John Gruber reviews Apple iPhone 5s: ‘This is what innovation, real innovation, looks like’

11 years ago

“What has Apple delivered with the iPhone 5s?” John Gruber writes for Daring Fireball. “With the A7 they’ve doubled CPU performance in exactly one year, at no apparent cost to battery life. They’ve potentially obviated the need for standalone motion trackers like Fitbits and Nike Fuelbands. And they’ve started a transition to platform-wide 64-bit computing years ahead of their competition.”

“With Touch ID they’ve eliminated the need to enter a passcode to unlock your phone and a (one hopes) complex password to download apps and media from the iTunes Store… They’ve also potentially set the stage for numerous future conveniences. Imagine Touch ID integrated with the upcoming iCloud Keychains,” Gruber writes. “With the camera they’ve created a simple, intuitive interface for taking bursts of fast action or won’t-stay-still kids and pets. It’s a wonderful hardware feat to put a 10 fps still camera in a remarkably thin mobile phone (a phone with no inelegant bulge to accommodate more distance between lens and sensor, at that). But the real innovation — there’s that word — is software, right there on the device itself, that makes it easy to select only the shots from those bursts that you really want to keep, and to throw away the rest.”

Gruber writes, “This is what innovation, real innovation, looks like.6 It’s like the Thomas Edison quote, “Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.” Innovation is missed by most people because it is so often incremental.”

Much, much more, including an iPhone 5c review, Apple A7 discussion and more, in the full article – highly recommended – here.