failure because they didn't name it the right thing?

I think maybe there's just something in every tech columnist's contract mandating them to go a bit silly for a week every time Apple releases a new handset.

ecubed• 14 years ago

The 30-pin connector is one of the longest-surviving connectors on the mobile market, but its clearly past its prime. Apple didn't change the connector just to get $30 extra out of its customers. It was an item on the phones that seriously needed changing if the size and design of the item were to be improved.

He also mentions that in the future Apple will change its dock connector again, throwing accessory makers "under the bus." I highly doubt this will happen. I highly doubt there will even be a "next" connector at all. Given the rate at which technology has progressed, In 11 years (the lifespan of the 30-pin connector) inductive charging will be omnipresent, and AirPlay-esque protocols will be the defacto way to send music between an iDevice and a dock. AirPlay is a software standard and thus can be supported indefinitely, so I imagine any phone that comes out in the future will be backwards compatible with current AirPlay docks.

alexchamberlain2• 14 years ago

They should have gone with USB though.

I'm looking forward to the day wireless just works, but I'm not sure we're any where near close yet. I still have a problem with my WiFi dropping because next door is using theirs, and that's after I picked the least congested channel.

ephelon• 14 years ago

The old dock connector, and the new "lightning" connector do a lot more that is supported by a USB connector. The dock can carry audio, video, act as a USB slave, and connect other slave devices.

Arguably, Apple could have included both ports, but that increases cost and complexity and flies in the face of the Apple aesthetic.

prpatel• 14 years ago

They could have AT LEAST gone with USB3. I mean really, it's 2012 and you release 'the most advanced phone ever' and it's running technology that's 10 years old. It's not as if better, "standard" options don't exist.

oofabz• 14 years ago

USB is insufficient for a dock connector. It doesn't do audio or play/volume/track buttons. You could use a USB audio device, but that would add cost to every iPhone accessory made everywhere, and there's no need because the iPhone has its own audio chip inches away.

To save costs, gadget manufacturers would just use the headphone port instead, and then you'd have to plug TWO things into your iPhone to hook it up. And it wouldn't have pause or volume controls because they don't want to spend the $1 on the USB chip for that functionality.

jpxxx3• 14 years ago

Yep. And then: what is the backwards compatibility story for 30-pin if Apple were to move to native Micro-USB? There is none.

Micro-USB can't ever reassign pins or masquerade as something else, otherwise it's not USB. An active 30-pin adapter would be able to signal that it can handle 30-pin signals and thus perhaps something could be arranged in reverse, but then all the old Apple-specific capabilities will still always require an active dongle like they do now.

Then there's all the added joy of making sure you NEVER EVER get this auto-detection wrong and send juice down the wrong pin.

baddox2• 14 years ago

As they said in the Apple announcement, audio and video are generally transferred wirelessly now (via AirPlay or Bluetooth). However, if the Lightning to 30-pin adapter is fully functional, and Lightning is truly all digital, that little adapter must be doing the DAC, which might explain the high cost.

bryanlarsen• 14 years ago

USB is sufficient for a dock connector.

Apple announced that Lightning was all-digital. Therefore it does audio basically the same way that USB does.

And I'm willing to bet that, like the iPhone 4, Lightning requires an authentication chip before the play/volume/track buttons on accessories work. And that the authentication chip costs a lot more than a USB chip.

ollysb• 14 years ago

There's a feature of the old connector that I suspect the new skinny model is going to have trouble competing with; it was large enough to physically support the iphone vertically. I'm looking at my logitech sound dock and the only thing supporting the iphone is the connector. Maybe the thinner and lighter iphone5 will require less support but designs relying on what was probably an accidental feature will likely have to change to accommodate this. If that is the case it's a bit of a shame as there was something rather elegant about the way it could stand free. It allowed a minimalist appearance which resonated with apple's design values.

vvhn• 14 years ago

This is actually the first valid criticism of the new connector i've read all day. That was indeed a useful feature of the ild one which the new one won't likely have.

diminish• 14 years ago

The change in screen size reminds me of some blogs and discussions here on HN, where people claimed that 3.5" was an ergonomic display limit for one-handed use of a smartphone for an average adult; so it was a perfect size after a lot of research made by Apple.

Does anybody who played with the 5 know whether Apple took any measures for one hand use to encounter the display growth to 4" in the OS or bezel, thickness or elsewhere?

calciphus• 14 years ago

I think you'll figure out what 100% of people with larger screen phones already have:

If you hold it slightly differently in your palm, your thumb can reach all of a 4" screen just as well as a 3.5" screen, and with less strain.

baddox2• 14 years ago

This author awkwardly combines two distinct and incompatible arguments (that requiring a $30 adapter to use old accessories is unreasonable, and that the iPhone should use Micro-USB) and seems to think there was a synthesis of the arguments. I don't understand why the two arguments were concatenated together with the pretense that the latter somehow related to the former. Switching to Micro-USB would cause all the same incompatibilities with old accessories, and wouldn't solve any problems other than letting you borrow your friend's Android charge cable if you're caught with a low battery.

ilanco• 14 years ago

But a perfect opportunity to make some cash off 30pin to 8pin connector converters ...

glenra• 14 years ago

> No, This Is Not the Best iPhone Ever

Yes, it is.

Apple generally doesn't bother to release a new version of a product until they've managed to make it significantly better than the last version, hence nearly every Apple product is "the best ever" version of that product. That earlier iPhones were "the best ever" when they were released in no way suggests that this one isn't also "the best ever".

And the fact that they finally replaced the dock connector is one of the things that makes it better. They've removed that constant tiny annoyance of putting it in the wrong way, they've made a key part slightly more reliable than it was, and they've freed up more room to make products smaller or fit more stuff (including battery) in the existing space.

codex• 14 years ago

Every time I see a super-cranky tech. article from Slate, it is written by Farhad Manjoo. I'm all for the contrarian viewpoint, but after a while, it just seems like trolling--or an advertisement for antidepressants.

No, This Is Not the Best iPhone Ever

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