Other Should Have Been Called the “#S”

[Channan]

Are we really going to keep hearing this every year? “The 13 should have been called the 12S.” “The 14 should have been called the 13S.”

It’s just a name. It doesn’t matter what Apple calls their new phones. At the end of the day, it will still be the same phone regardless. Apple hasn’t done an S since the XS so it looks like they’re not naming their phones with an S anymore. Stop whining about it.

 

[woolypants]

Apple used to follow the tick-tock development model.

Nowadays it's trying to follow a tick-tick model. The problem is that this means people expect a lot from each release. Commentators have been suggesting it's unsustainable for a while now, especially when it comes to software releases.

 

[lkalliance]

Apple used to follow the tick-tock development model.

Nowadays it's trying to follow a tick-tick model. The problem is that this means people expect a lot from each release. Commentators have been suggesting it's unsustainable for a while now, especially when it comes to software releases.

I really wish they'd go back to that. Not just with hardware but with software. In my head I think that would make them twice as stable...but probably what really would happen is they would be twice as many features and just as likely to yet be unstable.

I liked what Nilay Patel had to say at The Verge:

The way I’ve been thinking about Apple’s current iPhone lineup is that the iPhone 13 Pro was the culmination of a lot of ideas for Apple — it was confident and complete and kind of hard to criticize. The iPhone 14 is basically a slight remix of the 13, and it feels like the same culmination of ideas in many ways.

The iPhone 14 Pro, on the other hand, is the clear beginning of lots of new ideas, like the Dynamic Island, the new camera, and that satellite connectivity system. Because these ideas are new, they’re inherently incomplete. But they’re worth criticizing, which is its own kind of victory and a sign that Apple isn’t holding still with the future of the iPhone. I think we could all stand to think more deeply about how our smartphones work, and things like the Dynamic Island are evidence that Apple is still thinking deeply about parts of the iPhone experience.