I'd say that things like the integrated fingerprint reader (2012) on the home button was pretty innovative/bleeding edge. It was a bit of a gimmick, but ultimately they pushed the boundaries of what anyone else had done. Ditto with Siri (2011), while Windows Vista had basic speech recognition in 2006, Siri was able to merge the latest speech recognition with the user's data, to give the user compelling results.
So I don't think Apple needs another iPad/iPhone to be called innovative, it can be new software features, or little hardware features. I just genuinely cannot remember the last time I've legitimately been jealous of an Apple exclusive feature. Maybe Lightning's reversible-ness in 2012? What since then? That was three years ago.
The Atrix had a fingerprint sensor, but it didn't really do anything other than unlock the phone. The sensor on iOS allowed for far deeper integration into the system. That was innovative.
It seems obvious to me. Perhaps it's hindsight, but Apple's full-stack control of hardware and software make it obvious.
It's non-obvious on Android/pre-Android because software developers won't care much about an API for a fraction of an OS's market. Which is why I'd venture to guess most Android apps still don't take advantage of fingerprint sensors.
Siri was a big step forward when it was first released, but it has since been passed by both Google and Microsoft. It's not even close anymore. Like you said, it's been several years since I've been truly impressed with anything Apple has done. Maybe it's just unreasonable to expect that kind of thing so consistently.
I switched back to the iPhone for a bunch of reasons, but once I got used to TouchID, in hindsight, I would've switched just for that. Apple still seems to know how to add features that are surprisingly new and useful. I just wish they did more of that with their software too.
I sometimes feel Google really doesn't know how to market their stuff properly. I'd say their new Photos app is a computational wonder, but its jaw dropping features are not communicated well to common public.
Sure, but Apple has invented a way to drive theirs directly from a heavily modified Radeon GPU - for that Dell monitor you need to connect two DisplayPort cables at once to show 5K content. And like others have pointed out - that monitor costs as much as the 5K imac.
Actually I agree that the fingerprint sensor was innovative. I wish my Android phone had one. Siri, on the other hand... eh.
Siri still doesn't seem to be able to do that much of note (though I haven't read through today's announcements) and a straw poll of my iPhone using friends suggests that none of them really use it anyway. I'm the same with the voice functionality on Android, though I do use the cards provided by Google Now a lot.
On the other hand, Google Now on Android (voice commands/voice search) is extremely handy and useful for me and many of my friends here. They seem to do it all the time.
> I'd say that things like the integrated fingerprint reader (2012) on the home button was pretty innovative/bleeding edge. It was a bit of a gimmick, but ultimately they pushed the boundaries of what anyone else had done.
I'm not super familiar with TouchID and its capabilities, but is this true? According to Wikipedia, Apple announced its fingerprint reader in late 2013, not 2012, and this feature was available on a high-end Android phone (I forget which) a couple years before that (2011 if I recall correctly). I understand that "having a touch button" isn't quite a binary feature, and TouchID could have some novel elements as a product, but as I said I'm not super-familiar with TouchID. Is there something in particular about TouchID that was innovative/bleeding-edge?
TouchID is reliable in a way that previous fingerprint readers were not. I use it to unlock my phone and it just works. Every. Single. Time. Well, more like 95% of the time, but it is good enough. I used to not lock my phone because it was too annoying to unlock, so for me this relatively small improvement means that an important feature that wasn't available to me before suddenly is.
Ah, if the reader is truly better quality than earlier ones, then of course "first fingerprint reader that consistently works" would be a definite step forward.
That being said: I didn't have the Atrix et al (my first fingerprint reader is on my S6, and Samsung didn't even pretend they weren't borrowing heavily from Apple with this phone's design), but from what I had read, it performed pretty consistently as well. Looking up a random review of its performance:
"The Atrix prompts you to set up the fingerprint reader by swiping your left and right index fingers over it, and also asks you to provide a back-up password in case you go into the witness-protection scheme and have your fingerprints erased. In our tests, the biometric sensor responded to a quick swipe from either finger, so we found it fun and convenient to use. It seemed secure enough too, denying access to all of the interlopers we roped into our tests."
The fingerprint reader is something that's been in every ThinkPad laptop since time immemorial. Apple just wants you to think they invented it because they were the first to put it on a phone.
Fingerprint readers on laptops of old were the swipe type. These existed on smartphones before Apple added it to the iPhone. The trick of it was that the iPhone uses a touch sensor instead of a swipe, which works better. Of course, Apple didn't invent it. Another company did. Apple bought that company in an anticompetitive move so that no one else could use the tech. Interestingly enough, that's why the sensor didn't make it into the Nexus 6.
So I don't think Apple needs another iPad/iPhone to be called innovative, it can be new software features, or little hardware features. I just genuinely cannot remember the last time I've legitimately been jealous of an Apple exclusive feature. Maybe Lightning's reversible-ness in 2012? What since then? That was three years ago.