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Well, Apple did it again.  They released a minor update to their phone and are going to extract a lot of money out of a lot of pockets.  Last time, they did this it was from their version 4 to 4S.  Now it’s the 4S to the 5.  If you know me, I am not an Apple fan-boy.  I appreciate their tech but don’t understand the sheep-like mentality of their customers.  They will seemingly purchase anything Apple releases!

Here is a funny thing, nay, an ironic thing: do you recall Apple’s best-commercial-of-all-time?  It was shown during the 3rd quarter of the Super Bowl back in January 1984.  Its purpose was to introduce the new Macintosh computer.  It was directed by Ridley Scott and has a lady running down the aisle during a meeting(?) with a sledgehammer in her hand.  She launched that hammer and shattered the screen as a way to tell viewers that Apple was saving humanity from “conformity”.  Railing against doing a thing  just because everyone else is doing it.  Kinda like the iSheep filling up their cars with gas for the trip to the phone store to pick up their new iPhone 5…..because Apple told them to.  If you haven’t seen the commercial, it is awesome and you can check it out on YouTube via this link: Apple Commercial.  The irony of then/now is not lost on this writer!

Oh, and if you are a long time shareholder of Apple stock; congratulations, you have made a LOT of money!

The new phone is out.  Last time I thought to myself “this is a minor upgrade!”, this time I’m saying something about it.  Right here, right now.  Got a minute or three?  Read on!

A Little History

Apple’s first phone, the iPhone 2G, was released in June 2007.  It was a seismic shift in the cellular landscape as its’ look and feel was unlike anything anyone had ever seen.  A 3.5″ touchscreen and apps.  It was the first time this kind of magic would be released for public consumption and needless to say, it caused quite a rumble.  Fresh and oh so new!

Their next offering was the iPhone 3G.  The offering was released to the public in July 2008 and was a nice update to the 2G.  It maintained the look and feel, stayed with the 3.5″ screen, and leveraged music, movies, and photos like no other phone available.  More and more folks were seeing the value of holding a little computer in their hands and the upgrades from feature phone to this new “smartphone” tech was getting serious!  Since it advanced the already successful previous phone, people were very excited about it.

Then came the iPhone 3GS.  This one was a worldwide hit before it was released in October 2009!  First off, it fixed a myriad of problems the first two phones had and further advanced the device technology.  Again with the 3.5″ screen, and you could have any color you wanted as long as it was black.  At that time, the app store was being fully deployed and higher speed downloads were possible as the phone companies had been busily upgrading their services for the past 3 years.  The fixes were significant and with the apps becoming more and more useful, Apple had a true winner.

And then they released version 4 of the iPhone family.  This device hit the streets June, 2010 to great anticipation.  The 3.5″ screen was a design characteristic Apple stayed with for this upgrade, so it was really just a frame update you were receiving – a minor upgrade.  Everything else stayed the same.  So, you just picked up your 3GS in October and here you are standing in line in June, just 8 months later, about to drop six or seven hundred bucks on the next upgrade cuz by golly you are an Apple-fan and they can do no wrong.  And how do you feel when you put this beauty in your hands?  Fantastic?  You should, it’s the newest and best phone EVER if you were to pay attention to the adverts.  Then you tried to use it.  Anyone remember antennae-gate?  The iPhone 4 had an uninsulated stainless steel frame and dropped calls like they were hot potatoes.  The form factor was fantastic, the software very capable, but the phone call part of the equation?  Not so much.  Your phone, with its computing power could now launch the Space Shuttle if NASA had released an app for it, couldn’t stay attached to the cell tower.  Your HAND WAS IN THE WAY.  They released a How To Make a Call instruction-set to show where your hand should be placed and also made bumpers (gave them away for free) to insulate the phone from your hand.   From a technology standpoint, this one was a minor update and should be classified as a turd.

So Apple released the 4S.  With this release in October 2011, they fixed the antennae and upgraded the internal workings of the phone.  Situation normal there.  I think the “S” stood for Siri because this was the big upgrade the 4S is famous for.  Voice activated and oh-so-smart, Siri would take care of everything and anything.  Up until you forgot about Siri and went about your business as usual.  The touch-screen was responsive and the pixels per inch were off the charts!  It was gorgeous to look at and very smooth to operate.  Oh, and it could initiate and receive phone calls!  Yay.  Thankfully, with its 3.5″ screen, and more powerful than ever CPU, this minor update felt like a really good phone.  Worth the upgrade?  That is questionable.

Now, Apple is getting ready to release the iPhone 5.  This should be a BIG deal.  This should be a technolgic marvel.  This should be the ultimate cellphone.  Faster, smoother, better than ever.  Except it’s not.  They chose to add one half of a vertical inch to the screen to apparently increase the number of app icons the phone can show, but kept the width the same.  The camera is similar to the previous release, the processor speed is a bit faster, and the pixels per inch carry forward the spec from the previous phone.

My Gripe with Apple

Apple just announced their latest hardware, the iPhone 5.  Similar to the iPhone 4, they tweaked their previous model 3GS to come to terms with their “must-include” list of gear.  I “get it” that they don’t want, perhaps shouldn’t want to mess with a good (really good) design.  But little tiny updates don’t keep a company ahead of the curve.  Nokia just announced their upcoming Lumia 920 which kicks butt on this this latest slab-of-magic from Apple, and I don’t understand how that could happen!  Nokia, King of feature phones on planet Earth and late to the smart phone game, is releasing a better phone than Apple?  Wow, there’s a change.

So the included specs for the new Apple model#5 are finally including a larger than 3.5″ screen.  To me, that has always been a knock on their design.  I’ve got large hands and the iPhone never felt like anything but a toy, albeit a really smart toy.  I couldn’t read the font on the screen very well, couldn’t type on the keyboard….at all, and really never felt like I was going to do anything but drop it before I was finished using it.  So, HOORAY!  They finally made the screen 4 inches tall.  And they made it really thin too! Sadly, they chose to keep the screen the same 3″ width, so you now have an iPhone that is tall and skinny.

There is a problem with tall and skinny though.  Wanna watch music videos or film clips?  Say Hello to letter-boxing….yay <-sarcasm there.  I am NOT a fan of letter boxing and I have to ask “Hey Apple, what’s with the letter boxing?”  Really?  Odd decision, that.

From theverge – “And yes, it has a 4-inch display! The new screen resolution is the oft-rumored 1136 x 640, meaning the display of the iPhone 3G, 3GS, 4 and 4S has simply been elongated, both physically and in terms of pixel rows.”

Gleaned from the presentation by Phil Schiller (Senior VP at Apple), “you see, we’re able to add a fifth row of icons.  All of Apple’s own software has been updated for the new resolution and screen size, while third-party apps will be letter-boxed where necessary.”  Letter-boxing for apps?  Yes.  Letter boxing for apps AND video?  Ouch.  Didn’t see THAT coming.

Also, from another techie site gottabemobile, “Apple failed to introduce any killer features that put it ahead of the competition in terms of hardware. Sure, thin is nice, but there aren’t any real differentiators that its Android and Windows Phone competitors don’t have.”  The article goes on to indict Apple for not including several features which include: wireless charging, a best-in-class camera, near field communication (NFC), better battery life, and better Siri.

Here are two of those items above which made me wonder about their thinking:

• Apple claims the new phones’ battery will last slightly longer than its predecessor on a single charge.  And in striving toward thinnest (it’s not) and lightest (nope) they decided to make the battery thin and light too.  And I’m here to tell you, the darn battery barely makes it through the day as it is!  Add LTE reception to the equation – which burns up a battery quicker than a 3G signal – and my guess is, reality may be different than the hopes of the Apple brain-trust.  The article from gottabemobile ends the paragraph with “Thinness doesn’t matter if your iPhone is dead.”

• The other item which makes me believe Apple is really only presenting the iPhone 4.5S is the camera.  Nokia just announced their upcoming Lumia 920.  Inside that beauty is a lens with an f-stop of 2.0 (allows more light inside for processing) increasing the possibility of getting better night shots, which is SIGNIFICANTLY better than the f2.4 lens in the new iPhone.  Apple chose to release an insignificant upgrade of their camera, not a better camera as hoped for.  This model 5 is not a new re-imagined phone.  Just re-hashed hardware they had success selling for the past two years.  They really need to update their hardware BEFORE everyone else does.  They made their BILLIONS selling cutting edge hardware, now they seem to be playing catch-up with an old design.  Too bad.

I guess I’ll end with an off angled tip-of-the-hat to Apple.  I mean, congratulations for FINALLY realizing people want a larger phone screen.  Although I must say, shame on you for not keeping the appropriate 6:9 ratio.  Letter-boxing?  Really?  FAIL.

My next phone won’t be an iToy

I’m here to tell you, as customers interested in a new cell phone, you and I have a lot of device choices.  Apple, Android (Google), and Windows make the operating systems (OS) inside the phone most of  you crave. The manufacturers all pay good money – per device – to the creators of the OS you crave to put together your smartphone.  Parts and pieces are made by all sorts of disparate companies and the manufacturers put the pieces together, tighten up the screws, and send them away in a box for your consumption.

If you are an Apple-head with lots of iToys around, you have a lot of machines that are able to “talk” to each other.  Do a thing here on this thing, it becomes available there on that thing. Android, by Google, is a beast unto itself.  I could go on about how you are reduced to a “data stream” if you are connected via Android, but I won’t go into that here.  I don’t like Android and have none of their devices.  Now, if you already have a PC or laptop running Windows, you are best served by a Windows phone.

Wait….what?  A Windows Phone?  Yes, Windows Phone v8.  And my next cell phone?  The Nokia Lumia 920.

My Next: the Nokia Lumia 920

My eyeballs need a large screen.  The Nokia Lumia 920 has a 4.5″ screen serving up an industry best pixel density 332 ppi (pixels per inch).  With some pure Nokia Magic, the screen is VIEWABLE IN DIRECT SUNLIGHT.  Forwarding the technology from their Lumia 900, you really must see it to believe it!

My fingers don’t type too good either.  Hunt and Poke, that’s me!  With the larger screen on the Lumia 920 the keyboard increases in size, and there you go; easier typing!

As I am a bit of a photographer, I love to shoot photos.  My Canon 7D takes some incredible shots and it is always frustrating to be stranded in a picture-taking moment without it.  That is about to change though as the Lumia 920 has a pretty incredible shooter inside.  Sporting a Carl Zeiss f2.0 lens it will take a full 8.7 megapixel shot then process it with a magic potion of software Nokia calls “PureView”.  The full res shots will sport a large photograph that is 3264×2448, which is more than enough to create some breathtaking shots to remember.

As a side note: I learned about computers on a PC.  In spite of the Apple ads telling me I am a dork, I make my living using PC’s.  Since the desktop I use and the four laptops in my house are all based on Windows, I am very good with the platform.  Adding a Windows Phone two years ago to my stable of machines was a really good thing as I am able to easily share amongst them.  With the new Windows 8 upgrade and adding a Windows Phone 8 to the mix I will be able to do something here and have it show up there….wherever that may be.  Shoot a photo with my phone, it’ll show up on my laptop.  Work up a document on my desktop, it will become available on my laptop or phone.  In synch, always.  Yay!

There are lots of other features to crow about on the new Lumia 920: wireless charging, Near Field Communication (NFC), Bluetooth connection/transfer to name a few.  It’s a real advancement to the Windows Experience!

Sure, there’s ONLY 100,000 apps, but I have never wondered what to do with additional 400,00 apps.  I only use about 12 of them as is!

Want to see the specifications for this phone?  Go to the Nokia site: http://www.nokia.com/global/products/phone/lumia920/specifications/

Nokia will release the Lumia 920 on or about November 2, right after Windows releases the new Windows 8 OS.

Conclusion

Per usual, I went a little long on this missive.  After a couple of drafts and more than a few re-reads, I decided to stop here.  Oh sure, I could go on….but I won’t.  My point (and I DO have one), the one I have been trying to make is this: Apple has saturated the Market with some pretty good gear.  And perhaps they don’t know it yet, but they have just been passed up by many different manufacturers.  The Wow Factor in their newest cell phone release is gone.  It’s just more of the same.  The latest attempt is nothing short of a shrug of the shoulders.  Can everyone just say “meh” and move along?

Embrace a change, try something different!