Apple has released the much awaited iPhone 7 and the general consensus is that it is everything that is expected. These days its a big of an inside joke that Apple just don't change things that much at all, so its no surprise that the new phone looks almost exactly the same as the old design.
Here a quick lowdown of the improvements;
[Please repeat these "standard ones" with every new model released];
- Lighter - It weighs less.
- Screen is Better - Sharper colours.
- More Powerful - Better chip A10 upgraded from A9.
- Better Camera - Back one is still 12MP but front has gone from 5 to 7MP. Dual camera improving zoom for the S.
- Longer Battery - 2 hours longer.
The newish;
- Capacity - Finally scrapping the 16GB model, which is way too low considering their iOS update itself was a few GB! Models start at 32GB up to 256GB, which really has been the industry standard for a long time...
- 5 Colours - Rose Gold (Pink), Gold, Silver, Black, Jet Black (Glossy)
- Waterproof - Apparently losing the headphone jack allowed this to happen. Unfortunately, Samsung got there first.
- New Home Button - When is a home button not a button? Well, the iPhone 7! This is not an actually button anymore, it uses the force touch gesturing introduced in the 6S. I'm looking forward to seeing how the force touch operates, basically adding a click/pushing gesture to the touch screen.
- Stereo Sound - With the removal of the headphone jack, they've used that space to put more speakers. Will this be as loud as a club, enough to annoy other bus passengers with your chavvy music? Time will tell...
Headphone Jacks are gone!
A lot of people are complaining about this, but I don't personally think its a big problem. As expected Apple has included an adapter so that you can use normal headphone jacks with every phone.
The main concern is sometimes people might wanna charge their phone while listening to something, most of the time using an external charging product to top up their battery. So it will be interesting to see whether the extra 2 hours of battery life really make a difference and if it is a real problem for those on the go.
I remember back then there was a lot of people complaining about various things going, whether it be the wheel from the ipod, the swipe to unlock, or firewire replaced by the lightning port. I'm not too happy about losing the mag-safe adapter from the laptops, I thought that was an amazing idea, but as things move on, things have to become more efficient and simple.
The airpods are a pretty cool concept, but I do think that a lot of them might get lost as they're so small. I'm glad to see things move towards a wireless future, but bluetooth has been around for ages and it hasn't really caught on in a big way, so only time will tell if this catches on.
Not Leader in Innovation, But Simple Still Trumps All
With Jobs gone, so did Apple's innovation mojo. Amazing reveals such as the introduction of the wheel in ipods, replacing a stylus with your finger (now stylus is back!) for the ipad reveal, and the lightest macbook air that fit in an envelope just don't happen anymore in the way it did before.
Losing Jobs also lost his vision, and direction for the company. Never have we ever seen Apple buckling to pressure from customers outcry about missing the iPhone 5 model, re-releasing it in iPhone 6SE. Steve Jobs would have stubbornly ignored those outcrys for a different and better model.
Another contradiction to their previous ethos was the scrapping and merging of their "Pro" and "Air" series. Clearly, Steve Jobs had two brands in mind, and it really did make sense. The Air being a lighter, smaller, more casual use of products, and the Pro's being for more hardcore work.
Despite their misdirection, Apple has one thing over Android, and no longer can they say it is innovation. Its simplicity.
As a graduate in Interactive Design, I can say that the Android interface is pretty terrible. Too many menu's, too much bloatware (pre installed Apps that you cannot remove), too much of everything tbh. Apple realised that there was a huge market to tap into, and that was technology scared (mostly older) customers!
Keep the interface simple, remove all unnecessary steps and apps, and most importantly, create a hub where any newbie can go to get help without feeling embarrassed or patronised by an annoyed tech guy. Genius bar is indeed a genius idea, where no question is stupid and no customer is turned away. I honestly believe that most genius bar employees don't even know that much about computers at all, but they know how to explain the basics well.
If Android ever catch on to this, Apple is done for sure. But for now, they enjoy their uber cool tech savvy customers who love the freedom of customisation and other perks of a less simple product.
I love the simplicity of Apple's products, and that's why even though I'm bashing the company, I will and almost always upgrade to their new iPhones. Simples.
BetVictor Party Spins Aftermath
After last week's blog, I emailed BetVictor a link to my blog and I got a response.
It was good that someone of worth had responded instead of an auto answer email. So from this email we can conclude that 3x's were meant to be there from the start, and that the multipliers and blind levels were not updated on their website correctly which was a mistake.
Their calculations were based on the fact that players would have to play a 200k spins to get that 5% rake, which is ~5 years of playing 1600 games a month. Really, really, reaaaaaally totally not the cheapest in the industry!
