Anyone who knows me knows that I am quite the Apple fan. I’ve been a Mac user for so long that I actually owned a Lisa. (Look it up.) I’m no fanboy, I don’t have a shrine to Steve Jobs in my basement, or anything, but I sure do love what Apple does. I also won’t tell you to “get a Mac” when you express problems with your PC. I’m happy to let you do your thing the way you want and I expec the same courtesy.
So, Apple had their new iPhone announcements on Tuesday. Thanks to a massive leak by a (most likely former) Apple employee, there weren’t a lot of surprises. I still have an iPhone 6s+ and frankly I love it. The processor is still plenty zippy and, since I had the foresight to get a 64 gig model, I’ve got archers of space. So, I must admit, I’m not seeing any “Gotta Have” features that are driving me to upgrade to an iPhone 8. Wireless charging is nice, but plugging my phone in every night or when I’m at my desk (on the rare occations that’s necessisary) aren’t even mildly inconvenient. The new camera is nice, but my current camera takes pictures that are too large (as in file size) as it is. I’m beginning to wonder how I’m going to store the family photo album long term. So I don’t think I’ll be reaching for my wallet to upgrade to an 8.

Then there’s the “smartphone of the future” the iPhone X (pronounced iPhone ten). The substantive elements here are, better cameras, facial recognition, and the edge-to-edge display. Now, I’m going to depart from the conventional wisdom here and declare that edge-to-edge displays are an irrelevant marketing ploy to entice you to buy a new phone that you don’t need. I, like most smartphone users, have a big, ugly, clunky case over my svelt, beautiful iPhone so that when I drop it on the ground, the screen doesn’t fracture into a million bits. That case covers at least a millimeter of the bezel on may current phone, which is only 2 millimeter to begin with. Then there’s my hand when I hold it. I don’t have big hands, built i still manage to cover the entire bezel with the tips of my fingers when I hold the phone. I bet you do too, to say nothing of people with big hands. What that means in reality is that while the screen might go all the way to the edge, the OS can’t really use that space for anything but a border because your hands / case might cover it. So you’re paying a very premium price for what amounts to a fad. All it gives you is bragging rights. No thanks.

As for facial recognition, I don’t like it. Fingerprint scanning is so quick and easy that I can do it while I’m getting my phone out of my pocket. Long before I ever raise it to my face. I saw the demo failure at the Apple keynote, but that was because someone reset the phone but didn’t type in the passcode. (you iPhone owners know what I’m talking about.) It wasn’t a failure of the tech. It’s cool and Apple has designed it so that you can’t spoof it with a photograph, like other facial recognition security, but it’s just another way to lock my phone. It’s not that revolutionary that I’d want to spend the money on an iPhone X.

So to sum up, I won’t be getting a new iPhone this go around. I imagine by next year my phone will be showing enough of its age that upgrading will be a must, but that’s a problem for future Dan to worry about. The part of the show that I really want to talk about, was the very short time they spent on the new Apple TV. I have two Apple TVs and I love them. It was an open secret that Apple would be introducing a new, 4K capable, Apple TV at this show, so I wasn’t surprised, but then Apple did the thing I hoped they would. They won the content game all over again. iTunes made music too cheap to steal and singlehandedly de-fanged the piracy market. Now Apple wants to make sure that you continue to use iTunes to buy your movies. Rather than trying to sell you the movies you’ve already bought all over again, Apple is giving everyone who bought HD movies from iTunes a free upgrade to 4K. Also 4K movies will cost the same as HD (presumably they’ll just sell the movies in HD and serve up whichever content you need). That is AWESOME!

Way to go Apple. That’s one of the many reasons I love ya.

It is interesting to note that a rumor going around suggests that Disney was totally against this policy and tired to stop it. Kind of a dick-move if true, but the way Disney is being run these days, not surprising.

So, that’s it. My impressions of the iPhone keynote. I’d love to hear your thoughts or talk about anything Apple, just comment below. (Notice I said “talk”, if you want to get all PC fanboy on me, go elsewhere.)