It’s all iterative.
I made a point of not watching the Apple Keynote last night when shown live. Well, for starters, I was stuck in traffic for the first 30 minutes which helped!
It seems today that many new ideas are starting to thin out, and that in consumer technology the advancements are more iterative – an annual build on what existed before, without the big leaps that were more evident at the turn of the decade.
And with a mindset I set myself of “would I divert £800 from my children’s university fund into a new iPhone” it would have to be something quite special to upgrade from the iPhone 6s Plus I have been very happy with this past year. Especially as to the untrained eye, they are identical shy of the colour change and the bigger camera bump.
Upon observing much of the tech media analysis after the event, I have a feeling I would have actually been quite underwhelmed by the keynote. I would expect it to be very slick as always, but based on all the rumours beforehand and the reality of the event, nothing jumped out to me as a ‘must have’ to upgrade my 6S Plus to a 7 Plus. Yes, it looks nice in piano black but I always put mine in a case to protect.
If you are looking for something to begin to replace the lower end SLR’s then I think the camera spec bump is great, but my photos are generally the kids in play and the telephoto capability would be a rare use rather than the norm.
My gut says, it’s just not compelling enough to not put that money into my kids university fund, so I’m going to pass – even with the official launch of the UK iPhone upgrade plan.
What I did like though were the AirPods. I have a pair of PowerBeats that I use on the exercise bike, but they can only pair to a single device and they are a bit ungainly. The AirPods look to be a bit of smart innovation in terms of the beam forming microphones for better clarity of calls and Siri commands etc. And, by having an iCloud based pairing system, I can use them with any of my Apple devices.
My hope is that the iPhone 8 (or whatever the 10th anniversary iPhone next year will be called) is a major jump forward. I’d like to see the Tony Stark phone!
An iPhone with a full glass front with the TouchID sensor embedded under the screen. I like that the focus is on moving away from moving parts, this brings a reduced risk of component failure, and the use of capacitive / Force Touch looks like the way forward.
So, Apple, you can have something from me this year, but I am actually more interested in working with my contextual needs so, it’ll be an Amazon investment for 2016 and I’ll be buying the Echo when it launches (apparently) in the coming weeks in the UK.
