iPhone 5 sales may have been high this past weekend, but unlike some earlier launches, there was no line outside the Apple Store at Bethesda Row the next evening.
The phone may not be as earth shattering as Apple would have you believe, but it still has the organic intuitiveness you expect - and almost always get - from an Apple product.
 |
Are you following this guy
@BethesdaRow on Twitter? |
The 4" screen is just about as impressive as the latest iPad's. But after the Samsung Galaxy S III, going from 4.7" to 4" is like going from a giant flatscreen TV to a 1970s Trinitron. For video in particular, that .7 is a world of difference.
 |
Hey, it's the Piano Guy at
American Tap Room! |
I don't think the Apple Maps are as terrible as advertised, but it's quite different using them in a store, rather than navigating on the road. There's a neat feature where photos (from Yelp?) pop up for a particular restaurant, for example. But it is hard to to compete with Google without a Street View feature.
Where Apple continues to dominate, is not just in the interface, but in the tools provided (or downloadable) for video and audio recording and editing. And they continue to hold a slight edge in the apps department, as there are still a few apps exclusive to Apple (The Drybar was a recent example, much to the chagrin of Android-using ladies at Bethesda Row), and still some tricks you can't make your Android do with a trip to Google Play.
Panorama? The Galaxy S III can do that too. Front facing camera? Ditto. And the "new" Siri seems mostly just an upgrade to catch up with the app-launching S-Voice.
Which gives one the sense that with Google, Apple, and - almost unbelieveably - Microsoft, Amazon and maybe even Facebook hunched over their workbenches, and more competitive than ever, the next generation of phones after this will be truly exciting.
