Apple Keynote 2014 – My Obligatory Reaction Post

It’s that time of year again – the time when Apple announce its new hardware and software to the world. This yearly tradition has been met by geeks and consumers alike as an event that sets the standards for the following years consumer technology. Apple Keynote 2014.

As would be relevant to a blog from someone like me, I am going to give a quick summary of my thoughts based on the information at hand – I’m not going to go all out explaining every detail about what was announced, I am simply going to give my honest opinions, in my typical style.

So, let’s begin!

iPhone 6 / iPhone 6 Plus

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Well, as anyone would expect, we have the next generation of iPhone announced – this actually, in the same style as the iPhone 5s and 5c, being a paired release of phones, both featuring upgraded hardware and new features in comparison to last years offerings. What else is new, though? People seem surprised that there are new design elements to the devices, which makes sense, considering a year has passed, and naturally, a company would want to update and upgrade it’s offerings to fit with the times.

That being said, we are looking at a more powerful processor, this time the A8 chip, which means absolutely nothing to me – they claim 50x to 80x performance increase, but of course don’t define just what this means in regard to how people use their phones – I don’t doubt there is an increase, but I would like to hear actual tech specs, and see what the benchmark standards are.

I would certainly think the new chipset would provide more efficient power usage, so I could imagine their claims on battery life are legit, under their testing and control standards, but real world usage will of course be much lower than the stated time – “up to” of course doesn’t mean “use the phone nonstop and this is the time it will last you,” but inevitably I know people will complain about battery life. They always do, which I don’t understand, since battery life on such devices has always been rather poor. This isn’t a new phenomenon people.

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The Apple website also states the phone has a new camera, which again, makes perfect sense. I have yet to use the camera on any recent iPhone to judge quality, but I know mobile device cameras are getting better every year, so I have no doubts this will be a fine camera for most users. I still prefer true full body dedicated cameras for my photography, but for quick shots, instagram, and everyday usage this camera sounds like it will be good enough, so I won’t give any flack here beyond the usual: It’s a cell phone, don’t expect good zoom, or award winning quality.

There are some cool new features on the software end, in this case, video stabelization (a desperately needed feature, if you ask me), high-speed slow motion capture, 60fps 1080 playback, and a host of other tweaks. That’s something useful, so props to them for putting more quality into the device.

The iPhone upgrades seem to have flowed into the realm of gaming as well, with something called “Metal” promising a more “”console like experience” to gaming on the device. Okay, that’s great if true, but how many developers are actually going to provide full, top quality games for the device that would actually take advantage of such? I’m not saying this a bad idea, I just think it won’t be taken advantage of like it should be.

Then we come to the display. The pixel-packed Retina display has been overhauled, now being touted as the Retina HD display. Now a Retina display is just a buzz term for a screen with a high pixel density. It may display at a lower resolution, but it has many more pixels, resulting in arguably a sharper image. In this case, we are dealing with 4 or 7 inch screens with full 1080 HD support. That will certainly result in a sharp image on such a tiny display, but honestly, the resolution is the same as on your TV or computer screen, just on your phone, which makes it look better, since its smaller, because, that’s just how things appear. Pretty cool, really. I mean, I don’t think its necessary, but if people take advantage of the high resolution, then it will be worth it.

Beyond that, they claim to have enhanced the display contrast, view-ability, and general quality of the display, which I don’t doubt. Again, cool.

The last thing to note is that the iPhone 6 Plus will be 5.5 inches in size, versus the 4.7 inch size of the iPhone 6. This is obviously intended to fill the want for larger phones that most people seem to have, seeing the high sales rates of the larger Android and Windows Phone based handsets. This is a move that I am neutral on, as I actually prefer smaller phones generally. That’s just my opinion though.

 

Apple Watch

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Okay, we have all heard the jokes about Apple making a watch. Seems like they actually did it.

Now, I don’t care much for this thing, as I am not a watch person, but it looks interesting enough. It is supposed to link with your iPhone 5 or later, and various apps will have their information displayed on the phone, and all that jazz. It’s about what you would expect, from what I can tell, and honestly is kind of boring to me. I don’t want to go over it much more than that here, partially because of it being a product for next year, and also because of my aforementioned apathy.

There ya go. My obligatory post about Apple and their hardware that will get this site far more hits than it needs. I have no shame in admitting I wrote this mainly so that I would get those hits. Who can blame me? At least I’m honest about it!

No, I didn’t cover all the topics of the Keynote – Maybe I will touch on some of those as they get fleshed out more in the general public.  I just wanted to give my thoughts on what I see of the more important (to me) aspect of this – the core hardware that Apple is pushing out to challenge the already excessively flooder consumer mobile market.

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