My Thoughts on the iPhone X Announcement

Apple released its iPhone X (ten, not ex) today. I’m a complete Apple acolyte but can’t help but notice that all the main features (edge-to-edge display, wireless charging, and facial authentication) have already been out for months or years from other vendors.

I get that most of those vendors do those things poorly, and Apple will finally do them well, but that feels to me like evolution instead of revolution. And the truly new stuff they released (the new camera effects, the hardware improvements, etc.), while industry-crushing once again, seem similarly incremental.

Of course it’ll still probably be the most popular high-end phone in the world because it’ll likely execute so well on all these things, and I’ll absolutely be camping for one like I have for the last 9 years. But to truly have been a 10 year anniversary device it seems they should have done something nobody’s done before, and I just didn’t see that.

Perhaps it’s just too hard to do that in today’s market. You can only have so many iPhone-level leaps, and it’s pretty unrealistic to think they (or anyone else) could have timed the next one to an arbitrary anniversary date.

Other things of note:

  • The number of leaks this time around was insane. It really seems like they could do better there.

  • The Watch announcement was pretty exciting as well. I’m all about the space grey ceramic, and I hope this release gives us the true futuristic communication device we’ve been wanting all along.

  • The part that sticks out at the top of the screen is a spear in my side. It’s unbelievably unattractive, and belongs on an Android phone. I get how hard it is, I get that it was probably impossible. Still. It hurts me.

  • I’m super excited about all the camera upgrades. Can’t wait for this to be my new daily shooter.

  • The AppleTV looked fantastic as well. I invested in an OLED TV so I’ll definitely be trying to do as much as possible on 4K, and I hope that the final season of GoT will be 4K as well.

All in all, extremely happy with the release. Would have loved to have seen new AirPods, but also happy to have that be more of an event on its own when they get upgraded.

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