I think with this update all the focus has been on the software side--the last update brought the retina display and the hardware redesign; now we get iCloud, iTunes Match, iMessage, more Airplay/Facetime availability (?) and so on.
While those things are good additions, they are not what most people were looking for, the notification system was the biggest mess, and yet they still only managed to halfway fix it, you'll still need to jailbreak to get a status bar icon! The cloud offers me nothing, I have 1 gig of music on my phone, so it's a gimmick, iMessage is ok, but I have unlimited texting, so again it's of no benefit. Still no Facetime over 3G, I've been doing it for over a year thanks to the jailbreak devs
If the focus was on the software side, that's pretty bad, they are playing catch-up with other phones and yet they still didn't get it right.
Meanwhile other companies are pumping out a dozen phones or more every year, in all shapes and sizes, with more software features, yet you're telling me the most valuable company on Earth can't build one phone and one OS update every year? I don't buy that because it's utter nonsense, the only thing that could stop Apple is they are
choosing not to.
In other words, it's true that the iP4 specs have been matched and sometimes beaten by competitors, but simply having a bigger spec sheet has never been what Apple excels at, or has even tried to excel at. Instead, they're focused on the experience, and hardware is only part of that. I wouldn't be at all surprised to see that this year was more of a software refresh with some slight hardware bumps. Just the iOS 5 features have already got people excited.
While there is truth to that, after spending time with some of my friends "inferior" Android phones, that are much faster, and offer a far better "user experience", than the locked down iPhone, I wonder if that's just marketing spin.
What exactly is there to be excited about with iOS 5? The only things that interest me is the notification system and Reminders, I know the jailbreak devs will fix the flaws of the notification system, but then I have had a superior notification system on my iPhone for a couple years now.
The UI is still exactly as it was in 07, when you look at OS 1 and OS 5 they look identical, and just like a car that hasn't be re-designed in ten years, it looks and feels stale, eventually the average consumer is going to catch on (which I personally feel they already have going by how many people I know that have left the iPhone).
And it's worth remembering that the vast majority of iPhone users are not the usual tipb.com reader. Many are still happily using the 3GS they've never synced, unaware even that they could update their software. I just explained the app switcher to someone who has been using her iP4 for a year; she had no idea it was there. For people like this, specs--if they mean anything at all--are very far down the list, and certainly well below the ease-of-use factor that has made the iPhone so popular in the first place.
And those people would probably still be happy with a RAZR, I believe Apple should strive to be the best, and that's how the iPhone became #1, never updating the thing because Sally soccer mom is a moron and won't notice, doesn't seem like a good business plan.
I really hope Apple has a secret iPhone 5 they've been hiding with a larger screen and other improvements, but I'm not holding out much hope, the iPhone 4 was a must buy, now 15 months later, buying another iPhone 4 with the same boring locked down OS seems like a bad investment. I think some people really need to go out and see some of the new phones out from the competition, they really are good.
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