Well fanboy blogs are full of Apple’s iPhone announcements today. Apple stock price is down slightly. Generally most will yawn and then more iPhones will be sold than ever before. A quick review left me with a couple of questions and observations. Overall nothing much has changed. Apparently, no deal yet with China Mobile, although Japan and DoCoMo was announced.
Questions:
- What does 64bit in the A7 processor really mean for longer term development? From the presentation I understood it as graphics and thus gaming which creates a further set of potential questions re AppleTV, iPad and future products. Add to that how it might impact the longer term relationship between iOS and OSX devices.
- What does the M7 Motion Chip really do? Health care, fitness? Other uses?
- What does the fingerprint reader really mean for banking and payment transactions? How does it match up with bluetooth, iOS based register solutions etc. Apple is again ignoring NFC which may be a good strategy. I’d also like to know how developers can put this reader to use.
Observations:
- Camera gets another bump in power. I’ve upgraded each time for a better camera. Nokia understood the power of the phone cam first and Apple has clearly learnt from those lessons and the early criticism that their cameras were crap. Pictures are huge, period. I love the idea of the new slow motion video feature. I could have really used that a few weeks ago.
- Battery: There appear to be marginal bumps in battery performance. We still need better batteries. Smartphones aren’t going to make it in parts of the third world without much better battery life. Or we need to see some new modes to extend it. Battery extender?
- Development Cycle? The expectation is next year we get a new iPhone 5S casing and the 5C will continue perhaps with 5S innards. This cascading as a product strategy doesn’t seem to be all that effective. The 5C is effectively a cheaper 5. It doesn’t appear to be enough cheaper to really expand in emerging markets.
- Big Screen: It’s reported that Apple is testing larger screens. They better bring them on sooner rather than later. There are too many reasons why people like them. It was a big miss not to have a larger screen added at the same time.
- iWork iPhoto iMovie: This is almost huge. I just don’t understand why they don’t provide it free to all iOS users straight away. Yes I bought them but really there is more utility in increasing the universe and number. It would be a small hit to make them free across all Apple devices. It’s Office, but free. And it works across your devices. It brings an Office suite straight into the enterprise via iPhones and iPads. That really hurts Microsoft. A paid enterprise version could come later.
iWork:Free for all new iOS devicesBest-selling mobile productivity appsiPhoto, iMovie also included for free. via Everything Apple Announced At Todays iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c Event