Apple Unlikely to Make Big Changes for Next iPhone 227
The next iPhone isn't going to look much different from the last year's iPhone 6s, or 2014's iPhone 6. According to a WSJ report (paywalled; alternate source), Apple will release two new iPhone models with screen sizes 4.7-inch and 5.5-inch, and both the models will look pretty much similar to the last two year's models. There won't be any 3.5mm headphone port in the new iPhone, though, the report adds. The Cupertino-based company plans to introduce major design changes in its next iPhone, using OLED display and eliminating the home button to use the display for fingerprint scanning. From the report: For years, Apple Chief Design Officer Jony Ive has expressed a desire for the iPhone to appear like a single sheet of glass, according to people familiar with the matter. The current design ideas for the 2017 iPhones are expected to push the handsets in that direction by eliminating much of the bezel around the display, with the OLED screen.
Not a surprise (Score:5, Insightful)
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This isn't a surprise. The next Intel chip won't be much different than the last one either. The next computer you own will be very similar to the one you owned 5 years prior. We have really reached an end of the digital road now. You won't likely see huge progress like we have seen in the past due to limitations of physics and power concerns. I know people will scream "Moores Law!!!" but that doesn't apply in 2016. It looks like the Star Trek type future won't be happening.
Exactly correct.
Unless there is some newly-discovered law of Physics, Moore's Law is proving to be a "For limited values of..." doctrine.
I wouldn't say that the Star Trek future won't EVER be happening; but it doesn't look good for the next 20 years or so...
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Especially since right now fans can't even make a Star Trek movie without being sued. That's the complete opposite of the no-cash society depicted in those movies.
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Especially since right now fans can't even make a Star Trek movie without being sued. That's the complete opposite of the no-cash society depicted in those movies.
If the fans embraced the no-cash society and didn't ask for money for the film, they wouldn't have been sued.
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In terms of ship-board computing, personal communication and handheld devices, I think we're already at or past Star Trek standards. If we could just wear pajamas at all times I'd be 100% happy.
Re:Not a surprise (Score:5, Funny)
Siri: "The Romans were from Italy and had big noses. Here are some results I found for 'Romans" on the web"
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I think Siri has quite a few accounts here. [slashdot.org]
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I'm sorry
Mr. Hognoxious
I couldn't find anything for
I think Siri has quiet snooze amounts here
Re:Not a surprise (Score:5, Insightful)
If we could just wear pajamas at all times I'd be 100% happy.
Haven't been to Walmart lately, have you?
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But it doesn't do things like uploading at a petabyte/s to unknown alien civilization's computers.
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No it's not correct. (Well maybe the Star Trek part) People have been spouting that crap since the day I started reading Slashdot.
Yes, we'll reach some sort of limit at some point, but technology will still find a way to progress even when that happens.
In terms of speed, we're not close to that limit yet.
In terms of functionality, features, looks, feel, there will always be room for change.
ESPECIALLY with phones and smaller electronic devices.
Re:Not a surprise (Score:4, Interesting)
Personally, I think there are a lot of things they could do with the iPhone to make it better, but I think it would hurt their bottom line so they don't do it. The iPhone is $700. Why not ship the base unit with 256 GB of storage. They could do it and still remain profitable. Then they would only have 1 option for storage space, and they could differentiate models on things like battery life. Have a thick version with a headphone jack and an extra large batter, and smaller, thinner version with a smaller battery and no headphone jack (since they insist this is what people want).
Re:Not a surprise (Score:5, Funny)
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I'm sure some people would be able to fill it up. But it's twice as big as the largest option on current generation iPhones, and larger than I've seen on any other phone out there, although there may be some that support more if you put in a very large SD card. I'm not saying 256 GB will be all anybody every needs, but we all know Apple will never support SD cards, so just giving everybody 256 GB of storage would be a big plus. I think a lot of people would go for something like that. But they wouldn't be
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Modifying the form factor means you fracture the accessories market. It took them ages to release a big phone alongside a not-so-big phone partly because of this.
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Which Star Trek? My smartphone can do a lot of the stuff that the Enterprise computer was shown doing.
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Computer, what's the current location of Ensign Expendable Blonde?
Computer, search the database for "Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra."
And most amazingly, translation. Audio to audio even.
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Perhaps you need to take your speech recognition library out more.
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This isn't a surprise. The next Intel chip won't be much different than the last one either. The next computer you own will be very similar to the one you owned 5 years prior. We have really reached an end of the digital road now. You won't likely see huge progress like we have seen in the past due to limitations of physics and power concerns. I know people will scream "Moores Law!!!" but that doesn't apply in 2016. It looks like the Star Trek type future won't be happening.
Nope. The Intel chips keep getting faster. They keep on with the incremental improvement that renders big changes over a few years (the replacement lifetime of a computer). What's changed is that we passed the point where most people's compute tasks are slow enough to present an uncomfortable latency to interactive users. That was fine 5 years ago. My IvyBridge gaming machine with a 680 still works fine. That's 5 years old. But a SkyLake machine with a 980 would be a big step up in performance, although exc
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My IvyBridge gaming machine with a 680 still works fine. That's 5 years old. But a SkyLake machine with a 980 would be a big step up in performance, although excel would not feel any different.
I was running week long sims on Broadwell machines recently. Dropping it to a day would improve the quality of my life. In effect the sims I can run are bounded by the compute power available to me.
I really don't think you need a SkyLake machine in order to run The Sims. Pretty sure the last game came out in like 2013...
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My IvyBridge gaming machine with a 680 still works fine. That's 5 years old. But a SkyLake machine with a 980 would be a big step up in performance, although excel would not feel any different.
I was running week long sims on Broadwell machines recently. Dropping it to a day would improve the quality of my life. In effect the sims I can run are bounded by the compute power available to me.
I really don't think you need a SkyLake machine in order to run The Sims. Pretty sure the last game came out in like 2013...
If The Sims is Turing complete, maybe I can use it.
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You won't likely see huge progress like we have seen in the past due to limitations of physics and power concerns.
That isn't stopping innovation. The problem Apple has is that Steve Jobs is dead. He was Apple innovation, without him all there will be is incremental changes.
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This isn't a surprise. The next Intel chip won't be much different than the last one either.
Right, it's not a surprise that Apple ran out of ideas, but it's still just an excuse to say "intel did too". The real issue is, the Tim Cook culture does not value ideas, it values milking the cow.
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It looks like the Star Trek type future won't be happening.
in case you missed it, the star trek future came and went. flipping open communicators was 20 years ago.
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I think they could loosen up on peripheral attachment without affecting the bottom line much.
It sure seems like you could do a lot more with their devices if they allowed more ancillary peripherals to be attached to them. You still can't pair a mouse with an iPad, fer cryin' out loud.
Other than mass storage devices, it's hard to see where a sensor or some other widget attached to an iDevice would impact Apple's bottom line other than Apple not getting a cut of the sale.
In some ways, though, they seemed to
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If nothing much is changing... (Score:3, Insightful)
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My iPhone 6 Plus is still chugging along - I figure I'm good for at least two more iterations. I like to keep my phones until they die a natural death (or until my daughter drops one in the toilet, which is why I have a 6 Plus rather than my previous 5).
Removing the headphone jack is a rather annoying move, though. The iPod Touches are quite a bit thinner than the current iPhones, but they still have a headphone jack... so it's not a question of thinness.
And don't get me started on the ludicrous "IT MUST BE
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Do you ask the same question when an auto manufacturer releases a new model year that is almost identical to the previous year?
People still need new phones because their old ones break. Or they just want the latest and greatest. Even with nothing much changing, there's still likely parts that are changing. Old parts might be superseded with new parts of better quality. Or more cost effective. Maybe a better way of doing something was found that you the end consumer doesn't notice but makes sense from an eng
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Oh yes, I totally forgot the Chevrolet Camaro 6S is coming out this year, except it's not cause that's not how the auto industry works.
They call the car the same as they did the year prior.
Re:If nothing much is changing... (Score:4, Insightful)
And Apple is calling all iPhone an iPhone, just like Chevy calls all Camaros a Camaro. Chevy differentiates models by model year and trim level. Apple differentiates iPhone models by a model number and a modifier.
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They might call the car the same, but they will refer to it by the year it was released. e.g. The 2016 Chevrolet Camaro which is different than the 2015 Chevrolet Camaro and the 2017 Chevrolet Camaro.
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People still need new phones because their old ones break.
Yes, what is wrong with buying last years model which will be practically the same as this years model, but costing less? Just like the lottery, it's called the stupid tax and that is one tax I choose not to pay.
Maybe a better way of doing something was found that you the end consumer doesn't notice but makes sense from an engineering standpoint.
You truly believe that? Unless there was a recall or something broken, Apple isn't going to go out of it's way to cut into profit margins and spend on R&D...
No Headphone Jack? No Sale. (Score:3)
As someone who was starting to look at upgrading his phone (5s going strong so far), I know that the lack of headphone jack is going to make me sit right back down and wait on the purchase.
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As someone who was starting to look at upgrading his phone (5s going strong so far), I know that the lack of headphone jack is going to make me sit right back down and wait on the purchase.
I bet you said the same about PS2 ports, floppy drives and the recently defunct CDROM drives too.
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Except I *do* use the jack on my phone as input for the stereo in my car. "Use bluetooth" you say... fine. Maybe my next car purchase in 10-12 years I'll remember to include BT for the stereo system...
This is all good for me though since it should drop prices on the SE I've been wanting as an upgrade/replacemetn for my 4 ...
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I built a bluetooth receiver for my car out of a Raspberry Pi. You can buy them too, except they cost $80 instead of the $20 I paid. It's much nicer than an audio cable.
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It's bluetooth audio, in a car. It doesn't have to be great. If you like spending money then yes, you could absolutely spend whatever you like, from $2 to $10,000 on a DAC.
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You can also order a nice USB-powered BT audio receiver (TSBT35A24) and a cigar lighter to USB adapter from China for less than $5 shipped.
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Nice, thanks for the link. When I built the Pi solution the only other reasonable way I found to do that was to take apart a pair of Sony bluetooth earbuds. The car Pi also does some other stuff, like interfacing with OBD, but a cheap bluetooth receiver is handy.
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My cars (early 2000 models) don't have any sort of aux/headphone jack/input port. Is there some way to make this work?
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Maybe my next car purchase in 10-12 years I'll remember to include BT for the stereo system...
It's a cheap and decidedly worthwhile upgrade to existing tech / cars. I stuck a Grom unit [gromaudio.com] behind the stock radio in my '04 E46M3, and in my 21-year-old 1995 Jeep Wrangler I simply swapped in a sub-$100 new head unit (Clarion [amazon.com] but there are so many options). Much better solution than wrestling with a 1/8" cord constantly, especially with the wear and tear those cords get in an automotive environment (jiggle it just right to get audio out of both channels...).
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If you a) plan on driving the same car for 10 years and b) listen to a lot of music in it, it would be a worthwhile investment.
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What car built since the turn of the millennium has a radio that can be (affordably) replaced without losing functionality of an existing system as well as retaining a semi-stock appearance of the dash? In other words, what vehicles still have an actual DIN radios?
Every vehicle I've ridden in for a long time has had a radio that is fairly well integrated into the dash. My Honda Accord for instance has to resort to something like this [mopa.net] if you want to keep climate control functionality which is integrated into
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I'm sure if you can afford the $700 iPhone, you should have no problem paying for the $25 new adpater, or find one for $3 on ebay.
Here you go: https://www.amazon.com/GOgroov... [amazon.com]
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Oh, and if you don't happen to have a car stereo with a line in because it's so old, here you go: https://www.amazon.com/Audio-C... [amazon.com]
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Get a Bluetooth car adapter. I use a one from Kinivo that Amazon sells for $35 [amazon.com].
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There's a big difference between replacing a simple, ubiquitous, general purpose, analog headphone jack and replacing the special-purpose PS/2 with USB. The PS/2 port had one function, whereas the headphone jack can interconnect nearly any audio device going back 40 years.
The headphone jack is small and simple, and compatible with just about everything out there. Headphones aren't magically obsolete just because they are 10 or 20 years old. (Dropping the jack to make the phone even thinner is just silly.
D
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Apple was the first major digital audio seller to go DRM-free. Your fantasies need updating.
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In reality it was Amazon, in shitty memory Apple does all the good stuff first.
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Every machine I buy will have a PS/2 port. It'll also have an optical drive to read and write the latest BluRay/whatever format. Floppies are dead for me, though.
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Optical is dead for me but for stupid reasons : tax on blank media, lack of enough SATA or IDE ports on some machines.
On the other hand, gimme dual PS/2. I even made sure to have dual DVI-I for now (not DVI-D)
Re:No Headphone Jack? No Sale. (Score:4, Insightful)
Except that the jack connector is far from obsolete.
It is used on new products everywhere, in all price ranges, even Apple's earbuds use it. Quality-wise, it is more than enough for stereo audio signals within the range of human hearing, in fact you will be hard pressed to find a high-end headset that uses something else.
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As someone who was starting to look at upgrading his phone (5s going strong so far), I know that the lack of headphone jack is going to make me sit right back down and wait on the purchase.
Depends on how they handle this.
You DO realize that Apple has a pretty long and successful track record of getting excoriated for getting rid of "legacy" ports and peripherals, only to have the rest of the industry follow suit in the next year or so, right?
Re:No Headphone Jack? No Sale. (Score:4, Interesting)
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This one is a pretty big leap. Most people who buy headphones I want them compatible with everything. I have some devices I plug into that are 10 years old and will still be used long into the future, and this means an audio cable. While I have an audio cable anyway, why would I want to pay a premium for in-headset bluetooth and at the cost of having to charge them all the time. When flash drives came out, USB was already prevelent and that was fine. I haven't looked for a thunderbolt hub for quite awhile but last I checked they were still a lot harder to find than usb hubs. Finally, I swear at apple every time I have to find my displayport adapter. I still have three working VGA monitors and the macbook is so far the only PC I have without a VGA or HDMI port.
As I said: Depends on how they handle it.
Like everyone else, I have several headphone/earbud sets that have either 3.5mm or 1/4" plugs on them. I would imagine that Apple will go wireless on the next iPhone, with Bluetooth 5 being used (with possible failover to older BT standards). I would NOT expect them to simply switch to using the Lightning connector and keeping the headphone/earbud user TETHERED to the device. What's the sense in that?
If that (Bluetooth) happens, Apple and a zillion other companie
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USB-C supports using the connector as an analog headphone jack. You just need a specific resistor on a specific pin and it will switch over to analog headphone mode on one of the pins. You wouldn't even need an adapter with the right set of headphones. There's a strong likelihood that they're finally going to kill their proprietary connector on the iPhone in favor of USB-C.
So there is your precious analog headphone jack.
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So now you need new headphones, or a $30 adapter. And another thing if you want to charge the phone at the same time, use an OTG device, or whatever.
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Man you are really fishing for something to complain about today, huh? It would be a $2 adapter, or you can just build your own with a $0.05 resistor and an old USB-C cable. It's a really, really simple device. The 3.5mm analog jack is ready to be put out to pasture, long live the 2.4mm analog jack (USB-C).
Re: charging, with fast charging and/or modern battery life it's really not an issue.
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I guarantee that if I owned an iPhone with no headphone jack, I would not have been able to plug my iPhone in to play a song over the speakers at a jam session last week. Everybody else had Android phones. I reached over and plugged my iPhone in, and everything just worked, because my iPhone 6S is actually standards-compliant, using an industry-standard connector. When Apple requires me to carry a proprietary adapter just for their devices, suddenly access to audio output is not ubiquitous, and suddenly
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Get a Nexus 6P.
You'll _never_ look back.
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Why would you want a thinner phone? No, really. They're already so thin that human skin doesn't provide enough friction to keep it in your hand if your hands are sweaty. These things are a usability disaster because they're already way too thin.
How is this news? (Score:5, Funny)
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Apple is releasing a new product with little to no changes compared to the previous model, and yet still expects people to shell out hundreds of dollars for the new version? Sounds like they've finally figured out their customer base! Steve Jobs would be so proud ...
I would suggest that TFS was written to give that impression; however, I personally would consider the shift to OLED (and the increased battery life that change alone will bring) is a pretty significant change, in and of itself.
No Headphone Jack (Score:5, Insightful)
I can't believe that the next iPhone won't have a headphone jack. I think the world really isn't ready for this change. Personally I use Bluetooth headphones 80% of the time, but I think going that last 20% would be problematic. And if their headphone adapters are as resilient as their charging cables, this is going to end up being a major problem. I don't think that most people would go for a phone without a headphone jack. Even if they don't use it most of the time.
No built in 3.5mm headphone jack (Score:3)
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Re:No Headphone Jack (Score:5, Insightful)
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I was at a gaming convention this past weekend, and a number of vendors were using card reader dongles that attach via the headphone jack
I guess Square will refocus on Android.
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The latest Square connects using Bluetooth [squareup.com], so there's that.
But if you read that page, you'll discover that it still requires the headphone jack for swiping cards. So maybe they will just focus on Android.
Single Sheet of Glass? (Score:2)
Single sheet of glass huh? I'm not sure that's a good way to describe how you'd want a phone. Hopefully it doesn't break like a single sheet of glass!
Stagnated (Score:2)
Apple is so stagnated I'm bringing back the stagnated "<THING> is stagnated!" troll.
Be bold! (Score:4, Funny)
His Steviness the Jobs didn't make Apple what it is by doing the same thing over and over again.
Be bold! Make the corners pointed. Heck, stick bloody great spikes on them! Or even make them in black!
Out of new ideas (Score:2)
Location, location, location (Score:2)
Why do journalists need to say where a corporation is based? They could just say "the company" instead of the "Cupertino based company".
Meh (Score:3)
I think I'm the only one that isn't ready to burn down Cupertino over the headphone jack. Yes I'd sorta rather have it than not, but I really don't physically plug my phone into anything other than to charge it. I either use my suppplied earbuds or I use bluetooth.
I will concede, though, that if they remove it something interesting should be put in its place. I don't need a better speaker, which is what it sounds like they're doing. You've got me there, I'd be frustrated if they dumped the headphone jack for that. But if they used that space for more battery, or maybe somehow that extra space got it a better camera, I'd toss that jack away in a heart beat.
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Because it has less of the stuff that helps stop your phone from getting broken (bezel) and a higher percentage of the stuff that's easy to break (the glass), of course!
Probably a wise business decision, mind you - style trumps functionality on the market every time. As for me, I'm just hoping I don't need to switch phones before a Tango device comes out...
Re:why? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, I can't imagine why Apple would even consider going back to those glass backs. I was planning to upgrade my original iPhone as soon as they got a front-facing camera, but I ended up skipping the iPhone 4 and 4s precisely because the last thing I want is a fragile decorative element that does nothing but add risk.
Ironically, when I got the iPhone 5, I found it so thin that I kept dropping it, so I immediately put it in a case. I honestly don't understand why Apple even cares about the case design of phones anymore. The darn things are so hard to hold that nobody I know actually carries one without a case that completely hides Apple's industrial design anyway.
I don't know what's more horrifying—the idea of extra glass or the idea that the author of this story thinks that removing the iPhone's only analog I/O and forcing everybody to either use horrible, high-latency bluetooth or fragile, Apple-proprietary adapter cables doesn't constitute a big change.... It will be enough to make me skip two generations again.
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We've come to the point where additional hardware improvements don't result in a better experience (e.g., faster browsing) and so there's no reas
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Same with me, I like my jack....
And if they require you to use a fingerprint to open the phone, etc....then I"ll likely bail on the iPhone myself.
I don't use it now, and don't WANT my fingerprint to be what opens the phone. I'd rather use a nice, long passcode.
They might can force my finger to touch the phone, but they can't very readily force me to punch my code in for them....
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Highly doubtful. iOS already gives you several options to unlock your phone now, fingerprint will just get tossed in the mix.
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Umm. There are two methods: passcode and fingerprint.
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If they're not capable of waterproofing a simple headphone jack, then maybe their industrial designers aren't as good as they think they are.... This isn't rocket science.
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If they're not capable of waterproofing a simple headphone jack, then maybe their industrial designers aren't as good as they think they are.... This isn't rocket science.
No, it isn't rocket science; but it DOES make the 3.5mm jack nearly as fat (5-6 mm) (or maybe even fatter) as a USB connector [technik.com.hk], which of course won't do in ANY phone.
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You're taking it to the wrong place for repair, then. Even Apple charges, at most, $149 for a new screen at an Apple Store. I just got my wife's iPhone 6 screen replaced for $130, and that wasn't the cheapest place in town, merely the most convenient. Also, believe it or not, there is a pretty good market on eBay for broken screens, so you can make $30ish back selling your old one on there.
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I replaced my own for about $30. Then I did it again because at $30 you're less careful with them.
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