With the latest event, Apple has now provided us with its latest lineup. It is an interesting one:
- iPhone 6 Plus provides the paperback sized iPad experience, marketed as a phone with huge margins. Still surprised that it does not support the SD card reader.
- iPhone 6 is interesting in that the smaller 4" size has now been discontinued. I am still adjusting to this size, it is definitely less easy to use with one hand, but with some navigation changes in the software most of the problem could be overcome. Still hearing from people that it is too big and they went for the 5S instead.
- Retina iMac looks like a gorgeous and absolutely price competitive computer. Technically the most impressive advance.
- iPad has seen a small upgrade in the minis, lost the rotation lock on the Air, but gained a less reflective screen, and essentially provides Touch ID now. An incremental update, nothing you need to get, but a nice improvement if you had a pre A7 iPad. I am disappointed that the price for thinness seems to be the loss of rotation lock.
Overall it seems that with the new Watch, Apple is now willing to grow the surface of its devices, as the “glance and react/ignore” use case no longer needs to be so prominently served. The greatest advance this year is the better integration between the devices, making it much more seamless to move around work between the devices.