As an iPhone Air owner here’s my honest take: Build quality, screen, and performance are all fantastic. No compromises there.
Compromises are battery, no additional camera lenses. Single speaker. Some niche USB limits.
Battery life is fine overall but on days of heavy use/travel it’s noticeable. Single camera lens is ok but I do miss the telephoto on occasion. Single speaker gets made fun of online, but for any serious listening you’re going to use headphones anyway.
Charge speed via USB is lower than the pros and you can’t do video-out over USB.
They sold just fine. They just didn't sell a billion million units, so in Apple land that was considered a "failure". Most manufacturers would've been stoked to get the sales figures the iPhone mini got.
The same thing goes for cheaper phones. Apple has made some phones that were a little bit cheaper than the flagship phone, but most people still buy the more expensive phones if it’s not the most expensive, it’s the next one down that most people buy.
My take is that engineers were hypnotised by the technology (which is incredible) and they ignored the downstream social/political/economic factors until it became too obvious. Like moths to a flame.
We saw this play out with the social media era. Incredible technology but it’s now ossified into deteriorating closed platforms mostly filled with algorithmic, ragebait slop surrounded by ads. Fool me once.
> “(talking about when he tells his wife he’s going out to buy an envelope) Oh, she says well, you’re not a poor man. You know, why don’t you go online and buy a hundred envelopes and put them in the closet? And so I pretend not to hear her. And go out to get an envelope because I’m going to have a hell of a good time in the process of buying one envelope. I meet a lot of people. And, see some great looking babes. And a fire engine goes by. And I give them the thumbs up. And, and ask a woman what kind of dog that is. And, and I don’t know. The moral of the story is, is we’re here on Earth to fart around. And, of course, the computers will do us out of that. And, what the computer people don’t realize, or they don’t care, is we’re dancing animals.”
So funny. I need to make a monthly HOA payment. The bank is about a half mile away. I write a check every month at home, I walk to the bank, see random things in the neighborhood on the way, see a fire truck, see the little toddlers from the Montessori school on a leash with safety vests (always makes me smile), fill out a deposit slip, chat with the teller at the bank during the deposit, get a coffee and sit outside, walk home. What a fun little adventure!
My wife finally convinced me to just do the online, recurring payment every month. I definitely miss the physical act of walking the check to the tiny town bank every month.
I'll drive all the way to the city, to visit a store to buy a pair of pants or something (what I'm buying doesn't matter)
My wife doesn't understand why I don't just buy them online. I know my size, I know the style I want, and I know the company sells em online. But it's not about the item. It's about tossing on a podcast, or seeing something new, or even just getting mad at someone in traffic for cutting me off.
The journey is often more important than the destination
This is the administration that got close to getting the Supreme Court overturning the pretty clear wording of the 14th amendment. Do you think they care about the 1st?
But if you just gave customers the video files, they’d get leaked. We can’t have 4K Dolby Vision + Atmos files just floating around for people to pirate!
Oh wait, despite all the DRM we have that anyway. What a huge waste of effort all this protection has been.
Just a reminder to anyone reading that accessibility features are not just for other people but they are for our future selves. Growing old, getting injured etc are things that will happen to us all.
Affected world population:
"Whereas the presbyopic population is expected to increase from approximately 2.1 billion people currently2 to more than 4 billion people in 2050 (approximately 40% of the world’s population)3"
They’ve been working towards this since the introduction of ARKit in iOS back in 2016. Maybe even earlier.
They’ve done a very good job at proving the required tech with stuff like putting LiDAR in iPhones which is key to the Vision Pro….which is their AR interaction model testing ground. They are taking a pretty measured approach.
I just don’t think the physical tech is ready for AR glasses that reach a level of polish that Apple would ship mass market. But all the other pieces are there.
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