Other What was your favorite breakthrough in the evolution of the iPhone?

[gtg465x]

The Plus / Max sizes for sure. Can you remember how tiny iPhone screens used to be (3.5") and how the competion was already way beyond 5". Apple lost a lot of ground against Android manufacturers before leapfrogging them with their larger screens on iPhone 6 and 6 Plus.

I voted this as well. I had a brief (less than a year) stint with a used iPhone 4S and new iPhone 5, but went back to Android, mostly because the screen was still way too small, even with the larger 5. I gave iPhone another shot 4 years later with the 7 Plus, and never looked back after that.

 

[lybentius]

I voted retina, but Face ID is up there too. Actually, it’s the gesture-based system more so than Face ID that I like, but Face ID is a great feature.

The iPhone 4 was my first Apple phone. Beautiful design, FaceTime and that gorgeously crisp display was enough to pull me into the walled garden. That and Angry Birds/Tap Tap Revenge. Both were iOS exclusives at the time. Haha

I loved tap tap!

 

[applepotato666]

Taptic Engine for sure. It’s such an invisible thing but it made a huge difference for the experience. And vibration finally became what it’s supposed to be, a truly silent way to alert. No one has matched it to this day

 

[iFone88]

Going from 7 to X, ie, the full screen

 

[Ryan1524]

App Store
FaceID
The iCloud ecosystem across devices: things like continuity, handoff, etc
Privacy bubble

 

[NOATAK]

I chose 'Apple Pay' as it is one of the biggest reasons I won't go back to Android

 

[luigi.lauro]

App Store, Retina display, FaceID, TouchID, in this order.

 

[lkalliance]

It delights me that there is such a diversity of answers!

I agree that the capacitive touchscreen and the App Store were huge huge developments, bigger than anything on the list...for that reason I just opted not to include them in the poll. Without the touchscreen, there is no iPhone; without the App Store, you could argue there isn't one either.

 

[tompaulman]

Touch ID followed by Apple Pay. Since then, no few features have been as significant as these two.

 

[Skadoosh]

Face ID and the high refresh display.

 

[lkalliance]

Touch ID followed by Apple Pay. Since then, no few features have been as significant as these two.

I remember when they introduced Touch ID, and they cited a stat that 50% of iPhone users didn’t use a password at all. The next year I wondered what that stat had changed to, or what the percentage was for users of Touch ID-enabled phones, but I don’t remember them saying. But by now, between Touch ID and Face ID, that percentage has to be close to 100%, right?

(Though it still begs the question of how tough everyone’s password is. You still need it from time to time, and it is still securing your phone. Mine is 11 digits.)

 

[lkalliance]

Almost 150 votes in, and close to half of the votes are for something display-related (Retina Display, larger screen sizes, edge-to-edge) and another third of the votes are for biometrics.

 

[Ntombi]

I chose Apple Pay, though several on the list were strong contenders.

Apple Pay because it not only made things easier on the phone, but it made a huge difference generally. In the eighteen months before Apple Pay, I had to replace three cards due to credit card info being hacked at companies like Target and Home Depot. The pure hassle of your card being compromised has a lot of ripple effects, including dealing with autopay and so on.

So, even though adoption of NFC payments was slow in some areas (I’m looking at you, anti-Apple Pay consortium whose name I can’t remember), and I still get comments from cashiers marveling at how I can use my Apple Watch to pay for things, the fact that I can use the wallet to store tickets, vaccine records, gift cards, and pay options without worry has improved my life, not just my phone experience.

 

[lkalliance]

I chose Apple Pay, though several on the list were strong contenders.

Apple Pay because it not only made things easier on the phone, but it made a huge difference generally. In the eighteen months before Apple Pay, I had to replace three cards due to credit card info being hacked at companies like Target and Home Depot. The pure hassle of your card being compromised has a lot of ripple effects, including dealing with autopay and so on.

So, even though adoption of NFC payments was slow in some areas (I’m looking at you, anti-Apple Pay consortium whose name I can’t remember), and I still get comments from cashiers marveling at how I can use my Apple Watch to pay for things, the fact that I can use the wallet to store tickets, vaccine records, gift cards, and pay options without worry has improved my life, not just my phone experience.

When Apple Pay came out, I was still on an iPhone 5c. I got my first Apple Pay-enabled phone in 2016, so at least a year and a half after its launch. I went into a Kohl's to buy something. I knew from keeping up with such things that Kohl's accepted Apple Pay. So the clerk rang me up, and I tapped my phone. Evidently she didn't see me do it...she said, whoa, what happened? It says here you already paid! She had expected to get a credit card. I had to explain Apple Pay to her before she would let me leave.

Fast forward several years. Just last year, in fact. Again, in Kohl's. I go to check out, and I ask the clerk, really just as a courtesy, do they accept Apple Pay? She says sure, just call up the app. The app? She wanted me to call up the Kohl's app on my phone, and it would generate a QR code, yadda yadda...

I said you're kidding me, right? I'm not using your app. Don't you just accept Apple Pay? Sure, she says, like I said, just call up the app...

So I thought, "screw it" and took my phone and held it to the terminal. And of course it just worked, because Kohl's accepts Apple Pay. And of course she was confused as all get-out.

*eyeroll*

BTW, I know what you mean about people being surprised about my being able to pay with the Watch. I got the Watch early in the pandemic, so I was wearing a mask everywhere, and just using my physical card instead of fumbling with my phone password. And my daughter, who works in a grocery store, told me one day how it still took her aback when she saw people pay with their Watch...and the lightbulb went on. Now, even though there aren't barriers to Face ID for me, I would just rather use the Watch.

 

[Fred Zed]

Other. Total seamless integration when going full iCloud and Apple eco system. Luv it.

 

[TheKDub]

I would say App Store. It changed the iPhone from a phone/browser with great, but still limited functionality, into truly a portable computer, while starting up an entire mobile app industry. I mean, even the word "app" was popularized from App Store (remember when we used to call them "exe" or "programs" on PCs or even just "applications").

 

[lkalliance]

Other. Total seamless integration when going full iCloud and Apple eco system. Luv it.

It still gives me a tiny little pleasure to import photos from my DSLR to my Mac, and to have them just appear on my phone; or to sign up for a service on one device and be able to log in on another with just a biometric login.

 

[timber]

Retina display with Touch ID as a close second. The moment they were introduced at keynotes you could instantly feel they would be legendary.

Some of the others aren't even innovations, just Apple copying others.

 

[lkalliance]

Retina display with Touch ID as a close second. The moment they were introduced at keynotes you could instantly feel they would be legendary.

Exactly how I felt. Those two. I don't think Retina Display changed the paradigm of how I would use my phone, per se...I mean, I had a screen before, one that I was happy with. But holy moly, I can't conceive of being happy with looking at photos or watching video on a 3GS screen at this point. Touch ID, that changed everything I thought, and I didn't even think at that point about a future with a payment system (though I did think that it wouldn't be long before it replaced passwords).

 

[reppans]

For me, it was the combination of screen size over 6”, and battery SOT over 15hrs, that was the tipping point to finally consolidate onto a single device for 99% of my comms & computing needs.

 

[Ryan1524]

Retina display with Touch ID as a close second. The moment they were introduced at keynotes you could instantly feel they would be legendary.

Some of the others aren't even innovations, just Apple copying others.

If you look at most ideas, there's rarely anything new. Go back far enough, and almost anything 'new' can still be traced back to nature. Just because a thing is an iteration, or a different implementation of a prior thing doesn't make it less good. Especially if it's done well, or better, than previous examples.

 

[lkalliance]

If you look at most ideas, there's rarely anything new. Go back far enough, and almost anything 'new' can still be traced back to nature. Just because a thing is an iteration, or a different implementation of a prior thing doesn't make it less good. Especially if it's done well, or better, than previous examples.

Plus, if you're an iPhone user with no intention of moving to Android, then these are breakthroughs because if Apple didn't do them, then you weren't going to get them, regardless of whose ideas they were. When I fashioned the poll, I purposefully didn't use the word "innovation", I felt that did suggest "invented by". Though one might look at the word "breakthrough" and reasonably consider that to mean "innovation", so *shrug*.

 

[timber]

If you look at most ideas, there's rarely anything new. Go back far enough, and almost anything 'new' can still be traced back to nature. Just because a thing is an iteration, or a different implementation of a prior thing doesn't make it less good. Especially if it's done well, or better, than previous examples.

It's true, most of Apple's innovations are usually great implementations or use cases.

But larger screens or wireless charging are just plain rip off (and I'm happy they did that, you can't invent gunpowder every single day) and it's not fair to give the same (or even close) credit to looking at existent high dpi screens and implementing Retina or taking those finger sensors nobody ever used for something really useful and coming up with Touch ID.

 

[Ryan1524]

I'm a little bit irritated with this constant demand for 'Innovations'.

Coming from an Engineering background, and now working in Product, it's hard work to continually produce iterative improvements on just about anything. Time and resources are limited, and we need to carefully choose what would solve the most painful problems for the most amount of users.

Inventing something radical and new sounds fabulous and grand, but what's the point if it doesn't solve a real issue? There seems to be this expectation that companies need to constantly reinvent things and leap forward in technology. This is not how great things are built, it's always in small iterative increments.

As for copying, or not copying, I dare anyone to try and reinvent the wheel. Often it's far more sensible, and fruitful, to build on top of existing solutions. Starting from scratch and coming with something genuinely new is risky, and often pointless.

/rant

I didn't see it on the poll, but Taptic Engine should be on there. It's improved how we interact with these devices. Feedback is important, and I love the realistic tap/click feel from the iPhone or the incredibly responsive trackpad on the Macbooks because of it.

 

[lkalliance]

It's true, most of Apple's innovations are usually great implementations or use cases.

But larger screens or wireless charging are just plain rip off (and I'm happy they did that, you can't invent gunpowder every single day) and it's not fair to give the same (or even close) credit to looking at existent high dpi screens and implementing Retina or taking those finger sensors nobody ever used for something really useful and coming up with Touch ID.

It's not about credit (at least, not in the sense of this poll). If you were an iPhone user in 2013, you did not have access to larger screens. It doesn't matter if larger screens existed elsewhere: if you used iPhone and were disinclined to switch, you didn't have it. Apple coming out with the larger-screened iPhone 6 and the even larger iPhone 6 Plus was a huge deal, and the exploding sales figures backed that up. As a breakthrough feature, this one may have been the one that was the most profitable to Apple out of all of them.