And Apple Courage shows us what courage actually means for Apple.
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Apple’s decision to do away with the headphone jack makes people uneasy because it removes a choice that they had, says Jonathan Sterne, author of The Audible Past: Cultural Origins Of Sound Reproduction.
The new-generation iPhones and a second-generation Apple Watch unveiled at the event boast the ability to get wet without getting ruined. The company then deleted the messages. Apple has seen iPhone sales decline year-over-year for the past two quarters, and any additional piece of good news could have alleviated fears that these declines will continue. Or as Bob O’Donnell, a veteran consumer tech analyst at Technalysis Research, puts it: “You start losing those things at $160 a pair, you’re going to go insane”. “Ya know they gonna do something big”.
“Apple’s new products match, rather than exceed, the technological envelope already created by competitors in the audio and mobile accessories markets”, said IHS Technology senior analyst Paul Erickson. There’s no earphone jack in the new iPhone 7 devices. I hate to say it, but the iPhone 7 will not be a big improvement.
The iPhone 7 is priced from US$649 (NZ$1199), the same as its predecessor, the 6s. The iPhone 7 also features two stereo speakers, one at the top of the phone and one at the bottom. The new phones will ship with EarPods that connect via the iPhones’ Lightning Connector charging port, as well as an adapter to connect traditional headphones.
However, one thing it does not have as well, is an analog headphone jack – a push to wireless devices, including apple’s new air pods, which would come out in late October. However, with what amounts to an incremental, lookalike update with the loss of the headphone jack causing controversy, the outlook for this launch wasn’t exactly great.
“The reason to move on: courage”.
Apple did make an effort to improve on standard Bluetooth technology, which can be unreliable and obstinate when used to “pair” wireless headsets with phones or other devices.
The new phone will start shipping in major markets, including the United States and China, on September 16. The matte black, called Black, is finished just like the other color versions but the Jet Black version has a glossy finish.
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In the press release for the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus, Apple claims that the A10 Fusion is “the most powerful chip ever in a smartphone”, featuring “two high-performance cores that run up to two times faster than iPhone 6”.
