“Some products strike an amazing balance, are executed extremely well, and make significant progress from their predecessors while having no major drawbacks,” Marco Arment blogs. “Apple tends to make a lot more of these than most tech companies. I think the strongest examples among each Apple product family in the last few years as being noteworthy for the time and fantastic in retrospect are the 2010 13” MacBook Air, the iPhone 5, and the iPad 2.”
“But if I had to pick runners up, it would be tempting to pick three of Apple’s newest products in the respective families: the latest Retina MacBook Pro (both sizes), the iPhone 5S, and both new iPads,” Arment writes. “This is a very good time to be a fan of Apple hardware, and this says a lot about Apple’s product status and leadership — I’d rather have just a perfect iPhone than a half-assed iPhone and a half-assed watch.”
“If I had to make one nitpick about the new iPads, with the caveat that I haven’t used the new Mini yet, it would be the lack of Touch ID,” Arment writes. “Getting accustomed to Touch ID on your new iPhone, then not having it on your new iPad, is like installing a soft-close toilet seat on just one of the two toilets in the house — once you’re accustomed to Touch ID, it’s disruptive and subtly annoying when it’s not on both devices.”
Read more in the full article here.