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Apple Launches the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus; Feature Water-Resistance, Lack Headphone Jack (www.bgr.in)
Apple on Wednesday unveiled its new flagship smartphones: the iPhone 7, and the iPhone 7 Plus. Both the iPhones look similar to the last year's iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus, but offer a range of new features. Chief among those features are water and dust resistance, stereo speakers, improved cameras (the iPhone 7 Plus has a pair of 12MP cameras that are able to take SLR-quality images. It offers bokeh capability). And yes, the new iPhones indeed lack the headphone jack. "it's the best iPhone we have ever created," Apple CEO Tim Cook said. The home button is getting taptic feedback, similar to that of the MacBook.
So why is Apple removing the headphone jack? Apple's SVP Phil Schiller said, "courage."The company also announced AirPods wireless earphones. A pair of these will be priced at $169. The iPhones will go on sales starting September 16 in several regions including the United States In places like India, however, it will be available starting October 7.
So why is Apple removing the headphone jack? Apple's SVP Phil Schiller said, "courage."The company also announced AirPods wireless earphones. A pair of these will be priced at $169. The iPhones will go on sales starting September 16 in several regions including the United States In places like India, however, it will be available starting October 7.
Here's hoping the rest of the market doesn't make like apple-obsessed sheep for once and make the 3.5mm headphone jack obsolete.
People tend to criticize this site for being late with stories, but Apple announcements are one instance where Slashdot seems to trot them out before the paint even dries. They're still talking about features in the presentation right now and even the linked article mentions that there's still more to come. Why not wait for the dust to settle a little before rushing this story out?
dear slashdot editors.
please don't link to apples site about iphone 7.
the most shocking announcement this afternoon. i really thought it would be $29.99
My 12 years old DSLR will still take better pictures than those new iphones, it just might not be that evident anymore.
So they take away the 3.5 jack, give us an easy-to-lose adapter, and want to sell us their proprietary wireless one-size-fits-none earphones. And they call it courage? Really?
Oh, but they have licensed out the wireless tech for a whopping 3 alternative headsets. I suppose that is supposed to appease us.
Yay, you can no longer listen to headphones at your desk and have your phone charging. Listen all day at the office, phone is dead for the walk home. GREAT Idea.
I'll be sticking with my iPhone 6S for years to come. Remember kids, never update your iOS past the next major revision after it was released. This ensures a long life and usability. I will stop at 10.0 to ensure slowness and battery draining doesn't kill my hardware prematurely.
OK 2017 will be the year of iPhone photos with bokeh effect. In all photos in all circumstances in all social media :)
It's wireless. Less space than Azure. Lame.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
Until sunk. Then IP00.
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
"it's the best iPhone we have ever created," Apple CEO Tim Cook said.
Amazing, I think I will now purchase an Apple iPhone 7 device due to this declaration by none other than the CEO of Apple. I was content with my Nexus 6P, but that has all changed now. Thanks slashdot for letting me know about this statement in particular, time for the trip behind the woodshed 6P.
Nothing says performance like that!
Bokeh is a function of the lens diameter relative to the subject distance (and distance of other objects from the focal plane). For a given scene, cannot be created any other way other than a physically bigger lens. You know the penumbra during an eclipse (the area experiencing a partial eclipse during a solar eclipse)? That corresponds to bokeh. There is nothing you can do on the ground to enlarge this area. It is purely a function of geometry. (Mathematically, it's the point distribution function of the lens.)
You can fake it in software. I've been saying for over a decade that two small lenses with some lateral separation should allow an algorithm to estimate distance and blur the parts of the picture outside the focal plane appropriately to simulate bokeh. But it's not real bokeh, it's a digital manipulation.
I thought they were supposed to introduce wireless charging with this iPhone too...
the iPhone 7 Plus has a pair of 12MP cameras that are able to take SLR-quality images
Don't lie to me.
It has a tiny little sensor that assuming has perfect glass is just providing false magnification as the lens is a f/1.8 with a pixel edge size of about 1.2um (assuming the same size sensor as in the Apple iPhone 5S) but the diameter of the airy disk would be 3.7um. So the smallest item resolvable would fill about a 3x3 grid. Granted software can get rid of some of that but it isn't going to magically make it deliver results like a full frame SLR with good lenses.
While it is probably a better camera than most other cellphones (seriously these cameras are shit) don't say it holds a candle to an older full frame DSLR or even my 40+ year old film SLR that has some really nice lenses with good film.
Time to offend someone
I'm glad to see that they are improving the color spaces that can be displayed on their screens. Maybe someday we'll be able to have a true orange on our monitors.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Courage my fat fucking ass. They removed the headphone jack to SCREW every customer into needing to either replace ALL of their sound equipment, or purchase expensive ass proprietary dongles. That is the 1 and only reason, no, the headphone jack is NOT the reason your phone isn't a millimeter thick, it's because fucking technology has not got there yet, forcing all of my stereo equipment into obsolesce is not courageous. It's clearly a desperate move from a company that's losing marketshare everytime they check the numbers, a company that flat out refuses to actually innovate while promoting their stolen features from competitors who beat them to the market by years "innovation" is pretty fucking funny. But this is indeed innovation, it's an innovative method to fuck each and every customer into having to replace a bunch of shit that doesn't need replacing.
The existing earpods have a habit of falling from my ears - and now they're not even going to be attached to some wires? Great.
Exactly my point, the applefan boys will argue, but you've nailed it 100%, we used to point to apple as the definition of "planned obsolescence" but this.... this is just obscene. This is too much. This is beyond bullshit and every single braindead apple moron thinks its GREAT! YAY! static and bullshit for all, continually disconnecting earbuds for EVERYONE.. But don't you dare attach this to a non apple device, no sir, we're going to tax you for that buy licensing the pretend better bluetooth tech at ridiculous amounts.
is Apple marketing speak for, "We will now be able to sell you a whole new set of branded accessories that you wouldn't have otherwise needed."
Prediction: This version of the iPhone sells significantly worse than the previous two.
I like you, Stuart. You're not like everyone else, here, at Slashdot.
"It's the worst iPhone we ever created!" - Tim Cook.
No, I don't believe he would say that... so why would someone quote him for saying something so unbelievably stupid. I mean, actually replying with the word courage on how they screwed the pooch on analogue is pretty good. Basically, they can say anything they want and they will ship a bazillion phones. I suppose I bought my last one.
Great, now I get to hear the OTHER end of the conversation on the bus too :(
Or relevant to how we use photos now. If you need large-scale printed media or high-quality video, you already know to not use a phone camera. For everything else, we are not suffering for phone-camera capability - it's just toys from this point onward.
They are getting very old and can at least use some price cuts / ram / cpu / disk bumps.
n/t
You are welcome on my lawn.
The phone ships with an adaptor that gives you back the audio jack you could copy from if you wished... no more DRM than before.
It just ALSO gives you an improved audio path that provides power to headphones.
What is wrong with having an improved set of choices? More importantly what the FUCK is wrong with people like you who should be embracing technology, being steadfastly against any change?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Now Apple is making their technology less accessible. I know a dozen people who can't use earbuds, either because of the shape of their ears, or their need for a hearing aid. They tend to try a bunch of headphones until they find one that fits or works.
Personally I don't get it.
Loved it on my first generation Sony walkman.
Not so keen on them in the past 20 or so years.
Getting rid of it seems like a great idea... especially since so many phone makers already did it and Apple is merely following the trend set by others.
People need to get over the headphone jack.
Wires suck.
Wired headphones suck even more.
The EarPods that ship with the phone are wired, just using the lightning port instead.
The new wireless EarPods you would have to buy, so if you don't think they will work, don't buy them. Personally I was worried about that also (while running the default pods will slip out of one ear) but the wireless pods may be batter, with the long stems against your cheek it seems like they would stay in better.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
35mm film 'high iso' (400-800) has more noise and approximately the same resolution as that old DSLR capturing 3k x 2k I was talking about. If you were using slower film with tripod (so that the image stabilizator didn`t improve the shot that much over the old one) you can definitely reach the level of my 4years old DSLR, but you had none of the advantages.
I`ll see how it fares against a 50mm F1.4, or at wide angle level.. or even against my telephoto objectives. The thing is, when I want to take good picture, I get my gear out and set myself up for nice shots. If I just want to keep a souvenir then the samsung s6 does the job pretty well. I still have my film cameras, but last week I finally decided to throw to the garbage the films I had kept in the freezer for the last decade. I was sad to throw off the slides films though, those were the best :)
and too much of it
So when other phone manufacturers blatantly copy something Apple has done, Apple is the bad guy for not sharing with the world; when Apple catches up to where others have been, they're sheep?
I'm sensing a double standard. And an idiot.
So how the fuck am I supposed to use my existing earbuds (which I just purchased) with the dongle while charging at the same time?
This is an absolute requirement so that I can watch Netflix without it draining the fuck out of my battery.
How am I supposed to watch video and charge the phone at the same time with this dongle?
If you keep the adaptor on your headphones how is it any harder to lose than your headphones? That's what I'll do with the adaptor, put it on my backup headphones and call it a day.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
What is so difficult about making a standard headphone jack water resistant? Or is "water resistance" simply a distraction/spin?
"Water resistance? Who cares."
My boss dropped his machine in the water this past weekend.
My wife left hers in a puddle when it fell out of the car unbeknownst to her.
I have know several people who have accidentally knocked theirs in the toilet.
Some people care even if you hope to never care.
Is that some bullshit hipster-ass marketing speak for "Depth of Field" or what?
Yup, ripped off from the Japanese in 1997.
Fucking marketspeak assholes.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
The word courage doesn't mean what you think it does.
Jesus, man.
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
So don't buy their headphones if they don't meet your needs? It's not like they're removing Bluetooth or something.
What is it about Apple making accessories for their products that enrages people? Just don't buy the fucking thing.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Do they still, like, you know, make and receive telephone calls?
D-SLR means Digital SLR. Yes, that`s as old as that. With image stabilization at the sensor level. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... . My current DSLR has 2 128GB SD card in it, and I can switch them around as I see fit with many other cards.
Why do I think it takes better photos ? Well I compared my Samsung S6 & my friend iPhone 6 plus pictures to those I had been taking years ago and it still wasn't equivalent to those old pictures. I was saying that it's possible that the new one will reach this level now, but it's still only a toy and not a tool. I already have a few friends who confirmed they will be updating, I guess I`ll find out soon enough.
Folks, before you mindlessly type your rant about the loss of a headphone jack: Things like this adapter are going to be everywhere - and include lots of market competition. Your 3.5mm jack will appear like a "dumb" phone in the blink of an eye. Remember, we have 6.5mm to 3.5in adapters for some of us, USB adapters for others, adapters for onboard-mic headsets, etc. This is just another in a long line of slight refinements on an idea. The 3.5mm connector itself is a changed standard. Think of video - we have countless adapters for generations of video, including proprietary nonsense from several companies, include Apple. Most people aren't going to care.
So why is Apple removing the headphone jack? Apple's SVP Phil Schiller said, "Screw you, that's why. We're Apple so if you don't like it you can go lick your sister." -- that's what he really meant.
So now, when I watch TV shows on Netflix while driving, I cannot charge my phone at the same time.
So when I get home, my phone will be almost dead instead of fully charged.
I guess this does require courage.
WTF
Also, focusing with a DSLR manually is still way faster than auto-focus on the phones. I mostly use aperture priority mode meaning that the exposure will auto-adjust. I use my thumbs wheels to adjust the aperture, iso, and sometime over/under exposing instantly. The settings needed for the 'current' picture targets are somewhat dialed in before and only minutes adjustments are needed. After taking tons of pictures with a telephoto you can dial in the focus toward your target very quickly too. But then, the autofocus on DSLR has improved quite a lot and does a great job in most situations, and I'm still on a 4 years old dslr. I might change again in 4 years, I'll see what's best at that point!
Apple calls it courage, I call it pathetic stupidity.
I use regular headphones/earbuds with my iphone all the time and have no intention to change that. I also am all set up to use my iphone playing music in my car using the headphone jack, and I use the same earbuds for my laptop and iphone when I travel to reduce gear clutter. Apple made a huge mistake with the new iphone this time, removing the headphone jack. I could buy a complete high-end android phone for the cost of the idiotic dongles and adapters Apple expects people to buy to use with the iphone as an alternative to buying new *everything else*. Does apple really expect me to buy some goofy dongle or a new car simply because my nice current car only has a headphone jack aux input? Pathetic stupidity.
The 3.5mm headphone jack standard... isn't.
Even after you set aside the issue of cheap manufacturers releasing shoddy products, you're still left with the fact that there is no actual standard dictating dimensions, number of contacts, location of contacts, size of contacts, separation distance between contacts, etc. Different manufacturers can and do make them slightly differently. More crucially, there's also no validation authority to check that your products meet all the specs.
Let's just take the most obvious dimension: 3.5mm. For ages, those phone plugs were advertised not as 3.5mm, but as 1/8 inch (3.175mm). So if you wanted to make something compatible with a "1/8 inch" plug, you might get your dimensions wrong. Apply this principle to every other contact's position and size on the plug, and you can see where this is going.
Moreover, some phone plugs have five contacts (Apple's own, for example). The "meaning" of each contact is not standardized -- that ring in the middle may be microphone input, or the contact switch (answer/hangup) on the cable, depending on who made it and what it was intended to be plugged in to. Further, if the rings in your cheap knock-off aren't lined up with the socket contacts, then bumping the plug could cause the socket contacts to short across the rings, which would get interpreted as a button press, and your call gets dropped.
The result of all this mish-mash was the Apple engineers found designing a (cost-effective) headphone jack that worked reliably with all headphones and headsets one might encounter in the world was simply impossible. You couldn't position the contacts in such a way that they would never short across two rings (some idiot may have placed their rings very badly). You couldn't know ahead of time which contacts did what, and probing at insertion time was fraught with other perils, especially if your contacts created a short across two rings. Despite their extensive research and massive efforts, they still got tons of support calls about how someone's cheap-ass headset didn't work in what has long been assumed to be a standard phone jack.
So my theory is: They declared the problem insoluble, yanked the phone plug, and designed a new digital interface.
An adapter for "3.5mm" stereo headphones will almost certainly be made available. Yes, you still have the compatibility problem with other "3.5mm" devices, but now the problem is in a $30 adapter, and not a $750 phone. It will be interesting to see how liberally Apple licenses their connector so that third parties can also furnish adapters.
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
It is stupidity. We already struggle to keep up with the iPhone battery. Now we'll struggle also with the wireless earbuds. Yes, it's stupidity. iPhone 8 will sport back the 3.5mm socket.
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
These examples you speak of are simple adapters (wires). This situation is not just an adapter, but a DAC. It converts a digital signal to analog. The lightning port does not have analog audio output. Depending on which one you buy, maybe it does it well, maybe it does it poorly. An adapter is easy to get right, almost any brand will do, don't even think about it, just grab one off the rack. For a DAC, you now have to do your research before buying it, and your search results will return wave upon wave of cheap knock-off crap from China. Ever shop for a USB charger? Like that.
Nope, they needed the cubic mm inside the case for.... well.... a 3rd camera? Really? I smell a rat. This was to make the headphone connector proprietary and allow them yet another shot at licensing dongles.
Absolute brilliant move, Apple!
By removing the headphone jack, they have ensured that people and media are so busy being upset that they fail to notice that there is nothing relevant new with the '7.
I'm seriously laughing at how Pokemon Go on the iWatch actually warranted a bullet point. The fad has already started it's downhill slide.
What's the big deal about lacking a headphone jack? Every phone comes with an adapter that plugs into lightning anyway. Or you can go wireless. Headphone jacks are old technology that you simply do not need. Your headphones still plug in just like they always did. It's like having a cow because your new car no longer comes with a spare tire. Get over yourselves.
That is the problem. Now you have another dongle. Another dongle to be easily lost, and if not lost easily broken. Another dongle to put stress on the connector.
Now what happens when you want to listen but need to charge. Now you need yet another dongle and hope that that y-dongle will allow you to charge and listen at the same time.
Just because something is old technology does not make it bad. There are still plenty of 60 year old speakers that sound just as good as they day they were bought and sound better than brand new ones with all sorts of fancy research put into them, because in the end it is still the same underlying concepts. Just because a headphone jack is old technology does not make it bad, in fact because it has been around for so long and is so ubiquitous there is no reason to change it for change sake because now you are just breaking compatibility with millions of devices. Perhaps if they provided some substantial benefit from its removal, sure. But 'water-resistance' whatever that means and has been done before while keeping the jack, definitely is not a good enough reason. I also have yet to meet anyone at this point that gives a damn if their phone is thinner, so that sure isnt it either.
Its purely change for change sake, leaving out the whole proprietary lock-in aspect
As Apple pointed out there are already lightning earbuds that exist today. They work with all audio.
In fact over time more and more audio feeds have been exportable from Apple devices as AirPlay support expands.
What you are arguing about makes as much sense as saying I shouldn't go outside because I could get hit by a meteor. How about you wait until you at least see a speck in the sky first?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I'm surprised it wasn't already water resistant. Quite a lot of phones are.
God, i KNOW, right????? - all of that constant Apple hate from the Microsoft fanbois "whaaaa, I don't want to use wireless proprietary headphones" "whaaaaa, why can't I just use the standard interface for headphones which has worked successfully for 60 years". I'm glad you were here to stick up for Apple.
I think maybe apple is lagging, but still the vast bulk of phones on the market are. Apple really doesn't tend to lead the market in most cases. I haven't found them to be trend setters as most innovation seems to be from the phone makers who are struggling for a foothold.
Once people start wanting something in large enough numbers it seems to become available from Apple.
Not really surprising there.
Solid improvements over time, but nothing grand.
What if you don't have Bluetooth headphones? The audio jack worked perfectly and was not broken or dysfunctional. It worked across most models of phone and other devices trivially. There is no new advantage to the consumer to the new Apple method.
So if they removed all USB adapters from a mac book, would you say that's ok because everyone can just buy thunderbolt adapters instead or store the data in the cloud?
Perhaps you would be so kind as to actually, you know, say what the drawbacks are?
The phones all ship with an adaptor. Most people use one set of headphones anyway - so they are covered.
Meanwhile newer headphones that can draw power from the jack for things like noise cancelation without batteries are more possible.
And the inside of the phone is simpler, with one less jack that can degrade/break/fill with lint.
All I can see here is upsides, with zero downsides for 99% of the people using smartphones today. For hundreds of millions of people, this will be better and not inconvenience them in any way. How is this not better?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
If only Apple's iOS would support a decent Bluetooth codec like AptX (note: I said decent, not excellent). AAC and SBC are pretty sub-par. And OSX and Macbooks support AptX. But iOS devices? Nope. Not there. You're stuck with old Bluetooth technology when it comes to data transmission... And high latency at that (not even the very good latency performance of AptX low latency) - but I guess if you like watching movies that all appear to be poorly dubbed kung-fu style movies (where the sound lags the picture by several hundred milliseconds), then you're set!
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
It's not been true of any audio jack I've ever used that just "a little force" is required to unplug it.
The wires on most headphones would come close to breaking before the jack would unplug...
Keep reaching!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Apple has lost an idiot as a customer? Probably not a big loss. Nobody is forcing you to buy a wireless handset and nothing is stopping you from trying out the adapter in an Apple Store to check the quality when it comes out.
-Matt
Don't most new cars come with USB? They generally play audio over that connection... which covers charging as well.
That's for people who don't want to use Bluetooth for audio (and I freely admit I do not like using Bluetooth).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Apple always has a plan. The next years iPhone will be super thin (since it no longer has to be thick enough to accommodate 3.5mm jack) and waterproof to N meters (since everything can now be sealed). All while providing even higher performance and more battery life. Plus you can now have active noise cancellation in your wired headphones without a separate power adapter. Watch every other manufacturer jump onto USB-C bandwagon to do the same.
Apple is claiming they did it to make the phone waterproof. Apparently, they didn't bother to spend about 12 seconds with Google searching for "ip67 headphone jack", because if they DID, they'd have found countless IP67-rated headphone jacks like this one:
http://koumay.en.alibaba.com/p...
For those who don't know, the "7" in "IP67" means "waterproof to a depth of 1 meter for 30 minutes". I didn't have time to search further, but I'd be shocked if there wasn't at least one company that makes IP68 ("waterproof to a depth guaranteed by manufacturer, generally 1-3 meters, for some period of time also guaranteed by the manufacturer"). Note that IP ratings for things like headphone jacks don't guarantee that the jack itself won't end up with gunk in it if you drop it into mud, only that the jack ITSELF won't allow water to pass through to the interior of the phone case.
For $169 using the exact same shape as the normal ear buds but now wireless with a recharging case, means you are going to lose an AirPod in record time. Those suckers fall out of my ears all the damn time to the point I replaced the ear buds with something much better. Not even working out, just walking around or just sitting still and they fall out.
I'd rather pay a bit more for German headphones than any Beats or Apple EarBud/AirPod... I don't get the popularity of Beats, they make you look like a friggin' moron. Early iPhone adopters were mugged due to the white headphones clearly indicating you had an iPhone...
> . In the past they had to have a one size fits all approach to D/A conversion for the headphones
Oh fuck off with that. You can buy lightning headphones right now, they have a built in D/A conversion. They work with existing phones that actually have a 3.5 jack as well. You can buy a lightning DAC right now. These work with existing phones that actually have a 3.5 jack as well. All they are doing is removing choice- all the options you are talking about work with older iPhones.
What if the battery in your bluetooth just croaked and the came just went into over time. No zipping out to the quicky mart to pick up $5 earbuds....
Supporting World Peace Through Nuclear Pacification
Here's hoping my 5S lasts three more years. I refuse to buy any phone without a 3.5mm jack.
Are these bluetooth airPods abomination going survive a 4 hour call? The phone does, but I doubt tiny little powered buds will.
Good thing they still make the SE (the four-inch phone). Everything else in their catalog is just bleh to me.
Way to fuck it up, Apple!
The "Civilized World" jumped the shark ca. 1973.
Right. The old iPhone is a piece of shit, now that there's a newer one.
Where were you with that point last month?
so...yet another reason to get an Android phone instead.
Of course there will still be the hordes of sheeple lining up for one just because its Apple.
At this point I honestly think Apple could literally put a turd in a box and they'd still rush to buy it.
I've got a fever, and the only prescription is more bokeh
lucm, indeed.
If they don't replace it with a proprietary wireless product right now, how could they switch to an incompatible other wireless product that is "better" two phone generations down the road? This planned obsolescence won't appear by itself, someone has to get the ball rolling.
lucm, indeed.
Sure there's an advantage. The iPhone 6 if inadvertantly spilled on with liquid would die. This one, won't. One of the reasons for that is no mini-jack socket
Oh bullshit. My samsung s7 comes with a 3.5 jack and some how samsung made it spill and puddle diving resistance.
Supporting World Peace Through Nuclear Pacification
That is all I have to say.
No phone jack makes it a non-starter.
Hopefully Android phones have the sanity to keep theirs.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
You're wearing them wrong
They're always enraged about something. When Apple does stuff, people talk about it and you get to hear from them. You're not there when they bark about the green banana conspiracy at the local grocery store, or the quinoa hegemony at the hotel restaurant. You missed their rants about the weather and the Canadian president's hair. Did they mention there were weird smells at the movie theatre? Unbelievable!
But the worst thing is definitely the headphone jack. Clearly they just want to force everyone to buy $9 adapters every week when the old ones break, or get lost, or get stolen by corporate adapter-retrieval squirrels. It's monstrous.
They must have a different meaning of SLR quality from me.
The entry level Canon is an 18mp camera with interchangeable lenses. It has a significantly larger sensor that would enable a significantly different depth of field, and rang of depths. Further, you can completely manipulate the aperture, shutter and ISO. And you can export RAW for MUCH greater flexibility in editing. And you can mount it easily on tripods, dollys, etc. And by using different lengths you can manipulate the bokeh.
Hype much?
Actually, for me that is probably the most valuable feature. Getting bigger, faster, etc. is expected. What concerns me are things like durability. I've had my iPod Touch for years now, and three times I was afraid I might have to be without it. First I dropped it in the woods, not sure how one would fix that problem though. Second time it fell out of my pocket and into a puddle, thankfully I got it out of the water quickly and I saw no permanent damage. The third time was when I dropped my iPod onto a hard concrete floor. Newer devices have tougher glass to deal with such abuses and had I got a new iPod recently I would not be dealing with a cracked screen right now. It still works but the cracks in the screen are annoying so I'm looking for a replacement.
A piece of electronics designed to fit in a pocket with the durability to handle short drops onto hard floors and puddles of water are a selling point to me. If it also has something to help me find it again if lost in the woods then I will be much more likely to buy it over the competition.
The loss of a headphone jack is a non-issue for me. Since the headphone jack on my iPod wore out months ago I've learned to do without. What I would have liked is a cheap replacement for the worn headphone jack but none exist. With this iPhone I know one is available. So, perhaps less than a non-issue but actually a plus.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
OS X supports AptX - I can't think of any reason other than sheer stupidity that they wouldn't put it into iOS 10 as well, now that they're triumphantly leading us all to the wireless future with their "courage".
But you're right, even AptX needs work.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
What makes my iPhone actually indispensable, to me, is not just the internal and net-connected functionality, but - and equally important - also the ancillary functionality achieved via the physically connectable accessories from light meter and mics, to a host of other input and output-ables. Also the re-purchase of all these tools....Gaaahr! Courage, indeed! I guess we'll have to see who will snap this up and re-purchase everything currently in use in BT version. Won't be me.