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Oh, this is going to be fun to watch play out.

I wonder if this is the signal that moving forward, Apple will be all TSMC chips.

Stephen Hackett on the best pocket computer on the market:

The 5.5 inch, 401 ppi display isn’t just beautiful, but I find the additional space (and increased battery capacity) useful as this is the most-used device I own. Thankfully, every year, my pocket computer gets better, right on schedule.

He gets it.

Stephen Hackett:

It’s a different approach then what Apple’s doing with OS X and iOS, and Google with Chrome OS and Android, but I think it can be successful, if the company can prove investing in their platform is worthwhile for developers.

Could not agree more.

Shawn Blanc:

In short, for me, the 6s Plus is equal parts wonderful and terrible. There are some people who find the size to be just right, and so they have no sense of trade-offs with the device. But it is just too large for me to comfortably use as a hand-held phone.

Yeah, the iPhone 6s Plus is actually a terrible phone. But it is the world’s best pocket computer. And the best camera that can fit in my jeans pocket. And a fantastic wifi hotspot. And a great video communicator.

But as just a phone, it sucks.

I’m poking fun at Shawn here, but I truly mean this: don’t think of the 6s Plus as a phone, think of it as a computer. Once you do that, you realize how amazing it is.

Peter Bright:

The Surface Book should offer another feature found in laptops: better performance. The keyboard unit can include a discrete NVIDIA GPU. That’s only usable when the tablet is docked, of course. The keyboard also includes an extra battery; the system as a whole can manage a 12 hour battery life, Microsoft says, but that’s only when using both batteries. The tablet itself has much less battery life.

Yikes, that keyboard attachment is hideous looking. Despite all that — the Surface remains a compelling product whose success is hampered by the lack of good touch-first applications.

Nice article from Wired, going over the how of the new water resistance in iPhones.

Looks like we had a stellar 8 day streak in April…

Good infographic.

Horace Dediu:

Looking at new features like 3D Touch, Live Photos, and better cameras, one can observe how easily acceptable and desirable they are to those who first see them. As were Siri, FaceTime, Touch ID and iCloud, making something meaningfully better is a sign of sustaining innovation which does not over-serve.

Paradoxically, the improvements are not usually things that users ask for. Surveys always show that consumers want “better battery life” or a “bigger screen” but delivering something else entirely which nevertheless leads to mass adoption shows an uncanny insight into what really matters.

I love this passage from Dediu. Coincidentally, the Evening Standard had an interview with Apple SVP Eddy Cue, in which he said something very similar:

Can customer feedback be something of a minefield? “There are things people can tell us and there are things they can’t,” he continues. “Both are really important but one of the dangers is to only do things people tell you to do. You would never do [new iPhone features] Live Photos or 3D Touch if you only listened to people. To innovate you have to look beyond. We used to say that we get paid to look around corners.”

It reminds me of a story I heard in college about cars in the 1950s. (You know, the cars with the big fins on the back.) The parable told was that the big car companies asked people what they wanted in a car, and cars kept getting more and more boring. Then they started asking people what their neighbors would want in a car, and people said things like: “Oh he’d want something crazy with wings, and bubbles, something like a jet.” And thus they made cars with tail fins, and people loved them.

It’s an adaptation of this Henry Ford quote:

If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.

We are often the worst judges at what we truly want. We would all love better battery life, but very few us would be compelled to go spend another $400 for better battery life.

It’s out now, and it’s my new go to for RSS on the Mac. What a beautiful looking app.

Good insight.