iPhone 12 and friends announced. Yay. Here are some first impressions.
iPhone (mostly the mini)
I want a smaller phone than my iPhone 8. I'd posted on MacRumors that I think Apple is calling out people like me perfectly.
The SE 1 showed two things:
- People buy cheap phones.
- People buy small phones.
Those in group #2 sure acted like they'd like to do it independently of #1. You want a small phone with the latest features? Put your money where your mouth is.
I'm not going to. I still hate Face ID. Lots of use cases, but here's the most important: I like to wake up, grab the phone, and unlock it without taking my head off of the pillow.
I really wanted the "Touch ID in the power button" on this phone. You could talk me into buying an SE 2 (overly long story how I ended up with an 8 here -- got the SO an SE 2. It's a neat phone), but not the mini. Too bad. I had my fingers crossed.
'Nuff said on that.
MagSafe
MagSafe looks cool. Should have seen this coming. SO uses a magnet case to attach to a mount in the car. The Belkin MagSafe car mount is that "put some metal in your iPhone case" idea done right.
I kinda like the wallet attachment, though not in leather. David "_" Smith talked me into ditching my wallet years ago (even "thanked" him for it at Release Notes Dine-a-round), and I've gotten a Speck wallet case with every phone of mine since.
Now I can pop a wallet off of my phone and start it charging instead of worrying (I hope!) about the cards demagnetizing. We'll see. If they've solved that so that the case protects the cards if I forget, I'm going to regret my 8 not having MagSafe.
Seriously, it's no brainer. It's the right way to do accessories.
Edit: One follow-up. If, with the MagSafe, we're really headed to a no-port phone, how is Apple going to sell its "environmental" priorities when they make everyone buy a MagSafe power adapter next year to power them up?
Are they going to still leave the charger out and say, "You've probably already got a Qi charger in your home!" (And with me, they'd be right. I didn't use them at all three months ago, but now have two. One is some freebee swag and the other a Millennium Falcon that has the decency for its engines to glow blue when you've managed to get your phone on correctly.)
HomePod
HomePod mini is a buy. I bet the sound is better than an Amazon dot, and, at $100, I don't know another step up speaker I'd consider.
I don't have Apple Music, so we'll see how the Amazon Music integration is. I usually pump tunes through my stereo, but we'll put this next to the monitor in the office and see how I like it, using the stereo for CDs, tapes [sic], and albums & the HomePod for streaming, maybe?
For $100, it's cheap enough to try out, if just to wet my curiousity.
Edit: Argh. After a little research, I'm tempted to get the "real" HomePod from OWC for $210 for the Apple TV Atmos sound, which the HomePod mini doesn't do.
Lies
I do think the marketing is getting in front of Apple's business. Worst offender? Don't tell me Siri is "the most popular" voice assistant in the world because it's on billions of devices.
That might make it the most accessible assistant by some measure, but it's sure as heck not the most popular. Who uses Siri? Anybody? Really? More than Alexa? Really?
And number of constant users ("How many times have you used X in the last month?") really is the way to measure popularity.
You might be in everyone's Contacts, but until you're invited to all the parties, you don't get to say you're the most popular, Siri.
UPDATE: As Jason Snell points out in Apple fibs about iPhone 12 pricing to promote wireless carriers, it turns out there was a worse offender: The iPhone prices relayed in the keynote were only legit for preferred carriers. If you wanted an unlocked, SIMless phone it was $30 more.
Add to that that you're going to have to shell out $19 for the charging brick and prices of the non-Pro iPhones jumped up $50 this year. Quietly. Covertly. Clandestinely.
That's right. Apple lied (fibbed?) about the iPhone's price. Wth? Marketing is taking over the Apple culture in ways I don't like. I know, I know, you're supposed to use "If Jobs were still there..." sparingly, but I'm getting close here. He pulled some fast ones, but I can't remember it being about price. He was never (iirc) wrong, as in "feeding you a line". He was just highly, highly, um, biased when he was telling you what you wanted.
Here, with price, I feel like Apple's feeding us a line.
And I think that's about it for me.