Many of these same pessimistic arguments were flying when Apple was still clinging to 720p as HD.
No point in making iDevices shoot 4K if the iDevice screen is not 4K? How about shooting in 4K and then moving the video to a 4K TV? Even prosumer 4K cameras come with little screens that don't have 4K resolution. Why? Because what you shoot with and on what you play that video doesn't have to be the same device. For more than 100 years now, major motion pictures have been shot to film. The viewfinder for that was often an eyepiece peering through a hole and lens. Never could the shooting device play back the film being shot at full resolution. But that was also never the goal. For a long time now, the resolution of photos able to be shot with iDevices has greatly exceeded the resolution of the screen of that iDevice. No complaints there. So this is motion pictures instead of static pictures. So what.
No point in 4K
TV until there's 4K content in the iTunes store? That's purely chicken vs. egg. We already have other sources for 4K now. Camcorders and some cameras have been able to shoot 4K for a while now. Getting an
TV that can play that back at 4K would deliver great utility. Once there's enough chickens, the eggs will follow.
Another way to look at that one: right now, there's no apps in the app store that can fully exploit the A9 processors coming next year or the A10 coming the year after that. So since there is no such content in the app store, why bother building iPhones with newer A processors?
But what about the memory-hogging nature of 4K on memory-starved iPhones? First, you don't have to shoot anything at 4K. Second, if you intend to shoot 4K, you know you'll need the storage so pay up and get bigger storage. Cheapest price and highly-demanding, latest & greatest video standards are rarely compatible.
4K-capable iDevices would bring many benefits, from pressuring competitors to roll out more competitively-priced alternatives to getting to capture precious moments at higher resolution that you can never go back and capture again when all the con excuses are fully addressed. 4K iDevices probably comes with h.265 and probably spurs on a h.265 4K
TV too. Concerns about 16GB clashes might motivate Apple to shift the base up to something more (which would be good for just about all uses of iDevices). Home movies & Vodcasts could step up to 4K first and then some Studio would eventually be tempted to try some 4K offerings in the iTunes store. If they make some money, they'll roll out more and the other Studios will compete.
Some of you guys crack me up. There's no software to fully exploit the next generation of hardware coming in Macs but that doesn't stop us from pining for the latest & greatest in the next incarnation of Macs. We so look forward to that A8X or A9 in iDevices. We so look forward to the next generation graphic cards. We want faster/better/sharper everything
except this one thing, which we decide to cast as gimmick and then spin ideas like eyes can't see the difference (though we jumped all over retina HD when retina (non HD) was spun as the max eyes can see).
Much like it was before Apple got around to embracing 1080p, Apple doesn't have 4K now so "we" can find all kinds of flaws with it. But once Apple formerly endorses it, we'll forget all such arguments against it. There were very passionate pro-720p, con-1080p argument spun before Apple endorsed 1080p (including some of the very same ones that have been repurposed into this thread). Then Apple endorsed 1080p and all that evaporated. No one called Apple stupid for going 1080p, the whole internet did not crash, somehow those interested in 1080p found a way to store those "huge" files, "the chart" stopped being slung around, and the 1% that wanted 1080p (because apparently "99% did not") were apparently so enthusiastic about buying it, they motivated just about every offering in the iTunes store to offer a 1080p version.
