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iPhone 6 rivals have wasted their chance to cut Apple off at the knees

Monday, May 5, 2014 · 11:01 am · 19 Comments

“The elephant in the room is Apple and what rivals have known for years is Apple is planning an iPhone with a larger screen,” Gordon Kelly writes for Forbes. “In fact for the last 12 months leaks have consistently revealed the iPhone 6 will have a 4.7 inch screen. That’s big for an iPhone, but ‘mini’ compared to the 5+ inch behemoths Apple rivals have at the top of their phone ranges.”

“So it presents a simple, but invaluable opportunity: make smaller versions of your flagship 5+inch devices to combat the impending iPhone 6,” Kelly writes. “Given their names (S4/S5 Mini, G2/G3 Mini, One/One M8 Mini) and screen sizes (4.3in to 4.7in) Apple rivals appear to have done exactly that… but they haven’t.”

“The iPhone 6 will be the most significant form factor shift in iPhone history and with it comes a very real risk that Apple will not get either the hardware or software right,” Kelly writes. “After all a major rethink of iOS could be on the cards, particularly with the back button currently positioned in what will be a hard-to-reach top left corner.”

Read more in the full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: iPhones do not have a “back button,” dummkopf. The risk that Apple, of all companies, “will not get either the hardware or software right” is considerably lower than Mr. Back Button would have his readers believe.

As for “cutting Apple off at the knees” and other such delusional fantasies:

[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader "Fred Mertz" for the heads up.]

Categories: Opinion

Tags: App Store, App Store knockoffs, Apple, bigger iPhone, google, iOS, iPhone, iPhone 6, iPhone also-rans, iPhone knockoffs, iPhone upgrade cycle, iPhone wannabes, large screen iPhone, samsung, smartphones

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Comment Feed

19 Comments

macnut222

Monday, May 5, 2014 - 11:12 am · Reply

@MDN: The back button referenced refers to an onscreen button, not a physical button.
- Sharon Sharalike
  
  Monday, May 5, 2014 - 11:20 am · Reply
  
  Which onscreen back button would that be? You’re just making that up and hoping it’s right. But it’s not. There’s no onscreen back button in the top left corner. If you’re talking about Safari (and you aren’t) the back button is in the convenient and easy to reach lower left.
  - kayan
    
    Monday, May 5, 2014 - 11:35 am · Reply
    
    The back button in the top left corner is a very standard convention in iOS and has been since the beginning. It’s currently that way in the App store, Mail app, Music App, Settings App – most apps really. I would think any user would get easily lost in iOS if they didn’t notice it.
  - TheWatchfulOne
    
    Monday, May 5, 2014 - 11:35 am · Reply
    
    The “back button” appears on the left side of the navigation bar. It is used to pop the current view off the navigation stack. Please note that not every app uses the navigation bar so of course not every app has a “back button.”
    - Sharon Sharalike
      
      Monday, May 5, 2014 - 7:06 pm · Reply
      
      The article was talking about hardware and the OS, not something implemented by applications. The author clearly didn’t know what he was talking about.
      - os
        
        Monday, May 5, 2014 - 9:19 pm · Reply
        
        The back button others have referred to IS IN THE OS.
        
        listcatcher
        
        Friday, May 9, 2014 - 7:25 am · Reply
        
        You make no sense at all. If it’s “in the OS” then its placement is not an issue. But there is not back button “in the OS.”
        
        If you somehow mean some code that will maintain a stack and when invoked will place the state of the device “back” to something it was before, well, no, there isn’t.
        
        But even if there were, why would its position be an issue. It wouldn’t have a physical position. There might be some on screen element that would invoke it, but the placement of that element wouldn’t be bound to any particular location on the screen.
        
        In short, the original article was steeped in ignorance, and that ignorance has bled into your pot.
- kayan
  
  Monday, May 5, 2014 - 11:27 am · Reply
  
  I rarely use the on-screen back buttons now because of the back/forward swipe gestures added in iOS 7. Perhaps Apple added this feature anticipating the larger screen iPhone 6 would make the back buttons harder to reach.
- Arnold Ziffel
  
  Monday, May 5, 2014 - 11:31 am · Reply
  
  Yeah, we know that. But what ‘button’ is he talking about?
- mxnt41
  
  Monday, May 5, 2014 - 3:03 pm · Reply
  
  This is quite clearly a generic reference. When apps have screens where you go forward from one page to another, typically the “back” button will be in the top left corner. Perhaps with a bigger screen, designers will use the extra width to put it at the bottom left or something. The point being made, is that a bigger screen will likely see a rethink of various aspects of iOS to perhaps still allow one handed use for the some or all of the major functionality.
psimac

Monday, May 5, 2014 - 11:26 am · Reply

Actually, in many apps and in settings, there is a back button as you go through menus. For instance, I’m using Tweetbot right now. To get back to my feed, the left arrow takes me back. When in settings, if you go to General>anything else, a back button appears to get you back to the main Settings screen. So the button exists is spots, but it’s more bread-crumbs than a Back button in the Android sense. As usual, the author is exaggerating and grasping at straws.
I’m assuming the latter, because I cannot read he full article because the link in the @MDN doesn’t work.
hannahjs

Monday, May 5, 2014 - 11:38 am · Reply

http://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonkelly/2014/05/05/iphone-6-rivals-have-wasted-their-chance-to-cut-apple-off-at-the-knees/
- Road Warrior
  
  Monday, May 5, 2014 - 12:30 pm · Reply
  
  Hey, someone else who pays attention to the circular links that MDN sometimes ends up having. Well done as per usual hannahjs.
BoC

Monday, May 5, 2014 - 12:13 pm · Reply

“Wasted their chance to cut Apple off at the knees!” Yup!

Apple competitors from Jan 2007 up to nearly know, never realized how critical UI design & functionality is to getting and keeping customers.

Competitors have had 7 years to ‘smart up’, and some still don’t get it.

Make easy to use, consistent UI, with a physically superior structure and consumers will continually migrate to the winner.
- Chopped Liver
  
  Monday, May 5, 2014 - 3:02 pm · Reply
  
  Can they even reach Apple’s knees?
Road Warrior

Monday, May 5, 2014 - 2:06 pm · Reply

Let’s play a game. Pretend that a modern day journanalist had say some smarts, integrity, a sense of moral value. I know I know it’s a HUGE stretch of the imagination but it might give you something like this:

Let me present you with a business scenario: you know what your biggest rival and industry leader is going to do. In fact you’ve had a good idea for the last few years. Do you:
a) Beat it to the punch with a top notch alternative to gain market share and damage its plans
b) Have a half hearted attempt at making a basic alternative and hope for the best
c) Find out what makes them the best. Discover that they take the time to do it right when making a product. Discover that they actually do care for their customers and that they make products to change the world for the better, not compete for market share of sit on the temple of monetary gain at other’s pain.

Now, who can come up with d). Should be easy,…
- hannahjs
  
  Monday, May 5, 2014 - 2:25 pm · Reply
  
  d) Soil yourself. The big dog is coming and you’re out of bullets
  - Road Warrior
    
    Monday, May 5, 2014 - 4:25 pm · Reply
    
    See I knew it would be easy. Let’s see if someone can come up with option e, f and maybe g. Yes you can try this at home.
Altos

Tuesday, May 6, 2014 - 9:10 am · Reply

Why focus on the “back” button when a wider screen will make EVERYTHING on the left side harder to reach. iPhone 5 already made the top (or bottom) part of the screen harder to reach for people with smaller hands.

The issue is : one hand VS two hand operation. When I look a Fandroids operating their phablets, they are almost all doing it with two hands (except for the few people with very large hands).

If you decide that you are OK with using two hands (or no hands) to operate your phone, then the screen cannot be too wide and the issue becomes where you want to keep your phone (purse, coat pocket, back pocket).

Android phone manufacturers have shown that there is a market for the bigger form factor. Apple will look at it and decide how to properly address it if it deems it worthwhile.

I doubt Apple will simply switch to a larger screen for all its phone offerings and, with the simple product line concept championed by Jobs when he came back, the real challenge will be to make the optimal choices in size and feature variants.