Wondersomethingsomething

I don’t know if you realised this, but the Lightning connector on iPhones has had a longer lifespan than the headphone jack. Apple was quicker to remove a well-established, widespread standard in the name of ‘courage’, yet left Lightning — a proprietary, and by now aging connector — on iPhones for eleven years. With Apple, it should be clear by now that ecosystem comes before customers.

I didn’t really want to write this article. Not for lack of enthusiasm (though that is still present), but for a matter of honesty. For the first time in a long time, I didn’t watch the Apple “Wonderlust” event on 12 September. I don’t know if it was my workload or just plain absentmindedness, but I simply forgot about it and went for a walk instead. I tried to watch it the day after on Apple’s website, and I don’t know if I was tired or (as my contacts on social media suggest) if the event itself was boring, but I fell asleep after about 20 minutes.

So I really don’t have firsthand impressions about the event. I watched some shorter summaries on YouTube, and the excellent recap-with-critical-commentary video by Quinn Nelson, which gave me a fairly good idea of what was introduced at the event, and whether it matters.

I’m writing this piece only because I’ve received a significant-enough number of emails and requests that couldn’t just be ignored. But I wanted to be honest and clear about a few things: I missed the event, I’m not particularly interested in any of the things Apple introduced, and in my (very biased) commentary I may miss some nuances or details I could have caught if I’d taken a much deeper dive into these things.

For me the biggest deal of the event is the introduction of USB‑C on the iPhone, at long last, after the European legislators beat some standard sense into Apple. The rest — and I’m borrowing the impression of many who watched the event in its entirety — was pretty much a boring, predictable expanse. In his article about the event, John Gruber goes on for almost 700 words in the introduction to explain that this event may have been boring to some people, and that the iPhone September events may be repetitive and iterative in nature but are actually very much iconic, “the Super Bowls of technology”. I find that to be a very hilariously American-centric comparison. A lot of people outside the US don’t know when the Super Bowl is supposed to happen, and some regular folks don’t even know what the Super Bowl specifically is, apart from a vague ‘big American sports event’. The first time I heard about it, many many years ago, I initially thought it was related to bowling.

Despite Gruber’s attempts to paint the ‘Wonderlust’ event as something iconic and exciting, these past few years Apple’s September iPhone events have really felt boring and repetitive. A very diverse network of people has grown around me, both online and offline; the spectrum goes from very tech-savvy nerds and developers, to regular folks who are tech literate enough to use current devices unaided, to people who are not into tech at all and rely on the advice of others to make their purchases. And while such network can only produce anecdotal data, I’ve seen statistics made with smaller samples. So, when I said, Damn, I forgot Apple’s event was today and went out for a walk instead, a lot of people in my network told me I didn’t really miss out on anything special. The majority of those I interacted with weren’t particularly excited about anything regarding the event.

Compared with the previous generation, the new iPhones are faster, have an improved camera system, and are made with different materials. I could use these words to describe the iPhone 11 line compared with the X, XS and XR iPhone models. But Rick, this time titanium is a big deal, because it makes iPhones lighter than their predecessors. Well, it was about time, I’d say. Since today we have to endure oversized smartphones, making them lighter is the least Apple and other brands could do.

According to some tech YouTubers, the new camera system in the iPhone 15 Pro models is a big deal too. It’s probably a big deal for those who rely on their phones for all their photography and videography needs. Hardware-wise these cameras are a true engineering feat, and thanks to the computational heavy lifting behind the scenes, the final result can be stunning in the right hands. But as someone who uses cameras, not smartphones, for most of his photography, smartphone photography has become less interesting and less exciting exactly since computational photography has taken the lion’s share of image processing. Photos, even good photos taken with the last four generations of iPhones to me — to me — look artificial, clinical, lacking character (That ‘Apple website’ flair, a friend commented), at times overprocessed and with a somewhat weird colour science. Like I said on Mastodon, when showing older iPhone photos, I often get asked which camera I used. When seeing shots taken with more current iPhones, I often hear comments like, Yep, typical iPhone look.

The fact that the cameras on the iPhone 15 Pro models will be able to shoot ‘spatial videos’ — which, as far as I know, you’ll only be able to enjoy through the Vision Pro headset — and that for some this is another big deal, is another hilarious detail for me. And another example of ecosystem before customers. These 3D memories that will feel like magic in your Apple Vision Pro, how long they’ll truly last? After the death of my mother I had to sell my parents’ house and therefore remove all our personal belongings. In doing so, I came across a huge amount of memories in the form of old slides and printed photos (in most cases with their negatives carefully preserved). I saw pictures of myself when I was just a little child. I saw scenes from my parents’ and grandparents’ childhoods. Photos taken 50, 60, even 90 years ago. Will your children and grandchildren, 90 years from now, be able to watch that spatial video you shot in late 2023 or 2024? I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe after a long chain of format conversions. Maybe through applications created by wise souls who see past the innovation du jour of our tech overlords.

I digress. I wanted to understand if these new iPhones were actually this big deal some kept repeating. A few YouTubers all seemed to sing to the tune of ‘the new iPhone looks like a small update, but there’s much more to it than meets the eye’. So I turned to more prominent and established tech reviewers like Marques Brownlee, Dave Lee, Michael Fisher. They always have the most balanced reviews, I think, because they’re all constantly using and testing different platforms, and when it comes to new features on a phone, they can look farther than any fanboy and put things in a more objective perspective.

After listening to their impressions, my takeaway is that, well, the new iPhone 15 and 15 Pro are actually an incremental update and little more. Here are the features that, based on these reviewers, seem worth mentioning:

The new building materials. Titanium is a good choice especially because it allows the new iPhone 15 Pro models to be lighter than last year’s Pro models, but also feel even lighter in the case of the Pro Max.

Better displays. Brighter than the iPhone 14 and 14 Pro displays. This means better clarity and legibility when outdoors. The displays on the regular iPhone 15 and the iPhone 15 Pro have the same characteristics and specifications. The only two features missing from the non-Pro iPhones are always-on display and ProMotion.

Speaking of ProMotion, I love this bit in Dave Lee’s video review:

I really think they [Apple] used [ProMotion] to distinguish the difference between the Pros and the ‘Amateurs’, because I don’t think that the cost of production is that far apart at this point, at least not for Apple, because the volumes are so high. But when I review these phones and see them side by side, the 60 Hz [screen] just got to stutter, right? But I really think if I remove myself from this situation and I try not to be a sweaty tech nerd about it, I really think, like, 99% of the world doesn’t care about it. I’ve shown it to many of my friends and my family members, and they’re like, Yeah, that’s cool, that ProMotion is neat and all, but who cares? And in that line, very very little media takes advantage of that stuff; very few games take advantage of 120 Hz [refresh]. But it’s mostly just the UI. When you’re in the UI, and you’re browsing on your phone, and doing stuff, having ProMotion is just so much nicer to look at — if your eyes are used to it. And the fact that they [the regular iPhone 15 models] don’t have it is just ridiculous, because there are phones out there that are, like, 300 bucks that have 120 Hz displays, for it to be missing on a $700 phone… It hurts.

Thinner bezels. The regular iPhone 15 models have slightly thinner bezels than the regular iPhone 14 models from last year. But the bezels on the 15 Pro models are much thinner. This may be excellent news for those nerds who are utterly obsessed with bezel thinness. I think there’s a limit to such thinness, because too thin bezels in a handheld device could mean involuntary user-interface interference from the palm of your hands or the edges of your fingers. Dave Lee quickly points this out too, saying this happened to him a few times while gaming.

USB‑C ports. Again, big Finally here. Thanks to EU legislation, which strongly reminded Apple that standards and customers come before ecosystems. It still sucks that you have to resort to a dongle if you use regular wired earphones or headphones with your iPhone. But at least when travelling you can just take the iPad charger, and one USB‑C cable to recharge the iPad, the iPhone, maybe a pair of over-ear noise-cancelling headphones, and you can use it to connect an external data drive if you use one with your iPad or Mac.

The new Action button. A new customisable button that on the iPhone 15 Pro models replaces the mute switch, which has been a constant on iPhones since the beginning. Now you can assign a specific function to this Action button (it acts like the mute switch by default), like launching the camera or the flashlight, or taking a voice memo. At first the selection seems limited, but one of the options allows you to assign a Siri shortcut, and this really opens the doors to all kinds of stuff. Reactions to this new Action button have generally been positive. Marques Brownlee suggests it could be further improved if we could also map additional functions to double-tapping (or even triple-tapping) the button. Dave Lee wishes there was some kind of tactile marking on it so you could feel for it when the iPhone is in your pocket, and in his review he stressed a few times that “it takes some time to get used to it”. As for me, I’m somewhat ambivalent. I both like the concept of a customisable button, and wish the physical mute switch could have remained. I wouldn’t mind an iPhone with the mute switch in the same position as it was before, and an Action button on the other side, maybe further down from where the power/sleep button is located. (It’s where some Nokia Lumia models had the dedicated camera button, and it was quite handy).

Slightly improved CPU performance. Much improved GPU performance. The fact that you can play triple‑A games like the Resident Evil remake on an iPhone is impressive, but the question is, why would you want to? The interface is cramped, the touch controls make things awkward, and with games like that, the better experience is definitely on a gaming PC or console like the PlayStation or Xbox. I know, I know there are portable gaming solutions like the Switch, the Steam Deck, the recently-introduced Lenovo Legion Go. But while these don’t have very big screens, they all have physical controls, so you don’t have to put your fingers on the screen when gaming, and the interface remains uncluttered.

Slightly better battery life. Tests may vary, but I found Dave Lee’s numbers very telling. The full table is visible at about the 13:13 mark in his video. He calls his test ‘Reddit refresh loop’, which I assume is self-explanatory. The iPhone 15 Pro Max lasted 12 hours and 27 minutes, eight minutes more than the iPhone 14 Pro Max. The iPhone 15 Pro lasted 11 hours and 37 minutes, twenty-one minutes more than the iPhone 14 Pro and the iPhone 13 Pro. The iPhone 15, instead, lasted a few minutes less than the iPhone 14.

The camera system. More megapixels, and a new 5× telephoto lens on the Pro Max, essentially. Some observations from Dave Lee which again, ring true based on what I could see for myself. About the resolution:

I don’t feel the sensor on the regular iPhone 15 makes good use of that extra resolution, but on the Pro I would say […] it’s absolutely worth that larger file size. The details [in the photo] are there.

On low-light photography:

It’s still not great. Apple talked a bit about how they improved it, but the Pixel 7 devices and Samsung S23 devices [low-light photos] look better to me.

On lens flare:

Apple also talks about how they addressed some of the lens flare that has been in some of their photography. Sometimes you’ll see some reflective orbs floating around some of your shots; they’re definitely less pronounced on the iPhone 15 cameras, but they’re still visible here and there, and it’s particularly noticeable still in night shots with bright lights.

Automatic Portrait Mode. I like how simply Dave describes it: It’s the ability to just take a shot, not think about it, and the phone will capture the depth data, so you can adjust the focus later. And I agree with him, it’s a cool feature. I used to use a couple of ‘defocusing’ photo apps on my iPhone 8 to achieve something similar, but of course the iPhone 15’s image processing power guarantees a much faster, more accurate and effective result.

Update — 22 Sept. — I was pretty sure I had seen a similar feature before, but couldn’t recall where or when exactly. My friend Tony on Mastodon reminded me of Nokia Refocus (later renamed Lumia Refocus), an application Nokia presented at Nokia World 2013 — yes, ten years ago — that allowed you to take a shot and refocus later. In this article on Windows Central it is explained that

When snapping a shot, the Windows Phone will take numerous photos over the focus range. This makes it possible to simply hit the shutter button without messing around for three days to get the right object in focus. Think about this example: you take a self-shot and the background is in focus behind a blurry face. With Refocus you can select your own self and boom, the focus is now corrected. Alternatively, you can choose to have the entire shot in focus.

I’ve linked to an archived version of the article because it preserves the video at the end, where you can see a live demonstration of how the feature works. There is also this article from The Verge, and the related YouTube video where Tom Warren demoes the feature.

And yes, of course it’s faster and better on the new iPhones. But considering that the Nokia Lumia 1020 did the same thing with a dual core processor and 2 GB of RAM, the slight delay when capturing a photo with Refocus is forgivable.

It sounds like a lot, but if you zoom out and look at the evolution (or lack thereof) of the iPhone over the years, there’s really nothing groundbreaking about these new iPhone models. Some reviewers have spent a considerable time talking about the new building materials of the iPhone 15 line, especially the use of titanium on the Pro iPhones. It’s undoubtedly a cool detail, and it’s great that it makes the phones lighter. But essentially what we got with the new iPhones was entirely within expectations and educated guesses. Faster devices with improved cameras. But ‘faster’ and ‘improved’ in an iterative fashion, not in a ‘leaps and bounds’ or ‘night and day’ fashion. Meaning that if you asked me, Should I really upgrade to the iPhone 15? I’d tell you, If you currently own an iPhone older than the 12, sure. If you’re hell-bent on always having the latest iPhone camera technology because it really matters to you, sure. Otherwise, I wouldn’t bother.

Of course, at the end of the day, you do you. If you have money to burn, and love to get a new iPhone every year, here’s a lighter. I simply encourage people to be smart and not wasteful, because there’s too much waste today already. There are those telling you you should upgrade to the iPhone 15 Pro for the new titanium finish alone, because it makes for a svelter device that feels great in the hand. Do you know what feels even greater in the hand? Ten 100-dollar bills.

My lack of excitement about the iPhone in general comes from the fact that for the past few years it hasn’t really gone anywhere. I’m not one who demands constant innovation, mind you, but at the same time you can’t expect enthusiasm from me for any minor change or improvement. In technology there are occasional bumps of innovation, and inertial periods of iteration which can last a long time. The smartphone category as a whole has been stagnant for a while now. I’m not really complaining about this — again, it’s a necessary evil. But I can wish Apple showed more intent in thinking out of the box with the iPhone. Going foldable is what some wish for a future iPhone. But that isn’t thinking out of the box — it’s following a trend (and an uncertain one at that).

I know Apple is playing safe with the iPhone because it’s a cash cow, but sometimes I wish they revisited the iPhone line by maybe offering one less ‘safe’ model and using that vacant slot to propose something different, quirkier. Something that could be niche for a couple of generations, just to see where it goes. A ‘Special Edition’ in the true sense of the word. And not just from a hardware standpoint, but also from an application/usage standpoint. An iPhone model perhaps with different ways of interfacing, even. I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, Apple is pursuing that with Vision Pro and visionOS, and I see your point. I just wish it weren’t an AR headset. Something more in line with what Humane is headed towards. I want ‘vision’ without the impracticality and awkwardness of VR/AR goggles.

I was forgetting the new Apple Watches — Well, again, iterative improvements all around. If you love the Watch, you’ll love them. If you don’t, you’re probably shrugging as hard as I am. Neither its design nor its interface have ever really clicked with me. The general feeling I constantly get when I look at its UI is that it’s too crowded and complicated, too dependent on gestures with mediocre discoverability. And the Watch as a whole simply feels too chock-full of stuff. And every year Apple seems to be adding more stuff to the Watch’s capabilities. It feels like pure feature creep. (To be entirely fair, the competition isn’t exactly doing a better job in this regard). Again, it depends on what you use a smartwatch for. I just want a bare-bones tracker that tells me the time and date, that shows me a step counter and a heart rate monitor. I don’t need a miniature smartphone on my wrist, I already have one in my pocket.