That Apple pays so much attention to the details as to pick a different version of Helvetica for different classes of displays is emblematic of what makes the iPhone the iPhone — software and hardware that are designed in tandem as parts of a single whole.
Really? On the next paragraph...
There is, however, one problem with Helvetica Neue in iOS 4.0: it doesn’t include italics.(...)I can only assume this is an oversight on Apple’s part.
Yes, it is a small thing. I really don't care whether the phone comes with the Heuvetica Neue bold, or not. But I can't stop thinking about how Apple's marketing (or Gruber's writing) is eerily similar to hypnosis: you provide a baseless assertion that "sort of" makes sense intertwined with contradictions, making the target's brain take everything as valid.
As a designer, Helvetica Neue (even without italics) is a huge step in the right aesthetic direction. His original point was not so much about the font, but about the platform. He lays the groundwork, showing that the platform was higher resolution and therefore it made more sense for a font that displayed better at higher resolutions to be used.
I think it's a valid point and a great critique -- how is it contradictory to praise what is praiseworthy and point out what is wrong?
Or maybe "Of course Ford did forget to include tail fins on this particular model".
I don't think I've seen oblique, sans serif type used in an iOS user interface. Content, sure, and Helvetica is there for you, but this is the system user interface font. I think the clarity demanded of the system user interface argues against the subtle change afforded by slanting the font.
Oblique sans serif fonts are generally sort of an apologetic placeholder for: "Here is where I would have used a nice italic font, but my type designer couldn't pull that off in this clean, minimalist font, so please imagine that he did."
"Ford's new engine is incredibly powerful and well designed, but it's missing a low gear setting on the shifter." Might be more apt.
Again, Neue is leaps and bounds ahead of regular old Helvetica. It's a total bonehead move to leave out italics even though most people won't notice it's absence.
The contradiction is in praising them for their attention to detail in how that made a feature and then pointing out a problem with the very same feature that can best be described as a lack of attention to detail.
In general, yes. They might have careful attention to detail in general but show less attention here or there. But in this case, the feature that they're paying such close attention to is the same feature they messed up.
>The overall build quality seems impossibly good. The iPhone 4 is beautiful to behold and feels like a valuable artifact. It’s like a love letter to Dieter Rams.
Do other people actually like reading stuff like this? I mean, regardless of what you think of the iphone 4, that level of praise almost makes me feel bad for him. It's like romantic love for an object.
In the design documentary, Objectified, by Gary Hustwit, Dieter Rams is asked if there is any company that really gets design today. He answers after a moment's pause: "Apple".
I believe Apple is integrating design down to lower levels than anyone has done before. Some companies talk about corporate DNA but Apple is going to Jurassic Park levels.
It feels natural. Even though the object has been artificially and painstakingly engineered with love.
What's wrong with that? People love cars, architecture, sculpture, jewelry, watches, clothes, and all sorts of other objects. There's also nothing wrong with a purely utilitarian view of the world either. I don't see any good reason to judge either way.
Thats like asking do great mathematicians enjoy the description of a great proof.
"The overall quality seems impossibly good. The proof is beautiful to behold and there is a timeless nature to it. It’s like a love letter to Pierre-Simon Laplace."
Sure its a little corny, but F#ck, for the majority of even moderately wealthy designers the iPhone 4 is probably the most well designed item they have ever touched. Yes, the average person could care less of the design quality, but for those who do care its a big deal.
I like reading it because it's interesting. I can read a hundred reviews where the author says 'The build quality is good and the phone feels solid in your hand.' Those reviews are typically as exciting, fresh, and captivating to read as a first-generation Blackberry is to behold.
It might be a little over the top sometimes, but that's part of what I like about him.
It doesn't make me feel bad for him, but it doesn't make him sound like an objective source of information. Which is 100% okay.
Writers don't have to be objective, so long as they point out their biases clearly. Gruber does. More and more I don't want to read blatantly pro-Apple stuff, but that doesn't mean Gruber's wrong to write it.
It's not so much "love" as it is obsession; and obsessive people tend to be at least colorful, if not interesting, just given how much time they're willing to devote to a subject seemingly so minute. This article is the 1st I've read since the initial batch of reviews that I didn't stop reading after the 1st paragraph.
People go to his site for the words, not for the site. A flashy design would be distracting, and for someone who (IMHO) writes as well as he does, anything that takes away from that is impractical.
It's the same reason he'll link to images or videos or sound clips, but he never posts them directly on his site.
But his writing is the same way -- he's gotten to the point where he spends more time sneeringly mocking Apple's detractors than fellating Apple.
He wrote a bunch a while back about how Apple needs an equivalent rival like Nikon/Canon. It would sure make his writing a lot more interesting -- they've now got a Dreamworks to their Pixar in Android, but that's just giving Gruber more insubstantiative shit to sling.
There is plenty of discussion of the signal issue, the proximity sensor issue, and the potential fragility. It doesn't gloss over them or overplay them.
Is that sufficient? This seems at least as balanced and credible as the Ars Technical review.
The more money you spend on something, the more you need to hear that you did the right thing. At school in a psychology course I learned that there is advertising created for people who already bought the stuff (like an expensive car), to prevent them from worrying.
Still, the level of reassurance Apple fans need is a bit disturbing. If it is so great, why not just shut up about it and enjoy it?
A less serious accusation is that Gruber now knows that his core readership consists of, essentially, the Apple faithful. He knows to pander to that crowd and that is how he gets paid. It's iPhone fans who feel that every Gruber observation about the iPhone is so critically important that it needs to be voted up on HN.
His readership, from the frequency with which his posts make it to the front page here, seems to include the hacker news community. Do you consider yourself, or the rest of us, “essentially the Apple faithful”?
As far as I can tell the subject of his blog could be summarized as something like “high signal-to-noise and semi-technical discussion of Apple, the web, and graphic design, with occasional sports and politics related tidbits.
“The Apple faithful” as a group is quite different from “technical and semi-technical readers interested in Apple and the web”.
I != the other person. It was a simple, obvious observation. In the same way that a writer for the right wing press isn't going to suddenly question conservative values.
I feel that way a lot when reading Gruber. He has the same kind of unwavering fawning praise for Apple that Rush Limbaugh has for the Republican party.
Apple is so good at making buttons, it’s almost enough to make one wish they made button-laden devices.
Oh come on...Pro mouse, Mighty Mouse, Magic Mouse, current and previous gen macbook trackpad buttons, the previous gen desktop keyboards, iPod click-wheels, Apple Remote...these are some of the worst buttons I've used. Apple has made some decent buttons (I think the current and previous gen MBP keyboards are well made), but they're way too inconsistent to make a claim like that.
Is is truly surprising how the company that took the mouse mainstream now can't make one that's simultaneously aesthetically pleasing and a joy to use.
I can't use the Magic Mouse because it doesn't fit my human-sized man-hand: it has no palm support. And this strikes me as odd because how it looks should be extremely secondary: the only way to effectively use a mouse is to look at the screen not at the mouse, and even if you were to look at it, your hand is covering it up.
For those reasons, I find it neither aesthetically pleasing nor a joy to use. It's unfortunate that aesthetics have been merely associated with how something looks when it's just sitting there and doesn't take into account a pragmatic, active angle (not saying that that's how you associate aesthetics, brianwillis).
It has no palm support because you're not supposed to put your palm on it -- it's meant to be held by the thumb and pinkie at the sides (like the pilloried hockey-puck mouse).
If it was shaped to rest your palm on it, you wouldn't be able to use any of the multitouch features without fully removing your hand first.
And I think that may be part of the problem: I didn't find that to be a comfortable position to use the mouse even for short periods of time, having to hold my fingers and palm up and not having a resting, but still moving the mouse, position. I found it extremely hard to get fine control of positioning while clicking, I'd always end up moving the mouse slightly while clicking (incidentally, I have similar issues with the touchpad on the MacBook Pro).
Apple makes great computers, great phones and sucks at pretty much everything else.
Microsoft, a company that found out in the mid seventies that the software business would be much more profitable than hardware, is making software of questionable quality but manufactures fantastic keyboards and mice.
You and your cohorts will be among the first put up against the wall when the HCI revolution comes, especially the assholes that baked that behavior into the device firmware of some trackpads, forcing you to twiddle bits in the driver to ignore the taps (like on the OLPC XO-1).
"tap-to-click" is an abomination I wish to abolish from the face of the earth. I find it incredibly frustrating myself, but the older folks I know that already have problems with instinctively double-clicking everything are debilitated by it.
I'd agree with your assessment of the past Apple mouse lineup (undeniably shocking), but the Magic Mouse gets a lot of things right. I find myself wishing I had a multitouch surface at my work PC instead of the somewhat clunky but serviceable MS mouse.
For me, the Magic Mouse gets one thing horribly wrong: ergonomics. I use a computer at least eight hours of the working day, and potentially much more than that. If I can't be comfortable using a device, it doesn't matter how awesome it is, I can't use it.
It is designed to be used by touch by people used to Apple trackpads. If you keep your thumb on the bottom part of the trackpad and use that part as if it were a button, it works pretty much identically to prior models. But then, it has an additional big advantage that when when you want to use that bottom part for gestures, you can.
I think it requires the perfect amount of force to depress – I don’t press it accidentally, but it presses easily when I want it to – and just the right travel distance. The noise is a nice confirmation that I just pressed it (then again, I use a Model M when possible so YMMV).
It’s a matter of personal preference, but I would be surprised if most people share your opinions about it.
"... but I’ve had fun trying out FaceTime with a few iPhone 4-enabled friends"
This sentence is absolutely delicious to my mind, specifically the use of the word "enabled". It's as if to own a device was to somehow be an upgrade for one's person.
Is this how we've really all come to think of devices now? Are they extensions of our bodies? A whole raft of questions has drifted to the shores of my mind.
Every tool is an extension of the human mind. Play an instrument, drive a car, swing a bat... Sure you're using your fingers, legs, and arms, but once your mind adapts, you're thinking and reacting more directly about the new inputs and outputs the tool gives you. There are some neurological studies on musicians and their brain maps that demonstrate this.
Think of other types of tools like hearing aids and artificial limbs. Over time, the brain adapts to use them much like the real thing. Some tools are just "upgrades" far removed from what the human body is naturally capable of.
The tools we use definitely shape the way we think.
David Chalmers, in his preface of Clark's Supersizing the Mind :
"A month ago, I bought an iPhone. The iPhone has already taken over some of the central functions of my brain. It has replaced part of my memory, storing phone numbers and addresses that I once would have taxed my brain with. It harbors my desires: I call up a memo with the names of my favorite dishes when I need to order at a local restaurant. I use it to calculate, when I need to figure out bills and tips. It is a tre- mendous resource in an argument, with Google ever present to help settle disputes. I make plans with it, using its calendar to help deter- mine what I can and can’t do in the coming months. I even daydream on the iPhone, idly calling up words and images when my concentra- tion slips.
Friends joke that I should get the iPhone implanted into my brain. But if Andy Clark is right, all this would do is speed up the processing and free up my hands. The iPhone is part of my mind already."
"This is the result of a new manufacturing process Apple has pioneered. No other company gives a shit about things like this."
Samsung is doing this for their new displays. And they were out before the iPhone 4 was even announced. But, to Gruber, if it's not Apple, it's automatically crap. No sense acknowledging its existence.
I might be mistaken, but I believe he's referring specifically to bonding the LCD display to a capacitive piece of glass, rather than just regular protective plastic.
(Does Samsung use glass in their displays? They all look plastic to me.)
No, it's not glass vs. plastic he's talking about (and yes Samsung Super-AMOLED screens are glass anyway). The original poster is correct, Gruber believes this reduction in layers above the screen was pioneered by Apple because they made it seem like they did in their introductory videos and thinks it unique because he neither knows nor cares about things happening outside the sphere of Apple. He doesn't even just say that it doesn't exist (which is of course not true), he says it couldn't exist outside Apple because no-one else cares.
The OpenMoko phone also had a higher number of pixels-per-inch than the iPhone 4. And this was years ago, by a no-name hardware company.
The reason other phones don't have a "retina display" is because it's expensive, and the other phones are trying to win market share by being cheap. Sadly, this works better than making a quality product.
Given the retinal indifference threshold of 287ppi@12inches, which was given in a recent HN-linked and praised article, 282ppi only needs to be a 1/4 inch further out for the pixels to fall into retinal indifference. Pretty nice for a 2008 phone.
I've only played with them at the Apple Store, but the iPhone4 silence switch seemed a lot better than the ones on my original 2G and current 3GS. My 2G switch was so flimsy that it would toggle on and off in my pocket from idle friction, while the 3GS one was stiff to the point where I needed both hands to reliably move it.
I do like the feel and design of the 3G model better (much easier to tell if it's silenced in your pocket), but on multiple occasions, the switch on my 3GS has switched from silenced to not. The new one seems a lot less prone to that.
Say what you will about the volume and lock buttons, but the new silence toggle is great. About once a day I would accidentally switch my phone from ring to silent (or vice versa) with my 3GS.
Does anyone else notice this pattern and find it strange:
Feature X on my new Apple product is great. It's much better than the flawed version on my earlier Apple device.
The retina screen and camera are two big areas where Apple might have previously been considered behind the curve, yet they get strongly praised for being better than their earlier efforts rather than benchmarked against current rivals.
Compare the gasps of delight of someone comparing a Retina display against years old iPhones, compared with the "meh, looks about the same" response when compared with a Super-AMOLED screen from Samsung.
Was I supposed to bemoan the fact that they've improved it? I'm sure if you grepped the web you'd find that people have been praising the improvement of products they like since... since at least the early 1990's.
The Retina display is nice, but I find myself appreciating it for how it's used, not for its resolution (apps that don't accommodate for it look terrible). There is probably a lot of better technology out there, but soldering and gluing parts together does not a product make. People like it because of the whole package, and see it as greater than the sum of its parts.
Well logically you should complain about faulty buttons and be unimpressed by working ones. But people don't work logically so it's the same effect as wearing too tight shoes or the childrens' story "A squash and a squeeze", the relief you feel from something bad returning to a normal level is palpable and can actually feel better than just having things work in the first place.
Like you, I think it shows that if you get the important stuff right, then people will be very forgiving of your faults, while still being harsh about similar level faults in competing products (which perhaps get a different set of important stuff right for other folks). People are funny that way and while I find it interesting, I don't think people should celebrate it any more than placebo effects should be attributed to new medicines.
To a lot of you criticizing how in love with Apple he is... well it's not like Gruber hides being pro Apple, or that him taking sides on a personally owned blogged makes him a bad source of information and observations.
How biased he is can certainly be borderline infuriating at times but I don't know any other blogger right now that writes about Apple and consistently makes observations that weren't obvious to make. He also has a compelling talent for seeing the big picture and making pieces of the puzzle fit.
I am sure he wouldn't have downplayed the 'signal' issue if it was an issue with an Android phone.
Considering that similar issues were reported with the Nexus One, why don't you go find the 10,000-word "LOL DROID SUXORS" rant that Gruber -- as just another Apple fanboy, aiming to make the competition look bad whenever possible -- undoubtedly wrote about it? Then you can link it here and use it as justification for your post.
On the iPhone, signal-strength bars are not a reliable indicator of your local usability. My iPhone 3gs regularly shows 4 or 5 bars -- at the same instant it can't initiate a call or send an SMS. It's either showing some abstract measure of signal strength, unrelated to whether traffic can actually be sent, or it's been programmed to lie.
I would trust an unaffiliated speed test app or website server-side analysis much, much more than any count of signal-bars.
My point is that people are putting a lot of stock in signal-bars, assuming if there are 4-5 bars local service is good (and conversely that drops in signal-bar count mean bad service). That's not my experience in SF at all; the correlation used to exist, but in the last year, it broke. I can have usable calls at 0-2 bars; I can be unable to initiate or hold a call at 4-5 bars. It's some other capacity issue that's not measured with signal-bars that's AT&Ts giant problem.
I think the OPs point is that if this had been an issue with an Android phone Gruber would have jumped all over it as an example of how the phone manufacturer doesn't pay attention to detail and gets the simple things wrong.
I tend to agree on that criticism of Gruber but it isn't really worth pointing out. Everyone here already knows he is very biased and it is reflected in his writing.
I'm a little upset that this is called "IPhone 4". It is part of the story, in fact, a very telling part of his narrative that he merely titled it "4".
Except its less durable and the unsymmetrical breaks in the steel band take away from its clean, minimal aesthetic. The band's function as an antenna is compromised by conductive fingers.
I normally would not be so critical, and I do not know I have designed it better... but when you gush like this for Ram's style of functional industrial design, the criticism is a comin'. The 27" iMac I'm writing this on however, may be the truest object to Ram's style that exists.
Is it only me who finds the flat sides and glass back "aesthetically" unpleasing... The 3GS looks a tad better to me than the 4 (ofcourse they aren't deal breakers, but wanted to know since Gruber seem to like them)
I think the iPhone 4 gives the original iPhone a serious run for its money in the industrial design department. The 3G and 3Gs weren't even close, in my opinion. A rounded blob of plastic isn't very exciting.
Except this is exactly what was said about the iPhone when it came out -- that it was amazingly designed.
If good design is supposed to be timeless, how can once-beautiful pieces of design now be considered as "rounded blob[s] of plastic" that "isn't very exciting"?
This is the kind of fanboyism that really turns off a lot of us.
Thought experiment: if Apple came out with a new phone with the exact design of some previously maligned older phone, I'd be willing to bet that most Apple fans would immediately claim that this "new" design is amazing and perfect and all the other superlatives that are pitched about...
He's contrasting the "rounded blob of plastic" (the design of the 3G and 3GS) with the original iPhone design, which had a mostly-metal flat back, and, as you acknowledged, was heralded at its release.
Have you seen one in person? I think the new iPhone doesn’t look so good in photos (at least not Apple’s) but it looks quite great in person. No contest with the old plastic thing.
"I think Apple is going to be able to get the price on such an iPod Touch below $200 before Cisco is going to create iMovie-like editing software for the Flip."
He talks about how awesome audio and video quality on Facetime is. Yet, these are supposedly just SIP and H.264/AAC, or am I missing something there? Does Apple add some magic juice to these open protocols/codecs?
Haven't you heard? If it's Apple branded, it's obviously better. It's like the placebo effect, but instead it's the Apple effect (which, if you've been paying attention, makes it even better!)
In all seriousness though, I don't understand why Gruber posts this garbage and feels compelled to defend Apple at every turn. We don't need Apple's every action fucking analyzed to death by someone who is obviously too invested in the company to be objective. If I want to read this type of inane pandering, I'll ask the hipsters at Starbucks for the URL to their blog.
I for one am getting tired of all this undeserved attention to things that don't make a difference in anybody's lives. This iphone doesn't make anybody more productive, more empowered, more effective, less frustrated. It doesn't free up time for anybody and doesn't do anything new.
In fact, I just wrote the complete opposite of Gruber article: a comparison of the GREAT things that are unique to iPhone and to Android for startups trying to get something done.
As it happens, nobody that I know personally cares about turn-by-turn navigation at all. I probably use that capability twice a year just for shits and giggles. A marginally better turn-by-turn implementation would have no impact for me or anyone I know, but that's because there's nothing terribly complex about navigating around my region.
It also happens that the display resolution on the latest iPhone was a major selling point for me, as I end up doing a lot of reading on my phone for the simple fact that I read a lot and it's always with me when I have those random, spare minutes throughout the day where I have nothing else to do but kill time. I just want the internet in my pocket, and not to strain my eyes.
I suspect I'm not alone in my priorities. Did you really not suspect that there are people out there who are dissimilar from you?
I guess you're saying that the article suffers from selection bias? Maybe.
But then you go on to state that "nobodody that I know" ... which is just the same kind of selection filter.
There are well over 50 million Garmin style GPS units in the market offering turn-by-turn navigation. While you may not have a need for them, they are providing widely adopted functionality, and since Android is the first mobile platform doing this, it is potentially disruptive.
Is the higher resolution display of the iPhone 4 disruptive, or an enhancement?
I find the hardware to be very delightful, in most respects, and I appreciate the thought and efforts that Apple puts into creating a unified software/hardware 'product solution' even if I disagree violently with some of the philosophical assumptions baked into that in both physical form (hold it differently, buy a case!) and software (you'll like the software we offer you, and we know best what you might want!).
All that aside... I can't say I really enjoy reading daring fireball, for many of the same reasons eloquently described in this thread. Substance (of a sort), but without soul.
But he's right, can you name another tech firm that cares as much about these things?
I remember reading something a while back about how much time Apple spent on getting the angle (directon) of the mouse pointer right on the original Mac.
It's not about _what_ he says but more about _how_ he says it. I'd rather read something like "Other companies don't take these things seriously" than "No other company gives a shit about things like this.".
The screen is stunning. I found it annoying that Apple released the Ipad but a month before without it. It seems they could have pulled that one easy, but i guess we will see this in Ipad2, its fair business, but still kind of a dick move in my mind, I am glad i didn't get the ipad yet. I can wait for the retina enabled one.
I am not an Iphone user, but I held friends 3gs and the 4 to compare, and found the smooth block disconcerting, it was harder to cup the phone, and introduced a mild strain on the fingers, it felt slippery, prone to fall out of my hands if i am not too careful, which is often the case when i pick my cell. I suspect that I would have got used to it had I handled one for a longer period of time , but I have to ask, why should I?
The design strikes me as beautiful (the most elegant mobile phone design i have seen to date) But I also think that the design choices Apple imposes, exclude a good number of people physically,(minor discomfort for me, due to a hand injury) some people prefer physical keyboards because of the physical capabilities of their hands,why not make a version for them? Not to mention the great benefit IOS4 and apps can give people working in more physically hazardous environments that are missed by not having a little more variance in industrial design choices.
Its pretty much agreed by both people who dislike and people who love apple, that Apple is not looking to fulfill every niche of the market, it is a source of contention or pride, depending on where your sentiments are.
I am too much of a tinkerer to use an Iphone, i feel it restricts me. Indeed, Apple products, restrictions and other idiosyncrasies drive me mad, and so i don't use them.
I do recognize that these are issues of personal preference, and by most measures i am not the hypothetical "normal person" that always appears in most Apple reviews.
So I fully recognize the genius behind the design, it is elegant and beautiful, without peer in the industry (for shame) and it is also true that the "just works" cannot be overstated. It is simply of no personal concern to me, because i take pride in making things work on my own, and rather enjoy it, as i mentioned... tinkerer
But I would have bought my mom one without thinking twice about it, ware it not for the limited physical options, she cant handle it in her age with her hands, this exclusivity by Apple is a pity, and in that sense it is a bad design choice, I suspect elderly people, factory workers, or people that need to work with gloves would love to have a phone that indeed "just works". this exclusion is something I always found to be the chink in apples design ethos, imagine an apple designed product specifically tailored to the elderly, or an Apple designed tough industrial strength laptop or Ipad.
There is a world of difference between getting acceptable manufacturing yields on a 300ppi+ iPhone-sized screen and a similarly-dense iPad-sized screen.
I am sure there is,but can it be done? If it is possible, then its inevitable future design iteration, and worth the wait, because i suspect it will come soon, or am I wrong?
I don't think he's questioning the "inevitable future design iteration", but rather the characterization of withholding such a screen from iPad 1.0 as a "dick move".
One has to read Gruber's review and Ars Technica's review of the iPhone 4 to see the difference between a fan boy and a level-headed writer.
Before I clicked the link I bet myself I would not see a single criticism and Gruber was predictable in his praise. The iPhone 4 is perfect, like every other piece of anything Apple puts out. yawn
Before I clicked the link I bet myself I would not see a single criticism and Gruber was predictable in his praise.
So you just skipped the parts where he brought up criticisms and pointed out things he thinks are missing and speculated on ways Apple could resolve them?
It's a positive, thorough review by someone who develops on the Apple platform. Do you comment on Silverlight developers glowing posts as well? Or do you just dislike it when Apple developers do it?
BBColors, CSS Syntax Checker for BBEdit and TextWrangler, Apache Configuration Language Module for BBEdit, bbdiff and the Tiger (i.e. Mac OS X 10.4) Details Report are all Mac-specific.
What? Every single one of those is Apple-related -- one is a low-level review of differences in 10.4, and all the rest were originally written as itch-scratching extensions for BBEdit, which is an ancient Mac-only commercial text editor, and his last day job was for the company that produced it as some sort of tech-support / help-writer.
I would say that they are BBEdit-specific, except for the review of differences on Tiger. That's only tangentially related to Apple. It's not like he wrote something for the iPhone and/or Mac.
Even though this is the Haus of Gruber (why, exactly, does everything he post get FPd here? Confirmation bias, perhaps?), I'll take my downvote suffering-
>In fact, Apple seems very confident regarding everything it decided for the original 2007 iPhone
Except multitasking in apps. Actually, scratch that, except apps altogether. Two major shifts in direction.
Of course Gruber led into that talking about hardware. There you can look at the fact that the iPhone pre-4 had a worst-in-class DPI, but now with the 4 it's all about the Retina display. DPI is suddenly where everything is.
The original iPhones were about feminine curves. The new iPhone is about kick-you-in-the-face masculine squares.
And then the front-facing camera (a common complaint on the original iPhone). The volume buttons. And on and on. Original perfection indeed.
The iPhone 4 is a brilliant phone. I'm morally against Apple's dominance of mobile, yet it's hard to gather the strength to argue when a friend talks about possibly getting an iPhone 4: It's a hard choice to argue with.
Yet Gruber's salacious, disturbing love of all things Apple; his automatic justification of everything Apple does; is very tough to stomach.
As a somewhat unrelated aside, one thing that really strikes me about the iPhone is the large amount of wasted space. It's interesting seeing it near >=4" phones and they barely eclipse the iPhone in size, the huge bezel (esp. on the bottom) of the iPhone making a small screen in a large phone.
* In fact, Apple seems very confident regarding everything it decided for the original 2007 iPhone. There are no new buttons, or even moved buttons. The Retina Display is emblematic of the iPhone 4 as a whole, both hardware and software: the same fundamental idea as the original iPhone, but clarified. It hasn’t really changed so much as improved — like the same picture in increasingly sharper focus.*
Insofar as the automatic justification how does that explain his questions on the durability of the glass back? Missing italics which he urges people to bring to Apple's attention? His statement that the antenna issue is, worse case, a fatal design flaw? Seems like you're kind of spinning the article a bit to me by omission.
The only part of his comments that really amounts to negative criticism is about the glass back.
He isn't hard on Apple about the missing italic face in the same way he is about e.g. Microsoft's errors (he basically treats it as a regression for Apple to fix), and it's a gross distortion to characterize his verdict on the antenna as "This could be a fatal design flaw." Almost every mention of the antenna issue is cushioned with soothing positivity. He repeatedly states his belief that reception only drops when your reception is lousy to begin with, and overall he seems to think it's likely that the issue will be helped by a software patch, or maybe a small hardware fix. The "fatal design flaw" angle is brought up very briefly, immediately said to be unlikely, and then further softened by reiterating his belief that the issue doesn't affect your reception that much anyway.
I mean, I like Gruber. He's a good writer and has a lot of interesting insights and I actually value his opinion, but you'd have to be stark raving mad to read his blog and think, "Wow, this guy is kind of hard on Apple."
To put my two cents in on the antenna issue, I believe that Gruber is just saying it how it is in this case. I have an iPhone 4, and nearly everyone that sees it asks me about reception issues. I've talked on it for a total of probably 4 hours now, in various locations with various signal strength and have had no issues with dropped calls or reduced reception of any sort. During many of the longer calls, I've tried holding the phone upside down, bridging all the metal gaps, left handed, right handed, etc... and it made no difference.
So call him "optimistic" in his analysis, but if his experience is anything like mine, he is right to be wary of all the reports of the "death grip" as much as I am.
If you read something with the sure belief that someone is biased you are liable to read all sorts of stuff into what someone is writing. I think that’s exactly what’s happening here.
Maybe I’m naive but I really do think that way too many people read way too many things into what Gruber is writing – things he never actually said.
He does this a lot. I've called him out on before but he seems to have such an irrational hate (hinted at in his post with the "moral objection" bit) that he doesn't even realize it.
I agree with you that fanboy fawning makes one queasy.
I do want to point something out about bezels on iDevices, though. They make accidental touches with the base of your thumb rarer when you're using the device one-handed. With only one hand, and holding the device in your palm, your thumb becomes your primary way of interacting. But that means that the base of your thumb is pushed against the edge of the device, and slightly touching the front of the device. This turns into either spurious touches, or spurious multi-touches (think: drag turns into zoom) if the very edge of the device is sensitive to touch.
The solution is to have a little bit of a dead zone there. This is the one area of my Nexus One which annoys me - the N1 seems to have a comparable bezel, but it's actually sensitive very close to the edge. Consequently I often have to hold the N1 not securely in my palm, but resting on my fingers, so that the base of my thumb is nowhere near the edge of the device.
I agree with some of what you say but I don't think you can say Apple changed on including apps. They didn't include apps from the first gen due to the huge engineering effort required to successfully support 3rd parties and have the mechanisms in place to distribute apps. Launching a v1 product and including a ton of 3rd party support for an unproven phone would have been a big gamble. Coming out with it a year later isn't waffling, it's a smart business move.
Except that when iPhone launched, they didn't say "we're still working on supporting 3rd party apps"; instead the official line from Apple was "if you want to develop for iPhone, write web apps." Even Gruber called it ludicrous at the time.
Really? On the next paragraph...
There is, however, one problem with Helvetica Neue in iOS 4.0: it doesn’t include italics.(...)I can only assume this is an oversight on Apple’s part.
Yes, it is a small thing. I really don't care whether the phone comes with the Heuvetica Neue bold, or not. But I can't stop thinking about how Apple's marketing (or Gruber's writing) is eerily similar to hypnosis: you provide a baseless assertion that "sort of" makes sense intertwined with contradictions, making the target's brain take everything as valid.