[AlexanderDhoore]

I don't intend this as criticism at all, but it's quite amusing how routine iOS updates and new iPhone releases have become. I recall being in high school when the first iPhone was introduced, and the sheer novelty of smartphones was awe-inspiring. Nowadays, they've become so commonplace that I find myself getting more enthusiastic about new additions to the Python standard library!

[matsemann]

And even though iOS/MacOS updates happen frequently and bring little new each time, they still manage to break lots of stuff each time.

Like how many devs need to recompile their old apps to keep them "compatible", or how the network stack keeps changing destroying our VPN and stuff, or how even programs like Office sometimes won't work.

[yen223]

I recently rewatched the original keynote where Steve Jobs first announced the iPhone. The thing that struck me was how wild the crowd went when he demoed pinch-to-zoom, something which we basically take for granted nowadays.

[hinkley]

It killed the segregated internet for phones. They just figured out how to display normal web pages. And the double tap to zoom in on a column was a pretty big feature too.

I kept waiting for the Apple Watch to have its iPhone 3GS moment, where they came out with one noticeably thinner and with the same or better battery life. But it never came. Is anything they’re a tiny bit taller than the original. Instead they went with a smaller and larger version which is not quite the same.

I still struggle with keeping it on while doing anything that requires work gloves. Make it thinner already.

[shortcake27]

Something weird is going on with Apple Watch.

When the iPhone 12 came out in 2020, we got a new design language. Sharp flat edges were back. Every year since then we’ve been waiting for the watch to get a design update. But still in 2023 it’s the same old fat bubbly design which looks _very_ dated.

I wonder if Apple is waiting for some piece of tech to get better (batteries?), so they can launch a sleeker flatter watch.

[hinkley]

They had a patent on putting auxiliary batteries in the watch band. I was so stoked and then nothing came of it. I’m guessing poor performance or a fire hazard. I waited way too long before I gave up on that every hitting the manufacturing floor.

[andrewinardeer]

Often companies sit on patents and do nothing with them simply to ensure their competitors can't use that innovative feature.

[Andrew_nenakhov]

> And the double tap to zoom in on a column was a pretty big feature too.

By itself this feature is not a very big deal: Opera Mobile/Mini had it for quite some time before iPhone, I certainly used it a lot. But the whole package the iPhone brought was a game changer for the industry.

[muzani]

I remember the era. We had to double click or basically press a zoom button. It was still so bad even with zoom that my first job ended up making mobile/responsive sites because nobody wanted to zoom in and out all the time.

[benoliver999]

Anything multi-touch at that point was pretty impressive. Up until then touch screens had been single finger only, and often resistive.

[muzani]

Android 14 isn't much better: https://developer.android.com/about/versions/14/features

Grammatical inflection is interesting, though. I'd prefer formality over gendered though, like the difference between du and Sie in German.

[input_sh]

Android "peaked" around v8, maybe v9. Up until then, jumping from one version to the next one really felt worthy of a new major release.

10-13 (haven't used v14 yet) were all just completely forgettable (mostly UI changes, no significant new feature).

[muzani]

There were some tightened security features on both Android and iOS in that phase.

Basically a lot of really dark patterns were killed. A free casual game reading all your files. A game with media access being able to "track" you from location information in your photos, without any file or location access. A social media app could be pasting your password from clipboard to their servers. A messaging app which you gave cam/mic access once to could be recording you while it's in background, and converting your audio information via their speech to text.

So a lot of the changes have been around making this behavior really visible. Sure, any app can access your cam/mic, but there's a green light every time it does. Sure, it can copy/paste from clipboard, there will just be a little notification each time.

[jojobas]

Almost as if there are now more decent smartphone manufacturers that one can bother to remember, let alone models.