The world’s tech press gathered in the glittering Church of Tim Cook’s Apple yesterday morning in Cupertino, California to hear about the latest, bestest, most magical, iStuff they’ve ever produced. Oddly, Bono and U2 showed up to sprinkle their peculiar brand across the gathered great and good. Unless you’re near dead you probably have heard most of the detail, but you come here for opinions not detailed specs so here is my take:
The good:
Apple’s new iPhone Six Plus simply looks awesome. Finally a large screen, hi resolution, long battery life iPhone from Apple. The screen is 5.5″ big, full HD and the massively upgraded camera includes image stabilization, pixel phase focus, 60fps and 240 fps slow motion video. The new iPhone body is curved and so should feel great in the hand.
Some will complain the Plus is too big and will instead go for the 4.7″ iPhone Six. Easier to slide into the front jeans pocket for sure, but the screen and camera are lower resolution so I give the Six a ‘meh’ only. It’s quite behind the Android phones in the same price range and not worth the money to me.
A miss (for us):
Apple is taking another whack at the American payments problem. The silly Americans never rolled out chip and pin systems so card fraud there remains sky high. So Apple has invented Apple Pay a ‘tap and pay’ system and claims to have many US heavy hitters on board supporting the new system. No matter how enticing using one’s phone to tap and pay might be, Europe and Asia are already kitted out with chip and pin devices and so millions or retailers are unlikely to want to replace all that with Apple Pay devices at every till. So for us, Apple Pay is a miss.
A meh… one more thing:
The shiny thing so many were waiting for, the iWatch (Apple Watch), was finally revealed. A small computer strapped to one’s wrist has been the next big thing for several years now and this is Apple’s entry into the race. Thick and square it comes in two sizes with many different band styles it’s very un-Apple in that it’s about choice. The user interface looks interesting and well thought out and it has some interesting features, but it requires a paired iPhone close by to be useful which is a deal killer as far as I am concerned.
My guess is the hipsters will rush out next year when it’s released to buy one and after a few weeks it’ll be tossed into a drawer never to be used again. So unless you’ve got extra cash to burn, I’d wait until version 2 comes out in 2016. This thing is just too bulky and new to have mass market appeal.
So there you go … a sure winner, a complete miss for our market and a couple of who cares offerings by the American giant tech firm.
Next week I’ll summarize all the latest Android phones that have been released in the past few weeks.
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