05/10/2011

The archive contains older posts which may no longer reflect my current views.

A rose by any other name.

What's in a name? In these materialistic times are we more driven by the one-upmanship of increasing version numbers or do we see through the names to what lies beneath?

iPhone4SIt's fair to say that a lot of people (the stock markets included) were disappointed by Apple not releasing the iPhone 5 but are they right to be?

Apple products seem to elicit a more emotional response than just about any other whether it be by the fan boys or the anti-Apple brigade so it was always on the cards that any failure to deliver would become a big issue.

A let down?

The main "failures" from yesterday's presentation, as perceived by those with expectations based on unfounded rumour, were that Apple's new offering did not have a larger screen or redesigned body and, perhaps most importantly, the numeric reference was not incremented.

The iPhone 4S has plenty to get excited about: the dual core A5 processor giving faster speeds and more responsive graphics, the 1GB of onboard RAM, antenna upgrades, and a greatly improved camera. All of this combined would be enough for any other manufacturer to announce that the phone as a major revamp but our expectations are set so high with Apple that even a slight let down strikes us like a knock-out blow. HTC, for example, has been rolling out a number of devices with merely incremental upgrades (the differences between the original Desire and Desire S are hardly worth the effort) with virtually no comment.

It's not just about hardware

Whilst Android community web sites have been lording it over the apparent lack of progress - the biggest argument is that the Samsung Galaxy SII already meets the hardware specifications - we must remember that the allure of the iPhone is not down to hardware alone; the mixture of hard and software combines to provide the Apple "magic".

Android suffers not only from OS fragmentation but also fragmentation of application functionality where there is no consistent behaviour from one app to the next. Seemingly small things such as this all contribute to appreciating the level of control that Apple exerts over the iPhone ecosystem.

The new features in iOS5 such as the Notification Center and Siri may be viewed as Apple playing catch up but when combined with the hook into iCloud and iTunes Match provide a compelling reason to stay with, or even switch to, the iPhone.

Frustration

I have mentioned in the past my growing frustration with Android and the possibility that I will be moving to Apple with my next device but will I let the device nomenclature convince me that this is not a new phone? Does it matter that we have the iPhone 4S and not the iPhone 5?

What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.