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You are alive, so you have seen: millions of people are standing in long lines to buy a spiffy new iPhone 6. But as a contented iPhone 5S owner - who has safely upgraded to IOS 8 - what's in it for me to join them?
Well, the camera is better, everyone says so. And I believe them. And I use my phone's camera a lot. But the 5S has a great little camera, so I'm not sure the difference makes upgrading to the 6 worth it. The 6 supports Apple Pay. That might do it for me, we'll see. It will depend a lot on which merchants adopt NFC readers; if they become ubiquitos, maybe using Apple Pay will be compelling. I am quite willing to abandon a pocket full of easily spoofed or stolen plastic cards. The 6 has this little M8 motion processor, which means it can more accurately be used as a motion sensor than the 5S, which has an M7 processor. I use the Argus app all the time, which measures my motion, and it uses the M7 on the 5S. And it works pretty well. The possibility that it could work better is ... not that interesting. The 6 supports WiFi calling. Well, that's nice. There are most definitely times when I'm in a building where I have WiFi but no cell signal. But I can always use Skype (it makes voice calls over WiFi), and frequently do. So I'm not sure that's compelling. And the 6 supports VoLTE. This means, you can make a call and continue to use data over the same cell connection. AT&T customers have had this for years, but I'm a Verizon person, and its always difficult to balance making calls with using data. How often have I been on the phone in my car and wanted to use Google Maps? Still, I can always use Skype to get around this (it makes voice calls over the data connection). So I'm not sure that's compelling either. Finally, there's the allure of having a 6. Can a techno-savvy leading-edge software engineer resist the urge to have the latest and greatest? So far, yes. Stay tuned. |
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