Apple will no longer be releasing iPhones on quite the same schedule.
This is great news for your wallet, bad news for your need for a new device, and possible evidence of the company’s slippage from its peak under Steve Jobs.
The company will no longer release complete phone redesigns every two years, instead offering more incremental improvements like the S-models it releases in off years, The Wall Street Journal writes. Practically, this means that we’ll be getting an iPhone 6S-type device at the regularly scheduled time, with a newer device set to launch in 2017.
That next phone might have features like an edge-to-edge screen including a built-in fingerprint sensor, according to the WSJ.
The news is confirmation of rumors that have been seeping from the Asian supply chain responsible for manufacturing the devices.
Rumored changes to the 2016 device include elimination of the headphone jack, requiring wireless earphones or earphones that connect to Apple’s proprietary charger. This is where the Beats acquisition really starts driving value. A benefit of those changes will be a one millimeter reduction in the phone’s thickness. Is it worth it? Maybe.
What is certain is that the Steve Jobs days of consistent hardware excellence are firmly in the past. The decline started somewhere around the introduction of Siri, a half-baked addition that broke with Apple’s ethos of not being first, but being best. The tech giant has since seen its dominance slip in all areas except the personal computer and possibly the tablet, though those sectors seem much less crucial than the machine learning and phone fields. People buy tablets maybe once in their lives, laptops every three to four years, and phones every two.
Now that Samsung and Motorola are ascendant, Android has reached or surpassed the iPhone’s level of excellence. If there’s now going to be a hardware gap in addition to the software one, well, good luck to Apple in the future.
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