As an iPhone user, I am always interested to see the new phone when it is released each year. I don’t buy them, but I’m always interested to see what Apple has to offer. In a previous article, I praised them for standing up to the federal government, but I do have an issue with the new phone they have released.
My main grievance with the phone is that I don’t see a need for its existence. Since they released the iPhone 6s last fall, you think they would have followed the cycle and released the seven this year. Instead, they released the iPhone SE, which is just a smaller iPhone 6s. I’m not interested in an Android phone, but I can see why some might be. At least, the Droid phones are somewhat different and don’t release very similar products each year. These repetitive designs seem to have started when Steve Jobs passed away in 2011.
You can call Jobs what you will, but he managed to save Apple when he came back in the '90s. He did this by not focusing on marketing, but more around design. In his biography, he talked about how much thought he put into the design of Apple products. I think this is very apparent in the first three versions of the iPhone: the 3, 3Gs and 4. This was really the last major change in design before the jump from the iPhone 5 to the iPhone 6.
The jump from 3Gs to 4 was the last major product design that Jobs had a part in before he died in 2011. It went from a cumbersome, ugly black curved design to a nice, clean white/black rectangular design. I think it’s also important to note that the iPhone forever changed what it meant to be a smartphone. We went from a BlackBerry that had all the text keys on the phone to a touchscreen device that flowed beautifully when it transitioned between screens.
It is for these reasons that I am disappointed that Apple, which changed the way we use phones, has degraded into making smaller versions of their phones. Whatever happened to the innovative nature of Apple? What happened to the dare to be different attitude that Jobs started? I wonder if they have lost their way.
It’s my hope that Apple will one day make a new daring design regarding their phones. I think this time, however, has come and gone. Perhaps it is time for me and everyone to go to Droids and leave Apple to its own devices.
