I have been using an Android phone for the last year. It was a Nouns edition Pixel 7a running EthereumOS. It was great to have a phone that was running a light node and had a system-level wallet. I also played around with a OnePlus Open folding phone and was completely taken by it. I like trying different operating systems to better understand how the people I'm designing for compute, but for the most part, there is hardly any difference between Windows and MacOS or Android and iOS. What has always been a differentiator is the apps on each platform. Remember back in the day when Windows had all the best apps?
I recently returned to my iPhone 14 Pro with its shattered back for the emergence of crypto apps on iOS like Zora, Kiosk, and Scoop. Along with Warpcast, I want to study the ways these native app developers are trying to incorporate crypto in Apple-compliant ways.
I knew going into this week's Apple event I was an iPhone 16 buyer. My iPhone 14 Pro has been dropped one to many times. Phone events aren't that interesting anymore, and replacing the live element with recorded corporate scripts makes it worse, but I tuned in and here is what I'm excited about.
I haven't decided between the 16 and the 16 Pro. I usually go for the Pro because I want maximum compute and want to be able to use it for a few years without it feeling laggy. This year, the Pro is not that much of an improvement but has a much bigger price, and I like the colors for the 16 better. The Pro has a bigger screen (6.3" vs 6.1") and MKBHD says noticeably thinner bezels. The cameras are much nicer on it and it has 25W fast charging which will take it from 0 to 50% in 30m.
My main decision point will come down to weather I think the latest and greatest is going to let me do more with AI related apps in the near future. I don't really have an answer here so I'll have to go with my gut on Friday. All models have the 2 things I'm most excited about: buttons and intelligence.
I wonder what Jony Ive thinks of all those new physical buttons. There is an action button you can map to any app or shortcut. There is an intelligence button to bring up the new and improved Siri* and there is the Camera Control Button which lets you take a photo with a press, a video with a long press, and you can double tap and cycle through the various camera options.
My phone is at least as much my camera as it is my communications device. I also love using it to create things. I know that Camera button will result in me taking more and more creative photos and videos.
The other exciting thing is Apple Intelligence which isn't iPhone 16 exclusive OR even available at launch. Everyone will get this at some future point with iOS 18.1. From a ChatGPT-like Siri to all the little Intelligence touches within apps, it should give us a good view of Apple's vision for AI. I will most certainly be creating many photo albums using natural language.
Microsoft has done some good work with Copilot integration in Windows and Google Workspace and Gemini can do some interesting things, but they all still feel like the early smartphone and not a tightly integrated Apple device. Will Apple pull it off?
One thing for sure is that Siri can only possibly be better.
