http://www.flickr.com/photos/56573578@N06/
So, you may have seen that the Cupertino company (Apple) has released new iPhones. Some may say that I am a bit of an Apple fanboy (well being an Apple Distinguished Educator partially requires it) but I also appreciate some of the other “technology” devices available too.
Recently I ran a Nexus 7 tablet implementation pilot and I was very impressed. The £159 devices (now £199 for the new model) certainly provides a lot of “bang for your buck” and we were pretty much able to do everything we needed on the Nexus that I have previously done on the iPad (although perhaps not as intuitively).
So…….when the announcement of the iPhone 5s was made I was, to be honest, underwhelmed. Ok so it had a faster processor, a finger print scanner and some enhanced camera but for the first time I hadn’t thought “wow I must have that”. This started me looking at alternatives and I realised that the Android market had really matured, for example the HTC One and the Sony Xperia phones (especially the Ultra) are real contenders (my dad has the former and I actually think its a great phone).
I realised just how much the Android hardware developers had closed the gap in terms of function and usability & after having a play with the new Nexus 7 I realised just how much competition Apple now truly has. In fact I was all ready to place my order with my mobile carrier for an Android device but………………………I then updated my iPhone to iOS7.
This is where I realised something – the reason I find the “Apple” experience generally better than other mobile device experiences. It’s the hardware-software development integration. For sure Apple is certainly not as ahead of the game as they were 5 or 6 years ago, but when you load an iOS on to your idevice you can be sure of one thing, that it has been designed with your hardware device in mind (not the other way round).
Google are beginning to get close to this with their Nexus products. They too understand the benefits of integrating software and hardware design and development (see Chromebooks as an example here too).
So…………I am not buying a new iPhone 5S for just the accelerated processor, camera and most certainly not for a finger print scanner – but I am buying it because when iOS7 starts up on to it I know that the experience and integration has been carefully considered at every single stage.
No responses yet