Over the past few years, post-Jony Ives, Apple appeared to be shifting away from making devices as thin and light as possible, but the company’s new iPad Pro isn’t an anomaly, it reportedly sets the stage for thinner iPhones, MacBooks and Apple Watches.
Mark Gurman for Bloomberg News:
I’m told that Apple is now focused on developing a significantly skinnier phone in time for the iPhone 17 line in 2025. It’s also working to make the MacBook Pro and Apple Watch thinner. The plan is for the latest iPad Pro to be the beginning of a new class of Apple devices that should be the thinnest and lightest products in their categories across the whole tech industry.
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MacDailyNews Take: We’ll just leave these here:
We’ve had to endure years of inferior keyboards in order to shave off half a millimeter about which no one not named Jony gave a rat’s ass. — MacDailyNews, April 2, 2019
Enough with the thin. Everything is thin enough. Sometimes too thin. Thinner isn’t the answer to everything, nor is thinness intrinsic to good design. We’d gladly take a bit more robustness and battery life over more unnecessary thinness, thanks. – MacDailyNews, June 25, 2018
What’d be wrong with slightly thicker iPhone with more battery life and a flush camera assembly? — MacDailyNews, December 21, 2015
The law of diminishing returns can also be applied to industrial design. Apple’s eternal quest for thinness eventually runs into issues such as bulging camera assemblies, battery capacity, strength (breakability), etc. – is Apple’s quest for thinness now bordering on the quixotic? So, is it “you can never be too thin” or is it “thin enough is thin enough?” — MacDailyNews, December 21, 2015
If Apple made an iPhone model that was the smartphone equivalent of the Panasonic Toughbook — thick, heavy, full of battery, and virtually indestructible — they’d never be able to make enough of them. — MacDailyNews, November 2, 2018
See also: With Jony Ive gone, Apple is finally willing to make products thicker so they work better – November 13, 2019
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I hope not. But I am planning to buy an iPhone 16 Pro this year anyway and will not have to deal with this thin crap.
Liquidmetal?
Maybe we’ll see a more pronounced split, like we have with the Apple Watch / Ultra, and MacBook (Air/Pro).
A slim version of every device and a robust version of every device?
Oi-VEY. Don’t get me started about The Thin Man, Jony. That guy was all Form at the expense of Function all the time.
And is it just me, or did others tire of his trippy, marketing musings where he talked annoyingly slow as though trying to find the words for the indescribable spiritual experience of his work? 😖 Sheesh!
Anyway, that being said, while robust is important, I could definitely see a much thinner AppleWatch and (to a lesser degree) iPhone. I love my Ultra2, but it bangs into things from time to time and I wish the back could be concave to better wrap around my wrist.
A thinner iPhone––robust caveat still in place––would be nice too. Not sure if it will happen depending on the processor demands for AI, but it wouldn’t be a bad thing. The “bad thing” already happened when Jony started glueing iMacs together to make them paper cut ready. For a desktop? C’mon, Jony.
Could no one could get him to cut back on the ayahuasca back then?… 🥴
There are still many improvements/refinements that I’d like to see with the iPhone.
Love the feature whereby we’ll be able to log into them from a Mac. That’s a great direction. I suppose the next step is a docking station so we can use them with a monitor, keyboard and mouse just like we can do with our MacBooks. Still not a fan of iOS, but as long as the MacOS can stay updated and thrive, I hope iOS can get better tuned over time.
I need to use the flashlight button on the homescreen of my iPhone all the time. I hate that it dances around and needs 2-3 attempts to engage. 😖
I’d love an iPhone that could be told not to sleep when you want to keep it open for a GrubHub delivery or a loved one driving back home. And why can’t Apple’s Find My throw out ETAs for stuff like that? Allow us to set alerts when the person coming to us is 5 or 10 minutes away?
Or why is it so freaking hard to get voicemail to play on speaker (or default to that if you want it to)? Why is it such hassle to reset the VM progress bar to the beginning of the message you couldn’t hear because it takes repeated actions to get it to play on speaker?
Apple can turn anything into a marketing bonanza so why not become the Anti-Spam champions? Everybody’s super hero?
Thin or not, our iPhones get pummeled with Text-Spam, Phone-Spam, and old school E-mail Spam. Either give us the true abilty to block that stuff or do it for us. Bayesian spam filters just don’t work anymore. Timo, tell us that you have a real AI plan in play for SPAM. It’s ruining our experiece of your hardware, Captain Cook.
Thin or not, I get that no one will expect Apple to give up Form for Function, but a happier marriage of the two feel overdue.
I agree with the spam calls and texts, Apple needs to show some progress on that besides the “spam risk” notification. You can keep your iPhone display on until you choose to sleep it. Go to Settings -> Display&Brightness -> Auto-lock -> Never.
This “feature-pursuit” is nothing but a different type of speeds & feeds.
Touting functionality and making the way for increased productivity/creativity, is what’s needed. The former it what a company does when ideas of true value are scant. Better than updating the emoji libraries, though.
Kinda reminds me of that HR software commercial with the the Unnecessary Action Hero. Unnecessary thinness – lol