The lesson is you have to pay attention to the competition. I know many people who wanted an iphone but ended up with android phones because they had bigger screens. All these people could have been potential apple customers. Also, an increase in the screen size has always beeen the most wanted feature in polls about what is the most important upgrade in the next iphone. The iphone being number 1 now doesn't mean it will be number 1 forever unless they keep up with the competition. There are many examples of very successful companies who stuck to their ways and failed to adapt and ended up tumbling down.
No. Why pay attention to the competition when all the competition is trying to do is catch up with you? If you don't know yet that Apple does things based on what is good for the majority of people and not on what people claim to want then there is something wrong with your grey-matter. The only people begging for a mini-tablet phone are nerds, dumb nerds at that. Nerds are very much a minority in this world. The others that claim they would like a bigger screen actually don't realise they don't. Apple has already done with the iPhone screen what was necessary to improve experience and that was to increase resolution to enable significantly more comfortable use of a small form factor display. The iPhone is a phone, remember? The size of the iPhone 4 is pretty much perfect for that function (considering things such as varying hand sizes across races and sexes for instance).
If you want a nerdilicious phone then please switch to android offerings and enjoy the mess of bad design and sub-par experience. I'm sure the plethora of Android phone providers will happily take your money, listen to the next buzz thing you all claim you neeeeeed!!!11!!1!!OMGx0r and throw it into the next package with little concern as to how it works or whether it's actually a good idea.
People love to say that Apple is a rip-off and is just money hungry. Well the opposite is in fact true. Apple at least takes some responsibility for the fact that it's customers are handing over their hard earned cash for their products and so actually bothers to take the time to do things right rather than just throwing **** out at their customers and giggling madly as they pull in the cash from yet another bunch of gullible nerds that all think they are little geniuses. If you want to ride the rough bleeding edge of technology then don't bother with Apple because you will never get that from them...ever.
Apple isn't perfect by any stretch of the imagination, the state Lion was released in is a good example (but I think we all know why that was uncharacteristically rushed), but they are the closest to perfect there is in the current computing industry.
Hmmm it seems I found a soap box I wasn't originally intending on standing on, sorry for that, but I do find this kind of ignorance frustrating after a while. Why do you think leaders from all across this industry to leaders of countries have bothered to stop and pass comment on SJ's death? It's because his way of doing things was recognised as being best in class. Is it really that hard to understand that your opinions of what is good design or needed features are little more than a joke when put up against the collective design and usability genius that is Apple? If Apple ever does put a larger screen in an iPhone (which I am absolutely sure they have already experimented with extensively) it will be done in a way that doesn't compromise usability
for everyone.
