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Not entirely convinced about the changes to the dock connector, although I can see the reasoning behind such a move, it would undoubtedly have a massive impact.

I wouldn't be surprised if this was done however, with some form of mini to regular dock connector adaptor, either distributed with the device or purchasable separately. This would allow for future progression to small dock connectors across the board, it wouldn't eliminate all of the legacy accessories etc;.

An alternative could be no dock connector and some form of inductive charging. The cable isn't needed for syncing anymore so why not?
 
Will definitely sit out iPhone 5 (iPhone 6?) if it is still packing a 3.5" screen...will just stick to my 4S instead.

Many of us who sat out the 4S will probably upgrade to the next iPhone whether the screen changes size or not. I feel confident that it will feature at least some new features that will make the decision easier, including LTE and an improved Siri. I'm on a two year (or so) upgrade schedule anyway, since I sign a two year contract.
 
Environmentally are they all equal too? Or is it easier to recycle glass and aluminum?
It depends on the type of plastic. Some take as little as 10% of the energy to recycle than aluminum, some take more.

This is my pet peeve regarding Apple at the moment. Why don't they just make the best smartphone they can make and not hold back features. The same applies to the mac side of their business. Give the customer what they want, which at this moment in time would be a new iphone with the usual iconic Apple design with the internals of the Galaxy S3.
I could not agree more, if Apple were to pull out all the stops, I truly think they are capable of a Super Smartphone... one so outstanding, I would seriously think about carrying just the iPhone alone. Apple has the talent and expertise, I sure wish they would use it all in one iPhone.

That said, some might argue there'd be nothing left for the following year, to which I say bleh.... I have been an Apple customer too long, know many of their top people, and know what Apple is capable of. The following year would really surprise people.

Besides the bottom line is if Apple built a SuperPhone... the sales would be explosive. They'd make so much money, it would make current sales of iPhones seem modest. A fact I'm ever so sure of. A perfect example of competing fairly by releasing a product that could not be equaled

Instead of suing Google, Apple could blow them out of the water with a Super iPhone... I KNOW it.


I don't think I've bashed plastic in this thread so that's probably another poster. But to give my two cents. I have mixed feelings of use plastic. On one hand plastic can be very durable as numerous Nokia phones have proven, and you can build high quality device out of cheap feeling material - Samsung is a good example of this. They use some of cheapest feeling material for their flagship phones but they do a very good job in fit and finish whereas HTC tends to use nice feeling products but fall short in fit and finish in comparison.

Regardless I personally want my device to feel really nice in hand and look pretty too. Otherwise I'll just buy a waterproof phone everytime no matter how ugly it is. But then again plastic is usually much more practical than other material for a phone. I guess this is where liquid metal was supposed to fill the gap?
I do understand your points, but it's a matter of personal preference. Again, I'm NOT advocating for Samsung, but every top of the line model (the only phones I buy from any manufacturer) I've had has been quite good. Fit and finish excellent, and hand feel quite suitable. I do like the textured plastic of my HTC One X better, but there is no perfect phone.
 
It depends on the type of plastic. Some take as little as 10% of the energy to recycle than aluminum, some take more.

Right, but the kind of plastic used in Nokia and Samsung phones? Also, you can only recycle plastic so many times no?
 
I can see the iPhone (5) being exactly as the 4 and 4s are in terms of design and in a strange way, demonstrating tremendous corporate confidence in their product by doing so.

As if to say "We have the most ideal design, there is no reason to change."

While people will be disappointed, they will still make billions and billions in profit. So who can really win that fight?
Yeah, the phone design is fine. The OS/UI needs quite a few major and minor tweaks though. Between the jailbreakers they hired and the OS/UI tweaks they've been keeping an eye on from other jailbreakers I'm sure the updates will be pretty significant. The iPhone 5 will definitely need to appear to have a significant upgrade of some sort. I don't think the usual processor, camera & memory upgrades are enough with all the other competition out there.
 
If you're that concerned, I'm sure the search engine of your choice can provide a vast amount of data.

I'm sure they can. The questions were leading ones though, meant to insinuate a point you choose not to address, for obvious reasons.
 
I'm sure they can. The questions were leading ones though, meant to insinuate a point you choose not to address, for obvious reasons.
If you read my post, you may remember I said I don't advocate for any manufacturer. Nor any components or materials. Open minded discussions appeal to me, yet many would rather argue, challenge, etc.

I do understand that plastic is not accepted by some, you don't have to admit it, & I'm happy that you have the final word.
 
Right, but if Apple is managing to sell all the hardware it is capable of producing, there isn't really a need to try to target people like you. Their current client base is already sufficient.

Sure there is...one, they can always sell more devices. It's not like there is a waiting list a mile long 6 months into a products lifespan. There just isn't. So they could always sell more iPhones. It's all about production. More iPhones means you've squashed your competitor even more. Why would Apple want even one sale to be in another camp? Another reason is synergy. You can say they don't need me as an iPhone customer (I would disagree) but do they want to sell me anything else? An Apple TV? A new Mac? Anything? If the answer is yes, then that synergy thing needs to be paid attention to. After all, it was the iPod that let to more Mac sales and the iPhone and iPad. This stuff works together. Alienate a customer, and why would they want to buy anything else from you?

Or those "benefits" aren't actually useful to us and the benefits of a smaller device outweigh greater screen real estate.

Everyone has a different "benefit" to them. Do you think if the iPhone had only been made in a larger size right from the beginning that no one would have bought it?

Why should Apple care about you going to another platform if it still sells out?

see above

Well, two things i love about these "rumors" are that people are either SO opposed to a larger screen, or so FOR a larger screen, no one seems to want to mention that perhaps apple could run two iPhones side by side ,

Ah, you must have not seen my post where I have asked why they can't have multiple sizes....you know..just like they do in virtually any other product they sale!

I am older, and my eyesight has been 'worse' for most of my life. Buy a pair of glasses, that's what I do. The only reason for there being, or not being more choice in the screen size for the iPhone is what Apple decides will be profitable for them.

:rolleyes:Oh wow..that's what you do? Why didn't I think of that?!! I'm so glad that your one-size-fits-all mentality extends beyond phones to assume that other people's vision problems are the same as yours and all solved in the same way. They are not. Some people have vision problems not solved by glasses. Expand your horizons a little and realize there is life outside of your world.
 
If you read my post, you may remember I said I don't advocate for any manufacturer. Nor any components or materials. Open minded discussions appeal to me, yet many would rather argue, challenge, etc.

I do understand that plastic is not accepted by some, you don't have to admit it, & I'm happy that you have the final word.

That's a fair position to hold. And I'm sure plastic is a perfect substitute for many, precisely in light of the reasons you mention, I just thought to chime in to suggest that perhaps plastic shouldn't be accepted. I did not mean to be rude.
 
Sure there is...one, they can always sell more devices. It's not like there is a waiting list a mile long 6 months into a products lifespan. There just isn't. So they could always sell more iPhones. It's all about production. More iPhones means you've squashed your competitor even more. Why would Apple want even one sale to be in another camp? Another reason is synergy. You can say they don't need me as an iPhone customer (I would disagree) but do they want to sell me anything else? An Apple TV? A new Mac? Anything? If the answer is yes, then that synergy thing needs to be paid attention to. After all, it was the iPod that let to more Mac sales and the iPhone and iPad. This stuff works together. Alienate a customer, and why would they want to buy anything else from you?

Your points regarding synergy and alienation are apt. That should certainly get Apple to consider the option you propose very carefully. That being said, depending on how many more sales they can realistically expect, it might not be worth the cost of investing in the manufacturing needed to produce these extra phones. If, as I mentioned, they sell every device they build, then in order to make these other devices they would need to do one of two things, either pull some of the 3.5" phones off the assembly line to put in 4.x" devices (which wouldn't yield much benefit unless the 4.x" devices sold at higher profit margins), or they would have to invest in getting more factories to build those extra devices. That's a very expensive thing to do though. The issue isn't whether or not there are wait lists, but rather whether or not they are operating and selling at maximum capacity.

If most people, and this is purely hypothetical since I don't know the real hard stats, would just settle for what is available, then it might not be worth the huge investment to get the extra marginal sales that they would otherwise lose. All this to say, I think the situation is far more complex than people make it out to be. Only the people inside Apple crunching the numbers are in a realistic position to tell us whether or not it is worth it. What makes things even trickier is they have many of us already locked in. I wouldn't even consider an Android at this point because I use so many third-party apps there is no way I'd pay for a whole new bunch of Apps on the Android platform when I already have what I need in the iOS environment. So even if they make a phone of a size I don't like, like the 4.5" or 4.8" inch phones, when my iPhone 4 dies I'd end up buying Apple again.

Everyone has a different "benefit" to them. Do you think if the iPhone had only been made in a larger size right from the beginning that no one would have bought it?

Frankly, I think it probably would have sold just as well, the product was that revolutionary. But I don't see how that changes anything.
 
smaller makes sense - current one is pretty huge and 10 years old now. Also the clumsy physical connector could do with updating. Its a dinosaur compared to micro USB.

I'd love something around the size of the MBA magsafe adapter. Magsafe not only helps when you snag a wire, it also makes locating much easier. Apple's recent fun with magnets on the smart cover shows they understand that, so fingers crossed.

Changing the connector also gives them the oppportunity to change the way iphones and ipads charge. Ipad especially needs a way to get more current in to charge faster. Build in USB legacy support but also have a new system that allows for faster charging.
 
No thank you. Aside from the fact that Apple never promised to redesign the phone every 1-2 years, even if they had that was Steve Jobs Apple and that company is dead. Frankly we can't use anything in the past to really guess how the world turns in Cupe. Sure Jony is still there but who knows if he thinks the design is perfect and has no plans to really change it other than perhaps thinner glass when it exists, maybe a change to the antenna band as needed for new chip sets etc. Or if he hates the current design and wants to go back to the original one and now has that power.



Hey you are free to believe what you want. But if you look at how Apple constantly revamped iPods, sometimes, annually in the case of the nano, I'm placing my bet on new or tweaked aesthetics. The iPhone, like the iPod, is something Apple needs consumers to constantly flip. That is how they made so much money with the iPod -- everyone kept flipping them every year in addition to new users.

Bottom line here is that Jonny Ive and Apple are not out to make art, they are out to sell product. In the world of phones keeping the same design for more than two years kills sales. They have to keep it interesting. People are not as likely to buy a phone that looks exactly like the phone they have. That's just how consumer behavior works.
 
You want Apple to 'innovate' by building computers with screens just like all the others are building? That doesn't sound like innovation to me.

A black and white screen would be innovative too.

uniquefork.jpg
 
Perhaps I wasn't being clear. Sorry if I wasn't. Every app can be adjusted to display more or less content vertically or horizontally. That isn't the issue, the issue is whether you can make one app that fits both the regular screen and the screen that is longer vertically. It seems to me you will have to distort one of those images, but if I'm wrong, explain to me how to avoid this. If that's the case, anyone who carefully crafts the layout and images to fit a specific screen wouldn't be happy to have the image distorted to fit another device. They will have to make adjustments.

Now, perhaps your solution is to package two apps. The developer just quickly adds more vertical or horizontal space/content to the second package. The result then is that every time we search for iPhone apps we have to sort out the ones that are compatible and designed for 3.5" iPhones and those designed for 4.x" iPhones. That would make the App store even more of a nightmare to wade through. "Ah but you can create universal bundles that recognize the device being used". Ok but now you have bloated packages that contain all permutations, which increases the size of all the apps considerably.

I'm just not seeing how this will work. Explain it to me slowly and clearly, and I'll happily recant if you make a persuasive case.

Yes, developers will have to make changes to their apps, but what I'm arguing is that the difference to most apps would be "If 3.5" screen: display content-window in size Y. If 4.x" screen: display content-window in size Y+Z". (I should note that I'm not an iOS developer and only have limited programming experiance) I don't see this difference using up much additional time or storage space, at least when considering apps that uses the "standard" icons and menu designs, as you would want those to remain the same physical size as they do on 3.5".

The problem you described with two versions of an app in the App Store is certainly a legitimate one, especially for apps that would be too much bloated when including much full screen graphics, like games for example. But that problem also occured when the iPhone 4 came out and everyone had to try their best to find apps that were adjusted for the higher pixel density. I know a lot of people on this forum will argue that due to the quadrupling of pixels in that case made the image look identical to the way it did on previous hardware, I have barely used the older iPhones so I cannot tell that very well, but Im willing to bet that not even a slightly distorted app will look as bad as the older apps did on the iPhone 4.

But the point of my argument is that Apple shouldn't withhold change just because a lot of software needs to be modified. Apple has done that before and I personally think that any developer that loses users due to not updating their apps to keeping with the times only have his-/herself to blame.
 
"New Dock Connector: Fewer pins, Smaller Size, Universal Across New (New) Devices (Until We Switch Again To A Smaller One, Once You Will Have Bought Enough New 3rd Party Accessories For This One)"

:eek:


...;)
 
Ugh!

I am very excited about the new iPhone, but will be very annoyed if they change the dock connector size. Is there going to be an adaptor so I can still use the car connectors in mine and my wife's car and my two Bose sound system docks? What about all the people who are going to have to spend tons of money, not only updating their phones, but the $1,000s of dollars in accessories.
 
I think they should just get rid of the doc connecter completely and go with wifi syncing and wireless charging, :D think how many :apple: $$$$ wireless charging pads they could sell !!

----------

Re: Thunderbolt.

People. Have you seen the size of the TB controller ? Who wants that in an iPhone.

Also, who wants a $50 sync cable o_O

Thunderbolt is a fancy name for external PCI bus, USB is fine for syncing and charging a phone, i don't need raid card performance from the Bus given that the Data sync takes place over wifi anyway (i haven't connected my iPad to my mac to sync since the wireless sync option rolled out, i now charge from the mains sync via wifi)

I think we are moving away from tethered data transfer to cloud and wifi sync, the cable is more and more just for getting juice to the battery, and even that i think will move to induction charging soon.
 
erm... Image

PS: isn't Thunderbolt an Intel thing? I don't think it is even possible to implement it in iDevices, but then again, what the hell do I know?

PPS: I love/have the iP4/iP4S design, it is a classic... but still...

lol, no that does not really look like an iPhone 4 to me! Sure, it's a rectangle with a large screen, but that's about it. What I mean is that the iPhone has a glass front and back, edge to edge, which no other device has as far as I know. It's not a usual design, it's distinctive and easily recognizable as an iPhone.

Every other phone is basically plastic with curvy edges and asymmetric buttons and random silver/black details on the sides and the back. It's like they add more to it to make it look more ugly...
 
Frankly, I think it probably would have sold just as well, the product was that revolutionary. But I don't see how that changes anything.

That's my whole point. It wouldn't have changed anything. You see people up and down this thread bitching about a larger device being unacceptable, but that is because of what they have now and they are resistant to change. If they had never had the option for a smaller screen to begin with, most of those people would have said the larger device was just fine.

It's all a matter of what you get used to. Also, I understand about the need to retool an assembly line to make two different sizes of phones, but if they could do two different colors, (arguably something must less needed that two sizes), then it shouldn't be that hard to make them in different dimensions. Just as they do with some other products they sell. I'm sure they are up to the challenge.
 
I'm down with a smaller connector. It's more "elegant". Well, not even... but it's less "clunky" than the original...

But, as others have mentioned, I hope there's some backwards compatibility there...!
 
This is my pet peeve regarding Apple at the moment. Why don't they just make the best smartphone they can make and not hold back features.

Tossing in everything and the sink is a recipe for disaster,especially for debugging

The same applies to the mac side of their business. Give the customer what they want, which at this moment in time would be a new iphone with the usual iconic Apple design with the internals of the Galaxy S3.

Which customers are they supposed to listen to. Because if you line up 100 different customers they will give you 100 different versions of what they want. Including a few that think Apple should go back to System 7
 
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