The iPhones of the Future May Be Wireless, Portless and Buttonless (cnet.com) 249
The first iPhone to shed its headphone jack was the iPhone 7, which launched in late 2016. Now it seems like the Lightning port may be the next to go. CNET reports: Apple has considered removing the Lightning port on the iPhone X, according to Bloomberg, citing unnamed "people familiar with the company's work." While earlier rumors suggested that Apple would remove the Lightning port in favor of USB-C, Apple's goal may be to remove all ports entirely.
Bloomberg's report is about the challenges that Apple faces with its AirPower wireless charger, but it also shares some details about Apple's vision for a wireless future. The report says: "Apple designers eventually hope to remove most of the external ports and buttons on the iPhone, including the charger, according to people familiar with the company's work. During the development of the iPhone X, Apple weighed removing the wired charging system entirely. That wasn't feasible at the time because wireless charging was still slower than traditional methods. Including a wireless charger with new iPhones would also significantly raise the price of the phones."
Bloomberg's report is about the challenges that Apple faces with its AirPower wireless charger, but it also shares some details about Apple's vision for a wireless future. The report says: "Apple designers eventually hope to remove most of the external ports and buttons on the iPhone, including the charger, according to people familiar with the company's work. During the development of the iPhone X, Apple weighed removing the wired charging system entirely. That wasn't feasible at the time because wireless charging was still slower than traditional methods. Including a wireless charger with new iPhones would also significantly raise the price of the phones."
So people find their phones still usable... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: HaHa... (Score:3, Insightful)
Wireless, Portless and Buttonless or in a word ... very Useless
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Wireless, Portless and Buttonless or in a word ... very Useless
Watching tens of millions of people line up to buy this hardware, or in a word from the CFO....very Priceless.
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"Including a wireless charger with new iPhones would also significantly raise the price of the phones."
And not including one would still raise the price, since people would still have to buy a charger.
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It gets even worse. People want to be able to repair their phones so they last more than 2 years.
And Fairphone [fairphone.com] has arisen to meet that need.
I realize this looks like a shameless plug, what with me being an AC and all. I thought about proving my legitimacy by insulting the intelligence of the OP, but he didn't give me enough material to work with. So I will just have to hope you believe me when I say I am a satisfied customer.
I guess I do have an agenda in that I don't want them to go out of business, sin
Re:So people find their phones still usable... (Score:4, Insightful)
The Fairphone 2 doesn't seem like a good deal I'm afraid.
The price is â530, which is a lot more than flagships from companies like OnePlus and Xaomi. You get Android 6.0 and no sign of regular updates, a mediocre camera and a removable battery. So really the only major benefit is the removable battery, and in practice it's not difficult to replace the battery in a OnePlus or even most of the non-Apple flagships.
Replacement parts are a nice idea, but you have to compare that to buying a phone that costs half as much and replacing it twice as often. Even with replacement parts this thing won't last forever.
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Delivery only in continental UK/Europe. *sigh*
I was just about to buy one. Seems like a nice phone at a reasonable price. ~$600.
Americans, this phone is not for you unless you have a shipping location in the EU. :(
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Why do you think that. Because of random slashdot comments from guys who are still pissed that the GUI overtook the command line interface.
Or the fact that you can’t use do software development on it?
Apple has grown by leaps and bounds from the release of the iPhone.
Even with competition with Android who makes a really competitive and popular products apple is able to hold its own.
I haven’t seen a new PC in a while with serial, parallel ports. I haven’t seen a tape interface port in gene
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They would be more waterproof (Score:5, Funny)
I guess after all ports are removed, the next idea would be to remove the leading cause of repairs, if there is no screen, it won't crack... /s
Re: They would be more waterproof (Score:5, Funny)
Speechless (Score:2, Troll)
I am left speechless and powerless by their decisions to go portless, buttonless.
- They will surely go speakerless and mic-less (this will make the phones analog hole-less)
- Battery-less (no more battery fires, hurrah !)
- Use-less
- Price-less (how much does it cost? How much have you got? Or as they prefer in England, how much can you afford to pay ?)
- Screen-less was already mentioned.
- Case-less (the most lightweight phone, lighter than air)
This reminds me of a story about trains:
"When a train derails it
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You're kidding, but I am sure that someone at Samsung or Ericsson or wherever Apple steals ideas have already thought of a completely voice operated phone, as well as ones that requires wearing remote glasses or miracast to get a screen.
Re:They would be more waterproof (Score:4, Insightful)
A voice operated phone.....operators will make a comeback.
Then hipsters will demand actual human operators connect their calls.
Re:They would be more waterproof (Score:5, Funny)
Re:They would be more waterproof (Score:5, Informative)
The phone we had when I grew up did not have a dial, just a small crank where the dial would normally go. Cranking it produced a current that lit up a lamp at the operator's board, and she would ask where to connect us, and tell us how many arms and legs it would cost per minute. For long distance, she would also intercept every now and then during the call to say "four minutes" or similar.
At my father's work was a small plaque above The phone saying "Express yourself in brevity".
A more civilized phone for a more civilized time.
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At my father's work was a small plaque above The phone saying "Express yourself in brevity".
Our phones are different now but we have kept that sentiment. After all we use smileys and abbreviations or contractions like "LOL" or "ur" instead of "your" in texts.
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The phone we had when I grew up did not have a dial, just a small crank where the dial would normally go.
A crank? You were lucky...
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I thought you were going to say "gaze lovingly at their own reflection".
You can if you upgrade to the piano black version
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obviously this is where we are going.
not screenless, but at least touchscreenless.
just take those alexa or google home things, slim them way down and slap a screen on it.
you basically have your voice controlled phone.
Fantastic! (Score:3, Insightful)
Or you get nailed by malware that takes over your phone, and there is literally no way to reset the fucking thing!
Re: Fantastic! (Score:4, Interesting)
The most visited post on my website is instructions for rebooting a crashed iPod.
I can't imagine the iPhone is any better at not needing constant resets. Just today I had to force-reboot an iPad that had frozen on the home screen. I vaguely recall having to look up how to reboot someone's crashed iPhone X because they changed the method.
The point being that Apple's hardware is nowhere near stable enough not to have a method to force a reboot. I guess "wait for the battery to die" is going to become standard practice in the near future. I guess we finally learned why Apple refuses to put all-day batteries in their devices.
Re: Fantastic! (Score:3)
Well, he even posts as the fake Tim Cook. This is a no-brainer.
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i am still realing from the 11.3 update the amount of DoneFudgedUp (DFU) device resets was a horrible and this after switching to iOS instead of droid because... "it just works"
i guess the version of DFU reset will be to throw device against wall and repeat until destroyed.
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i am still realing from the 11.3 update the amount of DoneFudgedUp (DFU) device resets was a horrible and this after switching to iOS instead of droid because... "it just works"
i guess the version of DFU reset will be to throw device against wall and repeat until destroyed.
Never had to do a DFU Reset on either of my 2 iPhones or iPad I've had over the years.
Re:Fantastic! (Score:5, Interesting)
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What about a microswitch next to the SIM slot which can be triggered by a straightened paper clip and PHYSICALLY shuts off power to the battery?
That would require an intrusion into the case, kind of defeating the "no intrusions" design goal.
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Doesn't the SIM slot already intrude into the case?
For now. I heard they were going to some sort of virtualized "SIM Card".
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What about a microswitch next to the SIM slot which can be triggered by a straightened paper clip and PHYSICALLY shuts off power to the battery?
That would require an intrusion into the case, kind of defeating the "no intrusions" design goal.
Plus they'll take the sim slot out next. It'll be embedded and you'll have to get it paired at a store. Will probably not be reversible or able to change number without a lot of time and a couple trips to the bank.
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What about a microswitch next to the SIM slot which can be triggered by a straightened paper clip and PHYSICALLY shuts off power to the battery?
That would require an intrusion into the case, kind of defeating the "no intrusions" design goal.
Plus they'll take the sim slot out next. It'll be embedded and you'll have to get it paired at a store. Will probably not be reversible or able to change number without a lot of time and a couple trips to the bank.
Doubt it; since Apple already sells unlocked versions of their phones, and has for some time.
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Re: Fantastic! (Score:4, Funny)
With a nuke. From orbit.
Re: Fantastic! (Score:4, Funny)
With a nuke. From orbit.
It is the only way to be sure.
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When my phone or PMP had problems, USUALLY, the screen wasn't working. Eventually, I learned that by using actual buttons to RESET the thing, If I was lucky, I could get the screen working again.
Later on, when I was checking out some older electronics I kept that had stopped working, I found that...even when it wasn't documented, I could quite often do a hard RESET by playing with a combination of buttons while powering it on and it would start working perfectly!
Try as I might, I can't see how this can be done when all your controls are *on the screen*! The only other possibility is to remove the battery for awhile and let the unit/phone completely discharge and HOPE that it fixes it because if the screen is defective, there is no 'combination' of buttons to try as a last-ditch effort to save it.
But, maybe that's what they are striving for so you have to send it in and pay a lot of money to get it working again?
Just because YOU can't think of a way, doesn't mean it isn't possible.
As an embedded Dev., a few possible methods come immediately to mind:
1. A "system monitor" ("Watchdog"), with a long-enough timeout to not false-trigger under heavy CPU load. If the main OS or an App goes off in the weeds for too long, (say, 10 secs.), the WatchDog would trigger a hardware Reset. This method requires no user intervention whatsoever, and is SOP in a lot of embedded designs. In fact, I would be VERY surprised if Apple's SoC
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Some phones assign functions to squeezing the bezel itself:
https://www.theverge.com/2017/... [theverge.com]
Just because there isn't an external physical button doesn't mean that you can't hide a pressure-sensitive switch inside the phone.
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So, there are some methods that came to mind with about 30 seconds of thought. Think that Apple engineers can't come up with a dozen or more methods to accomplish this after a couple of weeks' working on it?
Some phones assign functions to squeezing the bezel itself:
https://www.theverge.com/2017/... [theverge.com]
Good point!
I guess I should have spent a whole minute thinking about this, then, LOL!
Just because there isn't an external physical button doesn't mean that you can't hide a pressure-sensitive switch inside the phone.
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This reminds me of the joy (not!) we had when USB replaced RS232.
In "the old days", serial ports were pretty much idiot-proof, as long as you didn't have to screw with anything where dsr, dtr, cts, or rts actually mattered (besides maybe using a cable that connected one of them to ground). The universe of potential baudrates was small and finite (as a practical matter, nearly everything used 115200, 38400, 19200, 9600, 2400, 1200, or 300, with no parity, 8 bits, and 1 stop bit). After verifying that the cab
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This reminds me of the joy (not!) we had when USB replaced RS232.
In "the old days", serial ports were pretty much idiot-proof, as long as you didn't have to screw with anything where dsr, dtr, cts, or rts actually mattered (besides maybe using a cable that connected one of them to ground). The universe of potential baudrates was small and finite (as a practical matter, nearly everything used 115200, 38400, 19200, 9600, 2400, 1200, or 300, with no parity, 8 bits, and 1 stop bit). After verifying that the cable was good, all you really had to do was iterate through the aforementioned 7 baudrates & there was a 98% chance one of them would work. Best of all, once you had the baudrate and bits/parity/stopbit settings right, the hardware literally worked the instant you connected the cable.
Then came USB, and everything went to hell. Drivers broke catastrophically every time Microsoft did a major Windows release. Flaky cables & poorly-designed (or excessively value-engineered) ports had endless, seemingly-random disconnects and dysfunction. And the inevitable lag between connecting a USB device & having it actually be operational made matters even worse. We traded a cheap, simple communications bus that was easy to configure and generally worked well for one that used cheaper hardware, augmented by extremely complicated software drivers that were barely understood by their own developers (most of whom depended upon proprietary vendor-supplied toolchains working literal black magic behind a curtain).
You remember RS232 a LOT more fondly than MOST people.
Case in Point: How many times have you seen an USB Breakout Box?
With RS232, there is an entire UNIVERSE of cabling "fun" before you even get to software issues. With USB, it comes down to "Do you have the right Driver?" You're just forgetting. And if you were a regular person, trying to hook up some random RS-232 peripheral, FORGET IT! Even with a simple 3 wire RS-232 interface, using XON/XOFF handshaking (or no handshaking at all) there was STILL the am
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This reminds me of the joy (not!) we had when USB replaced RS232.
...
You remember RS232 a LOT more fondly than MOST people.
...
Yeah, I was having a hard time deciding whether he was being sarcastic or not.
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With RS232, there is an entire UNIVERSE of cabling "fun" before you even get to software issues.
Problems which 99% of users never encountered. Only nerds ever had to deal with those problems, and what they got in return was a simple interface which often didn't require any drivers (since the operation was handled by the BIOS) and which could be cheaply implemented on any halfway decent microcontroller.
With USB, it comes down to "Do you have the right Driver?"
For the average user, so does serial — except they usually didn't need a driver for a serial peripheral. For the hobbyist, USB is a total PITA. It's not cheap or easy to implement, and with most mi
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They do already have a watchdog and use it, but that doesn't help if the kernel is still ticking over but the UI has frozen.
Gestures are janky, a magnet would allow anyone to reset your iPhone with a magnet and would break magnetic phone holders (which are awesome by the way).
Some phones have a squeeze sensor that works quite well now, maybe that could be used. But really you need a physical button that not only resets the phone but can put it into recovery mode. Since there is no USB^W lighting port any mo
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They do already have a watchdog and use it, but that doesn't help if the kernel is still ticking over but the UI has frozen.
Gestures are janky, a magnet would allow anyone to reset your iPhone with a magnet and would break magnetic phone holders (which are awesome by the way).
Some phones have a squeeze sensor that works quite well now, maybe that could be used. But really you need a physical button that not only resets the phone but can put it into recovery mode. Since there is no USB^W lighting port any more it will have to have a wifi stack with TCP/IP, DHCP and some kind of bootloader, which means a brand new and much larger attack surface.
Meanwhile everyone else just fits a waterproof USB-C connector and waterproof headphone socket.
I am not surprised that Apple SoCs have a WatchDog subsystem. In fact, I would be surprised if they didn't. However, all that has to change to prevent the "lights are on, but nobody's home" (UI Frozen) is to change the way the WatchDog is "Petted", to make sure ALL of the software subsystems and Apps are "ticking over". Takes some planning; but it isn't impossible.
For example, In my early days as an embedded Dev., when dinosaurs roamed the earth, and all computers ran on kerosene, I created a system based o
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You can do the squeeze sensor trick with just a switch. Make part of the case flexible enough to press a button hidden beneath it.
That's nothing (Score:5, Funny)
They're also going to be screenless. It's going to be a huge breakthrough.
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Not only that but it's been discovered that there's a slight current in normal, everyday phone lines. Utilizing this, Apple engineers have come up with a phone you never have to charge again! In fact, it's completely immobile allowing you to never lose. It will be packed with a handy, easy to use interface. It doesn't even have one. All it has is a "receiving unit" that's directly connected to the immobile part which is a single purpose unit. All it does is listen to your voice and recreates the voice of th
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And since it's completely immobile you have to buy one for each location you want to use it in!
More money for Apple!
What about charging away from home/office? (Score:5, Insightful)
It might be good to have wireless charging ability at home but what about when you're "on the go" and just need to connect to a cable somewhere to charge your phone, and there's no special Apple wireless charger?
Sorry, Apple, but my Samsung Galaxy S8 (which I bought to replace an iPhone last year) is far superior to your feature-stripped strait jackets.
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It might be good to have wireless charging ability at home but what about when you're "on the go" and just need to connect to a cable somewhere to charge your phone, and there's no special Apple wireless charger?
Important places will install wireless charging stations for important people.
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Important places will install wireless charging stations for important people.
The purpose of having an iPhone is to indicate you are important!
wireless? (Score:2)
Is it really news that mobile phones will be wireless?
I mean, there were probably wired mobile phones in the trenches during WWII, Korean war and Viet Nam war, but since the 90s at least, I think most mobile phones have been wireless.
What I miss the most are tactile buttons, allowing me to call without looking at the phone. And, of course, the times when people actually picked up the phone when there was a call, because calls were expensive and telemarketers and Indian scammers non-existent.
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I don't know about you but I still have to give my mobile phone a couple of good cranks before making a call. I suppose I should upgrade.
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Next step.. (Score:2)
Potting the whole thing, so it is literally impossible to open or repair it, as the phone is a solid block of resin.
Go ALL the way, Apple (Score:2)
How about also rid the screen: just shove your iSuppository up your rump, and learn to "read" vibrations.
A simple shiny little sphere: the ultimate in Apple Design.
Good news (Score:2)
All the better to sell you proprietary charging pads and AirPods!
Wireless, Portless, Buttonless... (Score:2)
You forgot "Userless".
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More money (Score:2)
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It's cute that you think Apple would allow their devices to be compatible with someone else's hardware....
Most likely, they will have a proprietary charging pad that authenticates with the phone before being allowed to be used. That pad will connect by lightning cable (or maybe even a whole new connector that doesn't exist yet just so you have to re-buy all your cables) to it's power source so as to also eliminate the possibility of non-apple cords being used.
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While true, it's much easier to plug in a lightning cable than use a Qi charger. And to keep it plugged in. Especially as the device slips around in a car/on a plane/etc.
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I find I have to be really nudgy to get it in the right spot to charge. Which means I cannot use it, then slam it down and roll over to sleep. With a cord, I can.
Obviously, battery life is unrelated to charging tech. But the popularity of "charge-on-the-go" devices suggest a lot of people are unhappy with their battery life.
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I find I have to be really nudgy to get it in the right spot to charge.
I've found that with shitty chargers, as well. Spend the extra dollar on a good one and that problem disappears.
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To be fair, you can get Qi chargers for less than the typical Lightning cable, so this might be a net win for iPhone users.
Do you really think Apple will allow that to happen? They will have to come up with some reason for you to buy the $150 Apple Wireless Charger.
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Without their proprietary extensions - so it will charge very slowly if at all.
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You'll need to buy a new car, with the wireless charging dashboard. Which will be obsolete in two years when Apple comes out with a new wireless charging protocol and the screen on your gadget reads 'unsupported device'.
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Why should the phone be more expensive? They couldn't keep it at the same price point and not make such a high percentage of profit?
My first thought is that most teardowns put the cost of materials somewhere around 1/3 to 1/2 the cost of the phone. Lets assume 1/6 of the cost is R&D - it really doesn't take that much development to use the same shape, same processor, up the RAM, remove and replace some hardware. That's still half profit on *every* phone. Greedy bastards.
Wireless (Score:2)
Fixed it.. (Score:2)
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iPhones are crippled
Fixed that for you.
There’s a term for this (Score:2)
Form over function.
cases & wireless charging (Score:2, Interesting)
Apple's been telling people that to protect their smaller devices, they basically need to put *something* around it. (remember the sock? or that band to deal with antenna issues?)
But wireless charging uses induction, and the further apart the induction pads are, the worse the charging performance (which might be related to their overheating problems, as they need to use move power). So if Apple's really serious about this, they need to come up with a phone that doesn't need a case ... which might piss off
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Well streamed Sir (Score:2)
Steam punks will be retro-fitting brass head phone jacks to iPhones next.
Don't drop this one... (Score:2)
An issue I see (Score:2)
Music apps are relatively popular in iOS... even Apple has one (Garage Band) and there are even MIDI interfaces that allow connecting instruments to an iPhone. ... But you can't really use Bluetooth for music (and I say that as the happy owner of a couple of Apple Airpods) because it has too much latency (noticeable / annoying delay between touching something on screen and hearing the sound).
But the GUI (Score:2)
What about forgetting your charger? (Score:5, Insightful)
How many times have you gone on holiday, opened your case, and found you didn't pack your charger? If you were lucky, you packed a spare cable, so all you needed was something with a USB connection and you could charge your phone. At worst, a trip to a shop that sold cables.
Remove cable charging, and now you're needed to buy a full wireless charger. Or visit Starbucks every morning for 2 hours while you slowly sip away at a long-gone-cold coffee.
And then what about those people who still use wired headphones using the adapter that comes in the box... oh yeah, sorry, I forgot that you sell expensive wireless headphones that you want to force people to have to buy also. Silly me.
Copying data to your PC? Or another phone? Getting a charge boost from another phone (like you can [seemingly] on USB-C devices)? In-car adapters? Peripherals?
My last few phones all had wireless charging. I rarely used it. Lately I was even thinking about why this tech is added to phones as it just increases the cost and provides, at least to me, no benefit. I'm not sure I'd like being forced to have to only use wireless charging. Plus you know that they'll change the wireless charging technology in 2 iterations time, making those 2 spare charges you bought when on holidays useless.
At least you can buy another one on your next trip away...
It's so ... black! (Score:2)
Eliminating the hole, not the port (Score:2)
Wow, lots of snark and sarcasm in the posts and responses...but letâ(TM)s think about who whoâ(TM)s could work.
What about changing the port from a male/female configuration (insert plug into receptacle) to the smart port where the connection is held magnetically? Intrusion points in the case are eliminated yet there is a means of a physical connection to the outside.
As has been mentioned elsewhere, change out the home and volume buttons from a operator that goes through the case to some sort of m
Wireless, portless, buttonless.... (Score:3)
I just got the latest iPhone (Score:4, Funny)
"It's so advanced... you don't even need it." -Stephen Wright
Re:Wasteful (Score:5, Funny)
The only Apple product I own is the White Album.
Re:Wasteful (Score:4, Funny)
The only Apple product I own is the White Album.
Whoa -- talk about being way behind the times there grandpa!
You should totally check out Abbey Road. Best. B Side. Ever.
Yaz
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The only Apple product I own is the White Album.
Careful! You'll trigger Yoko to file another decades-long frivolous lawsuit!
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Further, if they want to be hip - they never let the apple logo on the back get covered up. Even case makers leave it exposed. Why not make the apple and stem the electrodes of a cradle charging system? Still a sealed unit. But we've moved beyond two pin charging, I guess.
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We can begin to see the death of a brand and company.
In honesty, I'd love to see Apple fall back into obscurity. Their products suck and are over priced.
Then don't buy them. Simple as that.
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The fact of 'caught using' being a thing shows the real problem. Who cares what we use? Why it it so important to visibly be using a particular companies gadget?
Awww! Sounds like somebody's jealous...
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The entire tech industry will surge ahead into true innovation when apple is finally gone.
Actually they will have no one to copy from Apple may not have been first with many products but the way they are copied proves they get the user, better than others, and get the basics right. Also Apple tends not to release a product in a rush look up Knowledge Navigator to see how long the iphone idea has been in the works. Racking up feature count doesn't mean much if its difficult to use. And for most users the quality of phone cameras etc. is good enough