Mac360 started back in 2004 as a website about Apple and the Mac. That perspective has changed somewhat as Apple has changed. Yes, we’re still Apple Fan Folk™ but we’ve never been afraid to throw some shade on Apple’s occasional screw ups.
Perspective matters. So does insightful analysis. And most technology websites and writers use the former to gin up controversy to attract readership and downplay the latter because, frankly, analysis takes time. Here’s one that did it right.
See It, Call It
The old phrase “I call it like I see it” is simple and straightforward. “To state one’s opinion in an open, honest, and direct way.” That may not be possible because humanity, but it should be an objective, even if we can never achieve a “I call it like it is.” Daniel Bader, the Managing Editor of Android Central seems to have achieved the latter.
Apple calls iPhone X the future of the smartphone, but after using it for a week — and coming from months of Android use — I can comfortably say that it’s a really great phone. In fact, it is the best iPhone to date, and I’ve had a tremendous time with it, but it doesn’t drastically change my opinion of the iPhone as a product, nor of iOS as an ecosystem.
Perspective, meet reality. We can argue until cows come home to die whether Android is better than iOS or a Samsung Galaxy Note 8 is better than iPhone X– humanity seems to work that way– but what is less arguable is that Apple pushes certain edges of the envelope with more success than Google or Samsung.
Face ID is awesome. I disabled my fingerprint sensor on the Note 8 to see whether Samsung’s iris scanner (which approaches the same security level as Face ID) could compete, and it just couldn’t. And while Samsung’s Face Recognition feature is indeed faster than iris scanning, it’s also much less secure.
Remember the Touch ID skeptics? More than half-a-billion Touch ID users later, Apple decided to ditch the whole thing just as Android device makers caught up.
I was admittedly skeptical of Apple’s decision to remove the fingerprint sensor from the iPhone X — other than aesthetics (and perhaps cost), what reason did it have for not putting a Touch ID sensor on the phone’s back? — but the adjustment has been relatively seamless.
In other words, what was working very well in Touch ID– convenience and security– Apple threw out the window in favor of Face ID.
What else?
I really do like the overall design of the phone. It’s slightly shorter and wider than the Galaxy S8, which also advertises a 5.8-inch bezel-less OLED display, but the stainless steel frame (shiny and chrome on my silver unit) looks expensive and feels distinctive. Given the $1000+ price, though, I’m not about to use this thing without a case, so I won’t be seeing much of that chrome, for better or worse.
Ditto. I have many friends who are purists and love the naked iPhone. I’m not one of them. And being on the iPhone Upgrade Program I have an incentive to keep the scratches to a minimum.
What about that highly touted iPhone X display?
OLED is a big point of discussion right now, but the reality is that there’s nothing particularly special about the iPhone’s Samsung-made OLED screen. Like the latest displays on flagship Samsung phones, it’s both incredibly sharp and vibrant, with near-perfect calibration, while also butting up against the limitations of modern OLED technology. Even Samsung hasn’t figured out how to make an OLED display with an RGB stripe, so the iPhone X’s sub-pixel array forms the same diamond shape as its Samsung rivals.
Most iPhone X and Galaxy S8 owners will never be able to tell the difference, but DisplayMate‘s Dr. Raymond Soneira can.
What makes the iPhone X the Best Smartphone Display is the impressive Precision Display Calibration Apple developed, which transforms the OLED hardware into a superbly accurate, high performance, and gorgeous display, with close to Text Book Perfect Calibration and Performance!!
Anything else?
The iPhone X excels due to its record Absolute Color Accuracy (1.0 JNCD), which is Visually Indistinguishable from Perfect, and is very likely considerably better than any mobile display, monitor, TV or UHD TV that you have
What about the Apple-designed A11 Bionic CPU that powers iPhone X, iPhone 8 and 8 Plus; compared to other mobile CPUs? Benchmark tests show there is no comparison. Apple wins.
Bader:
Apple deserves a lot of credit not just for pushing the envelope of smartphone hardware innovation — look at iFixit’s teardown of the iPhone X to see just how elegantly the whole interior is laid out — but for creating an ecosystem where, once you’re in, you don’t want to leave.
Whether one particular brand of Android is better than iPhone shouldn’t be an issue because we all have different perspectives, different requirements, different budgets, and different priorities regarding our devices.
Some of the responses to Bader’s article in Android Central point out the problems:
scouser73
That fact that it’s $1,000 and upwards, people can & should learn that it’s just a phone and can they should buy a cheaper one that can do what the iPhone X does.
Response?
Retinella
No. No you can’t. You cannot find a cheaper phone that records 4K video content in 60 fps, that can do AR, or that has an optically-stabilized secondary camera.
As you can imagine, commentary goes downhill from there.
Apple built the Mac to be “the computer for the rest of us.” The rest of us understand that. The iPhone X is for the rest of us, too.
