The market wants what the market wants. And Apple, for reasons that I still don't fully understand, drives a large portion of what the market wants. I think the earpods are ugly as sin, but I guarantee there are already a slew of pro-Apple articles written that are hailing them as the greatest invention since the wheel, and even more of them will be released as people have to defend their idiotic $200 purchases. I would much prefer the black-and-gold neo-victorian look. Once I upgrade from the Galaxy S4 I have now, I'm planning on getting a giant, chunky several thousand milliamp-hour capacity battery case, so that I don't have to constantly be thinking about my usage. Give me a brick of a phone, as long as it does the things I want it to do.
My fundamental beef against Steampunk is that it celebrates an era of elitism and social inequality through the false over-ornamentation of everyday objects. My beef against giant chunky phones is they have to fit in a pocket. I mean, I had one of these. Which, granted, was smaller than one of these. And hey. You throw that thing in one of these: And it's bigger than one of these.
I have a three or four year old smart phone that I'm waiting patiently to die so I can replace it without feeling guilty. The other day when I was thinking about replacing it I remembered phones from the early '00s. Candy bar phones, flip phones, those nifty little sliders. Half of those things were pretty cheap, but the other half lasted forever, andany had nifty features like built in bluetooth, the ability to play MP3s, and even a camera of you were willing to splurge. The form factor was as much of a selling point as anything else, they were fashion statements almost. Now we have all of the features we could want and none of the cool form factors. It's nice in a way, cause we don't have to make anywhere near as many compromises. Still, I kind of miss buttons.
I'm on Fi right now. Don't know what your time frame is, but I'm sure it's worth waiting until the new HTC phone comes out (forget what they're calling it--not Nexus). The Nexus 5X is ok, but it's kinda cheap. Having never seen the HTC phone, I can still almost guarantee it will be nicer. Also, you get $150 discount on the handset when you sign up for Fi. You may already know that, but it's not heavily advertised if you just go on the Nexus page. I almost bought the phone then signed up for Fi, because I didn't know any better.
Yeah, been looking at that. Good tip about the 5X 'cuz I was going to saddle my wife with one. Apparently the specs between the Nexus 6P and the "Google Pixel XL" are pretty damn similar so I was thinking of jumping on it... but if the 5X is plastick-ey we'll hold off. Assuming my wife's iPhone survives another month. A friend tried to order the new iPhone in blacker-than-black. It wouldn't let him. "mostly black" was due end of November. Ridiculous.
The slaves in the apple aesthetic (God I hate myself for using that word) are Chinese instead of Cornish/Welsh, and are better concealed. At least Victorian aristocracy didn't pretend to give a damn about the proles. The Apple aesthetic is the inverse of the over-ornamentation, no? I'd happily take a TI-85 sized phone if it meant a few days of battery life, and a high capacity hard drive.
The Apple aesthetic is actually the Dieter Rams aesthetic and, on its own, is a useful and worthy design philosophy. Where Apple fails is that 3, 5 and 7 have superseded 1, 2 and 4. This is because Apple is more interested in shit looking cool than in shit being cool because, in my opinion, they have reached a point where they will not convert more people to the fold and are instead attempting to maintain marketshare through paeans to the past. The iPod - as originally conceived - was revolutionary. Note that there are five buttons and a scroll wheel, which allows the user to parse an XML file and operate on it in two directions. It gives visual feedback and tactile feedback. It has a hardware lock switch, an industry-standard charging port and a display large enough to accomplish its designed task and very little more. Where are we now? Perhaps you would prefer...
