I don't understand how the thickness of the device is an excuse. Make it thicker then. At what point is dropping features so that it can be thinner going to stop.
It stops when Apple finds their next big sales point. For many years it was speed. The G3 was a "Pentium toaster" and the G5 was a "supercomputer". Keynotes involved long boring explanations about how clock frequency isn't everything, and demonstrations of how fast this or that Mac loaded some huge Pixar movie poster document into Photoshop, etc etc.
When they switched to Intel they obviously couldn't keep going with their rigged speed tests, they had no real or feigned competitive edge in the speed department since the competition used the exact same Intel processors. That's when this whole "thin" and "gorgeous" craziness grew from side dish to main course. Once the "thinner than the last one" pattern had been established, they had painted themselves into a corner. It's taken for granted now and the stock would probably plummet whenever a keynote presentation doesn't feature the mandatory thickness comparison slide.
So all we can do is wait for them to hit a brick wall, or for someone to hit Jony Ive WITH a brick wall.
Edit: By the way that is a flat out lie, the ambient light sensor is a surface mount component no bigger than the capacitors that are already in there.
Schiller is vice president of marketing, not engineering, no point in scrutinizing his ramblings from a technological standpoint.
but the new Maps app IS SO BEAUTIFUL. If were comparing visually, I'd take vector Maps over Google's rasterized maps any day.
Yes, they are indeed beautiful. I sat for hours marveling at the details of Manhattan and Stockholm in glorious 3D. Then I thought, hold on... this has squat to do with the function of a map application, it's for orientation, getting you from A to B, and finding points of interest like restaurants. From that perspective, maps sucks ass. Especially for the 510,000 citizens of Gothenburg, Sweden whose home town didn't even exist according to Maps. It had literally dropped off the map.
