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Apple-haters look away: the iPhone 6 is not the first - but it's the best: Apple's biggest fan declares the new phones 'gorgeous in the hand and to the eye'(Guardian (UK) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Since January 1984 when I bought my first Apple Macintosh, through the dark late 80s and mid 90s when the company had just 3% of the personal computer market, I have developed the thickest of skins when it comes to Apple-haters. I could fill this entire article with links to ancient, now embarrassing, sneers: "what's the point of an iPod?"; "the iPhone is too large"; "huh, the iPad is nothing but a big iPhone?" (right, and a swimming pool is nothing but a big bath). "How disgraceful are the working conditions in which Apple devices are manufactured!" - oddly leaving out Samsung, Sony, Dell, LG, HTC and all the other companies that have their devices made in the same factories and have, unlike Apple, been much less transparent about it and failed to abandon so many of the controversial materials - beryllium most recently - that Apple have now removed from their supply chain. I welcome, love, revere and adore Android, Windows and any other mobile operating system. The richer the eco-system, the better for all. I've never thought anyone pretentious for owning a BlackBerry or an LG G Flex, but when it comes to Apple, it's open season. "Baaah, you're all sheep", or "Huh, far more Samsungs are sold anyway!" Can't have it both ways, darlings. . . Apple has often innovated, but being first to market is not the point or focus of the corporation: the iPod wasn't the first MP3 player, iPhones came late to multi-tasking - "we wanted to wait until we had the best smartphone multi-tasking system in the world," Steve Jobs said on unveiling the iOS 4 operating system in 2010, and no one can doubt his team achieved that goal. Regarding the dimensions, many Android owners will point out how late the Cupertino giant has come to the size game. But once again, Apple wanted to wait until they got the perfect merger of processor, battery life, resolution, materials and OS workarounds. Being first isn't the point, being the best is. The 6 is 4.7 inches measured diagonally, the 6 Plus is 5.5 inches, yet both are lighter than the 5s (which was 4 inches in size): more high res, more powerful, and offer equal or better battery life in all metrics. Personal fitness is becoming a big issue: the addition of a barometer into the phones allows the new bundled Health app to distinguish height, climbs, and stairs as well as all the other sporty parameters. These phones, in silver, gold or "space grey", are utterly gorgeous in the hand and to the eye. They are released with the superb iOS 8 - an operating system leap forward for the iPhone and iPad, blessedly backwardly compatible all the way down to the 4S phone. The matchless design and innovation team led by Sir Jony Ive - who has head-hunted to Apple the brilliant Australian designer Marc Newson (over whom at the launch I spilled some horrible green wheatgrass and spirulina drink that would have gone all over P Diddy) - have produced two devices of absolutely exquisite dimensions, heft and feel. I have played with both for a week and cannot decide which I would keep. Under the bonnet they each offer a ravishing Retina HD display. The Plus has more pixels and the (real) advantage of optical camera shake correction rather than digital. There's also full HD video, allowing a devastatingly cool 720p slowmo that will make Matrix directors of us all. At 5.5 inches the 6 Plus is, to my large hands, absolutely ideal, but then for most users I would recommend the 6. I now type faster on each, which I wouldn't have thought possible. The keyboard word prediction table - open to other developers to refine - can only improve as firms such as Britain's SwiftKey, so hugely successful already on Android, add an iOS app complete with their already compendious idiolect dictionaries, which will allow you to text or type as if you are Dickens or Doctors Johnson or Dre. There's barely space for me to talk about the extraordinary new Wi-Fi calling option, which allows you to hold a conversation using wireless at home or office and continue seamlessly as you move out of Wi-Fi range allowing the LTE (4G) mobile network (EE in the UK's case) to take over without a blip with Voiceover LTE. It only needs for me to leave with the confident prediction that these phones will prove through sales, as I believe them to be, the best and most beautiful mobile telecom technology ever yet produced. So sue me if I'm proved wrong. Oh and, of course, watch this space . . . Captions: Actor and Apple enthusiast Stephen Fry predicts the new iPhone will prove to be 'the best and most beautiful mobile telecom technology ever yet produced' (c) 2014 Guardian Newspapers Limited. |