Must-Read: Ben Thompson: Beyond the iPhone
Ben Thompson: Beyond the iPhone:
At first glance, as Manjoo noted, the iPhone 7… is mostly the same as the two-year-old iPhone 6….
Probably. I have been and remain relatively pessimistic about this iPhone cycle. However, I was actually very impressed by what Apple introduced… laid the foundation for both future iPhone features and, more importantly, a future beyond the iPhone…. The annual camera upgrade is always one of the best reasons to upgrade…. Bokeh, though, is only the tip of the iceberg: what Apple didn’t say was that they may be releasing the first mass-market virtual reality camera…. Apple hasn’t released a headset… but when and if they do, the ecosystem will already have been primed, and you can bet FaceTime VR would be an iPhone seller. Apple’s willingness and patience to lay the groundwork for new features over multiple generations remains one of its most impressive qualities. Apple Pay, for example….
Apple executives told BuzzFeed that removing the headphone jack made it possible to bring that image stabilization to the smaller iPhone 7, gave room for a bigger battery, and eliminated a trouble-spot when it came to making the iPhone 7 water-resistant. It’s a solid argument, albeit one not quite worth Schiller’s hubris. That said… Apple’s vision… is such a big deal for Apple in particular that I just might be willing to give Schiller a pass…. Putting aside the possibility of losing the AirPods… it really looks like Apple is on to something compelling. By ladling a bit of “special sauce” on top of the Bluetooth protocol, Apple has made the painful process of pairing as simple as pushing a button. Even more impressive is that said pairing information immediately propagates…. I can absolutely vouch for Apple’s insistence that there is a better way than wires, and the innovations introduced by the AirPod (which are also coming to Beats) help the headphone jack medicine go down just a bit more easily.
What is most intriguing, though, is that “truly wireless future”…. To Apple’s credit they are, with the creation of AirPods, laying the foundation for a world beyond the iPhone… a world that Apple, thanks to said product expertise, especially when it comes to chips, is uniquely equipped to create. That the company is running towards it is both wise–the sooner they get there, the longer they have to iterate and improve and hold off competitors–and also, yes, courageous. The easy thing would be to fight to keep us in a world where phones are all that matters, even if, in the long run, that would only defer the end of Apple’s dominance.